Christmas in July (7/7-7/9)

We made an adjustment to our summer daily schedule this week.  I'm now scheduling one big project each day for the afternoon.  In the morning, the kids get up and I make a list of what they need to get done for the morning and a deadline for when it needs to be done.  Workbooks, some reading, a few chores, and suddenly it's lunchtime.  This seems to be working pretty well for us, and the kids like having all their stuff done in the morning.

Jonathan being crafty.

The beginning of our week, our big project was to do some Christmas crafts.  Every year at Christmas, we have tons of projects and crafts that we want to do but we end up running out of time to get them done.  So this year we had our first ever Christmas in July craft days on Monday and Wednesday.

Emily working on a
Christmas craft.

Benjamin likes penguins.

Abigail is busy working.

Monday, we set up five different crafts in stations around the table.  Emily and Jonathan can pretty much figure out the instructions, which left me free to help Abigail and Benjamin.  Ben helped with a couple things, then was happy to go play with other stuff.  Abigail made a few, then got tired of gluing.  Emily and Jonathan sat and worked until it was time to clean up for dinner.

One of the picture clues
from FHE.

Monday night was Family Home Evening and Jay was in charge of the lesson.  He took close up pictures of lots of things around the house on his phone.  The kids had my phone and he would text them a picture.  They had to go find what it was, take a picture, and send it back to him.  It was hysterically funny listening to them whispering and giggling as they figured out the pictures.

Tuesday we went to the free movie at the Palladium, which was The Pirates: Band of Misfits.  The two older kids enjoyed it, but it was a little over the heads of the younger two.  Oh well-- it was free!

Starting the transformation.

In the afternoon, it was a little stormy, so we didn't head to the pool.  Instead
we started painting the master bedroom.  Good-bye to the ugly brown!  Jay is the master painter and got two walls finished by the evening.  The rest will get done another day.

Abby and Jonathan and the
mutant ninja
gingerbread men.

Wednesday started with workbooks and chores, then we did more of our Christmas in July crafts.  We had some to finish from Monday and two new ones.  Ben was starting to come down with the crud that Jonathan and I had, so he didn't do much.  Emily and I set up a snowman assembly line and worked away.  Jonathan and Abigail realized that some of the gingerbread men weren't cut correctly and made an army of mutant ninja gingerbread men!

Emily working on her
snowman assembly line.

Early dinner, gymnastics, baths, bed finished off our Wednesday and this part of Christmas in July.

A Fabulous 4th of July

On July 3, we were back to "normal" since all our company was gone.  I decided to give the kids the rest of the week off from workbooks since the week was almost over anyway.  Both Emily and Jonathan still had some thank you notes to finish up from birthday parties, so they worked on those for the morning.  After lunch, we made some fun shirts for the 4th.  The instructions didn't exactly work, but they still turned out pretty cute!  The kids each picked their own colors, so only Emily's was super patriotic.  (She was very concerned about this.)

After working on shirts, Jon, Abby, and Ben disappeared to play.  Emily had enjoyed the patriotic craft so much that she wanted to keep crafting.  She did some research and figured out a wreath that she could make.  I helped her print the stars out from the computer, but she did the rest of the work and design by herself.  She spent all afternoon coloring stars!  We did take a break in the afternoon to try some fruity yogurt drinks, which were pretty delicious.

Friday morning we had a slow start.  All of us were tired from a busy couple of weeks, and Jay had the day off.  After a breakfast of banana bread waffles, we went to the store to get groceries for the weekend and paint for Jay and my bedroom.  (It's needed painting since we moved in and we finally decided what color we wanted.)  After lunch, everyone had some quiet time so they'd be ready for fireworks and a late night.

The patriotic crew in their new shirts.

Jay built a sandbox for the kids last spring.  It was starting to fall apart in spots and needed some improvements, so Friday afternoon he started tearing it apart to put it back together again.  He had plenty of helpers!  Of course, they were more interested in playing in the sand than actually putting the sandbox back together!  Jay did a beautiful job-- he put a new liner in the sandbox, attached a lid, and started putting a walkway around it.  It should give the kids plenty of playtime.



It was super hot, so we made some iced hot chocolate for our snack.  Jay is usually at work when we have our crazy snacks, so he was amused to get to participate.  The kids thought the whipped cream was the best part of this one!

Our favorite part of most holidays is the food.  Independence day means cooking out!  We had an amazingly delicious dinner.  Emily had helped cut up vegetables for the pasta salad, so we felt like it was a group effort.

After dinner, the kids all got baths and put on comfy clothes so they'd be ready for fireworks.  Even Benjamin was excited to go this year.  Jay packed everyone up and off they went.  (I'd had a touch of Jonathan's crud all week and wasn't feeling up to sitting out in the heat.)  It had been raining and thunderstorming off and on all afternoon, so we didn't know if there would be delays with the fireworks.  They went off on time, but they all felt a little let down this year; the show wasn't as good as some years.  All four kids barely made it to bed before crashing.

