For the Picture-Hungry...

I hope it fills you up, oh-hungry-readers, cuz pictures are few and far between on this blog!!!

Here's what I've been up to this summer... in pictures.

YARD WORK...

The new fence, mid-building. That whole fence line was a wild jungle (much like the rest of the neighbor's yard you can see behind the fence). And see that dirt that Rohan and my dad are standing on? That was sunk in way deeper before from the Bobcat ripping up the jungleness, and my dad brought about 15,000 pounds of dirt in with his dump-trailer which we could only dump over at the end of the fence that's unfinished. So, we had to shovel and wheelbarrow all that dirt, spread it around, rake it smooth... it was a TON of work but so worth it!

More fence building... isn't Rohan the cutest little helper ever? My husband and my dad rock! (that's not my husband pictured, btw. That's my neighbor, A.J.)

Dad, doin' his fence building thing!

My ginourmous squash. (I've been gardening)

After the fence got finished we wanted to "cute" things up. We got two new trees for a SCREAMING deal and so we had to enlarge our beds to accommodate them! Dustin worked his butt off removing sod. (and then he pitched the tent so the kids could sleep out! What a good daddy!)

The front beds used to go just around the edge of those three tree trunks, but Dustin, my sod-cutting/removing machine, worked really hard and did my bidding of reshaping the bed into something much bigger!

And this just shows the flowers a'bloomin'.

This is the other bed, which we made a little bigger too...


Same bed, a couple weeks later with more blooms.




FURNITURE REFINISHING

I refinished Ella's bed (finally!) and it's hard to see how cute it is, but there you go...

More Ella's bed.
And inside with the dresser I refinished too. (in her BEAUTIFUL new room!)


Closer up of the dresser...




FOURTH OF JULY...

Taylor's girlfriend, Cherryn, is an aritist and she kindly volunteered to face-paint at my mom's house on the fourth. Rohan, my little Tiger. Mac already had his shirt off from playing in the water so he wanted body-paint rather than face-paint.

Cousin Lance, the dog. Cute Rohan and Mac's back dragon.

The artist-in-residence and all the painted children! (Lily the lemur and Ella with various little spot-paintings!)

MAC'S 9th BIRTHDAY!

Part of the outdoor Idaho-birthday-candle experience often consists of all sorts of windbreaks to try to keep your candles lit. Hence, the cooler lid behind the cake. Just after this picture was taken, all the candles went out in the wind. We relit, put up more windbreaks and huddled close around the cake and just as we sang the "TOOOO YOOOUUU!!!!" at the end of the song, Mac prepared to blow out the candles but the wind came up and blasted them all out for him! It was rather hysterical and we all laughed and said, "Oh well!". Maybe next year we should do them inside, huh?

Present rippage....

Some of the party attendees. Aunts, cousins, grandmas... lot's of love!




CAMPING

The only pics I took while camping were atop the GIANT slide that is at this campground. Here is my little family on top of the slide. As you look at these (way too many) pictures, keep in mind that you can't even SEE where we are standing in this lovely family shot in the following pictures. It is a BIG slide!!!

Rohan and his extra-cuteness! (Enlarge the ones of my kids... they're so CUTE!)

Ella with a big grin and wind-blown hair!

Mac lookin' cool on the slide!

My dad laying down for extra speed!!!

My mom looking very cute on the slide!

Me, looking not very cute on the slide...

"Dustin rocks the slide!


Not to mention the teeter-totter!



ADORABLE KIDS HAVING SUMMER FUN!!!

Friday's Fabulous Five

Is it seriously Friday already? I can't believe it!

1- Kids are out of school as of Wednesday.... and I've heard it said that, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." I can DO this summer thing! I CAN!! I CAN!!!!

No seriously, we had a rough start to our summer on Wednesday, but I held my ground and became "Drill-Sargent Mother" and I think we're going to make it! Which leads me to my number 2 fabulous thing....

2- CHORE CHARTS!!! OH, the power of a good example!! I've been studying and taking mental notes on my friends who are good moms and make their kids do chores. Oh sure, I've made my kids do them too, but I've always been very inconsistent about it, and I HATE the battle. It's always a battle and I'm a lovah, not a fightah. So, incorporating my notes and mental observations of my good-mom friends, I made a chore chart yesterday and I feel VERY good about it. The kids now know the rules. They can't do anything fun until they've done their chores. And guess what? Ella got up this morning and came upstairs totally dressed and brushing her teeth! She had made her bed and cleaned her room before she even came upstairs! Mac still gave me a little grief, but the rules are set so there's much less room for argument! I told you I think we're going to make it this summer!!!

