Friendly Faeries

It is amazing how often the kids dive into the dress up clothes when someone is over. Princess, faerie, pirate, cook, and angel are all universal kid games. Some friends prefer to play puppy more than pirate and to each their own. Teilee tends to try only to play dinosaur and it has been great expanding her enjoyment of some different repertoire.
Teilee had her friend Shamaiah over to play. Shamaiah loves to play princess or faerie. The last time she was over we ran out of time to venture to our Cottonwood Creek. A short jaunt down our greenbelt and you will arrive to a small weedy, grassy area with a huge cottonwood tree and a small creek running through.
This time I swore to the girls (who are good at getting promises out of me) that we would go. They donned their most appropriate attire and insisted on a few baskets to gather trinkets with, and we were off. Leave Landis in his nap and Daddy at home this was a girls adventure!


We found some lovely fishing sticks and began catching blue gill, trout, catfish, sunfish, big mouth bass, crappie. Then the ever elusive dogfish (that barked), catfish (that meowed, and cowfish (that mooed). Of course we practiced catch and release on a few. Some went into our fish basket for later dining.

We had a wonderful time, this is our little oasis. Quiet, somewhat secluded, and hidden. This was a great photo opportunity as well. The dark haired princess and the golden tresses of the faerie.

Trudging through the trees. This is one cottonwood tree with branches descending both sides of the path.


















We love having our friends to play, it is always an adventure!!




Shamaia is catching the Andi fish with her stick.

For the next visit she has made me promise we will bake cookies! Who am I to say no?

Water Play

I have some great pictures of some great experiences from this summer.

We have always ventured to this spot along the Spring Creek Trail. It is an educational art piece about the water cycle and we found it to be a quiet, secluded, refuge within our town. Little did we know that it held a fabulous surprise. One warm afternoon we were enjoying a picnic upon the stone structure when a few young boys came riding up. We were surprised that children of their age (around 10) would come here to play. As we were talking with them one child went and pushed what seemed to be a part of the artwork and low and behold water began spraying from the now evident fountain. The whole display suddenly made sense and we were quite embarrassed that we had not figured it out. We came back a bit more often to play in our own private water park.









The life cycle is described on the walls of this half moon shaped feature. At the end of the description is this fabulous structure. The water spills down and creates a pool where no doubt creatures gather to drink.

The button is difficult to push which is great for conserving water in a fountain such as this, but also makes it quite easy to surprise spray an unsuspecting relaxed daddy. :)












Teilee has absolutely no fear of the water and loves the spray. Landis would prefer to float dandelion seeds and sticks down the tile, rather than experience a single drop of water. If you look you will see the results of his dandelion water parade.




















What a beautiful place, and no doubt it will be one of our all time favorite places to visit in the heat of summer.