Its been awhile! With much prodding, I will do my best to keep up better with the blog as my time to chat via email or telephone has evaporated.
We are full into the summer already. I am 3 weeks into classes, VBS is finished, and Senior week of camp has just started. The kids are loving their summer already!
Saturday was one of the best days I've had all year. It wasn't because it was full of bright sunshine or beautiful things to see, in fact it was a cloudy day with sprinkles here and there, but the temperature was perfect! A perfect day to be outdoors! So we spent the entire day out. First we went for a walk, and stopped in to visit Merle and Mattie Prater. They are such a sweet older couple, we really enjoy them. Then we went to a civil war reenactment. Ethan and Arianna were especially taken with that! They loved the horses and the uniforms, the tents and big dresses. Ethan and Isaac liked the guns and canons!
Later we went for ice cream, then we went to a mini carnival they were having in town and let the kids slide down a giant slide and ride the carousel horses.
It was little things, and we didn't spend very much money, but it was just a perfect day in my book. Being out of the house helped me to be able to focus on my family and not be distracted by my endless loads of laundry and the lawn that needs mowed, or any of the other hundreds of things I "could" be doing. We just spent undistracted time together. I think as a stay at home mom, this has become my biggest struggle. I am used to being with the kids so much that I short change them and myself, by multitasking my way through our days. Saturday was a great reminder of the blessing that can come from just setting those "distractions" aside from time to time and just be where you are. I think everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.
I don't have a lot of time but I thought I would leave you with a couple of funny things happened this week.
First we heard Ethan and Isaac talking in the backseat of the Van and Ethan was talking about going to "messico". They jabbered back and forth for a little while and then we heard someone ask where messico was, and Ethan replied, "I don't know where it is, but its where they make messes!"
Then on Thursday night, Andrew and I were sitting on the couch and chatting, when we heard some cats outside getting into the garbage and fighting. So Andrew jumps up, rushes into the bedroom and pulls out his BB Gun that I got him as a joke. I hisper, don't shoot the cat!!" But he darts out the door and shoots the gun off. He comes back and looks a little bit like Ethan when he is guilty of something and says "you know that tire that we needed to get fixed...I shot it and it went flat." Not a big deal really, I was just glad he didn't shoot the cats! He was surprised because he thought he aimed it at the ground. Then he goes out and comes back in and says "Paula, its worse than that.." Yeah it was! HE SHOT OUT THE VAN WINDOW! (ok so officially he did shoot the ground and it rickocheted up and hit the van window). Then he says to me, well if you had bought the shotgun I wanted it would have cost the same amount of money, since the window will now cost $300 dollars to replace! HA! That was the most expensive $20 I have spent in a LONG time and now surely there is no shotgun in the near future!! I learned a valuable lesson...don't buy BB guns for kids, even big ones!! (lets just say that was an interesting conversation with the kids the next morning. "Daddy, what happened to our window?")
We are all laughing about it now...and the window will be fixed today. It took me about a half hour to see the real humor in the situation. Andrew will NEVER live this one down :-)