Nesting

Well, now that Tyler's crazy month of June is past, he's home to a long honey-do list. Luckily, he's totally game and keeps on working. This baby is coming soon!

First we painted Liza's room, since it's been Liza and Landon's room for months - yet still purple! You can see the old color inside the closet of Tyler's picture.


Of course, when we asked which color they wanted to paint their room, they couldn't agree on one color. Landon chose yellow and Liza chose green. Luckily, we found some colors that went together pretty well.

The kids had lots of fun "helping." It may not surprise you to know that I wasn't as laid back about them helping - and Landon especially kept getting paint on the most random places. So, whenever possible, I'd divert them to help clear the toys out of the baby's room or any other task that didn't involve painting.

While their room was under construction, the kids got to have a slumber party in the office.

They thought it was fun, and reminded me of how fun it is to rearrange your room or move rooms or whatever. As if moving every few years didn't keep us going enough, our parents had us switch bedrooms every so often so we all got turns in the "best" room.

Once we got the painting done, we bought bunk beds!

It has been a great source of excitement, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Speaking of when we were kids, my brothers and I had a lot of fun chucking socks or other random objects at our ceiling fan. It was endlessly funny to see how quickly the fan could turn our socks into projectiles when it was on full speed. Well, once the kids' bunk beds were set up - the first thing they did was climb to the top bunk and try messing with the ceiling fan. Luckily, it seems that the novelty has worn off (or the threats have sunken in) since they don't play with the fan anymore.

Well, though it may have felt like it, it wasn't all work this week. Somewhere in there the Fourth of July happened.

We had some friends - Cory and Mindy - over for a barbecue on Sunday, but were rained out of the fireworks that night.
We still had fun watching Tyler light stuff in the rain while we waited for the official "no go" on the fireworks.


The next night we met up again with our friends and their kiddos and saw the fireworks "for real." The kids were pretty cute about being impressed, and it was fun to hang out.
(this picture was worth including both for Liza's smile and Landon's funny face in the background!)

This week we also finally bust out the water balloons. We've been saving them for weeks, and with all our trips to the pool we haven't seen much need to come home and do water balloons. But it was a rainy week and when the sun finally peeked out we saw our opportunity.

My question is: Why do I tell my kids my ideas? Is it so they'll like me? Liza said just the other day, "You have a lot of great ideas!" (my response, "Who me?" I was genuinely surprised). I don't think it's for popularity. Maybe I'm still working on thinking before speaking. That's very likely it. Anyway, I was trying to show the kids all the fun things you can do with water balloons, and mentioned that when I was a kid, my brothers and I had one favorite way to throw water balloons: at passing cars. (What I failed to include in the story was that my brothers and I we were twice their age when we did this. And we did it from the privacy of my grandparent's gated community. Simply stand behind a concrete wall, peek out for cars, bombs away - duck back behind wall and laugh like a girl.)

Well, my kids were all game to try this out, and we have plenty of cars pass by our house. Since I'm not looking for enemies or to get tee-peed anytime soon by the teenagers, I told the kids they could only throw the balloons at cars of people we knew. Luckily Tyler was due home not long after they got started, so they saved a few of their balloons for him. Perfect.

Finally, you may remember Liza's infamous Mutton Busting ride last year. And this year it was rodeo time again. Liza still can't be convinced to get back on a 60-pound sheep, but we did go see the rodeo. Tyler had to miss it again (he's in St. George at his family's reunion/mission homecoming, etc.) but Becky and Olivia got to join in the fun. And the mutton busting was still my favorite part. The kids gave a go at the chicken scramble, but that's not nearly as satisfying for anyone involved. 50 kids chasing 3 chickens? Frustration for Liza. Oh well, there's next year. In the meantime, they had fun trying to count 8 seconds before the riders would fall off, watching the clown and eating shave ice. Let's hear it for the rodeo!