Spontaneity!

Well…I’ll start with the boring stuff…

My mom picked more berries. I froze them. The strawberries were good this year, but the season got cut short by a few too many days of hard rain. We’ll enjoy these in smoothies someday:

And now for the update on Ed: he is now less wise than he was before. Finally, on Tuesday evening, the dentist was able to remove Ed’s cracked and very painful wisdom tooth. We had first gone on Monday evening and the dentist tried to clean it out and grind it down and such in order to lessen his pain and buy him some time until he could see the oral surgeon. That didn’t work. So, Tuesday I took him back to the dentist and we got it out. So nice to be on the road to recovery. We decided on the way home from the dentist, that it takes a very special sort of person to be a dentist. You have to be OK with seeing people in pain and you have to be OK with causing that person more pain that may stay with them for quite some time, even though it in the long run it’ll probably be good for them. Pulling teeth is a seriously violent task.

On Tuesday afternoon, before we went in to the dentist, Ed said, hey – what do you need me to do that I won’t be able to do for a few days once I have this done? I said MOW THE LAWN! I’m so mean. So, he did. He’s so nice. Sarah helped.

On Wednesday we mostly did stuff around the house and I ran a few errands. I took this picture in the evening. No photo editing. I promise. I think it’s cool.

Now we finally get to the spontaneity. I was sick and tired of not playing with my kids and only telling them what to do and all of us not enjoying our time together. I want so much to have fond memories of these days and I want them to have fond memories of these days. The stress of Ed’s tooth business and all finally kind of got to me and I have not been in a good mood. The kids have been disobedient. I couldn’t stand it. I read in Proverbs yesterday “A child left to himself disgraces his mother.” Okay. I was not going to leave my children to themselves anymore.

I decided we were going to Whatcom Falls Park. Ed was going to come and I was going to carry a lawn chair for him to sit on in the shade. It was a hot day, so playing in the creek sounded like fun. Plus, it was close to swimming lessons, so we could just go straight there. Everyone seemed skeptical when I first suggested such a stunt. How on earth could we just up and take off for the day? But we did! And it was fun! Here’s the story:

I have never in my life played in the creek or jumped from the falls at Whatcom Falls Park. Disgraceful, I know. I couldn’t have my children growing up with the same thing.

Oh, see there?! I first practiced motion blur with my camera on the falls by the stone bridge. Cool water, don’t ya think? Then we went wading.

Sarah said, “Look Bethany! Let’s swim to that rock!”

“Okay, Sarah!”

Now what?

“Let’s jump!” “You go first, Sarah!” “Okay!”

SPLASH!!!!!!!

Bethany’s turn!

Back on the rock: “Do you think we can swim to that rock, Sarah?”

Should we?

All right. “Sarah, you go first.”

 

And they’re off!

They’re swimming back?

Oh wait, now they swam back to the rock and climbed up.

Oh. Now they’re coming back down. Hm.

Did I mention Ed was taking all these pictures? Well, he was. Here’s proof!

So, now I can say I have gone wading in Whatcom Falls Creek. Technically, I haven’t jumped. But, I think the experience is close enough to cross it off the Bucket List.

Back to the story:

 

They’re back on the rock. Do you think she’ll jump? Will her mother let her? How is that possible? Has the mother lost all of her common sense? Was it she that had a wisdom tooth pulled?

Go, Sarah! She jumped! She really did! Kind of out and not up, but she jumped!

Did Bethany?

Jump, Bethany, jump!

She did jump! Ed took these pictures and didn’t know I had it on “continuous” and he could have just held down the shutter release to take picture after picture. But I promise, she jumped. And if he took this picture and then she didn’t jump, that’s be a mighty feat, I tell you, for her to go backwards from there.

Besides, look how proud she is!