Knights Ferry

This morning we had absolutely nothing planned for the first time in ages! It's Labor Day weekend, therefore no games for any of our kids. We decided on a last minute day trip to the river for our puppy's first time of water play. We packed a small cooler, filled up the van and headed over to Togo's for a family-sized sub sandwich to get us through our day :P The trip to Knights Ferry only took about an hour and a half. We had been there before with the boys and they had enjoyed hanging out by the river and simply skipping rocks and exploring. I have a funny memory of the last time we were there. We were exploring the ruins of old flour mills and Liam, being alot younger, said "Look mommy and daddy, this is where Jesus was born!!!" I guess the ruined stone walls made him think of ancient times, so I had to explain that this small town in California was not Jesus' birthplace.

We knew the puppy would probably enjoy his first try at swimming....which he did! The last time the area was much more lush and green, but this time of year when the weather is around 100+ degrees, the lush greenery was nonexistent and has changed to mainly brown except by the river. I took this chance to get an early Christmas Card photo shoot, so before leaving home I ran to the boys closets after getting them into the van in search of matching shirts. I went with red shirts and denim shorts, as seen in my blip photo. I promised them a REALLY quick photo shoot if they would give me some cute smiles right off the bat. I even gave little direction on posing, letting them go with the flow. It was over in less than 10 minutes and then they were off to eat their sub sandwiches and then went exploring.

We had a great day, even met a boy Liam's age whose dad was named Loren like our oldest boy. They had brought a dog along as well, so Scout was his usual submissive self to this girl doggie. We found two huge litters of kittens along the way and I fell in love with one particular kitten. All the begging in the world to take it home just didn't prove productive after all of the vet expenses we've incurred the last three weeks with the pets we already have.

When we returned home, everyone showered, wet 'river' clothes were laundered and then the kids were tucked into bed....that's when Gary and I settled in with a movie rental called 'The Back-Up Plan'. We thought it was a really cute romantic comedy. It was such a wonderful relaxing day with the family.