End of Summer Picnic

It's so hard to believe that it is already our End of Summer Picnic time!!  We've been doing this for so many years that now it is a special tradition the girls and I look forward to every August.  This year though we drove to our normal picnic spot only to find that the entire picnic area was taken over with vendors and horses.  There was a festival set up for the weekend and absolutely no spot for us to have a picnic.  We weren't sure what we were going to do and Brooklyn exclaimed "our picnic is ruined!"  I quickly replied that sometimes things will happen and you just have to go with them and who knows we could just find something even better that we never knew was around!   Well as we drove a bit further up the mountain we found nothing so we turned around to drive back down thinking we would just go to a local park when I passed by an old school house museum.  I quickly glanced and saw grass area with picnic tables along with a play area and knew it would work for the day and once the girls saw the play area they were very happy.

We walked around to the back of the play area and found the tiny pavilion empty and perfect for our picnic so I laid out our blanket we usually sit on as a tablecloth and we ate our lunch and read our book we have been reading together.

The goal was to finish this book before school began but life has gotten in the way and we have not been home as much as I thought we would be this Summer so we still have a ways to go but this book is amazing and we have had so many conversations regarding what is or has happened in the book.  There was a specific part in the book today about what one of the characters thinks happens to you after you die and how she believed your soul is eventually re-born so that you get a second chance at life.  It was perfect timing because the night before I was explaining to Brooklyn how people believe that when you die your soul lives on so when we read this section in the book we ended up having a great conversation about what we each believed.   I have loved that this book has encouraged us to have so many great conversations that we wouldn't normally bring up or even think about in our day to day.  I'm really looking forward to this movie coming out in the Fall! 

After lunch and some reading the girls were ready to go play.  They were excited about the teeter totter until Brooklyn realized she was a little too high and wasn't too sure about the thump back down

Her I'm not sure about this and I don't want to take a picture face,

They love a good slide that launches you at the end

Their favorite part of the entire park was the tire swing, they played on this almost the entire time and now really want one.  I told them papa could probably build them one so I'll be searching pinterest for tire swings this weekend!

I had to stop them for a bit to get some pictures of my soon to be 5th grader and 2nd grader together.

and then just one of my 5th grader......HOW, WHY and WHEN did this little baby turn into a 5th grader???

Oh and then it was this girls turn, 

"Wait mommy, let me get ready"

She climbs herself up and gives me one of her Brooklyn poses

I'm pretty sure I was just carrying her on my hip in her pink flowered footed pajamas to drop off her big sister at preschool and now she's starting 2nd grade! 

It goes by so fast and too fast but I try not to dwell too much on it because it makes me too sad.  I sat and watched them today while they played forever running from here to there and wished so badly that they were little again or that they would just stay where they are now because I know it's getting so close to changing even more.  They had so much fun and just before I could get too sad I saw the most beautiful bird that I tried to capture with my camera but he just kept moving along and flying away little by little

 later I realized that bird was there to remind me that my girls also need to keep on moving along and flying away little by little

So thanks to that little bird I'll do just that and keep on enjoying each and every second that I have with them because in just three more days they'll be back to school moving along and learning to fly a bit higher and higher.