Lex discovered Dorrie, the witch, and here is what this morning’s outdoor play time looked like:

Luckily he’s a fast reader and was done with the book before long. Then there was lots of running and playing. He may look like his daddy, but he reads like his momma! :)

A few weeks ago I made a cleaning schedule (maybe I mentioned it?) because I feel like I spend a lot of time cleaning and neglecting the kids and it stresses me out… yet somehow my house is always dirty!  Actually, I think I did it the same time we made our summer schedule and blocked out 7am-8am as cleaning time.  I did great with it for a few weeks, but then got sick and went to Vegas and lost all touch with reality.  Sigh.  This week I decided it was time to get back to it.  The idea of the schedule is that I can clean, guilt free (ha!) from 7am-8am and get done what I get done and not have to think about it all day.  Usually the kids play during this time, though some day I may start making them do chores too! 

Today I said that I had to sweep and mop inside, sweep the front porch and sweep the mudroom.  To my surprise the kids both jumped up and said they wanted to clean the mudroom!  Well, ok!  We headed outside and I started telling them that I usually like to start by putting the shoes up on the bench.  Lex interruped and said, “No, we put the black mat outside and then put all of the shoes on it.  But first we have to bang the toes together and then the heels together to shake off all of the dirt.”  Apparently they’ve done this before, and believe it or not they did an awesome job!!  They worked together to get all the shoes out (Lex showing Eve the proper way to hold the shoes and tap them together) and then while Eve attempted to sweep the front porch with a big broom, Lex did an amazing job of sweeping out the mudroom!  I was shocked (what low expectations I have of my own children).  I did a tiny bit of touchup around the tight edges, but he got 98% of the dirt and dust out of there.  Towards the end I was thinking that I should have just sent them out and stayed inside myself to do the sweeping and mopping inside.  Who knew they can do the whole job!  After Lex was done sweeping they came up with a plan to get the shoes back inside without trecking in more dirt.  Lex wiped off his shoes and took them off in the mudroom, Eve stayed outside and brought each pair of shoes to the doorway (tapping them off again on the way), and then Lex took them from there and put them where they belonged.  So very cool!  I think next Tuesday they are on their own with that job! :)

I added a few more quotes to that page. Not sure if anyone ever looks there, so I’m going to post them here too :)

“I think I hear the noise of pumping pistons!” said Lex as we walked near a railroad track. 7/20/10

Eve: “How can you eat food when you’re sick?”
Lex: “The usual way, Eve.”
7/12/10

“See that pile of brown over there? That’s my mom!” says Eve. 7/3/10

The kids ask me, daily, when we can go back to the airport. They want to go back to Logan but I’m not real interested in a 2+hr drive just to watch the airplanes. This morning we went to our local (tiny!) airport to watch some planes. The arrival/departure times listed on the website were wrong, so we ended up hanging out at the airport, having a snack on the runway picnic table, and making friends with passengers. Overall a good morning, I suppose. The kids had fun but still want to go to Logan. Maybe we’ll try Manchester some day. Or try to save some pennies and actually buy a ticket to fly somewhere! I think all of us except Alan would enjoy that. :)

Snack time at the airport!

We made friends with a little girl (2.5yrs old!). Her daddy was flying away.

My kids decided to go back outside and Lex promptly took her hand and away they went.

Finally a plane came in!

We went inside to watch the plane boarding. Small plane and small airport, but you can't get this close to the action at Logan!

I’m not feeling very verbose at the moment (very tired instead!) but here are a few pictures from yesterday and today that I wanted to share. It has been nice settling back into a routine with the kids. I feel like we’ve been so super busy these past few weeks that the whole family is a bit out of whack. I’m working now on getting us all back on track… in time for school next month! :)

Lex got green beans from the plant he brought home from school! He even shared one with me. Yum!

He also brought a pumpkin plant home from school, and it's flowering. I hope we get a pumpkin!

The peas are growing strong.

This is why I garden. He won't touch veggies on a plate, but fresh from the garden... he eats them up!

Our sunflower house is growing well this year, but we seem to have a back door as well as a front. But the morning glories are growing and vining and I think we'll have at least two solid walls. Maybe next year I'll be in charge of the planting. Or maybe not!

I'm thinking hard about replacing the swing set next summer. Something bigger and stronger because these two (and our neighbor) are getting bigger and stronger!

We found a bird's nest on the ground. I love how it has so much bark from the nearby birch tree. Eve was VERY concered about the baby birds and had trouble believing that they actually flew away and didn't fall with the nest.