Saturday we were planning on cleaning and organizing our room so that we can get ready to paint.  Jay decided to start outside finishing the sandbox project while the sun was on the other side of the house.  Even without the sun beating down on him, he came in dripping.  But the sandbox area is finished and beautiful!  (Except for 3 more bricks where he ran out...)

Meanwhile, I worked on our room.  Somehow everything of everyone's ends up on top of my dresser!  I got all of it sorted out and then decided that I needed some more storage containers.  A run to Target and Michael's and I came home with four containers and two picture frames.  More organization to happen in the future!

After all the excitement of the last couple days, the kids had trouble settling down to sleep Saturday night, except Ben who was asleep in about 2 minutes.  It was especially hard since a lot of the neighbors were still shooting off fireworks and we could hear the rain delayed show from Fulshear.  Jay and I had no problems, though!  All that cleaning is hard work!

It was a great 4th weekend and back to reality on Monday!

Aunties are Awesome! (June 30-July 2)

Saturday night, we put
Emily's hair in pin
curls.  It still curls pretty
well!

Emily in her new church
clothes.  She's getting so
grown up!

Auntie Rachel was here for a visit at the same time as Grandma and Grandpa, so the kids didn't get to see as much of her as we do on some visits.  But she stayed for a few days after Jay's parents, so we crammed in as much Auntie fun as we could in the few days we had.

Monday we met Momo, Popo, Rebecca, and Rachel at the Katy Mills Mall for a walk and a little shopping.  We had a pretty good trip, except that Jonathan thought that everyone spent way too much time looking at stuff.  Once we'd done a round at the mall, we headed over to Momo and Popo's house for lunch and playtime.  Everyone was happy to have TWO aunts to play with.  Emily found a puzzle to work on, so she and I, and eventually Rachel, spent most of the afternoon putting the puzzle together upstairs.  We had an awesome pasta dinner.  Then we had a fun Family Home Evening lesson about reverence with Rebecca.  She had made a really fun slideshow for her primary class with examples of how to be reverent and not to be quite so reverent.  We all enjoyed the fun pictures.  Dessert was an amazing Boston cream cake.  All of us wanted to eat the whole thing!  Emily and I snuck back upstairs to work on the puzzle some more until it was time to go.

Does Rachel have a
future as an architect?

Tuesday Emily and Jay went to Splashway Water Park with some friends, leaving the three and me at home.  Jonathan hates water slides, I'm not big on water parks, and the two littles are really too young to enjoy it, so we had decided that Emily and Jay could just have a father daughter day.  They had a great time.  (Emily wrote all about it for the family blog.)

Rachel and her fan club

Since Emily was gone, the other kids pretty much had a free day while I got some stuff done around the house.  Jonathan spent most of the day playing with Legos.  He loves to create different creatures and buildings.  Abby and Ben played with him some of the time and also played with the play kitchen and their other toys.  They all got along pretty well and we had a pretty good day.  I worked on some job applications, cleaned out my desk, balanced the checkbook, and played with the kids.  The only bump in our day was bedtime; Abby was sure that she needed to stay up until Emily got home.  Eventually she settled down, though.  Jay and Emily got home about 9:30.

The puzzle we did this week.  550 pieces.  We were missing
one, which isn't bad considering I think this puzzle is
about 20 years old!

Wednesday was Rachel's last day in Texas, so the kids and I wandered up to spend the morning at Momo and Popo's house again.  Emily and I finished the puzzle we had started on Monday.  The kids played with the aunties.  After lunch, it was time for Rachel to go to the airport.  We said our good byes and headed for home.

We had a quiet afternoon before gymnastics in the evening.  Everyone was sad that all our company is gone for the summer.  But we're looking forward to other projects!

Jonathan's Baptism

July 28 was Jonathan's Baptism day.  We'd all been looking forward to it and planning for a long time.

Jay and Jonathan before the baptism.

And Jonathan being Jonathan!

We had a lovely service, and were so happy to have so many friends and family there.

My handsome men!

I love our family!

These two are best buddies.

Jonathan with Momo and Popo.

Our family with Momo and Popo and Aunties Rebecca
and Rachel.

Jonathan's Grandma got him a special towel
for his baptism.

 It's so hard to believe my Jonathan is 8!  He's such a great kid and so fun to have in our family.

Fun with Grandparents

Jay's parents came to visit this week, so the whole week was full of fun with the grandparents.  From the time they arrived on Monday, it was a busy week full of showing Grandma and Grandpa all the fun and different things to do in Texas.

Tuesday morning, Jay, the kids, and his parents got up and drove to Galveston for a day of beach fun and exploring.  (Since we only have 7 seats in the van, I stayed home for the day.)  They took the ferry to Port Bolivar, had a picnic, explored Galveston, and spent some time on the beach.  Unfortunately, the beach wasn't as much fun as usual due to the record breaking amount of seaweed that's been coming in this year. Jonathan normally loves swimming in the gulf, but was a little creeped out by the seaweed grabbing his legs. They still had a great day, and came home late and exhausted.  

Seaweed on the beach in Galveston.

