before the rain came...

We've had a surprising amount of rain and cloudy weather for our area this past week. Its been blustery and chilly out and both of the kids have slight colds. Seems strange to be keeping them inside with colds when its nearly June. ...But before the rains came we had some very warm weather!!! Since I didn't have the pool out yet we filled a couple big bowls of mine with water and since we conveniently still had a sled out hanging around from winter we filled that as well. I gave em a few cups and spoons and the had a blast!

Our redneck side showing a little. :D

Doing her best to make the most of her small swimming pool. :D

So while the kids were busy with the water... i was busy with the paintbrush! Finished painting all the trim for the playhouse and Mr. Wise Guy worked on getting the roof finished.

I also got the ceiling primed...well, at least half way primed.

A little someone got into my primer bucket during lunchbreak and apparently stepped in his mess. (Note the heel prints going in circles) He left his tracks around the lawn as well.

This shows our progress to date.

Oh yeah, and I finished another dress that weekend also.

I have finished a few other sewing projects now too but haven't taken any pics of em. I still have several things I'd like to finish in the near future though... while i'm on a roll in the sewing department. :)

I filled a little wading pool for them on the second hot day. This is what they were actually doing while Mr. Wise Guy and I were working on the playhouse together. The pics are from the day before when I was painting all the trim. Enjoy!

This and That

The kids getting their morning exercise before eating their breakfast of GREEN EGGS N HAM, which has become a favorite around here!

( Oops! see video at bottom of post)

When the kids have been trapped in the house for too long with only their little mousies for playmates...

things like this happen!!

I had been in the kitchen not 5 min. before and all was well and happy. I was sitting on the couch listening to their happy squeals and Mr. Wise Guy asked if I shouldn't check on them, but I didn't feel like moving from my cozy spot on the couch and they sounded like they were just playing silly stuff together. Apparently the game was "Flip the spoonful of brown sugar and see how far it will fly". Thankfully my brown sugar bin wasn't completely full...

Because when they finished it was completely empty!!!

Now you know why this mommy is so thankful for the warm sunny weather sneaking in on us. I can send the kids out to play and actually get something done.

The garden patch is the spot of choice to dig around in and get DIRTY!

Maybe have a little dirt snack,

And then take turns riding the trike ...

and talking to grandma in the sunshine.

Miss Kate has been busy as ever in the kitchen helping mommy make The Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls! They are SOOO yummy!

And helping Mommy and A. Sus make blackberry jelly with all our frozen blackberries. We now have our pantry well stocked with this tasty treat thanks to a lot of help from A. Sus.

It appears someone has been eating it as well as stirring! ;D

And this little beaver has been busy gettin his head all banged up like boys like to do. I'm thinking he may be needing these teeth before too long if he doesn't start treating his own better than he has been.

He chipped his first front tooth before it was hardly through the gums by falling on his face while still only crawling, and has chopped the little stretch of skin between his gums and upper lip too many times to count since he was about 6 month. But this past month he has fallen and cut his gumline up a bit 3 times and has knocked both front teeth slightly loose. One is a little darker but I'm hoping it will revive and tighten up again. The first one was done on a cement sidewalk, the second time he fell out of the crib and 2 days later mangled it up worse by falling on his big metal tonka truck while pushing it about the yard. He also got a great big knock on his noggin that same morning. It appears we're just getting started with the boy bang-ups! I'm getting kinda used to his mouth dripping blood all over the place and trying to rinse it with cold water to stop the bleeding while he's screaming and squirming, and cleaning all the blood spatters off the sink afterwards, but he caught me off gaurd the other morning when, after pulling his shirt over his head in a hurry had set the cut on his gums to bleeding again I rushed him to the sink and set him on the counter. I flipped the faucet on and sat there a moment waiting for it to get as cold as possible. Kate stood looking on, as close as possible since the blood filling his mouth always seems to facinate her, and suddenly and without warning he SNEEZED!! Kate got the worst of it but I got my fair share! She looked down at her shirt in dismay and then survey the damage done to mine as well. Then she proclaimed my exact thoughts ... "YUCK!" and a swipe of her hand over her face to remove the blood spatters. Tay-O thought it was funny. :) When He's asked to show his OWIE he responds with a proud grin. You can't tell how puffy his lip is while he's grinning so big. The only sign is that you can see his inner lip hanging below his outer lip. I didn't dare take a pic while it was nastily fresh and messy because if I pulled his lip up it would start bleeding again. So here is part of his semi healed owie peeking out from a puffy lip that is hiding the rest of the chopped up mess. (I know you all are dying to see it!) ;D

On that sweet note happy day to ya'all!