The kids have suddenly gotten camera shy, so we were being silly this morning and I was trying to get them to let me take pictures. This is the best I got :)

Lex woke up this morning with a plan in mind. It started with a sign (paper, markers, glue, popsicle stick), then a chair, and a parking garage... that's when I took this picture. He is in the living room right now building the hotel on top of the chair. Apparently there is an airport behind it. I love when he is so certain about his plans.

I went to Vegas last week. Have you heard? It was awesome! And exhausting, expensive, excessive, and tons of fun! It took me awhile to get out there because I was flying standby and didn’t make it on the first two flights. I stayed a night in Boston with Lauren’s brother, then back to the airport bright and early to miss a few more flights. Ugh. I ended up just buying a regular ticket and that got me to Vegas pretty quickly. It was great catching up with my college roomies. We spent the days by the pool (not as tough as I thought it might be!) and the nights getting dressed up, dancing, and paying $14 for drinks! Eek! :) Luckily my standby flights on the way home went much more smoothly. Alan and the kids picked me up at the airport and we spent about an hour hanging out there, having dinner, watching planes, exploring the parking garage, ec.

Here are a few pictures.

A night view from our hotel. We were on the 25th floor of an awesome new hotel! The whole place was digitally controlled and very fancy.

The pool area

Where we spent our days.

Palm trees

At the pool, with the Monte Carlo in the back

Aria - the hotel we stayed at.

Kim, me, Lauren and Amy

Daytime view from the hotel

Lauren, Kim, Amy and me at the club drinking $14 drinks. Yum!

This was about the extent of my gambling, loosing $2 on a black jack computer at the bar.

Do you see where we are sitting? Lauren was so smart and brought the boas along to the pool to make it easy for us all to gather.

Out to dinner our last night

Our elavator had a mirror wall, so we took a lot of mirror pictures :)

Freemont Street. Old school Las Vegas. Check out the roof of this street. Yep, the roof. Every hour or so they darken the street and do a light show on the ceiling. It's pretty cool.

All dolled up on Freemont Street

The light show

I have about 15 minutes before Lex will be up and about a hundred things to do, but I wanted to take a few minutes for the blog. Priorities, ya know!

We have been very busy these past few days. Actually, probably just busy, but I am very sick so everything I do feels like it takes three times the effort. Ugh! All week we’ve been gathering and pricing for our yard sale. Five families at my house, my neighbor at her house, and then two more families around the corner. A big event! Lots of advertising, sign making, and coordinating. It was hot and sunny all week, beautiful. We decided to have a lemonade stand and sell cookies to keep the kids busy. I was going to use their little picnic table, but Lex said “That’s not a lemonade stand! We need to find a box…” and went from there. I followed his instructions and we came up with this:

Lex wrote the cookie sign

Eve wrote the lemonade sign (with some spelling help from me)

Lemonade stand! I could not get them to pose with it, but you get the idea.

Friday night everyone came and loaded up my garage and we all hemmed and hawed about the rain predictions for the weekend. It was late though, and everyone was tired, so we just crammed it in there and called it a night. I really wanted to go back out after the kids were in bed and do some rearranging for the morning, just in case, but I felt miserable and barely got the kids in bed before passing out myself.

Saturday morning came (not so) bright and early, with heavy rain coming down. Ugh! We ate a quick breakfast and then went out to rearrange the garage as best we could. People showed up way too early, of course, and dug through boxes and looked around. The very first thing that sold (at like 7am) was an old heater grate that’s been in our garage since before we moved in :) The guy paid a dollar for it and it’s probably some awesome antique. The next few hours were spent wet and busily rearranging and better displaying things as best we could as things sold. I was surprised at how many people came out in the rain.

I didn't get a chance to take a picture until towards the end of the first day. The women in the back were both part of the sale, not shoppers. It was nice to have other people there so I could take care of the kids and whatever.

The day went ok, we had a fair number of shoppers, and when we closed the doors at 2pm we were feeling ok. Among this chaos Alan and I also managed to get the Subaru to the shop where we learned it needs a new axel or something expensive, ugh! Alan had to take off in a hurry Saturday afternoon so they didn’t get a chance to fix the car, but they said it’s safe to drive. I hope! There’s just one more thing on list of things to-do.

