Just In Case

Just in case you send your kids out to see if there are any peas in the garden, plan on hearing some wild stories.

For instance, they might come in to tell you that there are baby peacocks in your back yard.

Just in case you peel yourself away from the computer long enough to go see what is actually in your back yard, grab your camera, because chances are, there aren't baby peacocks in your back yard and you might want to show your kids in a few years what they thought baby peacocks looked like.

Just in case you go in your yard and find a couple of frantic quail, some over excited children and three very deep window wells filled with baby birds...grab some gloves and most importantly, grab a bucket.

Because if you don't grab a bucket, you might end up jumping down in the window well to rescue the baby birds and set them gently outside the 5 foot hole only to have them run panicked to the next window well and jump in.

Just in case the neighbor kid walks by with his dog and you tell your over-excited children not to invite them over... and they still do, try not to over-react. You'll regret it.

Just in case you didn't grab a bucket, you might have to jump in the window wells.... Oh, let's say about 7 times, find a way to get yourself out of the window well without squishing the baby bird and take them over to the neighbors' yard where they have plastic covers for their window wells.

Just in case you think you have all the baby birds out of your window wells, go back out after the parents come back and start calling for their babies. Chances are, there are a few more.....Again, a bucket would be handy.

Just in case you didn't know...Baby quail are tiny and fast and kind of dumb. But when the mama and babies get back together, it's priceless, and totally worth the incredibly sore body that is a result of me never once thinking of getting a bucket. Again, don't lose it on your kids.... after all, they just want to see some baby peacocks.

Week #6 - U.S.A. Week

What else could we do for the week of the 4th than have a patriotic theme? NOTHING that's what.

Since the week of the 4th also happened to be the same week that we went to Idaho we didn't have a ton of plans other than visiting family, but we still fit in a little bit of patriotic fun.

To start, I decided to give tie dye a shot. Because to me, tie dye just screams summer and 4th of July. You may have noticed them in a previous post since I'm going a little out of order here.

I haven't done tie dye since I was in young women's. I tried to tie dye a sweatshirt. I learned something pretty valuable that day that you might not know. Sweatshirts don't tie dye well. It just turned into a brown mess.

So, I watched a few you tube videos, bought a tie dye kit at JoAnn's and went for it.

The kids were pretty excited.

Roman picked the spiral shirt from the list of options. Marisa picked a heart. Ezra ran away crying so I picked a spiral for him as well.

Shane and I grabbed a couple of old shirts to dye as well.

We tied them up and went outside to dye them.

Here's a hint. If the box says it will dye up to 8 shirts. 4 is a more realistic number.

We ran out of dye and I had to improvise with some RIT dye that I had and it didn't work as well.

Here's another hint. The directions say after letting them sit for 6-8 hours, to untie them and rinse them in the washer. DON'T DO IT!

I decided to do mine and Shane's shirts first to see what they would turn out like. The water in the washer turned dark purple and instantly dyed any white parts of our shirt purple. DRAT!

So, with the kids shirts, I took them to the tub and ran them under hot water until the water ran clear. THEN I threw them in the washer. They turned out perfect, if I do say so myself. They are so cute!

I learned the heart technique on Youtube and I was skeptical as to if it would work and it worked great and wasn't hard at all. I bet there is all sorts of fun things you can do if you search the internet enough.

The next day was the 4th and they were all ready to go in their new red, white, and blue shirts.

I had planned on making some kind of red, white, and blue dessert for the day but considering the fact that I have a bunch of weird family members who wouldn't eat it, I decided to make some red, white, and blue pancakes instead.  So fun.

We skipped all the festivities in the next town over. We just weren't all that excited about leaving the house. So, we grilled up some burgers and I bought a bunch of monster snaps and a big box of fireworks for the evening.

It rained a little, but cleared up just in time to get the party started. Tell me this, why is it that you can buy a box of fireworks with 50+ different sizes and names of fireworks and they all look exactly alike when they are lit. The kids didn't care though and they were excited to be up so late anyway.

I tried many nights in a row to get pictures of the many aerial fireworks in our neighborhood but I wasn't having any luck. I figured out that my UV lens protector was causing all my troubles, but I didn't realize until it was too late :(

Anyway, it was good times and we enjoyed our short but sweet U.S.A. Week.

Tailspin

I feel like all weekend (and some of last week) I was in a tailspin just waiting for Monday (today) where I would finally get a view of the horizon and pull up. Is that dramatic enough for you? Actually it wasn't nearly that dramatic at all, I just knew that school better start soon or I was going to crash.

Roman has only been in school 1 hour and 42 minutes and I feel like I might just come out OK already.  Crazy how it can make that much of a difference, but I think we were all ready for a little structure and change around here. I don't know how homeschooling mothers can do it. I don't have the discipline for myself or my children. I guess if I had to, I would find a way. I'm jut glad I don't have to.

So what did go on these last few days that made me feel so out of control? Well, for starters, I decided to take my kids to the Utah County Fair...twice. It's free so there was no harm in going more than once. Although now, I'm feeling like we should have just gone once.

I had really just planned on going alone but told some friends about it and another friend emailed me about it as well. We ended up there with two groups of friends and had a great time but we were there for a long time. I even saw a few other people I knew there and I felt so popular if only for just a moment.