Here is the video meant for the top...I don't know how to move it.

They spend many a morning and afternoon on rainy days doing this. What cracks me up is the typical Mr. Tay-O meandering around the loop eating his granola bar while Miss Kate is galloping around in high energy accompanied with music. She pushes the button on the happy bear repeatedly until the song she wants is playing, hence the reason she takes a long time to reappear sometimes...she is resetting her music.

Backyard and Bathroom changes

I had a hard time digging up any pics of this area that actually show what it really looked like before today. Here are the only 2 I could find for BEFORE.

We had decided on this area to put in a garden as it is the most out of the way spot in the yard to do so without messing up the very symetrical landscape and gets the best sun. So today I finally got a chance to have at it (after spending the morning at the doctors for another ear infection for the Little Man) and knowing that it was probably my last chance to do so I REALLY went at it! After spending pretty much from 1:30ish to 9:30ish going full steam with only 2 breaks of 15-20 min. I actually got somewhere!!! The kids were terrific for me, and Kate actually had some fresh dirt to play in for the first time in her life. :D She loved using my little hand shovel and told me several times, "I gettin duhty. Its otay. It fun to be duhty sometimes." ( she always nods her head in affirmative while telling me these bits of observations.) She fluctuated between taking care of Elliott and playing in the dirt with me, or fetching things for me.

I guess I had about 5 yrs worth of gardening energy stored up and I pretty much used it all up in one afternoon/evening. :D I feel like a Mr. Bendy now. My limbs sort of stay in the same stiff positions until I work at rearranging them again...and then it seems I can almost hear my joints creaking and popping. So I dug up and replanted several plants that were originally there, prepped an area of lawn just outside the gate to put down new "sod", dug up slabs of lawn from the area I was trying to turn into garden and relaid them in their new home, removed all the excess lawn, and then used a hand cultivator to till up my new garden plot.

I forgot how heavy a roll of lawn with 6 in of dirt attached to it is. I could barely grunt them suckers into the utility wagon. But then again, thats not sayin' much... I'm pretty out of shape. :D

And I must admit that while I was "tilling" up the little 5ft -8ft plot of earth by hand the words off one of my fitness dvds kept running through my head..."if you feel like your gonna die...you can catch your breath for 5 seconds, but no longer..." :) I also came to a much clearer understanding of why horses were our ancestors most beloved animals. I feel like I just had a near death experience and gained an inch per Bicep tilling up a little garden plot. But then, I'm sure my ancestors would consider me a sissy for the way I feel after what they would have considered an easy days work. :D

So now that I'm done whining... here's the finished work. Yea!!!

Oh, and this is my hand cultivator, for any of you who were wondering what that might be. :)

You simply plunge it into the earth and give it twist and repeat, repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat....

(Note: I had to actually measure the plot to figure how much stuff I needed to go around the edges and its actually 5 1/2ft by 14+ft. Just shows how poorly I am at guesstimating. :D )

Well that was the backyard change and here's the bathroom change.

See, I have this basket that is full of about an inch and a half of pebbles with candles nestled into them and a few larger rocks on top of that that sits atop the toilet in our bthrm. The weight of the rocks keeps it from ever sliding around and falling off... most of the time.

Kate recently discovered this facinating bit of entertainment and likes to rearrange it to her liking every now and then.

Several times I have come in to find the candles all in a row on the countertop with a large smooth rock on the center of each candle...last time she had added one small pebble to each as well for some variety...

And then she removed all the large rocks and attempted to bring the basket of pebbles down to play with them. Unfortunately, they are fairly heavy as I mentioned, and as I was dressing Elliott for bed I heard a roaring avalanche of cascading pebbles and a gasp. 2 seconds later Kate came scurrying out of the bathroom shaking a little and looking slightly terrified. I don't know why she was so scared other than the fact that she knew she shouldn't have been playing with them and they made such a horrificly loud noise. Then she stood there peering at the disastrous scene before her with a terribly distressed look on her face.

I thought the real-pebble floor added a nice touch to my bathroom decor, except they had a painfully low comfort level when being walked on.

