Our fabulous friend Cindy let our girls take a tour of the Arabian Horse Farm where she works. The girls were in LOVE. Mayzie Faye especially loved this donkey whose name is Mazey Day. She just HAD to get a picture with her.
As is always the case in Indiana during the summer, the cicadas sing their humming clicking songs of searching and leave their shells all over the trees. We finally found an actual bug, and not just the shell. Annika was enamored!
When the girls met this foal, they were head over heels. They fed this not so shy girl apple slices and giggled every time her lips tickled their hands. It was so much fun to watch their little faces of absolute joy.
I think they might have had more fun fishing if we had actually caught anything. Our friend Heath briefly reeled a fish in that had the unfortunate mishap of being in just the right place at the wrong time. The fish got hooked in the eye on Heath's first cast. Good thing there was a playground nearby.
Mayzie was more interested in looking adorable than actually fishing.
It rained on us, but we didn't really mind. We still made sure that the kids got their s'mores with the giant marshmallows that Andy found calling to him at the store. I just adore Annika's face in this picture. She was laughing so hard and I couldn't help but kiss her sticky sweet cheeks after I snapped this shot.
Our camping crew had a great time despite the crummy weather. The kids even entertained themselves much of the time while we adults sat and had actual adult conversation.
There were bunches of laughs and giggles and good times to be had this weekend, and I needed more of that in my life. Mayzie won the good behavior award, though I might take it away for all the potty accidents she had. I keep trying to remember that it's a looong process, and we were in a strange place.
We even had some old friends that live in a nearby town come over and visit us at our campsite. We took the kids to the swimming pool. We took the girls for outrageously humongous dinosaur ice cream sundaes. We took so many trips to the bathroom with the kids that we lost count at some point. We all slept in one giant tent because the other tent didn't have a rain fly and it was pouring. We had fabulous dutch oven breakfast casserole and roasted tofu-dogs. It was a deliciously savory and sweet weekend that will not ever be lost in my memory. It was beautiful and messy and frustrating and hilarious and scrumptious in every way possible. This is the kind of weekend when the juice runs down my chin and hand from taking a giant bite out of life, and I couldn't be more thankful for having been there.
