My Little Band of Brothers

Happy Monday morning everyone! We are recovering from a fun weekend of family time! I love weekends like this! Mostly we stayed home, but we pretty much spent all our time together. We swam, watched movies, played board games, baked cookies, and helped Ty pass off a bunch of requirements for his bear rank in cub scouts. We think he will have everything done this week--which would be great as it would still give us several months to work on his arrow points before he turns 10 and becomes a Webelos scout. I still can't get over that--Ty's going to be10 years old!!!! How in the world did an entire DECADE fly by that fast. I must be getting old...at least looking at Ty, and how tall he is is starting to make me feel old!

Anyhow though, I do have a layout to share today. It's one of my recent ones for Scrapbook.com featuring some of my very favorite new Basic Grey--Oxford.

The Journaling reads: "I love how close you three boys are! You are each others favorite playmate—and especially now that it is summer—you are always together. I also love how you older boys include and play with Spencer too. He adores you and wants to do everything you both do and is so happy when you include him in your play! I know that the coming years may naturally end this special, little boy type of “best buddyship”, but my hope is that as you grow older you will always be close as friends. May 2011"

And since a couple of people have asked for it, I'll be adding a few summer trip photos to the ends of my posts each day this week. For today, here are a few from our first non-family stop on our summer trip: Carlsbad Caverns

 We decided to go in the natural entrance an hike down to the bottom rather than take the elevator--and I'm glad we did! There are many fascinating and beautiful formations on the way in, as well as at the bottom!

 It took us about 1 1/2 hours to reach the bottom, and once we got there we were blown away that there could be so much more to see! We spent another 1-2 hours touring the bottom of the caverns and loved every minute--well okay, everyone loved it until about the last 20 minutes or so when we started getting tired and a bit chilly :) Spencer wanted to be carried at that point and all the amazing formations started to look the same. We hurried on the last 1/4 mile or so without stopping much so we could ride the elevator back to the top.

At the top the boys enjoyed some rock candy and found a place to take these photos:

It was a really interesting day, and I'm glad I got to scratch this place off my "bucket list" :)

Have a great Monday everyone!