View out the driver side of the
cell phone lot.  Notice that no one
else wanted to stop there either!

 Meanwhile, I rode with Rebecca to the airport to pick up Rachel.  Rachel wasn't expecting me, so it was fun to go surprise her.  Rebecca and I had quite the adventure driving to the slightly scary Hobby airport, especially when we found the "cell phone lot", which looked like somebody's afterthought.  We very carefully locked the doors, and were just as glad when it was time to get Rachel and come home!

View out the passenger side of the
cell phone lot.  We especially liked
the port-a-pots and the random
outbuilding.

Wednesday was my semi-annual shopping and fun day with my mother and sisters.  When Rachel comes to visit, we go to the mall for conversation, shopping, and a ridiculous lunch.  We had a usual fantastic day, including Cheesecake Factory (yum!) for lunch.  

Jonathan hadn't been acting like himself since his birthday--tired, cold, no appetite, and really quiet.  Over the weekend he started having a cough.  We'd thought it was better on Monday, but he'd been worse again on Tuesday at the beach, so Jay took him to the pediatrician Wednesday.  Turned out he had the beginnings of a sinus infection, so they came home with a prescription for an antibiotic and a cough suppressant.  They all had a pretty quiet day at home with Grandma and Grandpa, then Jay took his parents and the kids to gymnastics that night.  Jon ended up sitting out most of his class, but it was fun for the grandparents to see Westwood and watch Emily do her thing.

Thursday Jay took Emily and his parents to go skeet shooting.  Emily is apparently a great puller!  They also did some driving around Katy to see the sites and look at the area.  It's always fun to show new eyes all our huge schools and the growth in the area.  The three kids and I stayed home and got some chores done.  Jonathan took his second dose of antibiotic and rested most of the day.

Emily and Grandma are ready
for the game.

Jonathan is feeling better
and enjoying some baseball.

 Thursday night we had tickets to the Skeeters baseball game.  Jonathan was enough better that we decided he could go, and he noticeably perked up as the evening went on.  We all had a great time at the game; we've decided we like the Skeeters' games much better than Major League.

Play ball!

Apparently when you finish
your ice cream, you put the
cone on your nose...

It was a perfect evening--
not too hot and not too cold.

Emily, Jay, and Popo.
I'm not sure if the kids enjoyed
the baseball or the snacks
more! 

I think Jonathan is
feeling better.

Friday we had planned to go to the science museum, but we were all fairly worn out from the week, and especially from the late game.  So we mostly bummed around the house all day and got ready for our busy day on Saturday.  Jonathan was definitely better--I knew he was feeling better when he started getting snippy with his brother and sister.  His appetite also seemed to be recovering.  Jay took the girls and his parents for some more sightseeing in the afternoon.  We finished the day with pizza and a four layer, strawberries and whipped cream cake.  All in all, a lovely, relaxing day.

Jonathan, Renae, Abby, Ben, Emily, and Jimmy.
The kids had a great week with their grandparents!

Another busy week!

Summer is definitely keeping us busy!

Abby woke up early  Tuesday
morning and spent her time
making magnet statues.

Tuesday we started our morning with a free movie again.  This time it was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.  Emily and Jonathan really liked it, and Benjamin thought parts were really funny.  He was even willing to sit in his own chair this time!  Abby, however, thought it was a little too scary and made us promise to "Never Ever Ever buy that movie" when we got home.

Ben asleep in his big boy bed.  So cute!

In the afternoon, Jay took the kids to the pool.  I had a test on Wednesday, so I stayed home to study.  They all came home waterlogged and happy.  It's so great living in a place where they can swim so often!  Again, the secret to easy bedtime seems to be exhaustion-- we got no arguments from anyone!

Wednesday, my test was in the afternoon.  We had a quiet morning at home, then I took the kids to Momo's house for the afternoon so I could drive into Houston.  They played and ate and did crafts.  I sat in a room and stared at a computer screen for a couple hours.  I think they got the better deal!  I got back in time to eat some pizza and take Emily and Jon to gymnastics while Jay came to get the little ones and take them home.

Thursday was Jonathan's 8th birthday!  We made chocolate chip pancakes (his favorite), and had a day mostly of relaxing and playing instead of working.  For lunch, we tried turkey and cheese scones, which were a fairly dramatic failure.  Thursday was also cake baking day for Jonathan's party Friday night.

Friday we spent the day getting ready for a birthday party.  Lots of house cleaning and cooking and decorating.  We took time in the afternoon for a fun new snack.  Momo and Popo and Rebecca came in the evening for calzones and a giant chocolate cake.  Great food and a fun party!

Trying out the first car of the
train.  

Saturday was more cleaning and getting ready for Grandma and Grandpa to come.  Jonathan spent a good part of the day playing with his new birthday toys, especially the Lego train that he got from Momo and Popo.  Everyone enjoyed that!

Benjamin checking out the Lego
train.

So it was another busy, not quite what we planned on, sort of a week, but we had a great time!  Looking forward to fun with grandparents for next week!

Abigail thinks the train is pretty
cool.