Crammed Full of Fun

This was our last week of  summer vacation before school starts August 16.  Boo!  So long, sleeping in and lazy mornings at home.  Sunday after church, Julia, Lauren, and I went out to lunch at Jamba Juice, then to see a play.  Julia's friend, Elizabeth, was in Anne of Avonlea at the San Luis Obispo Little Theatre.  It really was a lot of fun!  The play was good; Julia happened to be reading the book right now, also. 

We made a quick Costco run and did a little back-to-school shopping for the girls.  We'd gone two weeks ago with everyone, to get backpacks, lunchboxes, basic supplies...  Austin picked out a few new shirts, but he was sooo bored when Julia and Lauren tried on clothes!  Then Lauren started talking about how she itched, and she had a "botherin' feeling" that she had lice.  Oh, what the fitting room attendant must have thought!!  Big brother horsing around with baby sister; then one kid talking about lice.?!?!  So much easier just to take a couple kids at a time!  At least clothes shopping!

~Lauren mentions getting a "botherin' feeling" often, when she can't stop thinking about something; or when she's very concerned about something not going right.~

Our last swim lessons were this week, ending Weds. the 8th.  Julia's job [for just a few minutes] was to hold the pool noodle and make a tunnerl for Caroline to swim through.

The kids were so funny choosing what kind of silly jump they wanted to do at the end of the lesson.  Sometimes Miss Jennie lets them choose, like today.  Austin's back was red, as he'd been scratching it.  Miss Jennie asked him why he was so itchy that day?!  His reply:  "Bedbugs!"  Not sure where that idea came from!  Bedbugs?  Lice?  Where are these kids coming up with this stuff?!

Tired out after swimming lessons.  Caroline wanted to sleep with Bitty Baby, so badly.  Lauren really didn't want to share, and kept making comments how Bitty Baby was her doll!

One of our "Annette" dahlias, from Doug and Annette.  :)  This dahlia was huge!

They are really blooming right now.  Sadly, a gopher completely chewed through one dahlia's stem--no more dahlia!  :( 

The leaves seemed a little wilted, so I checked on that plant, and out came the whole stem, gnawed off about and inch below ground.  Naughty, naughty gopher!!  There are also gophers destroying our garden, and one of them killed some of my other flowers!

Caroline was so tickled to be carrying Bailey around the yard!

Bailey has such a sweet personality, and tolerated Caroline chasing him, picking him up, then letting him go.  Over and over she did this.

Bailey always loves attention--not sure he knew what he got himself into with this attention-giver!  Oh well.  She had fun and didn't hurt him at all.

Monday night Julia had a sleepover at her friend, Lorin's house.  I picked her up Tuesday morning, and took the kids to the Avila Barn.  It was really hot there!  The kids had fun feeding the goats and other animals.

It was a perfect day for ice cream, but no one got any, b/c the power was off for the whole place!  I let my kids choose cookies and a giant Rice Krispie bar for their treats.

We also went on a hay ride around the orchards and berry patches.  There was no fruit ready to pick, so we just got a ride.  Until just before the end, the driver (the Barn's owner's son) dropped us off in a Triple Crown Berry patch.  We picked a very few blackberries, as they weren't quite ripe yet.  But at least it was a little something.  :)

The kids were still starving, so we drove to San Luis Obispo to eat at Panera Bread.  Yummy!  Caroline wanted to go to Old McDonald's.  ;)  Oh well, I'm sure we'll end up there another day!  We did a few errands after lunch.

There are lots and lots of these beautiful zinnias growing  at the barn.  They were so pretty!

Beautiful colors!

Thursday we had a free day at home.  The older kids had me buy canvases months ago, for paintings they wanted to do.  Well, guess what--it didn't happen till now!  There is just too much going on, typically, for us to get a big chunk of time to do art.
Austin made a splatter painting.  It goes perfectly in his room!

Caroline's art...I didn't buy her a canvas, but of course she didn't want to be left out from the big kids!  She wanted a picture like Lauren's, so I helped her draw sea creatures and sea life.

Lauren used oil pastels, and Caroline used crayons to draw their sea life.   Then they both painted blue over top their drawings, to make an ocean scene.

