Sweet summertime...for today anyway!

Today we headed to the city to Grey's Lake.  I had a meeting with Patty, our pastor's wife.  We have been meeting for a while now, one time a month.  We do not have a specific plan for our meetings but just a nice chance to chat and it is awesome to have a mentor that is someone from our church.  I really enjoy our time together and since it has been nicer, I have taken the boys along.  They love "Miss Patty" and she seems to enjoy them too :) 
                          

I am pretty sure today's goal was to get as dirty as possible.  We started out just scooping sand (which they did for almost an hour) before we moved closer to the water, THEN it got messy!  They both love to dig, explore and look for treasures of some sort!  It was a beautiful, warm summer-like day.  There was a slight breeze the kept us from getting too hot.  It felt amazing to be out soaking up some vitamin D. 

Hutchinson got dirty like it was his job.  Oh wait, it is.

After our little fun in sand we headed across the street to Water Works Park.  It was simply amazing.  There were SO MANY crab apple trees in bloom and they have so many different varieties.  The smell was almost overwhelming! We picnicked under a HUGE bright pink tree and then the boys set off to do some exploring and the loved reading the tags on each of the trees.  We searched for our favorite and decided that this big white one had to be it.  If you live in Des Moines, you have to stop down there soon and check out this amazing work of nature. 

After our city adventure we headed back to the homestead for some quality rest time.  Finnean is right on the brink of giving up his nap but still needs it...so we have rest time for him and Hutchinson was out like a light.  We had errands to run and then met the Blanchards at the park.  It was a nice surprise, since they have moved to Indianola we just don't get to see them as often as we would like.  Finnean, Grady and Jace just play hard.  It is nice because they don't really need much from the adults...they have a plan and they are going to do it!   Hutchinson just tries to keep up and checks in often with us.   Little Dax brings up the end of the group, he is just about big enough to crawl all over everything, so I think likes watching the big boys in action.  What a fun way to end such a great day!  We had to get the extremely dirty boys a bath and then get to bed for the LAST DAY of preschool tomorrow! I have mixed feelings about this.  It just makes him seem so much older that he is done with one year of preschool but I am so looking forward to whatever the summer as in store for us...hopefully many more days like today!