Wheeler Farm is the best place in the world and we've only just discovered it.

This place is AWESOME! It's a functioning farm, over 75 acres of just gardens, animals, grass, streams and lakes, and cool machines and stuff for the kids to play on. AND it's all FREE! you can pay a couple dollars to milk a cow, ride a hay ride etc, but that's it! It's so fun, beautiful, relaxing to be there. My kids run away and I could care less because we're just on a giant farm. Not only are we outside, but they've seen tons of new baby animals, watched pigs be washed and fed, they've fed chickens, helped gather and count chicken eggs, and there are always really nice people and friends there to play with. But it has never been very crowded so far either.  Can't wait to go back with Collin. We'll plan to be there every couple weeks or more during the summer.



Harriet having a gorgeous Dorothea Lange moment

Days and days

Every day we go outside and have an adventure. Sometimes we take the double stroller. It's better not to. The kids complain about waking toward the end. I might have to carry them for a little while. But living on Capitol Hill means going back home at the end of our journey up a GIANT HILL. Pushing kids in a double stroller up that hill is very vey hard. I did it once and for the next day I had pinched nerves in my back and neck. Not cool. So now we are on foot mostly. Unless we stay out all day and daddy drives us home after he's done w work. 

Ran into this family. These two boys are Uncle and nephew to each other and one is a month older than Fred and one is just 1 day apart from him!!!! They are moving into the neighborhood!!! When we came upon them, the three boys automatically started running in the grass and wrestling each other. They would run around and then two of them would tackle one and then they would get up and do it again. I believe that kids are inherently good and learn through play and through doing. I am trying to back off and let stuff play out more instead of micromanaging. 

Adventures inside too

Doing homework

The other day we went to temple square and saw Legacy. I love that movie so much. It's a beautiful film about the Pioneers and what they went through for my religious freedom. Freddie was so interested and I explained and cried through it. Then to walk outside and see all that was accomplished by them and all that is here because of them, was marvelous. 

We met Collin for an organ recital in he Tabernacle. It was so powerful. I told Freddie about how it used to be he where they held General Conference and how I went there once when I was a little girl, 8 years old. I remembered where I sat even. It was amazing because compared to the Conference Center today, it seemed so small, yet when I was 8, it seemed gigantic. I remember so clearly, Gordon B Hinckley coming out and speaking to us. It was a different life. It's hard to imagine sometimes. 

Ran into Collin's Uncle Rick!!!

Outdoors.

Feeding the ducks the other day...and met an old man from the Far East who guess I was Mormon and then told me about his connection to the church for an hour! Phew! What an interesting guy he was. We will see him again. He was surprised at the freedom I gave Frederick to run around the pond and commented that in his culture they are very protective of their young and would never allow something like that...but that maybe if they did they would be more daring and courageous! He told me I'm doing a good job as a mom...which was nice to hear even if he doesn't even know me haha!

Baby ducks!