Last Days of Summer

We had a glorious month of August and early September here in western Washington. All of the sunshine that we were lacking earlier in the year seemed to (almost) be made up for. I had forgotten what it was like to long for warm sunny days until this week. I am already missing the boost in vitamin D.
I got some great shots of the kids in the pool last week enjoying the last bits of our summer sunshine.

And of course I can't forget our "white trash Friday" that we had last week with Erica and Elijah. The boys did a "car wash" with the hose, buckets of water and their favorite push cars. They were down to their underwear in the process. Then they had popsicles while sitting in the very small sandbox. Needless to say, they were a couple of very happy, sandy little boys.

I can't forget our "sick" day that consisted of stuffy noses, popcorn and the kids watching Despicable Me. The movie was so charming and cute. I loved it and so did they.

On the same "sick day", the kids got into some mischief. This has been happening more often lately, as the kids are becoming more friendly with each other and less competitive. I honestly would rather have them get into trouble with each other than fight. But here is what happened: I gave the kids their milk cups at the same time. I left the room for about 1 minute. No more, no less. I came back in the room to find that they had shaken their milk cups all over every single couch cushion in the living room. Not just a light sprinkling either. They were drenched with milk. I scolded them and put them in time out. Instead of feeling bad and ashamed of what they had done, they giggled and talked to each other throughout their punishment. I couldn't help but feel happy and thankful that they were enjoying each other at the moment. 

I stripped the couch cushions and got them out of their time out chairs. I put their milk away and left them downstairs while I ran upstairs to throw the cushion covers in the wash upstairs. Gone not 2 minutes, I came back downstairs to find them ripping the cotton threads off the inside of the cushions and throwing them everywhere. They were in complete destructor mode. I was again mad at them, but thankful at the same time that they were working together and not against each other. How silly is that? So...we ended up with 5 bare couch cushions and one bare ottoman cushion. The kids decided we should make a slide (and be naked at the time). I couldn't help but enjoy every second of them sliding butt naked down the cushion. The pictures are few only because there were so many full frontal photos that I wasn't willing to publish all of them on the internet. I love my kids, mischief and all. The chair in the background is piled high with couch cushions and covered with a blanket so that they wouldn't continue to rip the stuffing off of them.