Continued

The kids and I should really practice badminton.  We have a set somewhere...

We did tug awars until Moira and Tyler's palms started to get shredded.

It's was warm enough that Moira still wanted to go to the beach...

Action shots are fun.

Guys against the girls... then they found more guys and whooped the girls.

Old style farming.

This was the lover's lane from the hired hand's house to the main house where the meals were taken.

While I thought it was a bit arduous for us to live all five in our 2 bedroom upstairs while Brian renovated the downstairs, I had a whole new perspective as they told us about the Motherwells who lived in a a 3 room log cabin for 8 years while they gathered rocks to build their house and barn.

And as grand and pretty as it looked, I'm sure glad I have better heating, cooling, running hot water, a stove and microwave, washer and dryer...  Although if I lived then, I'm sure I would have thought we had so much then too- and they did- and do compared to so many around the world who live on so little.

This boy does not like writing, but since Arwen signed the book, he had to also and I had to of course, take his picture signing the biggest book of his life!

Since there was still talk of a beach outing and none of us really had that much energy for a whole big outing, the crazy Koopses decided to do water play anyways.  Victoria and Tyler got water balloons, Arwen found a couple of water guns, I found some hot dogs and stuff and Mike made a slip and slide and it was all out war!  The only bad part was that it had gotten cooler and the Koops live up on a hill that is cool and the water from hoses here is ICE COLD, so all that said and done, the water war was really intense- like ACKKKKKK I've been hit crazy cold, running for real away from the couple of privileged people who got their hands on a gun or hose.

I'm always pretty much totally AMAZED when with such responsible and thoughtful teens that wouldn't mind untalented badminton partners and the whines and slowness and little kidness to crash their teen dominion.  THANKS VIKKA, TYLER, MOIRA and ARWEN for another great summer memory.