Julia found a cat drawing in the art book we used, and decided to paint this cat.  It was very challenging to her to draw a cat!  Her painting turned out cute though!

Caroline had her big birthday party in WA, but I didn't take along three of her presents.  No room!  She saw these presents set up, and made her own scene with them, with her ballet outfit, toy instruments, and her ocean art!  Then she wanted me to take her picture.

Little girl, BIG present!

Friday, Brian took the day off from work. We went to the Ravine waterpark in Paso Robles.  There were big, long slides, as well as a kiddie pool with short slides. There was a lazy river to float down, which connected to a wave pool.  The wave pool was Austin and Caroline's favorite thing to do at the park.  The water park had life jackets for infants, all the way up to 90 lbs.

It was such a fun day.  The kids loved the waterpark!  We ate dinner at Olive Garden that night in San Luis Obispo.  We were all so tired and worn out!

In the group picture below, you see Lauren's arm raised high.  The kids have been watching the Olympics, and she sees the gymnasts raise their arms like this.  Lauren has gotten extremely interested in gymnastics.  She checked out gymnastics books from the library, and she and Caroline practice doing the moves/tricks in the books.  Then they dance around like they are doing gymnastic floor routines.  So fun!



 Austin stacked a bunch of inner tubes just before the park closed and we left the park.  This was at the shore of the wave pool.

Caroline's "big" birthday present was this Snow White Cottage.  It is so cute!  I bought it last year on Black Friday for $15!  So worth it!  I saved it in my present stash for her birthday.  All 3 younger kids like playing in these tents!  the pink one is Lauren's castle tent.  The kids combined the two to make a bigger tent!  They rigged the tent storage bags and Austin's shirt on top to connect them both.

 So cute!



June

Sooo, my 3-month blogging hiatus is finished! There was a good reason for the long time without posts. June 2 we opened escrow on this (photo I found online from 2008):


Listing photo


Photo I took this morning. We got the keys to our new home July 7. There is much more to the story, which I will post later. The house was a foreclosure and the bank would not budge on a 30-day escrow, which meant we had to get busy with moving tasks, even before, but when we were pretty sure, the asset manager signed the final counter offer.


The weekend (Memorial Day weekend nonetheless) before he signed, Brian and I started packing knick knacks, stuff we didn't need in the next month. It was the weirdest feeling, surreal, like we were secretly sneaking off. And even though we were fairly sure the offer would be signed, we wondered if we'd end up unpacking those first boxes! We only had a 7-day investigation period (where we could back out w/out losing our deposit) so wanted to be sure to have all the necessary inspections done in that week. Especially since we were buying the house in "as-is" condition!!

Our realtor is awesome and super on top of things, and immediately started scheduling inspections, even before we had the final offer signed! Crazy! We had the roof inspection: no leaks, just a few broken tiles. We had the termite inspection: no termite damage or evidence! None at all! Brian and I were surprised, as this house was built in 1998, and our first house, built in 1997, had some minor termite damage that we had to have repaired when we sold it in 2004. We saw God work in many ways during this whole process, including the inspections, making it clear that we should indeed buy this house!

June 6 we had the septic tank inspection. The results were normal with it as well. The septic inspectors were these cute (as in comical) college-aged guys. I asked them all kinds of questions, like what they'd pumped out of the tank that shouldn't have been there. They found baby wipes, feminine products... None of that really shocked me. But one of them said he found a baseball bat in a tank once... How in the world would you get that down there?! The other guy said the "healthiest" tank he'd inspected was a farmer's. The farmer had easy access to his tank and put a dead chicken in it! LOL They told me to put sour milk or meat fat down the drain now and then to keep it healthy--that was interesting. Bad cell-phone pic of our tanks (just what you wanted to see):


June 7 was Lauren's Kindergarten graduation. She was soooo excited for her big day and wore her fancy dress. The kids sang a few songs, adorable as always at that age. :D

There was a family picnic after the Kinder performance. A few other parents (who have kids in Austin's grade) and I remarked what a nice class Lauren's is--and the parents of this class. At Austin's graduation, people were standing in front of others videotaping the singing--like they were the only ones who cared to see it. At Lauren's people got up to take a picture or video a little, then sat back down! At Austin's picnic, some of the parents were crowding and cutting! At Lauren's, the parents were making sure the kids got to go first, and kinder to other families. Kind of interesting!

