Motorcycle

Today Ben was asking Devan to buy a motorcycle.

Devan: When you're as big as I am,  then I'll buy a motorcycle.

Ben: Do you hope you won't be dead before I'm as big as you are?

Devan: Yes,  I hope I'm not dead before you're as big as me.

Me: Ben, do you hope Dad isn't dead before you're as big as him?

Ben: No, then I'd just buy my OWN motorcycle.

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Monday

On Mondays we babysit and I have school at night, so Mondays are usually our stay home day for the week. I try to catch up on housework after the weekend and do homework before class and the kids fight all day. The days always start out with such big goals and by the end of the day we've all got cabin fever and we're ready for another week of going to the park every day.

 

Today we...

 

Played with Legos

 

 

Josh discovered his pictures on the blog and was super excited.

 

We all worked together to make a bird's eye model of our house out of Legos.

Hannah worked hard to make furniture for "Ben's room"...

 

Then Ben dumped a bunch of random Legos all over the section that was his bedroom. He said, "My room's always messy!" I thought it was a good demonstration of his ability to understand symbols. Hannah was just mad that he was messing up her work.

 

 

While we were building, someone always wanted to be on my lap, so after lunch we had a long reading time. They all chose books and whosever book I was reading got to sit on my lap. We read about whales and looked on the globe to discover that all the oceans connect.  

Then we babysat 5 friends.

 

Then I went crazy and was SO glad when 5:00 came and I could run away to school. In this heat, getting to go to an air conditioned school and have discussions with adults is my ultimate "me" time!

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Fancy Hannah

We've been reading a lot of "Fancy Nancy" books and now Hannah wants to be fancy all the time. For the last few weeks she's worn dresses or skirts every single day. She has shirts and dresses that I call play clothes, which she'll wear if she has to, but what she really wants is to run around everyday in fancy church dresses. The rule is she can't play outside or eat in church clothes. So, we experience a costume change before every meal. I used to tell her she couldn't wear her tights to play outside, but now I just beg her, please, wear shoes over your tights outside!

 

 

Here she is giving her brothers a ride, wearing her favorite fancy dress and shoes.

 



She dressed in the same shirt she wore on her first day of school, packed her purse and grabbed a book and asked me to take a picture. She pretended she was going to school. (I don't know why all my vertical pictures are uploading weird. Click on the picture to see the non-distorted image)

She and her brothers with their play scarves. These went from butterfly wings, to capes, to whatever this is, in the period of 15 minutes.

Even hauling rocks, she was wearing a fancy dress. I guess she slipped past the "no church clothes outside" rule that day.

And this has nothing to do with anything, just our Lincoln who we babysit looking cute in butterfly wings. The girls were wearing some and he wanted a pair, but then wasn't so sure about them once they were on.

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Potluck

Today we had an unofficial preschool get-together. We did a potluck with 6 of our preschool families. I really just needed an excuse to make and eat potato salad. We met at Wildwood park, which is my very favorite park in the area. It was so nice and shady. My adventurous kids (Hannah and Josh) had a great time exploring the surrounding forest (where I could see them)

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Field day

My friend from church set up an afternoon of summer games for the kids. She made an amazing obstacle course relay, and had balls and parachutes and hula hoops. It was a blast. It was also 85 degrees, so the kids spend a lot of time at the water spigot. I gave my kids their sandwich bags after lunch and that was all the water toys they needed.

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Our tadpoles all died. It's okay because the pond they were living in at Devan's work also dried up. We gave them a couple extra days of life.

Painting on one of the hottest days of the year.  Ben had the right idea.

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