Summer

For the first couple months of this new bunk bed phase, Benji fell asleep like this. He preferred the floor for some reason! It's amazing what can change in a few months, though. We put the kids in the bunk beds at the beginning of summer; right after school got out. They were so excited to sleep in the same room that it took FOREVER for them to fall asleep at night! For the first few nights I gave up and separated them. And then I just buckled down and figured they had to get used to it some time, so I might as well start now. So for the next 8 weeks it took about 2 hours for them to go to bed. We'd put them in bed, and they got out and played and giggled. We'd threaten, yell, put in time out, etc. Every night. It was not fun. By the time the kids fell asleep, Thad and I were angry and in bad moods. But they have finally gotten to the point where they just go to sleep when we tuck them in. The newness has worn off. And Benji sleeps in his bed now, too. Now if we could just get him to stay in his bed all night! Moving him into the bunk bed was also the start of another phase ... waking up several times a night crying! uggghhh. Someday things will settle down and we will get a full nights rest.

This summer I learned how to can green beans and peaches! I got to can with my parents in their kitchen and it was fun! I like to learn new things, especially when they relate to provident living and being more self-reliable.

Science experiments and homemade paints with the Perry's. For this one we: colored vinegar with food coloring, then used a syringe to squeeze drops onto a mound of baking powder. Mini volcanos! So cool

Homemade paint from salt, flour, and a couple other ingredients (both Pinterest finds, of course)

Benjamin was trying on his new church shirts in his bedroom and he looked so GQ standing with his hand in his pocket. So I told him to stay still so I could take his picture. But he wanted me to take the picture in the kitchen instead, and this pose was all him. Funny kid.

And then there's this girl ... ;0

We've had some weird weather this summer, but the weirdest was a random hail storm that turned into a thunderstorm where this clap of thunder literally lasted for about a half an hour. It was like one continuous roar of thunder; it was AWESOME!! All of our neighbors were standing on their porches watching the storm, and kids were running around in the hail and rain.

Our yard looked AWESOME by the end of the summer! In large part to all of the great rainstorms we got during the last few weeks of summer. Ignore that yellow spot -- I left the kiddie pool in one spot for two days in a row and the grass died temporarily, oops.

It's hard to believe that just three summers ago, our yard looked like this!

Salt painting with the Perry's. Oh how I've loved our little craft get-togethers with Reyna and her kids!  For this project you draw pictures with Elmer's Glue, sprinkle salt over the glue, then drop food coloring over the salt and watch the color spread over the salt. It's cool, and the kids loved it

Thad's sister and her family came down at the beginning of Sept. to buy a boat that they found here in Idaho Falls. So we got to spend a weekend with them and go boating at Black something. I forget the name. Blacktail? Anyway, we had a fun weekend with the Clares!

Cousin Jack and Benji

This kid was such a friend to Ana while he was here! He's way older, and a boy, but he just played with her and entertained her the whole time! And made her cool things out of household products, like the purse you see below. Thanks, Josh!

I tried to hit the zoo as much as I could before school started. We even splurged once and got Reed's Dairy ice cream cones from the Kookaburra shack. I got peach cobbler, and holy hannah! It was amazing!

Ana won a free Fancy Nancy chapter book as one of her summer reading prizes. She was so stoked, she "read" it the whole way home. It's a first grade reading level, so she told everyone it was her "first grade book"

Eastern Idaho State Fair

OK here's my fair rant. I've never been a huge fair person. The fair wasn't really big in my family growing up. Maybe that's because we lived in Marysville, OH -- a tiny little town northwest of Columbus -- and it was just a big white trash gathering. And all you do is spend money. You have to pay to get in, but then you have to pay to ride any rides, and pay to buy any food, so what's fun about that?? So when our state fair opened this year, Thad and I thought, we'll just take the kids and let them each ride a ride. It was $12 to get into the fair, like $5 a ride, per person .... so with Ana riding two rides and Benji riding one, we spent $32. And that wasn't even counting food. How do people afford to take their families to the fair, and buy ride tokens for all of their kids?

This is Jane. She is happy all of the time. Just content sitting by herself, keeping busy. That's all.

We had pretty good success with our garden this year (with a few exceptions)! Carrots, beans, sugar-snap peas, onions, lettuce, and tomatoes. The tomatoes did great ... but they didn't start coming until the end of August. By then we only had a month for them to start ripening. We planted the lettuce in mid June, but it didn't shoot up into about the end of August either! Weird. And then after we cut a head off to eat, it never grew back. So we didn't get to eat much lettuce. And then the green peppers ... well, they didn't really grow at all. Only the starts grew; the seeds didn't come up. And out of two starts, we ended up with one small green pepper, that turned red then black and never really ripened. But everything else did great.

This year I learned that our garden needs fertilizer! Haha I didn't realize that before. I put it on in the middle of the summer and that made a world of difference! We also learned not to fence each pea row with chicken wire. We ended up fencing in the peas, and then we couldn't get into the middle to pick them! It was a big, tangly mess. We also learned that we can plant lettuce in March because it doesn't mind the cold. I think I will try that next year for sure.