3- So I mentioned a while ago that I needed a new dryer. Well, actually I just mentioned that my dryer has been making a "rather strange and shockingly loud noise lately" and that was clear back on January 14th. Well, that "strange and shockingly loud noise" got worse and worse. Here's an image for you... just imagine turning on your dryer and the noise being so great that you may as well have a 747 jet engine in your basement. YEAH! It was awesome! It got to the point where you couldn't carry on a conversation if the dryer was on. Seriously. That's a noisy dryer. Anyway... off and on since then I've been perusing craigslist.com to see if I could pick up a good, used dryer. After all, a dryer can easily last 20 or 30 years (as did the jet engine one... it had to be made in the seventies... avocado green... beautiful!) and if I could pick one up that was just a few years old then I could be set for a long time! So, I've checked periodically and yesterday I found two! One was $65 and the other, $100. I liked the $65 price better (obviously) but the $100 one seemed a better dryer. So, I asked the $100 guy if he might consider going down to $65 and he said, "Sure". Really? I thought. Just like that? No haggling? Wow!

So, we loaded up in Dustin's work truck and went and looked at the dryer. Beautiful, it was. Only about 7 years old, white (bye, bye avocado!!!), clean, complete with a light!, and best of all.... QUIET! $65 later, we became the proud, new-used owners of a Kenmore 70 series, large-capacity, Quiet-Pak dryer!!

There is a universal truth that you can't know the good without experiencing the bad. Let me tell you how true this is! I've mentioned how you don't know how awesome closets are if you've never really lived without closets. And now I'll tell you that you don't know how WONDERFUL a quiet dryer is until you've lived for six months with a 747 in your basement. Seriously, I came down to check on the kids after Dust put them to bed and I didn't even know the dryer was on until I came close to it and heard the little ping of buttons, zippers, etc., tumbling around inside it. I could've sat down and wept right there. Blessed, peaceful, soothing, quiet, white noised dryer. Best $65 I've ever spent!

4- It's our anniversary tomorrow. Last year was ten years and we decided to do something we hadn't done before. We went out of town for the weekend. My mom and dad kept our kids. Because of that GREAT weekend last year, I think I made a decision without even realizing it. I NEED to go out of town for our anniversary... without those darling little humans I call children. Love 'em to death, and it's now a anniversary requirement to leave for at least one night, just D and I.

So, this year... the big eleven... we're going on a little jaunt to the mountains. We are staying in a "riverfront" room at a lovely place with a dinner theater thingy. I am very much looking forward to it. YEAAAH!!!!!!

5- (Dang. This is a long list. Or, long stories on each item. Are you still with me? Ok.) So, number five on my list today is my friend, Maria. Maria, over the course of the last year and a halfish, has become a sweet treasure to me. I am so grateful for the things she has taught me.

We were at the park yesterday for the last of our of Mother's Group activities (that Maria perfectly planned and excellently executed for over a year!), and another little gal, Destiny, was asking if there were any good babysitters we knew of in our neighborhood. We talked about who we knew of and then we mentioned our swap-weekends. We told how we would swap kids once a month for dates and one couple would go out Friday, and one couple would go out Saturday, each keeping the other's kids. It was a perfect arrangement. We touted the benefits and Destiny looked dubious. I realized then that it was a rare situation, indeed. All the components were a perfect fit. Maria's kids and my kids are all the same ages and play very well together. Our youngest two are best friends, and our middle two could rightly be called such as well. With endless imaginations and creativity, these children have a blast. We trust Maria and John and they trust us. We have a lot of similar ideas about child-rearing so we know our kids would be well cared for and treated fairly. It is a rare thing to find such compatibility.

And, my friend Maria and her cute little family are moving this weekend. Well, Monday, technically. It's a very bittersweet thing. She is going to law school, where I'm sure she will prevail. She's one of those people who excels. It's just what she does. So, I have no doubt that she'll conquer law school with excellence. But I will miss her so much!

And so, my number five Fabulous thing in my life this Friday is Maria. An incredible friend with a powerful mind, endless talents, a beautiful heart and a tough hide. She's taught me to stand a little stronger, worry less about the things I can't change and change the things I can, trust myself more, learn my mind and then speak it!, get off the fence, be a little more organized about things, and decide what I want, make a plan and do it. In short, she is AMAZING!!!

So, thanks, Maria! I love you and know you'll ROCK this law school thing!

Global Warming...

Looks pretty warm out there this morning! At 11:36 it is 39 degrees. Thank goodness for global warming, cuz without it we'd be REALLY cold! ;)

Yes, that would be snow on June 11, kids!
ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME?
(How do you like that broom sticking up out of our deck? I wonder what kind of game my kids were playing?)