Caroline wanted to be in this picture with Lauren and the sign. Lauren loves her baby sister and wanted her there too. But still, I wish I would have gotten one picture of just Lauren with the sign on her special day. I didn't even think about it--just one of many things that didn't get thought about during our crazy month of moving!!

That afternoon Julia competed in the 5th-6th grade spelling bee. She was one of four classroom finalists for her class. Well, she ended up getting 1st place! I was so proud of her! Beating even the 6th graders! ;) For that matter, the last 3-4 contestants were all 5th graders. And lest we get too proud, she and the 2nd place winner went round and round spelling words correctly, misspelling words. Till finally Julia spelled the other kid's misspelled word correctly, then one more word to win it! It could have easily gone the other way--Julia said it herself. :) Another bad cell phone picture--the only camera I thought to bring! Bye bye, mind!

June 8 Julia had her 3rd trimester awards assembly--earned Perfect Attendance (for trimester) and Honor Roll awards.

Right after Julia's assembly I had to go right home to the house we were leaving to let the appraiser in. It didn't take long for him to take his pictures of the rooms, but still, I was late to Austin's awards ceremony! In fact I missed the whole thing! Bad mom!! He wasn't happy about it either, and told me, "You went to Julia and Lauren's things, why didn't you come to mine?!" Poor little guy. My friend took this picture for me of Austin with his award for Creative Writing. The whole 2nd grade class had a family picnic after the ceremony, so at least Caroline and I were there for that. And wouldn't you know, Austin let me know how unhappy he was about me not being there earlier, yet the whole time I was at the picnic, he was off playing with his friends! And so it goes...

Last day of school was June 10. The kids took to sleeping in right away. I didn't sleep in much. LOL I was concerned about getting out of shape without my daily walk to school and back. I needn't have been. I packed and carried and cleaned so much, I got a ton of exercise even without the walk!!

Caroline was glad to have her big sister with her to play with all day, every day! She and Lauren are best friends. Austin and Lauren used to be, but now they fight!

Austin found my tin of old marbles from my grandma one day. I showed them how to play marbles with a shooter and the yarn circle. Austin was pretty good at it!

Julia loves the kitties and they love her.

The youngest 3 had 7 swim lessons in June and July. They loved them, as always. Miss Jennie, their teacher, is sooo good with the kids! Julia didn't take lessons but swam and played in the pool while the other kids practiced.

As soon as we got things finalized with the house we moved from, we pulled out all our

boxes and hoard of stuff to get rid of and started sorting through it for a garage sale. We couldn't make a mess of the house till we knew for sure what was happening with it. I'm not going to go into detail online, but I have to say, the part about what to do with the house we were leaving was the part of moving that worried me the most. I was sooooo worried about it and felt like throwing up thinking about what we were doing, but the whole issue turned out *great*! We prayed that God would bless us in that endeavor, and He brought along *amazing* people to make that house situation work out perfectly, and in absolute perfect timing--sooo much better than we ever imagined!

These are the boxes we'd accumulated in our garage. For a garage sale someday. And this was even after I'd taken boxes and boxes to the consignment shop earlier in the year! And then Brian brought in boxes of boy baby and toddler clothes from the attic for us to add to the garage sale pile. They aren't even in this picture! We had sooooo much stuff, and soooo much kid clothes especially. I'd saved all of Austin's newborn to just-out-grown clothes, except what I'd sold at the consignment shop. That is 8 years of clothes just from him!

The mountain was so overwhelming, I just decided to price everything at 25 cents a piece and hoped to get rid of a lot. Nicer jackets, jeans, dress clothes, and shoes I did price higher. Julia was a huge help with the garage sale sorting. She was born for the job. I couldn't have done it without her! She'd sort and I'd pack. She'd ask me about prices, then go ahead and price things. We did give her a portion of the profit, since she helped so much!!

