Weekend: check

This weekend was full of excitement, or rather busyness, at our house.  Because parent/teacher conferences were this week the kids had Friday off from school (except for Logan who still had pre-school).  Here is a little bit of the fun we had on our long weekend. 

 We took a trip to the library and came home with five zillion Goosebumps books and also a goosebumps movie (wow, that is quality cinema if I have ever seen it -- notice that quiet hint of sarcasm).  However, the true hit of the trip is a "real life horrors" book that Gavin found in the reference section with a picture of the skeleton of a two headed baby.  The kids are completely enamored with that one.  It is a book full of odd real life things.  Everyone loves looking through it (I have to admit, it is interesting, so I don't mind when they ask me to read them bits from it).  Success at the library.  SCORE!

  On the not so successful side, I discovered that Logan has been stashing food on his chair underneath and besides his booster seat the last couple of days.  Awesome!  It was lots of fun to clean up crusty bread, soggy fruit and hot dog bits.  Actually, I made him clean up the bulk of it but he's only four so I did have to follow behind to finish the job.  Oh, kids.  No wonder he has been fighting me so much less about eating his meals. 

This weekend we emptied our lovely backyard pool.  We have been de-chemicalizing it for the last 10 days so that we could drain the water onto the lawn without killing the grass.  The kids had all kinds of fun playing with the draining water. 

Aubrey recruited the younger kids to make a "dam" with her.  She used pieces of 2x4 to try to contain the water and let it pool up on the grass.  It was fun to watch them (surprisingly, the wood pieces did not hold the water in very well). 

 The boys also used the drainage hose to make their own "water slide."  They set the hose at the top of our swing set slide and then slid to their hearts content. 

The kids were having such a good time with the draining water that they didn't want the excitement to end.  So they turned on the yard hose attached to our house and towed it over to the now sagging pool to fill the pool back up.  So we had one hose putting water in and another hose pulling water out.  When Josh realized what they were doing he was not too thrilled, but he did have to laugh a little before he mad them turn it off. 

 Even though Logan had lots of fun, he was not too happy when Gavin sprayed him with the hose...not sure why it mattered since he was already soaking wet, but that's how he rolls these days (you would think the kid was a teenage girl with all the drama he finds in life).

The children played "top chef" with moon sand in the yard as well.  I have a love/hate relationship with moon sand (a sort of moldable, sticky sand that kind of works like play dough).  It is great stuff  because the kids get to be creative and make things out of it...but it is horrible stuff because it is ALWAYS a huge mess.  However, when the weather is good and they can play with it outside I hate it a lot less.

Josh reinstalled the brick step we have between the carport and the back yard.  We had to tear it out when we put up our new fence/gate and this was the last piece of that project that needed to be done.

And last, but not least, Josh made a bike rack for the kids bikes.  Not only do they tend to be a jumbled mess all over the carport (because we really don't have anywhere else for the kids to park them) but we have also had two bikes stolen in the past month (one we got back the next day because it tends to have its chain come off regularly so we found it abandoned at the school with its chain off...ha ha, jokes on the bad guys...sort of). 

Anyway, we created the bike rack so the bikes can all be parked in a row and we can now chain them up at night and (hopefully) put an end to their clandestine adventures. 

It was a productive weekend and that is always a good thing.  As an added bonus, the BYU football team won their game on Friday (even if it was not beautifully done) so overall we'll call the weekend a success. 

Today I am thankful for:

1. A hard working -- and very kind and understanding -- husband.

2. Chocolate chip cookies.

3.  Lessons in church that inspire me to want to be better (cause boy do I need that).