Sunday came and it was rain free. Hallelujah!! The kids and I went outside for breakfast. I opened the garage doors, but we didn’t get shoppers quite as early. I guess the die-hards are only out early the first day. We got a lot of traffic Sunday though and overall it went well.

We went out bright and early on Sunday. Had breakfast at the picnic table, read the comics on the lawn. It was peaceful, as Lex so sweetly pointed out.

Eve took it upon her self to sample as much as possible. Many small toys got rides in this wagon, she enjoyed a princess scooter for awhile, loved that tiny hat she's wearing. The funny thing is they were all baby toys, since everyone there was getting rid of baby stuff. Eve didn't seem to mind.

On Sunday we got out the lemonade stand! They were so excited... for about a minute, then realized that neither of them actually wanted to approach people and talk to them. Oh well. The kids all enjoyed cookies and lemonade :)

As the day progressed, we slowly moved things further and further out of the garage.

Towards the end it was beautiful and sunny and all the people participating in the yard sale and all the kids were just hanging out on the lawn, chatting and drinking (spilling, playing in, wearing) lemonade. It was like a big playdate :) Lex made a new friend. A four year old girl, who has an almost three year old sister. We’ll probably do some playdates with them later in the summer.

Lex and his new friend

This took way longer to write than I expected, but Lex is happily testing all of my pens on a piece of paper next to me, so I’m going to keep going for another minute and do some complaining :) Just kidding. Sort of. I went to the doctor today. Eve had a fever on Thursday and took a long nap (5 hours!) and woke up feeling good, but then Lex and I woke up Friday with fevers. He took a nap (for the first time in awhile) and woke up feeling great, but Eve didn’t nap and I didn’t nap, so while they both felt great Friday evening I started feeling worse and worse. Sore throat, headache (since last Monday actually!), fevers, sweats, chills, etc. I didn’t know what to do so I just popped Tylenol like candy and powered through the weekend. This morning my headache was less and the fever was gone, but my ears were hurting so I called the doctor. I CAN NOT be sick on Wednesday! I am a busy person with places to be, no time to be sick! So we went in, did the whole checkup, etc., and got a diagnosis of strep, mono, or viral. The quick strep test came back negative, but the doctor said it looks EXACTLY like strep. Feels like it too. He sent for a longer strep test and a mono test as well. I should hear back on those in a few days. He also sent me home with penicillin. We had a nice long chat about Vegas and he said it’s ok to go and hopefully the penicillin will help me feel better by then. If it turns out to just be a viral thing then it will clear up on it’s own and I’ll stop taking the meds. Ugh! I want to be well!! Right now I should be packing and planning and preparing my family for five days without me (think they’ll survive?!?), but I can barely think straight.

Alan and I are going out tonight for a date and some shopping. He said we could cancel if I wasn’t feeling up for it, but I said, “Hmm… dinner at a restaurant or home bathing and putting my kids to bed…?” Easy choice.

I’ll try to post again before I leave, but I’m not taking my laptop to Vegas, so if you don’t hear from me, that’s why!

Guess what? I did not yell at my kids today. Not once! Yay me! :) Sorry for the rant yesterday. Today was much better. Still hot, but it seems the monster has left the house.

We spent the morning with some friends at a state park we’ve never been to before. They had a great playground and a nice nature trail. I mentioned the nature trail to Lex on the way there and he was super excited. I said I didn’t know he liked hiking on trails and he said “I think I like it. I don’t know. I think I’ll try!” I wish he’d do that with food too! Turns out he loved the hiking. We also saw some guys working with some heavy machinery. They were pulling a new log jam across the lake near the dam. It was cool. They gave the kids long pieces of rope, which the kids loved and dragged through the woods with them :)

Walking along the nature trail. Eve got pretty tired, but they all had a great time.

Snack time! Can't hike without snacks, right?

Then we headed up to the dam itself to take a look. I did my best to explain it and the park ranger came out to answer questions for us. It was a lot of fun. And it wore them right out!!

A view from the dam.

Walking on the bridge to the control tower.

The kids always wash their hands when we get home. Today Eve decided to wash her feet too.

We spent the afternoon gathering items for the yard sale. The kids “helped” and argued over which toys to sell. Lex wants to sell everything (well, lots of stuff anyway!) and Eve doesn’t want to sell anything. She even argued over the grown-up DVDs that she won’t be watching for many years! Silly girl. Then, to top off my day, I went to the salon to get a hair cut (all of them really!) and then did some shopping while Alan put the kids to bed. Yay Alan! :)

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