A Barrel of Carrolls: Summer Recap

This is what summer should look like, right? Everyone sleeping in!

Man, we've had such a blast this summer. It's been a surprisingly cool summer, so we've spent a good amount of our time outside exploring, playing, taking walks, going to the pool, playing in our new fort, having picnics in our front yard, and trying to soak it all in.

racing on the loud bridge by the pond of one of our favorite parks

painting with mommy and daddy on our on-going summer remodel

The boys love pretending, so I feel like no matter where they are there's some kind of explanation for who they're rescuing or where we need to hurry to be safe or protect somebody. So fun! When we started talking about Daddy being home more in the summer (after Prim was born) Tytus had two things he was looking forward to: building a fort with Daddy, going on vacation. We had talked about getting to do those things in the summer once his preschool was out to get the boys excited about what was to come. Well, most of the summer went by and we realized that the fort idea might not happen this summer. We threw around some ideas, but weren't too sure on what to do since our time had been taken up by some home projects already. Little did we know, a neighbor was getting rid of their fort/swing set in the backyard and would freely give it to anyone who would help remove it for them. Yay for us! Ian got some guys to help haul it, and Uncle Mark and Ian spent some time digging out holes one night to place it securely in the ground the next day. So far, it's been a hit! It's the first thing they want to do almost every day after breakfast.

They've been watching Octonauts and were mimicking one of the characters that is a rabbit.
Tytus chose these carrots specifically at the store and we ate through all of them right when we got
home because they would climb up and down the fort saying "Got it Cap'n!"and take a bite.

We also got to go on a trip to Sea World that we had been planning on doing this summer with the boys. They've been really into learning about animals, specifically sea creatures, and we thought it would be a fun experience since we live fairly close to San Antonio. On our way to a hotel that night we stopped in down town Austin to watch the bats fly from the bridge. We got dinner and ate it on the bridge while the sun went down. Once it was about to set, the bats all started to fly out. It was a lot quieter than I imagined, but it was amazing to see that number of bats. The boys have a book about different places in Texas, so it was fun for them to see what the book was illustrating.

Sea World was an adventure! We enjoyed getting to see the different animals, ride a few rides, the boys splashed around in the splash pad/climbing area, and we drank lots of water! Man, it was hot! All in all I would say it was a fun trip and interesting to see some of the animals in real life, but it was a little too fast-paced for our ideal vacation. Great memories were made, with the highlight for the boys being the last show we saw with acrobatic divers, dolphins, and belugas. They have both been trying out different ways to be divers or flip around like those guys were doing in the show. Yikes!

Some good exploring has been going on around our backyard, neighborhood, and just around Austin in general. We've been going to the library more frequently again, walking down to our creek to see if it's filled up with water yet (they've been praying for God to fill it up with rain), and building tons of legos. One Saturday we headed out to our favorite breakfast spot and then went to Zilker to walk around and climb the giant rocks in the center of the park. Ian had run in a race at the park the night before and Tytus thought it'd be fun to come back to climb around in the day time. It was such beautiful weather and good time to spend together!