While packing and taking things off walls, we discovered this:

Hee hee...Neither Brian or I remembered painting *around* the shelf that was there. That is not something *we* would do. LOL

Austin with a Lego tower he built. And playing in a fort made of garage sale boxes. He and the little girls (especially them!) were bad about getting into the garage sale stuff and finding toys and treasures they loooooved. Supposedly--they'd forgotten all about them until they saw them in the pile.

Father's Day

Lauren. I don't even remember what she was doing this day. Looking like a rock star?! She put on tons and tons of make up and thought she looked sooo beautiful. Now, I have no problem w/ the girls dressing up and playing with their play make up.

But check out her nails! See the polish all the way down her fingers and hands?! Well, it was also splattered all over the bathroom tile--counter and floor--and toilet, and even on one cupboard door! I was so mad at her and told her she was not allowed to use nail polish again till we were at our new house. And then she could do it outside!

Lock info, paint samples, new house listing, yellow notebook filled w/ new house info, inspectors, people to clean carpets, do tile, fix roof, etc.

June 25 was our garage sale. The pictures are bad b/c (bye bye, brain, again!!) the camera was set on Tungsten, and Brian didn't know, and took these pictures on about as opposite conditions from Tungsten as you can get: this gray, misty, foggy morning. But he didn't know. I should have switched the camera back to auto white balance (I usually do...like I said, bye bye, brain!!) I color corrected them, but they're still bad.

Anyway! Brian and I told the kids for a few weeks that if we made enough money, we'd take them to see Cars 2 at the drive-in. Of course with all our stuff, we sold plenty for that outing! I doubted a garage sale would be even worth our time, as we made a measly $90 some odd dollars at our last one.

Julia made cupcakes and the kids sold most of them. Before, we've had all the cupcakes sell, so that was kind of a surprise they didn't. But not a big deal, as we ate the rest! ;)

We had sooo many kids clothes, we ran out of tables. Brian and I rigged up tables using large boxes. The toddler bed mattress and the ironing board. We already had all our tables (not our big dining table) and coffee and end tables out there. And we borrowed two tables and the clothes rack from a friend. And rigged up a table using our sheet of plywood. We still couldn't fit all the clothes on them! We had more than one person ask in disbelief, "How many kids do you have?!" ROFL!! We did get rid of almost all of it though!

One lady, pregnant with a little girl, bought a bunch of baby girl clothes. Then came back again for more. She said we had such nice things, and priced great! Then, Sunday, I got an email response to our Craigslist sale ad from this lady. She wrote that I had such amazing clothes, and could she buy the remaining baby girl things? I sold her the last 4 boxes (of non-Gymboree anyway. That's going to consignment or online ;) ). Yay! Glad to be free of them. And glad to help someone out who appreciated the cute little things. :D And, as my friend says, be glad you can bless someone else.

Then, there were a few people who would roll a shirt inside a pants, to hide it, and try to get both for 25 cents. That irritated me. Because I gave most people an even better deal than a quarter each if they just asked. Grrrr.... Made me feel like they were stealing from the garage sale! Goodness!

Julia helped set things out and keep the items as neat as we could.

We sold most of what we set out. We were surprised our green glider rocker/ottoman didn't sell. Several people looked at it and said it was a good price, but didn't buy it for whatever reason.

And, we made enough $$ to go see Cars 2 at the drive-in. We brought pizza, popcorn, and other snacks. It was reeeeeally cold that night and I was glad to have Caroline to sit with, and blankets to bundle up in.

Many, many Popsicles were eaten this summer. The kids always have to eat them outside b/c they make such a mess! That, and it's good for them to get out in the fresh air. :D

Austin is still liking karate. June 29 Brian took this w/ his phone--I *think* it was the day Austin earned two stripes! That is really good, to earn two on one testing day. Last week he earned another stripe, so now he has a white belt with 4 yellow stripes. We think (still not totally sure how the stripe/belt system works) he gets a yellow belt w/ a white stripe down the center length next. ???

And that is the update for June. I tried to keep it short, but it still turned out long. :D