Our summer of bliss...

We have been spoiled with a weekly schedule of: ocean, lake, live music, fair. Repeat.

repeat...

Keep it coming until I am too cold to jump into the lake please!

Stargazing...

"If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently." -bill watterson Seriously... It just blows me away on those nights when I can sit and watch the sky and marvel at the vastness of it all. Tonight I spent a little time in the tree swing soaking it all in.

photo via oh pioneer because I was a little too distracted to take any myself...

Gardening...

It has been said that you can bury a lot of troubles by digging in the dirt... And yes, I think that is true. I love passing the morning hours out of doors, with the chickens scratching around and the kids flying out of the house to be near me as I dig. This first year of gardening at Green Field Farm (named by AnaSofia and oh so fitting!) has been therapeutic to say the least, just so lovely and fun. It gives me pleasure to pick a few things for dinner, dig up a few that didn't go and try again or just watch the kids play with a few tomatoes with no plan in mind whatsoever. It is trial and error and not so much about the bounty, but the fruits of labor are always rewarding.

Color Your World

We bought some face painting crayons at the art supply store in town the other day as an afterthought... Silliness quickly followed...

I can't believe I let a five year old color on me and do damage to her little brother too. But it is hours of endless fun and we only look crazy going to the market for a day or so before it washes off!

Blueberries

Now that all the strawberries have been picked, jammed and frozen we are on to the next fruit of the summer! We have two huge patches of blueberries in our fields and have been filling a bowl each morning while the chickens roam the yard for a bit.

We are always under the watchful eye of sweet Jipsee.

Unless she gets distracted by something else...

...like the chickens... "Do you feel someone watching us?!"

and then we sometimes get distracted by the critters we find...

But our little bowl eventually fills amidst lots of chatter, eating and silliness.

Setting Up Camp

It has started! Sneaking off on weekends for campfires, good stories and being outside from dawn to dawn. As the fantastic Tom Waits said, "there's a lot of things in this world that you're gonna have absolutely no use for. And when you get blue and you've lost all your dreams, there's nothing like a campfire and a can of beans." I am that type of girl, when things get tough, I run to nature. This weekend the mom's group I have been part of since AnaSofia was crawling scheduled their annual camping trip to Cobscook Bay, there is nothing like group camping with a bunch of like minded parents and watching our kids run wild together.

We were waist deep in the mud flats clamming, whispering stories in the tent as it rained, doing art projects with our paint pens, playing and making memories. Hopeful there will be many more camping weekends in store for us this year!