At least she helped me pick them all up...

actually she thoroughly enjoyed that part. :)

And then she did this as many times as I would allow.

(kneeling on the toilet seat by candle light singing "Happy Birthday to you" before blowing then all out. :) Weird. :)

Well, I'm off to a hot shower and my bed, which has been screaming my name for the last couple of hours. :D

Miss-chievious Kate II

We're almost 1/2 way into the "terrible twos" and life has been very interesting! :D

Miss Kate seems to be getting a bit more attitude with each passing month, and a bit more bossy along with her growing vocabulary. She has learned that Elliott goes crazy over food so whenever she gets a snack she goes and sits as close to him as possible, and as he longingly watches her every bite she calmly continues eating with great enthusiasm. If he reaches a hand out she sweetly tells him "No, Eh-ee-ut, don touch. You cant hav dat.".

I had to take the below photo after telling the girls to keep their juice in the kitchen. "NO JUICE ON THE CARPET, GIRLS" I told them firmly...so what do they do? Stand with toes on the the line. (In all fairness to cousin Adelynn I should mention that she was only copying what Kate was doing)

Miss Kate loves to draw and cut things...

and not only on paper... We have proof of that fact on furniture and clothes and...

HAIR!!!

I must confess I nearly had a heart attack when I saw this in the sink!! :D

She, appropriately, used the hair cutting scissors and tried to wash all the hair down the sink when she saw me headed her direction, so it doesn't look quite as dramatic as when I first caught sight of it. It looks like less when its all wet and matted than when it was lying in neat clumps all over the sink.

Thankfully she did a pretty decent job of cutting large clumps out of the under layer of hair and leaving a little to work with on the top.

Notice the short chunk sticking out above her left ear. She is missing several chunks from that area, chopped off at different lengths, but it blends in pretty well.

The part that shows the most is the bangs...

chopped off right near the roots, but again there is a few shreds left to cover it up,

Yes, she's embarrassed about it.

Are we done yet, mommy?

See, it covers pretty well.

Miss Kate also likes to use lotions and chapsticks or anything that appears to be that sort of thing.

Doesn't this look like some fun cream!?

The kids were quietly entertaining themselves in the bedroom at 6:30 this morning while I was getting stuff done in the kitchen and checking on them occasionally.

I found this guilty looking person on one of my "checks". :)

I have no idea why she felt the need to put the first aid cream on her eyes and face...I don't use any eye or face creams.

She also put it all over Elliott's face in a much thinner layer. If you look closely you can see it in his eyebrows. :)

(sorry about the poor lighting)

I guess I should tell a few good things about our Miss-chievious Kate after all that, because there is lots of good things about her. :)

I love to hear her break out singing one of the many sunday school songs she knows while she's busy helping me unload the dishwasher, sweep the floor, do the laundry, bake, cook, or while riding in the car or keeping Elliott happy.

My favorites are: "I hav da doy, doy, doy, doy, down in my heart, WHERE?"

translation: I have the joy, joy, joy, joy...

or

He will gabber, he will gabber, da gems fo hih kingum, ah da save one, ah da bite one, hih love an hih own.

translation: He will gather, the gems for his kingdom, all the saved ones, all the bright ones, his loved and his own.

Other songs she sings are:

Happy is the boy

O cling to the bible my boy,

O, happy day...

A little ship was on the sea...

The B-I-B-L-E, yes thats the book for me

This little light of mine

Isn't HE wonderful

Wide, wide, as the ocean

Stop, and let me tell you...

Jesus loves me

Jesus loves the little children

Trust and obey

The wise man built his house upon the rock...

I am so glad that Jesus loves me...

Behold, behold, I stand at the door and knock, knock, knock...

Around the throne of God in heaven will many children sing...

The funny thing is that she sings "happy birthday to you" right along with all the other songs. I'm just waiting for the day when she's old enough to choose a song to sing and gives out "happy birthday" in sunday school. :)

As for this little man, he has been very sick for the last couple of weeks. When I took him in on Tue. of last week they said Bronchitis and an Ear Infection. Yuck! So he is on steroids and an antibiotic just like his sister was around this time last year.

Thankfully, this week he has been back to his happy healthy 23 lb chunky hunk of a self for the most part. :D

Its so good to have our Little Man back! :)

Bye now. :)