Visitors and a BBQ

We had some visitors at our house last Friday.

 

They were staying behind our BBQ out back.

 

As I watered tomato plants I thought, we haven't BBQ all summer, I need to pull it out and uncover it and clean it up so we can BBQ.

As I sprayed out dead leaves a couple cob webs, that is when I heard the meowing.

The mother had run off without my noticing but she paced trying to get to her crying babies.

The girls had a fun 20 minutes playing with the visitors...

They named them... midnight and cloudy...

  

Then the nice officer from Animal Control took them away...

 Someone was not very happy about that.

 

Is that blame in those dark brown eyes???

 

Now my kids can say they had pet kittens. 

See we are not such mean pet-less parents after all.

hyperventilation

Sometimes I want to hyperventilate when I think about this new home.

Here it is with the frame of the house now covered with wood.

We love seeing it move forward and I am very anxious for it to just. be. DONE. but patience never has been my strong point and if anything, I am only becoming more set in my ways the longer I age.

Erik and I have always tried to be conservative with money. We had a goal to pay off our Hidden Cove Lane home in a couple years.

But we chose to change our goal for something which we thought would still benefit our family (and future teen age children), just benefit in a different way.

Of course, with the change of address comes other, different changes.

We have to tighten up in some other areas we hadn't needed to before... I mean... we are not ones with endless amounts of cash at our feet.

NOT that there is anything wrong if you do have endless amounts of cash, just sayin'.

We have tried to be smart in this decision with the new house, so it's not like we are going hog wild, but like the majority of people in life, when you choose to put money towards one thing, a home, vehicle, clothes, entertainment, whatever it may be, the money has to come from another area.

So... I start to hyperventilate over the unknown. I mean lets consider... in the future when my reading light runs out of batteries, I may not be able to just go buy another one.

I found all these in my drawer and thought it was sort of comical.

But now thinking about it, I think when I would go to purchase a new battery, the price for those "SPECIAL" nickel shaped batteries was so comically overpriced that it was cheaper to just purchase a new night light.

So... as I start to worry about the cost of this new home, and what I'll have to trade, I start to worry that possibly, just maybe, I won't be able to READ until 2-3am.

Erik's Jacket

I love my husband.

I love my husband.

I love my husband.

But he has this jacket that drives me nuts.

He paid good money for it and by golf standards it's a nice enough pullover jacket.

I don't mind it on - it looks nice. No, better than nice... to quote Elizabeth "Dad looks hot!" I told her she can't say that, only me, but she just grinned.

Ahem... Back to the aforementioned jacket.

When that thing goes in the washer I curse the day it entered my home.

Why? How? How can one jacket drive someone to such teeth clenching fury?

This.

It has Velcro sleeves at the wrist.

What?

Background.

I usually throw nylons and my girls dance tights in with the medium darks. See, I have a home of six, five of them being girls and a husband who could very well count as one as he cannot wear anything the least bit dirty, we can discuss that later... SO we have enough laundry to have it's very own category called medium darks. I put these nylons and dance tights in with the medium darks because they stand out so when they go to the dry cycle I actually see them and pull them out and hang them to dry. If I wash them with the medium lights or lights they just get camouflaged and then get dried and in my opinion there is nothing worse then seeing McCall or Elizabeth in balled up, dryer fried nylons & tights.

Right.

So when the stars and planets align and this medium dark jacket is being washed with nylons or dance tights those darn Velcro tabs on the wrist snag the nylons and tights (along with any other string, seam or hook-able item). I then pull out from the wash that tangled mess and grit my teeth and curse (like dang and darn) that blasted jacket and the good husband who brought it into our home.

Now, I could train the good husband to turn the jacket inside out when he takes it off but then I am just as liable for missing it when I load the washer so I can't really complain about him...

Right?

Maybe that jacket will just disappear?

Why 4-year-olds don't raise 2-year-olds

Wednesday morning found me sitting at my laptop doing some humanitarian/Relief Society work. As I am sitting on my bed, I can hear Claire and Estelle in their room playing with the dollhouse.

It's cute to listen in on them... mostly, and I love that they like to be under my radar.... if I'm in my room, they are right out the door in theirs; if I'm in the kitchen, they are in the family room; if I'm in my office/craft room, they are in the playroom or in the exercise room; if I'm in the bathroom they are pounding at the door.

Right.

As I sit a top my bed, I hear a thump (someone tripped I suppose, as a second earlier I saw them laying on their tummy's playing on the bottom floor of the dollhouse and I could just catch sight through my door of Claire's legs still lying on the floor in the same position with Stella now on her knees on the opposite side as I saw before). I then hear Stella's annoyed "Clayew!" Obviously Stella took it as Claire's fault that she tripped over Claire's legs.

Before I could interject with my, "It was an accident Stella!" I hear Claire's panic-ed voice of reason...

"No Stella, don't hit! You only hit when someone really hurts you!"

This week from the Peterson Home...

Just thought I'd share a couple things from this week which made me smile...

After getting all the girls bathed and dressed I called all of them upstairs to get their hair done. Claire zipped right upstairs. I complimented her on coming when I called the first time and being the first one up.

Claire then responded...

"Yeah! And I didn't even use my magic powers!"

At Target the other evening I just had Claire with me. We wandered past the DVD section. Claire spotted a Barbie Rainbow something or the other and said, "Can we get this movie?" To which I replied, "No."

Most emphatically Claire cried, "Ohhw...but it's the best movie EVER!"

"But you've never seen that movie Claire." I replied.

"Well... I just know it really IS!" she declared.

I was making dinner this evening. (Baked Tilapia, rice and broccoli - if you want to know.) The girls had been at each other for the past hour straight as they picked up and got pajamas on before dinner. Frustrated I tried to occupy them and told the girls to grab a board game or two to play at the kitchen table while I got dinner ready.

What was in the water today?! 

With board games opened they continued to fight over random issues; who gets to set up the game, who gets that piece, who gets to go first, whatever they could argue about this evening they did!

Exhausted, particularly by Elizabeth's whining, I said,

"Elizabeth, if you whine one more time you will go to your room for the rest of the night without any dinner."

Elizabeth paused for a moment considering and said...

"What are we having for dinner?"

Rough Morning

So I scheduled a post for today and hate to post twice but I just had to share my morning with you, this is DEFINITELY getting labeled under trouble!

I guess when I typed this on the picture I was refering to STRAIT rather than STRAIGHT as in

STRAIT: (strāt) A position of difficulty, perplexity, distress, or need. 

The best part was when I called Erik and he brilliantly told me "you can't leave them alone even for a minute". 
Good thing he wasn't standing in front of me.

Claire must be following trends!
She has seen a lot of tinker bell
as she's on a big Peter Pan kick lately.