Camping

This post is a few months late, but better now than never, right?

My parents recently purchased some land up in Forest Lakes, and we went up with them a couple times this summer, to help clear off pine needles and dead trees so that it would not be such a fire hazard.

Shayla loves being outside, exploring and just getting dirty. Here she is riding the ATV with “Paca.”

Shayla also loves playing with “Beshie.” (My sister Shelbie).

And reading books with Nana.

She loves swinging in her swing (though you can’t tell by the look on her face in this picture. 

But most of all, she loves getting dirty. It rained and rained one of the days we were there, and we could only keep her restrained in her high chair for so long. I finally had to give in to the fact that her clothes would get ruined, and just let her be a kid. She just splashed and splashed for quite some time in the wheelbarrow full of muddy water. How do you resist a cute little girl with a Hitler moustache?

We went back later in the summer and chopped down some trees.  All of the men were excited to get their hands on the ax and chainsaws to cut down these big pine trees. When they got the first one down, Shayla got real sad, and almost crying, kept saying “Twee down, twee down.” Apparently we’ve got a little environmentalist on our hands. My parents have some video of it, so I will have to get a copy of it to post one of these days.

Learning ABC’s

We have several ABC type books, and we’ve been reading them forever. I never really thought Shayla was getting much out of them. All of the sudden in the last couple of weeks, she can identify every letter of the alphabet—the capital letters at least.

I remembered yesterday, that I bought these magnetic letters probably a year ago, so I pulled them out and she loved them. My fridge will never be free of fingerprints again. I only wish I had bought more than one set so we could spell out words with her.