225: weathering the storm

Who lets a little summer storm interrupt a perfectly good game of dodge ball?

212: Swimming Sisters

210: too hot...

Not a fan of this weather!

196: Lounging at the Lake

It's the beginning of our family kayak fleet. We just need a few dozen more boats.

193: busy summer Saturday

Such a fun, crazy day! Azia is 12 today!

We started the morning at the Missoula Kids Marathon. After Zoran and Lex ran, we were back over to the softball fields for Azia's game. After the afternoon game, Azia had cupcakes with her team,  slightly destroyed tie-dyed cupcakes she made last night that sort of survived the morning and riding to Missoula with Lex, but birthday cupcakes still. She wanted Chinese food for her birthday lunch and then we took everyone over to Splash Montana to cool off. Azia was off sliding with her friends and girls from the team so I didn't actually see her much (so I have a picture of Zayda the fish who loves the water!)

When we got home in the evening the kids were ready for more swimming at the Dam, Azia & Jenna were bike riding and planning outfits for church in the morning, and after some moon watching and more ambulance calls,  I was pretty excited about not having to get up early in the morning. Another busy week ahead!

190: Splash!

I take a lot of pictures of the tiniest people (because they're cute and all) but sometimes these bigger ones do more exciting things.

I ♥ Faces

184: Summer Basketball!

Zoran played in his first 3 on 3 tournament today with Bryce, Kellen, and Robbie. They had to play in the bracket with the 5th & 6th grade since there wasn't one for their age, but they did pretty well against the older kids. Hopefully they'll get to do one this summer with kids their own age–I think they could do really well.

183: spent some time lounging at the pool today

It's beginning to feel like summer out there!

182: July 1st.

After Israel's double header in Polson we found a pretty nice spot by the lake to change Zayda into pjs for the ride home.

It's been a little hectic the last month and it seems like we haven't even had time to do any real summer fun sorts of activities. But there have been some great moments in there for sure.

Looking forward to a few more over the next couple months...

243: Plains Fair

I took the younger kids to the fair. I was feeling sort of irresponsible about it since I don't even have money for school clothes or new backpacks or even groceries. I got paid for a photo job and then instead of getting any of those things I spent the whole check on an evening at the fair. I don't even like the fair, but my kids do and it seemed a good end-of-summer evening since a bunch of their friends and cousins were also going.

Of course I did ask the kids if they'd rather have groceries or go to the fair and they voted for the fair. They're all over age five now. I'm sure that's old enough to make decisions like this, so I probably shouldn't feel bad about it.

239: Good bye summer. . .

232: Fire in Lolo

Fire season is going strong. The Lolo Creek Fire is the worst local one right now. They already lost five homes, have evacuated others, and have warned anyone still in the area to be ready to leave on short notice. It's burned nearly 8, 000 acres. I was actually surprised at the lack of smoke in Missoula, but this ominous cloud of in the distance makes it pretty hard to forget what's going on a few miles away, even when you can still breath outside.

192: Sunrise

The view from our camp spot at Big Arm at about 5:00 am.

There are some perks to having to get up to go to the bathroom this early in the morning.

188: Zen Creek Gardening

I suppose this picture and headline give the impression that Lex was the one building the sculptures in the creek, when really, like always, Lex was much more interested in knocking them down. (Though he did help a little with that one closest to him and didn't actually knock any of these down, just asked somewhat excitedly if that was why everyone was building them.)

This just happens to be one of the moments none of the twenty other kids who were there are in the picture. Even though there were a few dozen kids, I think about 75% of the sculpture building was actually done by Michael and Eldon.

184: Still no AC

The one benefit my children get from our car without air conditioning is that I feel bad passing up any bodies of water without letting them get in if we have a hot drive ahead of us.

This afternoon expedition was really to the movie, but after that we had to make another stop at the lake (for the third day in a row) before we headed home.

174: summer reading

I'm using my children for work projects again. . . 

(A version of this image will be the cover of the summer issue of the Montana English Journal.)

168: Our library delivers!

It's sort of cool that our library brings books to our house during the summer for the kids to check out.

163: another summer sunset

266: mountains. smoke. sunrise.

The is the time of year where the length of the days and the time I need to be to work coincide about perfectly. To the east, this is the view nearly all the way to work.

263: middle of the day sillohettes

That's what our smokey days are good for.

A few people have asked me lately to take photos for them, and although my kids never allow me to take pictures of them when I'd like to, they seem to really enjoy this scouting out locations and light and helping me figure out how to take other people's pictures.