Birthday Festivities!

My youngest just turned six years old. It's hard to believe it's been that long since I drove myself to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning fully convinced I wasn't having contractions. Greta has been a little blessing in our lives ever since. She's such a happy, caring and kind child. Happy Birthday my not-so-little one!

Greta and my father have the privilege of being born on the same day so we got to celebrate both of their birthdays this weekend. Aunt Betsy and Uncle Blake came down and Aunt Jessica was there with Alex, Abby and Evie. It was a great time! Happy Birthday Dad!

The hat has been with us the whole time. Although she hasn't always loved the hat.

Greta wanted to go to Build-A-Bear in the mall and make a stuffed animal so we did that this week. She picked out a cute stuffed yorkie dog. She was ecstatic.

Aquariums, Siding and Minecraft

School has been going for a month now and I'd like to say I've fallen into a nice routine but alas I haven't. I've been sculpting a lot and selling a lot but I forgot how long it takes to package up sculptures and ship them out. Some days I spend the whole day doing that. And then there are days like today where I don't work at all. Today I did something I've never done before. Today I boiled driftwood in a big pot on the stove.

You might be asking yourself, why would anyone boil driftwood? Well apparently if you are wanting to put a big lovely chuck of driftwood in an aquarium you should boil it first to kill anything living in it and to release the tannin in the wood. This is all great if you happen to have a ginormous pot big enough to put the whole chunk of wood in. I do not. So I had to periodically rotate the wood so all chunks were boiled. Then it went into a Rubbermaid container with water to leech out the rest of the tannin. I will change out the water daily until the water stays clear instead of tea colored (because nobody wants tea colored water in their aquarium).

See look! You learned something new today, as did I. This is all being done so eventually I can place the wood in a 35 gallon hex tank I just bought off of craigslist. It's been cycling for a week now and I'm thinking it might be time for a couple of fish to help the cycling. My parents were kind enough to bring me driftwood and rocks from Colorado, thanks guys! Since the driftwood will take weeks to be ready I put some of the rocks they brought home in the tank. I can hardly wait to fill it with schooling fish.

Sean has been busy working on the siding in all of his spare time. It's coming along. I think he's more than ready to be done with it.

The kids are enjoying school. Greta's anxiety seems to have gone away for the time being. She was having a pretty rough time when kindergarten started but we've been working on it and she's coming out of her shell. I'm super proud of her. Each day they come home from school, do their homework and then play Minecraft together. They build some pretty fascinating stuff. That's about all that is going on around here.

Home Repairs

Our house is slowly falling into a state of disrepair. I assume everyone's house slowly falls into disrepair just like ours, I just don't realize it. It also doesn't help to move into a (then) twenty year old house. At twenty years old most things are in need of replacement. For our house it was siding. We moved in knowing we'd be replacing siding.....we just didn't know ten years later we'd still be doing it. Sean has been doing one side of the house about every four years. We started with the east side. You can't forget that side. It was not pleasant for him. Then we did the south side before putting in the new deck. Now it's the front of the house's turn.

As the years go by the motivation wavers. Could be we're getting older, could be we're lazy homeowners I don't know but neither of us want to do this project. And when I say "us" I mean Sean. I do what I can but this is his project. I paint the siding and hold what I can but he's doing the brunt of the work. Poor guy.

We had to special order the twenty four 4X9 foot sections of siding and they were delivered last week. Now we have the pleasant task of laying them all over the yard and painting the fronts and backs.

About a year ago our lovely dog Sophie was left outside in the fenced in yard while the neighbor was shooting. She goes nuts when this happens. She does everything in her power to get into the house, away from the gunfire. In this instance she jumped up on the bay windows and scraped and clawed until she broke the window. We came home to this and weren't too thrilled to say the least. It didn't break both panes, just the exterior pane. And so it's sat like this for a year. I haven't been too interested in taking the window out and driving around town finding someone to fix it. But with winter coming I felt it was time....plus it's an eye sore. Bugs were starting to go in between the panes and make nests and it looked bad. So Sean took the window out and replaced it with a piece of pink foam insulation.

The kids though this was highly entertaining and pulled up a chair to watch.

I drove to the local Andersen window store with my four and a half foot broken window in the back of my SUV. They told me they don't do that and gave me a phone number to call. I called when I got home and I must admit it was a wonderful experience. They asked if we had an account with them to which I replied no, so they looked up our address and sure enough the former owners were listed. They were able to tell us the windows were installed in 1996 and all I had to do was read off the engraved number in the corner of the window for them to order me a new one. It was manufactured and shipped UPS to our front door. Now that's some customer service!

The installed window is SO clean! Made me realize how dirty the others were.

One Goat

One goat.....

Two goats.....

Three goats.......I might need more.

Odd

So I'm doing dishes the other evening and look out the window to see some strange animal toddling through the dog pen. I call the kids over to the window and we watch as this strange creature sniffs around the ground and squeezes his odd little body under the fence. He trots off into the back yard at a pretty good clip. I grab the camera to document the very first living armadillo I've seen.  Crazy stuff!

Late August Activities

School has been in session for three days now. Greta is adjusting to full day kindergarten really well. She seems eager to go in the mornings and likes her teacher a whole lot. I feel like I was more anxious about her starting school than she was. I do miss my little mini me around all day. She and I had fun. So yesterday we went into town for a girls day out. We went shopping and stopped by Panera for a treat. She picked out a carrot cake cupcake.

