Lovely Rainy Day

While I promised my fav MIL that I would be catching up on blogs from the vacation (phew, over a month and some moons ago...), I couldn't pass up the opportunity to share our deliciously lovely rainy day:)  Started with some dancing (sorry, can't flip the video!):

Filling up pots with the rain water:

Going to the doctor with crayons and books in tow:

And ended with some cupcake making for the Spaghetti Dinner:

Great fun had by all.

When Life Hands You Smooshed Bread....

Grocery shopping adventures again.  In between holding Squeakers in my arm, trying to prevent Beans from hunting down every little girl she saw to become BFFs with, and keeping Smoosh from throwing cans out of the shopping cart, I noticed a loaf of bread precariously close to Smoosh.  Trying my best not to alert the beast of this unwary prey, I gently removed the bread from the shopping cart and placed it in the seat where Squeakers was supposed to be sitting.  In her new independence, she has become quite mobile in those seats, able to duck out of those silly little lap belts quicker than I can turn around; however, I digress.  I walked merrily along my way (well, we'll all just pretend I was humming happily up and down those aisles with a toddler in my arms, crazy beast in the cart, and scary-friendly 7-year old running at least one aisle ahead of me at all times scaring all the other children) when I turned to put the eggs in the seat of the cart so no damage would be done to those either (ok, side note, sometimes we need to buy eggs for baking.  I don't like to use my hens eggs for baking because I feel they are much too yummy to waste on baking - 3 at a time for brownies the Big Daddy devours in one sitting?!?!?  My lady chickens' eggs are much too precious for that gluttony!).  I noticed the bread was missing and Smoosh was happily smiling away.  The little stinker had sensed the bread and all of its vulnerability, grabbed it, and made a seat out of it.  What else to do with a loaf of bread?  One of my friends was actually in the grocery store that day and came by to say hi a few minutes later.  She hadn't seen me; she had heard me yell my dear child's name as I discovered the bread beneath his bum.  Sometimes you have to just have to accept defeat, which I did quickly this time and walked straight to the checkout line, finishing our grocery trip with half of the items on our list.  At least we had smooshed bread we would be eating for lunch, and jimney crickets, Smoosh was going to be eating that bread until it was ALL GONE.

Deciding it was not that big of a deal (hey, as a kid, I used to love taking off the crusts of bread, rolling the inside part into a ball and then shoving it into my piehole...yumlicious), we made PB&J rolls out of our smooshed bread.  It turned into quite the party as I began my search for the rolling pin; an adventure unto itself.  The rolling pin likes to hide itself deep in cabinet with the pots and pans, so everyone decided to make musical instruments out of the pots and pans that were now unearthed in the hunt for the rolling pin.  That night at dinner, it was decided (more like decreed) that there would be no more grocery shopping with the Smoosh, at least not if there was bread on the shopping list.

Boys will be Boys

Before getting their new hairdos, the 2 boys were living it up a little bit in the backyard a la Lord of the Flies.

And now the hair goes:

 Smoosh's "Spikey" Hair

Otter's Mohawkalicious.

Best part of it all for Otter?  Rockin' his mohawk for the last day of school.  I just love the adorable, precious little Bean next to him, looking so sweet and innocent....

LaCrabbing

What do you get when you mix 4 boys, 2 lacrosse sticks, and 1 great big ocean together?  The new sport of LaCrabbing....The big payoff came when the boys all enjoyed their "feast" of crabs.

Listing

We are back home from our fantastically wonderful vacation.  There are so many things to do now that we are back home; so many, in fact, that I have been incredibly busy creating many many lists to keep track of all the things to do.  So far, I have made a To Do list for Unpacking, Garden Work, Inside Work, Home to Do, Sewing Projects (Started and To Be Started), Kid Chores, Honey Do, and, me being the ambitious one, I even started a Christmas To Think About To Do list.  Unfortunately, in the midst of all of this listing, I got quite distracted by some very cute fabric I forgot I had and made myself a skirt instead of getting anything on any of the lists done.  I added "make self skirt" on the Sewing Projects lists and crossed it off so I could feel productive today.  Tomorrow, I will start conquering the Lists...and perhaps find the random one or two pics I managed to grab while on vacation!

Simple Amusement

This is what my husband likes to do for fun - put the chickens in various roosts and high positions throughout the yard, take pictures of them, and anxiously wait for me to find them when I download all the other pictures.  What's great is that I do find this all incredibly hilarious.  We unfortunately had no camera around the other day when there was a torrential downpour.  The chickens were in their "clubhouse" as Smoosh calls it and Joe was trying to get them to their coop.  He had a large, plastic blue bowl over his head and ran across the yard with 3 of the chickens running after him.  He found the story quite humorous and, inside, I was giggling quite a bit about the image of it all as well.  I wonder if we have some screws loose over here. 

Summer Saturdays

Summer is our time for doing so many activities.  So many activities.  Here is what happened today:

Beanie's first Feis (the word for the Irish dance competitions!) - 5th place :)  Very nice for her first competition!  The picture is the preshot before her wig gets put on and the massive amounts of hairspray are applied.  Egad.  Both she and Daddy had loads of fun!! Even Squeaks was part of the action.  What made me the happiest was hearing her reaction to her friend Kate getting 2nd place - "I was just so proud of Kate."  Nice work Beanie Bops!  (Sorry, no pics during the competition were allowed!) While she was at the Feis, Smoosh and I were rooting Otter on, who was swimming away at his first home meet for the Sun Prairie Piranhas.  He swims all exhibition, but man oh man he puts his heart and soul into it.  Here are his results (something I will try to post each Saturday as I know at least one person is very interested in them:)). 50 free - 56:66; 50 back 1:19; 100 free  2:10:01.  He sliced a few seconds off his 50 free and added a little bit onto the others; but he's just warming up:)  He also swam a Free Relay.  Beans joined the swim meet and was able to jump in to a relay as a sub, exclaiming to Coach Nancy with great joy "Your Super Sub Swimmer is here!"  She did a great job for being up early and dancing at a competition just a little bit earlier.  Once the swim meet was done, Otter was supposed to go to a lacrosse game to help out his team that had already been playing all morning, but that was rained out.  I know it is hard to believe, but I wasn't too upset that we didn't have to make the 45-minute drive out there and sit outside in the sun some more.  I don't think Otter was too upset either after swimming his heart out for the morning either. Our exciting day kept going with tornado sirens sending us to the basement to watch some family movies.  We then packed Beans up for a sleepover and are all headed to bed ourselves right now!!  We are done done and more done!