Cool summer days outside

This week was unseasonably cool here, with temperatures dropping into the upper 60's overnight - wow!  We spent many hours outside every day, enjoying the cool summer days while we could.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the children seemed to need a sandbox to dig in (our old one became unusable earlier this year).  Lucky me - and lucky kiddos - my husband and son made one for us last weekend, a big 3' x 4' cedar box with 8' of bench seating along the sides.  It's a beautiful sand box, and the kiddos played in it almost constantly all week.

With all our outside play, I captured some lovely quiet moments, as well as lots of active play.

Here is a new game the kiddos came up with this week: collecting the bark from the crepe myrtle trees to use as "pens".

Another favorite activity is collecting the berries from our nandina shrubs (non toxic for humans).

 I had to remember to warn this child's parents to check her pockets before doing the laundry!

We played with chalk on the driveway one morning... and the kiddos drew on themselves too.  Maybe they're pretending it's makeup?  

 Silly me, when I bought all these trucks for outside play, I thought they were for driving around!  How wrong I am - they are puppies, and the children lead them around outside by their built in "leashes".  I love how this ended up being a pile of puppies!

Kaleidoscopes and other viewers are always available to the children.  I haven't seen this exact way of using them before, but when she put these to her face, all I could hear was the Beatles singing "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes."

 Less than a month ago we stomped in puddles - and this child refused to join in, wanting nothing to do with getting wet, dirty or muddy.  What a change!

With all the backyard time we've had this week, it shouldn't be a surprise that the children found some interesting critters to observe.  I've never seen this before myself - but this roly poly had at least 50 tiny white babies with her.  Cool!

 This cool bug was spotted on a marigold plant in our veggie garden - again, I've never seen one before.  According to www.wetcanvas.com it's a candy-striped leaf hopper.

 We also had more squash blossoms to eat... so far this year we've only seen one female blossom, and it died, so we probably won't be harvesting any squash, but we're feasting on blossoms every day.  We are loving the great outdoors!