We cut into it and to her surprise found shredded carrots. She picked some up and asked me why there were shredded carrots in it. I had to explain that carrot cake is made from carrots. She thought it was called carrot cake because of the tiny sugar carrot on the top. It made me laugh. She got home and told her dad it would have been good except for the shredded carrots, raisins and walnuts in it. Ha! So needless to say I got to eat a really tasty cupcake minus the frosting (she liked that).

Afterwards we went to Petco to look at the animals. I cleaned out Wesley's 5 gallon aquarium in his room and I brought in a water sample to see if it was ready for fish. The water looked great so we picked out a Betta. They had a whole wall of Betta fish in tiny little containers but only one yellow one. Greta's favorite color is yellow and she was so excited to find one in her favorite color.  She's a little jealous it's up in his tank but she is getting an aquarium for her birthday so perhaps "Sunny" the Betta will be transferred down to her tank at that time.

She got to carry it the whole way home and did a great job not letting him get too jarred. Isn't he just beautiful? I've never seen a yellow Betta before.

Wesley is enjoying his new found love of skating. We picked up a pair of inline skates at a garage sale a few weeks ago and he's been skating around the house nonstop ever since. Funny thing, there were two exact pairs of inline skates at that garage sale and so he picked up just one pair....turns out he picked up two right hand skates instead of a right and a left skate. It rubs his leg and has created a sore spot but he just loves them too much to care. So he skates through the pain. I'll have to order him a pair of new skates sometime. 

Yesterday while I was out with Greta he decided he wanted to climb a tree, so he climbed a tree....like 20 feet in the air. Sean was there and watched him do this. He was so excited to tell me when I got home. So later in the day he went climbing that tree again. It's good he gets time with just his dad because I'm not sure how I feel about him way up high in a tree. I've got to let go one of these days I suppose. 

First Day

Today is a big day. Probably the biggest day in the last eight years. Today is the day that both of my children start school. It's crazy to think that I have a third grader and a kindergartener.

It's a big day for them and a big day for me. I've officially graduated as a stay-at-home mom. No more tiny ones at home. Sniff sniff.

That's so strange to write. I've stayed at home raising two small people for the last eight years and now the house is quiet and it's very strange. Not strange in a bad way, just different. I will be going back to sculpting full time like I was doing before kids came along. I'm looking forward to it.

I was slightly worried about how Greta would do with her anxiety and starting school but she did awesome! She was excited to see her friend from preschool again (who is thankfully in her same class). I think she'll do great.

Wesley is happy to see his friends again. Happy first day of school kiddos!

 

 

We are replacing the siding in their normal picture spot.

Children's Museum

My friend Jessica and I took the kids to the local children's museum that's downtown. It's a rather nice place with many exhibits, including some that travel around so there's always something new to see. It has been a few years since we were there last and it turns out the kids are at the perfect age for that museum now. They just soaked up those exhibits. It was a fun day!

Flight exhibit was a hit with the kids!

We built an atom, a very unstable one.

Fun in the tornado tube, enjoying 79 mph winds.

Giddy up!

Group picture of the gang.

A wonderful miniature exhibit.

Aunt Jessica needed a time out.

A whole room devoted to block building!

Playing with the mobile veterinary exhibit.

Finding water turtles.

Buried

I always thought the novelty of the sandbox would wear off on these kids but at eight years old and nearly six years old it's still going strong! I put six new bags of sand in it the other day and they spent two straight hours out there digging and building castles. The sandbox is built on a decent sized concrete slab that was here when we moved in. I always thought when the kids got tired of digging in sand we'd take it down and put a hot tub there....but at this rate we won't be getting a hot tub any time soon. Which is fine. Some day though.  For now I enjoy going out there and seeing one kid burying the other in sand. What fun they had!

Cosmosphere Space Museum

Last week the kids and I took a trip with my parents to the Cosmosphere Space Museum. It's a beautiful museum filled with all sorts of space artifacts, a big display about the race to the moon and examples of actual flown spacecrafts among other things. The kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves as did I. We enjoyed seeing the planetarium and finding all the constellations in the night sky. It was a lovely day!

Posing in front of the lunar module replica.

The planetarium was a hit!

Clowning around.

Wesley, the rock collector, was intrigued by the moon rock on display.

The kids and my Dad rode this simulator, Mom and I bowed out because of motion sickness.

Out and About

The summer is quickly winding down, school starts in two and a half weeks. That's crazy! I suppose time flies when you're having fun. I always plan to do so many things with the kids during the summer and in the end I'm happy if I get half of them done. They've been having fun though. We've had to instill limits on the electronic devices because if it was up to them they'd play computer games and Minecraft on the playstaton3 all day long. It's funny because the one hour time limit doesn't start until I wake up so they've learned if they whisper and tippy toe through the house they can play Minecraft all morning as long as I stay asleep. It's a win win for everyone!

We decided to get out of the house today and go have a little fun. They love going out to lunch so I took them to my favorite place, Jason's Deli. Any place that offers free ice cream after your meal is a winner in our book. They always love going to the giant fountain and playing around the lake. It's a fun place to spend an hour (until it's so hot you must go find air conditioning).

Then we decided it was time for Greta to get a haircut before Kindergarten starts. This will be only her second real haircut from a stylist. I've always just cut the dry ends off and tried to tame the wild curls myself, but this time we called in a professional. She did great and they took about an inch off and gave her layers. I might be able to get a comb through it now! Woo hoo!

We can't have an outing without a family selfie in the car.  Those are my little goofballs!