summer fun

pictures are worth 1,000 words (except if you have the photog skills that i have, and then they're worth about 400 syllables of toddler-ese...). so here are a few photos of the past couple of days...and about 600 accompanying words to make up for the lack in photog. we're having a good summer.

we went to the bug lab with a bunch of friends on tuesday. rode the city bus to and from (the lab is at usu), which was a definite highlight for the kids. here are carson & lays waiting for the bus and looking like full-on tourists.

below, carson and layla are showing you all their "favorite" bugs, which, coincidentally, happen to be located in the boxes where they were sitting (i'm pretty sure layla wouldn't have chosen a bunch of enormous, sick spiders as her faves if she hadn't been sitting right there when i pulled out the camera, especially when there were plenty of perfectly ginormous, purple, and shimmery butterflies one row over). carson's pointing to the "hay-ee-est [hairiest] spider of all" as his favorite, and layla's just gesturing wildly at the entire experience.

oh, and carson was brave enough to actually hold a cockroach for a split second (something that i neither encouraged nor discouraged...ewwww), although the photo doesn't actually show it. can you please check out the SIZE of that bug? no. no. no. that should be illegal.

carson just finished his first session of swim lessons (with his cousin ella, a bonus), and he has absolutely loved it. he thought the fact that he had to wear a swim diaper (some kind of law, until they're 4 years old) was simultaneously silly and offensive. what can you do. since he got goggles (on the second or third day of class), his favorite thing has been to go underwater and swim (heh...kind of) around, looking at the "undersea" world of the swimming pool.

his teacher ruled and was so good with her class (in the pool pic, carson's the kid at the top on the left...it's a really good photo, i know). and after class every day, layla and i got to swim with him in the outside pool, which was a highlight. even though i was, as i told paul after the first day, "the biggest and whitest thing there," i guess i didn't really care, because i busted out the bathing suit every day. we're considering doing another session in a couple of weeks.

i bet you're jealous of our basement flood (my fault, too -- in removing some rose bushes right outside the house a couple weeks ago, i completely and unknowingly sliced through a sprinkler pipe, and we turned the auto-sprinklers on without checking them all before we left for the family reunion last weekend, which in turn flooded the hallway of our basement. i feel so proud of myself. paul's been super nice about it, but i just know he's rolling his eyes and muttering inside).

anyway, i don't know if you can tell from the snapshot above, but we had to rip up the carpet, cut out part of the pad, dry everything out, and we have yet to put it back in (or replace it altogether?) because we've had more sprinkler woes and outside projects that have demanded priority. like i said, i just KNOW you're jealous.

anyway. life is good. this good, in fact: