August 2010

Well, for some reason I don't have my July pictures available to do the July blog, so we'll just skip into August. It's kind of been a busy month, but I foresee that September will be even more so! Joshua has grown and become more of a challenge. People often comment that he's a lot to chase after, and I usually reply that it's not so bad at home. I guess I forgot all the dishes he keeps breaking! I had put our dishes and bowls in a place that would make it easier for the kids to set the table. It took 2 broken bowls and a broken glass for me to realize that Joshua can get into them, also! I finally moved them. I'm really grateful that he didn't get hurt.

We did a lot of water days. Finally bought a little blow-up pool for the backyard. It's made the kids happy.

Benjamin won $100 at the Country fair. That was really fun. I entered a couple of pictures. Ben entered a picture he'd taken of baby Joshua, and got 3rd place = $10. He also entered the recipe in a jar. I found a cool recipe for orange dreamsicle cookies. And Ben put it together and made up the recipe by himself. Oh, they are good! And the judges agreed! Ben won 1st in his division = $15 and also Grand Champion = $75. They had to submit 6 cookies. He only had 2 left on his plate, all the others had 5 left. Obviously a hit. (Although we gave some to our neighbors and Ben's friend didn't like them.) I will put the recipe on my baking blog asap!

(Joshua also gets into the cereal boxes if we leave the pantry door open. He's always bringing out a box and digging in. He's dumped a few of them on the floor, too.)

Ben found out how to climb up the tree. He uses the garage and leans against it with his back while climbing his legs up the tree. Dad also hung a rope in the tree and Ben added a ladder for climbing onto the roof of the garage. The day he broke off a large limb from the tree was the day he got grounded from the roof for a LONG time!

The next couch will NOT be mostly comprised of pillows.

We got brave and had a water party at our house the week before school started. We had some problems though. I'd promised a water slide, water balloons, kiddie pool and squirt guns. The water slide ended up with a big hole and so we had to hook up our own sprinkler. I tried to hook up our cool ball sprinkler, but it had a hole, too. One more - a kiddie sprinkler, which also had a hole! I mean, REALLY!! Then there were the water balloons. I think we bought them last year, but I guess it could have been even longer than that. Well, I filled up the bottom of the cooler and when I came back a bit later they had all popped. I didn't have time to get more, so that was out. The kids liked the big water blasters we had, we'll need more of those for next year. So, it was a wet and wild mess. We had popsicles and frosted cupcakes. (At the beginning of the summer we'd planned on having an unbirthday party. By the time we got to the end of the summer, we just decided to combine the 2 parties. This was an Unbirthday Water Party.) We also had each guest bring a $1 gift and we did a little exchange. I thought it was fun, the kids did too. We had 25 kids there and 5 moms. I plan on doing this each summer. And next year I'll be more prepared. It seems like you have to have the goofs to do it better the next time.

Sarah, Marcus and Ben enjoying cupcakes.

Ben and some of the girls had this little synchronized water-blast thing going!

Ben and Josh playing in the water cooler the next day.

Our final hoo-rah before school started, was a trip to Wild Island. I didn't want to go, then I said I would, then the month caught up with me and it was better for me not to go! So, Kannon took the 2 older kids. I dropped them off and took Joshua with me to do some shopping. My phone died as I dropped them off and I spent the majority of my time trying to get a charger. The ones I found at Target and Walmart didn't work. I tried a few more stores and found nothing. I'm not sure why the cheap ones wouldn't charge my prepay phone. I still need to go to the service store and see what they have to say about it. But, since I didn't have a way to contact Kannon I came back to the water park and hung out. Ugh, I would have had a more productive day if I'd stayed home. Oh well. THEY had fun!

When I got there I had a 10-minute pass to find them. I stayed with Sarah while Kannon rode a ride with Ben.

(Kannon's behind that big yellow tube!)

Sarah decided she wasn't done, so Kannon took her back to the kiddie area. She finally came out and the boys stayed to ride 2 more slides. They had a great time and are still talking about it. Ben wants to buy a season pass next year. We'll see. I don't think we had enough available Saturdays to warrant that.

This is a normal Sunday morning sight. Joshua comes in to our room, climbs on the bed and cuddles up with dad while drinking his milk. He just sits there leaning against daddy. It's sweet.

The first day of school. We finally found out who Ben's teacher would be a week before school started. We met Mrs. Heser a few days before school started. She seems like a no-nonsense lady. Ben hasn't had any complaints yet. That must mean he's behaving! This morning he did tell me that, "school is boring. I should be in 3rd grade. I already know everything." Aargh. Humility, boy.

We signed Ben up for soccer and had his first game on Saturday. He scored the first goal! Pretty good for not being at the practices and just being placed on a team that morning. We'll have practices twice a week and games each Saturday until mid-October. We also signed Sarah up for ballet again. She starts on Friday. I'm excited for both of them.

On Saturday I jumped in the shower at 7:45 knowing that Kannon had to leave at 8:00 to set up chairs for a stake conference at the church. I thought about the kids eating their cereal and Joshua's knew-found ability to climb and debated whether to say something to Kannon about cleaning up before he left. Well, I didn't. And this is what I found after my shower. This was Sarah's bowl. She's not a huge breakfast fan and had left a lot of cereal and milk in her bowl. Joshua was enjoying it, patting the milk and banging the spoon. (and if you look really closely at the shelves in the background you can see the plates - the bowls used to be next to them, they are now on the shelf above.)

Saturday was all busy. We went to the soccer game and caught the end of my cousins' triathlon. Signed Sarah up for ballet. Ate lunch, painted the house and garage. Let me pause here to say that I've been painting the garage for 2 months. It's been a long process and I only could get an hour here and there. Often I'd get up and get my paint clothes on and never make it out before it got too hot. So, Kannon borrows a paint sprayer and does the whole house in 2 hours - AND finishes the garage. Aargh, again! This is the new green we painted. The bottom will be a creamy color and the trim will be a dark bluish gray (called sailboat blue). The white 2x4's will be the blue, so what should I do around the windows? The blue or the cream?

We quickly cleaned up to attend a baptism then Kannon went to leadership meeting and I hauled the kids to Walmart for a few things. We got a babysitter for the evening meeting and we all enjoyed that. It was a busy day and I was exhausted by the end of it.

So, I will try to get July done soon - we had a 1st birthday - and we'll have a lot to say about September.