Our sweet Shelby

Love this girl!!!

Crawdads a.k.a. Crayfish

We had some friends over for dinner last night and found ourselves in the river, fishing for crawdads.  We had such a fun time!  Adam was the instigator and he and Josh found a lot!  We boiled them up and the guys ate them dipped in garlic butter.

Here's Shelby with the cooked crawdads.

And Shelby holding Roxy.

It was a fun night and the girls slept great after all that fun!

It smells so good!!

We had a cord of word delivered today and they split it at our house.  It smells so good right outside our door!

Now we will be working to get it all stacked before the next cord is delivered!

So excited about our fire pit - September can't get here fast enough!  (And then hopefully the burn ban will lift.)  Josh dug out the middle of it and added some rocks so it is now bigger and better.  :)

Caterpillars

Josh was so good and chased grasshoppers with the girls yesterday and this morning. I think they caught a few! Then they got a caterpillar and had a blast with it crawling on daddy and Vivian. Shelby eventually let it crawl on her shoe and a little bit on her leg. It tickled her and we all had a nice laugh. Vivian did so well letting it sit on her. She didn't care for it much as it crawled around.

Vivian had to have her own caterpillar so we made our way out to the apple trees. There are at least a hundred on this one tree!
Then we got homes for the caterpillars. Josh and Shelby figured out that they could hear the caterpillar crunching on the leaves! Just now Vivian's caterpillar (in the jar) was eating and we got to hear it! Notice Vivian listening in the second picture.

The girls and I went down to the river this afternoon and saw a gray snake slithering away from us. Eek!  We played in the river for a bit, but Vivian was being a stinker so we decided to come back to the house.

All sorts of nature fun today!

Adoption

We have some new sweet friends and they are adopting 2 babies from Ethiopia! Lynsey is the daughter of our landlord, Greg Harvey. Here's where you can check out their story and give, if you feel led to do so:

Bilbruck Family Adoption

Skillet rack complete!

Josh finished the skillet rack today and it is up!  I love it!

Crossing the Kettle River

Today we went down to the river and Josh carried the girls across the river one at a time.  They loved it!  In our area of the river the deepest it gets is mid-thigh for Josh right now.  Here are some pictures and a video!

I am at the top of the hill looking down to where Shelby is standing.  Josh and Vivian are across the river.

Josh & Vivian on the other side.

Josh carrying Shelby to the other side.  

Josh & Shelby on the other side.

 Sweet girls!

And here's the anti-climactic video: