Hoyt (in water) and Coyote
Hoyt in action. I love those little bare feet and rolled up pants.
Lily and Lincoln
It was a Hoyt running kind of day
We forgot to bring Elsie play clothes, so we stole some of Hoyt's pants.
Hoyt was attached to this shopping cart. It went everywhere with him, including the mud.
Elsie hopping
By the end of the day, Elsie's shirt was hardly white at all.
Elliott wasn't that into getting muddy, but he liked being outside.
Running
Lincoln and his puddle
Running Lily
This is the kids favorite puddle because it is deeper than the others.
Who knows.
It was good mud.
Lincoln and his muddy hands
Kickin' it.
Hoyt in the puddle
Hoyt more literally in the puddle.
Gilbert's discarded footwear. He got these boots from his cousin Brylan, and he is in love with these!
Sunday collecting. The sap ran like crazy on Sunday, and has continued ever since. We were expecting a bad year and now we have more syrup than we have ever made. And the season's not over yet.
Collecting the front trees before heading over to the sugar bush we tap of some friends of ours.
Elsie helping Hoyt with his shopping cart.
Hoyt and his mud ball
Lily
Meanwhile, everyone inside was much more civilized. And clean.
Wood bark platter
Croquet mallets are useful in all sorts of instances. Poor Mom and Dad, I think we owe them a new, lovely croquet set. The kids use these things. and the balls for all sorts of non-croquet things.
Lincoln's accidental mud on the face. Once he discovered he had mud, he had to make the other side match. And then everyone tried to give everyone else mud tattoos. I quickly squashed that idea.
Sticky wicket.
Red haired girl
These two are so busy in their two and three year old pursuits.
Scooping water
Little gap toothed, muddy girl.
Lincoln with his tray of mud. And Dad having a sunshine rest in the background.
Lincoln camoflauging his mud with dead grass.
The mature girls
We have a pretty good clay content in our soil, so the kids had a lot of fun with mud sculptures.
Mud spatter grin
Elsie's sculptures
It was quite a little ceramics class
Gilbert was inside watching bananagrams
Geri and Ashley peeled all the dyed eggs for future use.
That one looks like an eyeball.
The digginest dog
Abilene came out in the sunshine
So delighted with himself
Cheyenne is getting so grown up!
Elliott being a farmer.
Squint eyed look.
I love this kid
Hahha!
And then he went his merry way, tossing his hat.
Hoyt-mid puddle.
Trying to see the first calf of the season that was obliging enough to be born on Easter Day.
It is hard to see, but that black thing is a calf. We couldn't get too close, since we didn't want to bother poor Mama cow, who had already had to endure one of the horses over mothering her calf and trying to make it run around like a foal. Poor calf.
Owen heading off to tag it and treat its navel.
Hoyt still enthusiastically pushing his stroller around.
And then, it was evening. And time to get cleaned up.
A new and improved Elsie had a story with Aunt Geri before we had to say goodbye.
Such as marvelous weekend!
