More Outdoor Summer Fun

It's hard to believe that summer is over halfway done. In fact, three weeks from tomorrow John starts teaching at EKU for the fall semester. Crazy. We are happy to report that we are taking full advantage of all that Lexington has to offer. In fact, although we don't have pictures for you, yesterday we spent the afternoon at the Kentucky Horse Park Indoor Arena watching male and female competitors in the Kentucky Cup Horse Vaulting competition. This is one of many events that will be part of the World Equestrian Games that Lexington will be hosting next year. Go to youtube and check out some video of horse vaulting. It is something to watch, that's for sure.

But let's get to the pictures we do have. We'll start with one of our favorite activities, hanging out at the local park. Here we have an artistic rendering of John and Callie on the jungle gym.




Every time we go to the park it seems that Callie gets more daring and wants to climb more of the obstacles/equipment they have there. It's a lot of fun for us to watch.


We thought Callie was pretty cool because she loved the slides. Well now she just wants to climb up everything and hang on the monkeybars. It is difficult to keep up with her and at times we have to be careful about our driving route so we don't tease her by driving by the playground and not stopping.



Over the past two weeks we also have been going to one of the local pools for Callie's swim lessons. To be honest, it really is just about hanging out in the water. In other words, she hasn't mastered the butterfly stroke quite yet, but is getting a bit more comfortable dunking her head under the water.

Her instructor, Miss Becca, actually helped us feel comfortable dunking Callie's head under the water. This video is Callie's first of hopefully many underwater experiences.




Fortunately she never got upset after her underwater dunkings. But she did tend to spend more time on the stairs of the pool than playing around in the deep end. It's good to see that she enjoys the water. Surfing can't be far away.


We don't spend all of our time outside, of course. And when we are indoors the fun only continues. Callie is getting better at dressing herself, but she doesn't always want to wear her clothes. She clunks around the house in our flip-flops, and sometimes aims a bit higher. Here she is with a pair of John's shorts looking even cuter than normal.




Another outdoor activity that we found was the park of all parks. Evan's Orchard is our go to orchard for pumpkins in the fall. They have a massive playground that includes huge slides, a buried tire obstacle course, swings, and so much more.


It's definitely a family friendly place and they have cater to people with kids. Callie loves it, and we spent about an hour and a half checking out every corner of the play area. They not only had real sunflowers there, but they also had a place to turn your child into one. Not too shabby.

So, you can see this blog post has a little bit of an artistic flair to it. We are trying to get fancy with our monthly updates. What you don't see in the below picture are all of the make-up artists and lighting people involved in getting a perfect shot. It's well worth the result.



We must admit that we never realized how much fun we would have hanging out at parks and just taking in the summer. Summer certainly has become more active now that Callie is a part of our lives. And we still feel like we never get to half the places or do half the things want to.


Our last picture shows Callie next to the wonderful stretch of wildflowers maintained by the folks at Evan's Orchard. One of the best things about taking in the summer with Callie is that we tend to appreciate the smallest things that we would not have noticed before. This is a perfect example of that.

Well, summer may be hitting the homestretch but there's lot's more to come in the months ahead. We head to Chicago this weekend and return to New England in about a month. Our camera is ready and so is Callie.