The Utah County Fair is so small. It's kind of sad, but it's free so I can't complain. However, I do believe if those rides were $1 instead of $3-$4, they would fill those ride right up. I know I wouldn't have had a problem letting my kids ride a few rides but $9 for my kids to ride the carousel for 2 minutes is just robbery.

Anyway, The next day we went again so that we could watch a little bit of the horse show and meet up with another friend. She didn't show up and I came home feeling tired, vulnerable and like I didn't have a friend in the world I could count on...Other than Shane of course, I can ALWAYS count on him. I'm pretty sure that's why I married him.

I had called someone to cut my kids' hair. I usually cut their hair but I was feeling like being nice and throwing some business the way of a neighbor. That's nice right? There really was no reason why I couldn't do it myself (other than some haircuts come out much better than others). She didn't return my call. I felt irritated. I cut my kids' hair.

Funny how one day can change so much.

Saturday I ran a half marathon. I wasn't prepared. AT ALL. I have been running all summer but it's been less than regularly, slow, half-hearted, and with a small injury that I've been sporting since last summer (just go to the doctor already right?). I didn't want to run it but I had signed up in the spring with the hopes of having a running partner for the summer. I knew I couldn't count on it actually turning out that way and I was right. Does that sound cynical? I guess so huh.

I had hurt my knee on Wednesday and was feeling even less thrilled about running 13 miles.

The race was fine. I did better than I expected to do with the amount and speed of my training and my aching knee.  But, within minutes of finishing my stomach felt like I had eaten glass and was ANGRY! I was so sick for hours. I curled up on the floor next to the bathroom wishing for death. I never want to run again.

Roman has been in school for 2 hours, the dishes are clean,and the other kids are waiting patiently to go to the library. I feel like life is in control again and I'm feeling less cynical by the minute.

Week #5 - Water Week

Here we are on something like Week #8 and I haven't even told you about Week #5 of our best summer ever yet.  No... I didn't abandon everything and quit. Although I have to admit, part of me wishes I would. It would be easier, but certainly our summer would no longer qualify for the "best ever" anymore. It would just be an abyss of Wii and movies... not that there is anything wrong with that.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, Week #5 was Water Week round these parts. I figured there would be more to choose from if I made the theme water instead of something like Ocean Week, etc.

I picked out a kit from the library about oceans. So we read lots of books about sea creatures. I liked this one:

Roman was totally embarrassed by the end where the two fish kiss on the lips. GASP!!! But I thought it was totally cute.

For activities, some ideas I had were; swimming, running through the sprinklers, water balloons, visiting the lake, and the aquarium in Sandy.

My last experience at the aquarium was good only they bled me dry. OK, it's not awful, but it wasn't exactly worth it. So, we didn't do that one.  We actually didn't do many of them, but we still had a lot of fun. Here is what we did do:

Instead of running through the sprinklers I set up a swimming pool in the back yard for the kids. Ezra saw the swimming diaper and flipped out. So he spent the first few minutes in our back yard buck naked and screaming. Then, I put on his swimming suit sans diaper and he screamed some more.

I got out the bubbles and he decided that he could stop screaming long enough to blow some bubbles.

Those other two looked like they were having a good time, so he decided to blow bubbles a little closer.

Then he gave up and decided to have a good time with Roman and Marisa.

They had so much fun. We'll have to be sure to get out the swimming pool again before school starts because it was fun and mostly free.

We did go swimming at a real pool one afternoon which wasn't all that cheap either but at least it was worth it. My kids LOVE the water and Roman is getting so big swimming all by himself and not drowning. :)

I got a huge workout by taking each kid to the top of the slide about a billion times.

For the finale of Water Week I planned to fill up a bunch of  Roman's water balloons and just let the kids have fun popping them. Roman had other plans.  He knew that he wouldn't be allowed to throw them at Marisa and Ezra and that wasn't good enough so he wanted to invite some moving targets (a.k.a friends).

So, I obliged and we made a plan. We sent out invitations and invited every 7-8-9 year old boy (and a few little sisters) within walking distance. I bought a cheap slip-n-slide and some hot dogs and we had a full blown water party.

It was chaotic and I filled water balloons for hours. It took less than a minute to pop all those balloons.

Luckily, my neighbor came over and helped me fill a few more balloons and keep a little bit of order.

The slip-n-slide was kind of a dud because the water would shift every time someone would slide and the slide would no longer stay wet. I'm glad it only cost me $7, but I sure would have liked for it to just work... I'm kind of funny like that.

 Marisa enjoyed from a distance but still had fun.

Ezra did not enjoy himself one bit. He spent any time outside screaming bloody murder (it was so loud in my back yard that no one even noticed) and the rest of the time inside doing who knows what.

I was EXHAUSTED after the party but I was glad that we did it. Roman LOVED it and it made me feel a little better about not throwing a birthday party for him earlier this year.

Anyway, that was Water Week and what you didn't know is that the water party actually took place a few weeks later because 1. I needed more time to convince myself I wasn't going to die with a billion little boys at our house. 2. I needed more time to plan and let parents know about it since many of the moms work. 3. It still wasn't super warm the last week of June and wouldn't you know... it didn't even hit 90 degrees the day of the party. Is this July? It was sunny and not windy so it turned out perfect.