Yes you really are on the Larsens blog, and yes you read the title of this post correctly. You all know about my love of animals and today my dream of owning one came true. As I was standing at my sink tonight cutting up strawberries, I glanced out my window and saw this little face staring up at me! 
So naturally I screamed "Oh my gosh, there's a turtle in our yard!" So I dropped what I was doing and of course grabbed my camera and told the boys to run outside to see the turtle. Now when you think of turtles, don't you think of slow little animals? Well not this little guy...he was pretty speedy and seemed to want to quickly escape the hands of two little boys. 
So they of course found a way to trap him... 
It was just so random for a turtle to be wandering through our yard, and Lars was gone fishing all day, so I told Ashton to go tell Kent and Debbie (our neighbors) that we had a turtle in our yard. We had just been talking to them and they let us borrow their slip n' slide...
...so anyway they came out to see the turtle and I was hoping they could help us decide what to do with him. First they suggested we just keep him (ha!), then we all wondered if it was someone's pet that had escaped, so we asked around a little then we decided to go release him into the creek that runs behind the houses across the street from us. Well when we got over there, we decided against that figuring that he may not survive and decided that Kent (who happens to be the bishop in our neighborhood) would just announce it at church tomorrow in case the turtle is anyone's pet, or in case anyone wants him, then if not we'll go see if the little Willow Park Zoo wants to adopt him on Monday.
So naturally I screamed "Oh my gosh, there's a turtle in our yard!" So I dropped what I was doing and of course grabbed my camera and told the boys to run outside to see the turtle. Now when you think of turtles, don't you think of slow little animals? Well not this little guy...he was pretty speedy and seemed to want to quickly escape the hands of two little boys. So they of course found a way to trap him... It was just so random for a turtle to be wandering through our yard, and Lars was gone fishing all day, so I told Ashton to go tell Kent and Debbie (our neighbors) that we had a turtle in our yard. We had just been talking to them and they let us borrow their slip n' slide......so anyway they came out to see the turtle and I was hoping they could help us decide what to do with him. First they suggested we just keep him (ha!), then we all wondered if it was someone's pet that had escaped, so we asked around a little then we decided to go release him into the creek that runs behind the houses across the street from us. Well when we got over there, we decided against that figuring that he may not survive and decided that Kent (who happens to be the bishop in our neighborhood) would just announce it at church tomorrow in case the turtle is anyone's pet, or in case anyone wants him, then if not we'll go see if the little Willow Park Zoo wants to adopt him on Monday.Needless to say Ashton and Gunnar were in heaven playing with their new little friend for about 2 hours!
Ashton was so cute saying..."okay, so he's mine until Monday right?", then
Ashton was so cute saying..."okay, so he's mine until Monday right?", thenexcitedly telling a couple of his little friends that he has a pet turtle.
haha! 
They named him Yoshi and we've got him in a big rubbermaid bin in the garage for now. Hopefully he'll survive a couple days in our care. Kent went home and looked him up on the internet to try to see what type of turtle he is (look at me assuming he's a boy)...and he came back and said that he thinks he's a chicken turtle and the reason they're called that is because people used to eat them and they tasted like chicken!
They named him Yoshi and we've got him in a big rubbermaid bin in the garage for now. Hopefully he'll survive a couple days in our care. Kent went home and looked him up on the internet to try to see what type of turtle he is (look at me assuming he's a boy)...and he came back and said that he thinks he's a chicken turtle and the reason they're called that is because people used to eat them and they tasted like chicken! hmmm...I guess if Willow Park doesn't want him...
Just Kidding!
Gross.
Aunt Kelli had a turtle when we were growing up, so she told us to feed him lettuce and corn...
So here is our (temporary) pet for 2 days.
The best kind in my book :) 
The boys loved every minute of it and Lars and I realized how much we've missed it. 
It was a really nice campground and we loved our lucky # 11 campspot :)
And we found out that it's definitely waterproof! It rained a little off and on and it never leaked on us.
We usually hit the LaBeau's over there, but now I'm way more of a Merlin's fan!
They loved helping Lars collect wood for the fire and there was tons of it all around us. Then Ashton got to help cut it up...oh how he loves stuff like that!
Ashton thought it was so cool that they would eat out of his hand.
Ashton of course was scared to death that it was going to collapse on us and trap us forever and kept asking if there was a door on the other end, then was panicked to learn that there was only one way in and out. It didn't help when our little tour guide started talking about an earthquake that had happened there about 100 years ago. Poor Ashton...our little worrier. Then they started talking about bats! Let's just say it was a long walk out...
I don't know that I could have done it! So I just held on tight to Ashton going up and down the slippery stairs.
It's crazy to think back about all of the elaborate dutch oven dinners we used to do (pre-kids!)...it's all about simple now. 
And having S'mores?
Kind of fitting! ha!
Ashton was excited he got to flip them... 
...so away he went and he so nicely let all of his friends take a turn lighting them too. 
I'm sure their parents would appreciate that :) 
So after going out to Grandma & Grandpa's house to relax for a little while and have dinner, we headed back into town for more fireworks. Poor Gunnar had started feeling sick actually Saturday night, just a fever and not feeling well. Well after we got out to the house he puked all over and finally zonked out. 
After a little more ibuprofen he perked up some, so we went back to town. We went over to a park by my Uncle's house and he and his clan came over and we spent about an hour setting off all of our fireworks.
Again...heaven for Ashton. 
Then it got dark and we watched the city's fireworks. It's honestly almost hard to tell which ones are the city's though because every way you look people are setting off fireworks as big as the city ones! 
And it goes into all hours of the night. Not for us of course...we headed home after the city show was over. 
Ahhh...the look of awe and wonder in a young boy's eyes while watching fireworks...
It's actually the first one all these years that I've seen be born.
