Oh, What Do You Do in the Summertime?

Teaching my kids how to manage their money has been more of a struggle than I would like. It's so hard for me to stand by and watch them make bad choices, but that's exactly what I learned I must do from Love & Logic. I have to give them opportunities to fail while the consequences are still relatively small. So, enters the "ice cream man." You know the music playing, bells ringing, while some creepy guy drives really slow through your neighborhood, and manages to lure all our children out onto the street. I cringe every time I hear the sound. And then starts my speech about what a rip off it is, and how we can go to the grocery store and buy a whole box for the price of one of theirs. There must be something wrong with my speech, because it's not sinking in.

Monday rolled around, and it was one of our first HOT days of the season, so I finally let the girls get the sprinkler out and play in it. That's when I heard the familiar music playing, and knew there was no way I could distract them from it. So, for once I did nothing; just sat and hoped that they would learn the lesson on their own. Sophie came running in the house, "Mom, I need my wallet! We stopped the ice cream man!" She's so excited she just spins in a circle, not even knowing where to look for her wallet. I remind her of where she keeps it, and out the door she goes. I went to my watch post (their bedroom window) so I could have a good view of how it all played out. She bought two "bomb pops" -- always nice to see her looking out for her sister (Chloe would have done the same). I grabbed my camera to document the occasion, and by the time I reached them I think they had already decided this was a bad purchase. Their popsicles were SOUR. They weren't very frozen, so they were dripping everywhere. Chloe hardly ate any of hers. So, I guess you could say I got the failure I was looking for. Now I just need to wait and see if the lesson has been learned. They quickly went back to playing in the sprinkler, and we were all happy -- for a while.

Happy Father's Day!

We had a pretty fun father's day. The girls and I had picked out several small gifts for Brandon (a book, tape measure, tool box, and he had picked out some knee pads), and we made a little geocache for him. I was just going to hide them around the house, but the GPS doesn't work indoors, and our yard isn't quite big enough to make it very fun so I went around and asked some neighbors if I could hide them in their yards. We recorded all the coordinates in his GPS. We had to do this on Friday while he was still at work, but I didn't want to hide the gifts that early and have them sitting out all weekend. I wasn't sure how we were going to get them hid without him knowing, but Sunday after church got out the girls and I were sitting in the hall waiting for Brandon. I didn't know where he was, but knowing that he usually isn't very quick I thought we could run and do it without him knowing. We actually pulled it off. Turns out he got stuck handing out candy, so we hid all the gifts and got back to the church without him even knowing we had left.

It was fun watching him look for them. At first he was a little apprehensive about wandering through other people's yards, but once I gave him the go-ahead he was fine. It was a very warm day (not like we've been used to lately), so that made it hard. We probably gave him more hints than we would have otherwise.

I bought him a salmon that he got to BBQ for dinner, and made our favorite fruit salad. We had a peach pie for dessert, and I had picked up a coulpe quarts of Cold Stone ice cream, but that was too much so we're saving it for another day. The girls were even pretty nice to him the whole day (until dinner time when they didn't like anything we served and they had chores to do). After dinner we took some fun pictures. The girls make up for what I lack in coming up with poses. And if you notice, I even made it in one! That makes two family pictures already this year.

Cottonwood

One of our neighbors in our cul-de-sac has this gorgeous, gigantic cottonwood tree (so big I can't fit it in my lens). It's a beautiful tree that provides a lot of shade, and is usually pleasing to look at. But every year about this time the cotton starts to fly. It literally looks like a snowstorm in June. My brother's MIL was over here last week and said she grew up around cotton, but had never seen anything quite like this. With our house being just to the west of the tree we get hit the hardest, but it does fly all the way down the street. Our first year in this house we didn't know any better, and the cotton got in our air conditioner and clogged it up. We now know to keep it covered until the cotton is done. But it doesn't stop at the air conditioner, it also gets in the garage and the house every time a door is open.

This is the yard on the first day it really started. Just wait a week, and it will be several inches thick.

Chloe is ready for a "snow"ball fight.

Sophie's Graduation

Last Thursday was Sophie's kindergarten graduation. I still can't quite grasp the importance of this trend. I love the program they do for the parents, having an opportunity for us to see all the things they've done through the year, but do we really need to call it a "graduation"? I realize I'm being a poor sport about it, but it's just one of those things I think our society has gone a little overboard with the silliness of. However, we are VERY proud of Sophie and all her accomplishments. She was the only student in her class to complete her skills book in one day, she had the highest number of AR points (for reading), and she completed the year with the highest SME Math score in her class.

Sophie did get a speaking part in the program, but bonehead mom is not very good at running the camcorder. I couldn't find her in the viewfinder. It is recorded on the tape, just doesn't show her doing it. Otherwise I would post a clip of the program.

