A Trip Down Memory Lane

Tonight for our usual Sunday night "dinner and movie night" we watched home videos from when the boys were 3 1/2 . . . . .OUCH. Oh my word, it's almost painful for me to watch those videos and they are now only 7!! They were so stinking cute - yes I know I'm biased - I just wanted to reach through the TV screen and hug them and it was killing me. Fun to watch, but oh so hard to accept that those days are gone forever. Where do they go?!? And why at such lightning speed? And what in the world am I going to do when they are seniors in high school? The mere thought truly terrifies me. And now (possibly as a result of the movies?) the familiar pit in my stomach has returned - the one I had at this time last summer when it really hit me the boys would be in school full-time - - the schedule doesn't change this year, but just the fact that they will be in 1st grade already is a little too much for me to wrap my head around. Uggh - I hope I don't feel this way all month! (Or actually 3 1/2 weeks - that's all we have left of summer!) :(

Okay, enough of the pity-party - we had a great week last week. Barely unpacked from our Arizona trip, on Tuesday morning the boys and I headed up to the Big Horn mountains in Wyoming with my mom and dad. We have family friends that have a great cabin in the mountains, and they invited us up for a couple days. I grew up in Sheridan, WY, so I had spent considerable time at this same cabin when I was little - so it was REALLY fun to go back and show it all to Jack and Noah. They had a blast - they loved the cabin and the loft they got to sleep in; had fun on the home-made teeter-totter;

and seriously bonded with our friends' dog named Pippa.

This dog was AWESOME - she loved the boys as much as they loved her and the 3 of them were inseparable. She doesn't shed, she's sweet as can be, she was a literal shadow to Jack and Noah - we loved loved loved her. She's a Kerry Blue Terrier, and I researched the breed when we got home, but found they are VERY difficult to find. Hmmm - the perfect pet escapes us again . . .

The other cool thing about this little trip was that there were two giant moose basically living in the yard - they were there nearly the whole time we were. It was amazing to be so close and so fun to watch them . . .

Here's one crossing the road right in front of us:

Thursday, back at home, we hit the pool with some friends - ended up staying for 3 1/2 hours, not getting home till after 6:00 - but it was great. We'll be doing a lot more of THAT before school starts!

Friday my brother, his fiance and her little boy came over for the night - got a babysitter and us grown-ups got to go see a grown-up movie!! It's been a LONG time since we've done that - saw Hancock, which I thought was good, but then I probably would have thought anything was good because it had been so long since I had seen a non-children's movie! They stayed over and then left after lunch on Saturday, at which point we went car shopping for Mark. UGGHH. Have I ever mentioned I HATE car shopping? Ick. Mark's car is 10 yrs. old and he does really need a newer one, so we tried to buckle down and get it done, but by the end of the day we (or at least I) was really crabby and we hadn't made much progress. Stay tuned.

This week? We have a lot of NOTHING. Yeaaahhh!! What a great feeling. I love our family trips, excursions and adventures, but I also dearly love our downtime. Especially now as summer is winding down . . . .