Play while you Play

Work while you work,
Play while you play,
This is the way
To be happy each day.

All that you do,
Do with your might,
Things done by half
Are never done right.

-Nursery Rhyme

We may have been in Idaho to remodel a house and get it on the market, but Mommy and Zoey needed a little time for play.  Play with a four year old is never boring, but sometimes draining.  I'm grateful Zoey has a few aunts and uncles around to help keep things going when Mom has crashed.

While home we were back to the daily grind of renovations, there was always time in the evenings to go to Grandma and Grandpa's (Memoo and Papa) and visit, oh and play with Rufus of course...

...the races with Chrissy, Karlie and Bianca.....

 ...take trips to the park and have water fights in the back yard.

The slides are her favorite.

The end of June we took our annual trip to Ogden for the D.C.  Although we were there for a specific purpose, we weren't going to pass up a chance to make it a full vacation.  My sister, Chrissy, and I thoroughly enjoyed taking Zoey to Cherry Hill, our old stomping grounds, to ride the water rides.  She rode each one fearlessly, including Cardiac Canyon, a wild tube ride down waterfalls  and through twisty canyons.  At the end she declared it was fun, but she wouldn't be going down it a second time.  Her favorites were the blue tube slides and a pirate ship where she play-steered the ship then ran periodically down stairs to check the map and change course.

One day after the D.C. in Ogden, my other siblings Karlie, Micah, and his wife Jessica joined us for the Dinosaur Park adventure.  We all thoroughly enjoyed the fossils and life sized replicas of dinosaurs artfully displayed amongst dense vegetation.  

The work on the house was not over in July as I had hoped, but we still had many wonderful days of fun ahead of us.  Although we had already bid farewell to our poultry, we did get to foster a neat little rooster for a week (he loved to perch as near us as possible, which was often my head); and  we loved the cool little 20's dress-up dinner party hosted by Karlie and Bianca...

 


...days in the canyon with friends and family.....

with Barbara and Joe's little ones.

...the county fair and Zoey riding her first pony...

...and of course our own petting zoo.

 There were so many great moments this summer.  When we worked, we worked hard; and when we played, we played hard.  The only sadness was that I was only able to share most of these experiences with my loving husband, John, via pictures, but at least we had that.  I hope all my friends, family, and if you're reading this and I don't know you, I hope you too had a wonderful, fun filled summer too.