Chloe's Tooth

Chloe lost her second tooth on May 2nd. As you may recall, she tried to save her first one, but lost it before she was ready to give it up to the tooth fairy. This time we talked about how she probably shouldn't wait so she wouldn't have a chance to lose it. That first night she put in under her pillow, the tooth fairy was all set, and then she came crying to mom that she couldn't find her tooth. I asked why it wasn't under her pillow. She explained that she really wasn't ready to give it up, so she had put it somewhere else, and had now lost it. After a little searching she remembered where she had placed it, so all was not lost. I told her if she wasn't ready to get rid of it she didn't have to put it under her pillow. Several days went by and she started getting worried again. She finally told me she just needed a picture of her tooth so that she wouldn't forget it. So, that night we went out and took a picture. Then we put her tooth in a baggy and put it under her pillow -- again. But as you can guess, she still wasn't ready. Now she's telling me she just wants to print out the picture of her tooth and give that to the tooth fairy. I'm not sure the tooth fairy pays for pictures, but we'll have to see. Too bad our printer has gone kapooey. One of these days we'll get a print and give it a try.

Kitchen Floor

A couple weeks ago Brandon and I got real ambitious and cleaned out our garage. We threw out a ton of stuff that did not need to be there. Among some of our "treasures" we found were all the flooring remnants the previous owners had left for us. We had no use for them (because we're hoping to replace our floors one of these days, ok years), so I listed them on Freecycle. Someone came and took all my tile, but the vinyl used in my kitchen is still available. I had taken this picture to send to someone who requested it, wanting to see if it would match her stuff -- see my pretty kitchen floor?

Yeah, and then Friday morning I woke up to Brandon screaming. I finally found out it was because our kitchen floor no longer looked like the picture above. It had exploded (as one of our neighbors put it, it looked like a volcano). After some investigating we found a leak in the hose that runs to the ice maker in the fridge. We got it turned off and cleaned up, then Brandon drilled some holes in the floor to try to let the water from underneath dry up. It didn't help; it only got worse. I had a friend in town for the weekend, so she had her handy husband stop by and he explained why this type of subfloor wouldn't dry up. He also pointed out how the previous (idiot) owner had just put the subfloor on top of their existing linoleum. I suppose that might have helped the water not leak into the basement ceiling, but I still don't understand people that can't just do a job right. So, we got to spend our Memorial Day pulling up the kitchen floor.

Chloe was a super helper. I think she would have done the whole thing, if we'd let her. We had several neighbors stop by to offer help and suggestions. My visiting teacher brought over cupcakes. Now doesn't that make the whole ordeal bearable? I think so (but only because they were chocolate!)

Here you can see a little bit of the old linoleum sticking out. We're just going to leave it until we decide exactly what we want to do with it. Yes, it's ugly, but it's not THAT bad. However, Chloe is so funny with it. She won't step on it. She tried to just walk around on the counters to get to the fridge, but since I don't allow walking on the counters it's done well to keep her out of the kitchen. We're going to survive, but I still hope we find a good replacement sometime in the near future. Anyone want to trade me homes? Lately, renting sounds pretty good to me.

Girls Bedroom

I thought it took me forever to get my girls room painted, but it's honestly taken me even longer just to post the pictures I took over a month ago. But here they finally are.

The first picture just shows the two different colors we did. I went back and forth on so many different ideas, but had to settle on this one simply due to the layout of the room. The way our roof pokes out over their bedroom makes it so the wall above the window isn't as tall as the rest of the room. It looks cute, but posed some decorating challenges. So, we just did the wall with the window this hot pink (my interior consultant was much more willing to accomdate Chloe's request than I was), and the rest of the walls are yellow -- the same color we had in their room in Cheyenne.


This is their closet. We put the moulding around it. It was much easier after doing the window and learning from our mistakes, plus this one didn't require any angle cuts. This was pretty simple, and makes a huge difference (to me). Yeah, the closet door still needs painted (it's not quite as white as we painted the moulding), but that's just gonna have to wait until I feel like torturing myself again.

And here you can see the window. This was the biggest challenge. My "interior consultant" (as I call her, aka a visiting teacher) had told me I could just cut the pieces straight across. I had seen her windows she had done that way and they looked really cute, but our base board was a lot different from hers so it just wasn't the same. It looked awful, so we had to redo it. This time we cut them at 45 degree angles, and it did the trick. We weren't sure how we were going to do the top moulding since it had to be cut in half (lengthwise), but we used Brandon's Skil saw and for the first time since purchasing it, Brandon was happy with what it did. That made it all worth it. Chloe's not happy that she didn't get a pretty header for the top (like on the closet and the window we did in our bedroom), but it just wouldn't work with the window touching the ceiling.