My favorite part of summer — enjoying rest.

Forcing myself to breath deeply of fresh air and stop moving if for only an hour or two, and watching my children play…together with a friend or two added in to the bunch…happily…simply enjoying each other’s company with no expectations, no pressure, no schedule to keep. All while sitting on a hill, chatting casually with a friend.

Lady at Goodwill Check-out: “Are they all yours?”

Me: “Yup!”

Lady at Goodwill Check-out: “You must be ready for school to start again.”

Me: “No, I actually really enjoy summer.”

I do. Days of nothing on the agenda besides water slides and diving boards. 6 different flavors of ice cream in my freezer. A collection of crocs and flip flops in a pile in my kitchen. Staying up late and sleeping in in the morning. Not having central air can be dreadful. I am so not a heat person. But, having all of my brood at home with very little planned, I’m that kind of person.

Today, we decided spur of the moment to go see some aged equines. Yup, we did. There is a farm for aged equines (aka, a nursing home for old horses) not far from our house. So, we packed some lunches, went to the store to buy some carrots for the aged equines, and went on out there.

Fully expecting Lydia to need to be held the entire time and giving me her “scared… big… horsie… scared… big… horsie” type of thing, I didn’t even bother to get my camera out (at first). But, oddly enough, the girl is scared of toy poodles but was pretty darn comfortable around these big old beasts.

Mind you, I was not. So, I had to keep grabbing her in case their old blind eyes thought this little pipsqueak was an extra large carrot. Apparently, most of them are missing a good number of teeth since they are so old, so maybe a nibble wouldn’t be so bad. Drew seemed to disagree (note the blur on his feet in the next picture as Mindy the pony moved a little too close for comfort).

But, regardless of missing teeth, I saw some icky drool coming from those gnarly mouths. Ick. I’m so not a farm girl apparently either.

New Years. Valentine’s Day. Easter. Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. Cow Appreciation Day….Yup, we aren’t ashamed to celebrate it yearly.

On my way down to MD to visit my parents on Wednesday, I had a moment of “oh no!” when I got an email reminding me of Cow Appreciation Day which was today. How could I not have marked this on my calendar? There we were with suitcases in tow and no black and white, no yarn tails, no cat or zebra headbands to pretend are bovine. Ashlyn even has a cow patterned dress she could have worn this year.

But, that didn’t stop us.

Lydia was not so sure, but she caught on quickly. This next picture was taken literally a nanosecond after the one above.

The shift manager was a bit of a Cow-Appreciation-Day grinch and would only give my children the 4-piece meals and us the sandwiches free since our costumes were not head to toe realistic. I’m thinking the high school girl there in a plush cow costume complete with horns and bell set the bar a bit too high.

So sorry for these folks who didn’t get the email message and had to pay for their lunches.

After 3 days of a mini-vacation at my parents complete with Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Cheeseburgers in Paradise, playground and sprinkler play, setting up Mom’s new ipad2, and watching shows on my parents’ humungous tv, we headed home this evening after a quick dinner.

About 90 minutes into the trip, the kids were starving. So….

Wait….

Got it.

Yup. I’m a brave bovine indeed.

A n d,   I ‘ m   a b o u t   5  p o u n d s   h e a v i e r.

you may know the type (maybe you are the type), the family who lives somewhere and never really learns about where they live. That’s sorta embarrassing, you know? I do a lot of fun stuff with the kids and have been heading down to Phili on a pretty regular basis. But, I didn’t know much history beyond Ben Franklin and a broken bell.

Not anymore.

We rode the ducks, people.