Wedding weekend and July ze 4th

I feel like I just went on vacation.  Saturday morning we had a fun time at the Golden farmer's market (I'll tell you about my awesome treasure next time...), and then?
We had an overnight away from the kids!  WHOA.
We went up to Keystone for a wedding.  We have several weddings to attend this summer, but this one was special.  Obviously because it meant not only travel to a beautiful mountain town, but travel without kids.  I totally slept until nine this morning.  .

Today, after 4 hours in weekend mountain traffic, we picked up the kiddos and went out for pizza.  There's this place nearby called Lil Ricci's and they have a super Sunday family special:  4 drinks, large pizza (any and EVERYthing you want on it), salad for 4, and a ginormous skillet cookie ala mode for twenty dolla.  I could not buy groceries for all of that delicious nonsense for that price so it's sort of becoming our Sunday tradition.  After our bellies were full, we ran to Home Depot, grabbed some stuff to stain our play structure, and went home to veg.

We didn't really lay like broccoli, actually.  We had better things to do BECAUSE...

The other day I sanded the big old used playset we got the kids on Craigslist.  We had borrowed a power washer to annihilate whatever old red stain that was remaining.  It didn't do the trick and I was left to sand the old fashioned way (with a palm sander).  There was just a slight amount of sawdust that did not land in my nostrils, so Nick powerwashed it down so we could be ready to stain.  The children helped.

seriously.  Where is my son in this photo.

Well when we got home from the Depot tonight I figured I should try out the stain stuff.  Just in a spot or two. Clearly that led to just staining the whole dern thing!  My little ones always want to help me paint stuff, but there are very few casual-project opportunities for them to actually do it.  This was one time they could, so I put them to work!  Nick grabbed a brush too, and we had it spiffed up by bedtime.

I cannot get enough of the Spidey-Butt Cheek combo!  And he was completely comfortable with not only staining the swingset in his tiny-spideys, but with one little cheeky exposed to the world and my camera.  Love him.

How was your 4th of July?  Ours was fine.  We went fishing up in Boulder Creek early in the morning with some of our favorite friends.  I can't prove it to you because naturally I brought my camera and no memory card.  Golden does a great festival downtown so we took the kiddos to that in the afternoon. 

We have all kinds of fire bans in the state due to our yearly forest fire tragedies, so the downtown fireworks were canceled this year.  A few cities could do them though, so that night we went up to a nearby park on a hill and spied a few shows around Denver.

And, oh yeah!  I put up an American flag finally!  I have always, always wanted on one my house, and I finally have one up.  Makes me feel all warm and patriotic etcetera etcetera!

How are our chickens doing?  Oh thanks, they're pretty okay...
There is a lot to catch you up on, but one of the main fun facts is that we are letting them free range.  Hooray!!!  The kids love it, and Howdy is amazing with them!!

So basically, it's really stinking late here in CO.  I was up too late last night being a wild and crazy kid-free grown-up, so I'm completely tired and officially out of words!
good nimey monshoney gooksgen berflagt.