Forts, and a Lot of Paint!

This week we had some fun with forts.  It took me about an hour to put together a nice Toobie fort for the kids, plus put up our pop-up forts.  The kids planned on sleeping in them, but only Gracie did.  That was surprising.  I thought she would be the first one to call it quits, but she and Shoji had a nice, quiet evening down there while the boys retreated to their rooms for a more comfy sleep.

My mom and I spent a day and a half painting Grace and Matt's room yellow.  It is very, very bright.  Ben says it glows.  It's now the most happy room in our house.

Father's Day, and Other Stuff

First of all, wouldn't he make a great looking girl?  Thanks, Haley.  It was so nice of you to spare him the makeup.

On Friday, we were invited to Grandma Bertha's apartment building for a nice lunch.  We even got the private room.  The kids were impressed with the table clothes, salad bar, and napkin rings.  We made it through the lunch without breaking anything.  Andrew was glad he ordered chicken strips when one of them came looking like an alligator.  Sadly, he ate it and we won't be selling it on ebay.

We had our traditional breakfast in bed for daddy on Father's Day.  We made a feast of eggs, pancakes, turkey bacon, sausage, and watermelon.  Dad is enjoying his new sunglasses.

On our way to Grandma and Grandpa's, we drove through a major storm.  We looked to our east and saw a tornado forming, but luckily it was headed away from us.  We got some major flooding and hail, though.  And the Metra is destroyed.  Several buisnesses in the heights are gone, too.  You can see pics here and here and here. 

But we had fun on our new tandem bike.  And Ben took some pictures of our cul de sac, which turned into a pond.

We're all dried up now, though.  I'm sure some people are still bailing out water, but the roads are open now.  Grace is still afraid, and the boys are still excited about seeing their first tornado, luckily from a safe distance.

My Kids are Weird

This is what I found when I went to check on the kids before I went to bed:

And a big, big mouth.  Matt used to do what we called his "Silent Open-Mouth Face".  He would just look like this all the time.  I guess he was having deja vu.

Do your children do things like this?  Why?

And now, please enjoy some pictures from our latest trip to the ballpark: Scarlets vs. Royals. The kids just went for the cotton candy, hot dogs, nachos, and foul balls. Next time maybe Ben will just take me, and we'll actually be able to watch the game.

We spent a good portion of our time walking with the kids (mostly Matt) all the way around the ballpark. He was fascinated with the garbage cans, and wanted to tow every one of them back and forth. Luckily for the garbage cans, they were chained down.

Haley has a few friends on the teams, but unfortunately she was not able to come with us. She was at her first ever youth dance at church, and she was having a ball. I kept texting her to drive her crazy. It worked. We stayed through the middle of the fifth inning (a new record for us with the kids), and finally decided to leave after Joey and Andrew had a 15-minute laugh-attack, and we were pretty sure we were making everybody around us want to jab themselves in the eyeball.

1st Week of Summer Over

The boys spent their first week of summer at basketball camp.  I was really proud of both of them.  They loved it, and learned a lot.  And it wasn't easy -- 3 hours a day all week!  That's a long time for little boys.  They also did golf lessons and swimming lessons with Aunt Kelsey.  So it was a busy, active week.  And yet, they still had enough energy to stay up until 10 PM every night... how do they do that?

This week, Andrew is at Cub Scout camp, and Haley is at volleyball camp.  We'll see how much energy they have after THAT!

This is a picture of Matt's bed after we caught him playing with his toys instead of taking a nap.  He had gathered everything he could find, including his horsey, his garbage (he is absolutely obsessed with garbages), and other random treasures and put them right where he was supposed to be slumbering.  That was a new one.

Haley had to get a picture of her favorite Matthew pose:

And this is peek-a-boo:

A few days ago I cut my finger with a scissor.  I didn't think it was that bad, but it hasn't healed or gone back together in five days.  Perhaps I should have had it stitched, but I didn't.  So while Ben was leading a youth fireside last night, my mother put some New Skin and medical tape on it.  I came home, and he wanted to do even more.  It was really cute how much he wanted to help.  And he did a great job -- he's obviously had a lot of First Aid training.  Unfortunately, the First Aid he did was suited more to a broken limb than a tiny cut on my finger.  But it was really cute anyway.

This is what I ended up with:

And I needed to brush the hairy monster we call a dog, but her hair was getting into my new contraption, so he tied a plastic bag around my hand (which made it oh so easy to brush the dog).  Not.  I took it off when he wasn't looking.  All of it.  But thank you, honey, I love you for caring!

Yay! It's Summer!

Okay, this first photo has nothing to do with summer, but I just thought it was funny.  This pretty pink stroller has become one of Matt's favorite things.

And now to summer fun:

We hit the ground running last Friday.  It was the last day of school, and the kids had a half day.  So we went to the store to load up on a weekend's worth of snacks, laid out 14 pieces of bread for a stack of sandwiches (which Ben says is my favorite thing to do -- make rows of sandwiches), and packed up the cooler for an afternoon in the mountains.  Our favorite little lake is called Wild Bill.  It is a cute little man-made pond up behind Red Lodge.  It has several piers with benches, good outhouses, and tons of stocked fish just waiting to be caught.

Almost every time one of the kids cast, they caught one.  Occaisionally one would get loose, but we caught dozens.  We released most of them -- not always because they were too small, but because we just didn't need that many in the freezer.  And Grace named each and every one of them.  It's harder to gut the darned things when they are named "Joey", "Gracie", "Andrew", etc.  Although, Haley was a little put out when Ben released one of hers, and it promptly died and floated to the bottom of the pond.

(Side-note: Grace is busy drawing with her new bag of goodies from our neighbor.  She told me to come look at her lips, because she just put chapstick on.  It was actually a glue stick.)

So we had a great time catching fish after fish, eating our cooler full of loot, and driving back home.  We saw what appeared to be a wolf crossing the road at a million miles an hour.  We're not sure, though.  It was a blur.  We were back home in record time.

The boys are at basketball camp (Joey's first one).  They also have First Tee today.  Next week is volleyball camp for Haley (who is at work right now), and Cub Scout camp for Andrew, along with swimming lessons (by Aunt Kelsey), and two more golf camps.  It sounds like we're over-scheduled, but we're not.  We just have a lot of kids.

Oh, and before I forget, I must say "thank you" again to our friend, Chris.  He was in Primary on Sunday with Joey when the latter decided he needed to stick himself with his EpiPen because he thought he stepped on a peanut.  So he did.  Chris quickly confiscated the needle after Joey plunged it into his thigh.  Joey had only held it in for one second, not the 10 seconds it takes to get the full injection.  Thank goodness.  At least we know he can do it, right?  We had a long discussion on what it will feel like when he really needs his EpiPen.  I think we've got it straightened out.  Lesson learned: I need to not only inform his caregivers on what anaphylaxis looks like, but inform Joey what it will feel like.  The last time it happened, he was only a one-year-old, so he doesn't remember.  But good job to Joey, for wanting and being able to save your life, and good job to Chris for being there so we didn't have to take Joey to the hospital for an unnecessary injection of epinephrine.

I had to throw this one in, too.  I came down the stairs last week and saw that these two (Andrew and Grace) had decided to take a nap.  It was pretty cute.  Grace was sacked out on the trunk.  They both woke up sopping with sweat, and they were up until 10:30.  No more naps for these two.