A Little Something at the Country Fair

The tooth fairy visited us again for the third time this month, third week in a row. First Amelia, bottom left tooth, second Everett bottom front left, then third Phillip, losing his top right tooth. He rigged up a length of floss to his bedroom door handle, prepped a cup of salt water, and a folded towel. The thought of tying his tooth to the door and slamming it was more than he could handle. Took him two days to give up on the door idea. Instead I convinced him to let me tie floss around the tooth with a slip knot, he could yank the strings out sideways when he was ready. After 4 failed attempts, he pulled down instead of to the side, the errant tooth popped free. He was so surprised it came out with no pain. He was quite impressed over his bloody front teeth. The salt water and towel took care of the rest. What a silly guy. He earned a dollar from the ole tooth fairy for his efforts.

Monday was a flurry of cleaning our house so someone could look at it. Nothing came of the showing...well, except for a very clean house. I was up until past midnight mopping floors, scrubbing the kitchen, and clearing out the normal clutter a family our size makes. I am in love with the 6 collapsible laundry baskets I got last year. They are so useful to fill up, empty, and fold flat when not us use. All the clutter in the baskets made me rethink my sorting strategy, looks like another purge is on the way. I walked into the storage room during my cleaning blitz, a large puddle of water soaked the concrete. Appears my ability to keep up with the salt for the softener, weeding, taking out garbage and doing Justin's chores as well has me quite overwhelmed. I called the HVAC company, a guy was over in less than 10 minutes. He quickly changed the air filter, a dirty gray mess of dust. The issue was the filter was not allowing the drip pan to drain fast enough. I'm glad it was not something worse. Felt terribly stupid the problem was something I should've caught and remedied, instead spent more money on a service call. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

With the house immaculate I left Sidney with the kids early Tuesday morning. I would not even let them eat breakfast. They spent a good hour in the yard or pounding on the front door begging to come in as I finished the last walk through. We drove to Cheyenne for the day. The kids got breakfast on the go while I nursed my gross protein bar. Being chubby is not fun, blech. We started our fun day off at a new park we noticed a couple months ago. It proved to be a very fun park. My friend Candice met up with us before she left town to drive back to Sidney. I am grateful she made the effort to stop and say goodbye. The kids enjoyed the park until the sun burned off the cloud cover, it got warm rather quickly. We ate lunch at Chik-fil-a, also playing the play area. The main attraction of our day was swimming at the updated rec center. As soon as we walked in a heady wall of moist chlorinated air knocked us over. My eyes started to burn with minutes. Josie fell asleep and napped in her carseat, a rare, very rare, occurrence, especially with all the noise around her.  We were almost denied entrance because I had too many "non swimmers" with me, guess the limit is two per adult. Amelia and Phillip quite enjoyed the high diving board and the rock climbing wall. During break we headed outside where a fun splash garden graced the back lawn. We swam until 4 pm then headed to Once Upon a Child to see what specials they had. We made it home before dark, well after the house showing. The clean house lasted a couple days.

Wednesday we pretty much laid around and moaned. It was fun to whine and moan. The kids went swimming again because they are morphing into dolphins. I stayed home with Josie and worked on burning CDs until the baby was done napping. I heard a strange whining moan float up from the basement after dinner. it sounded like this, "Moooooooooom, I'm borrrrrrrrrrred!" The strange sound syllabicated over and over. The moaning stopped once I packed all the kids into the van to raid my storage shed. The whiner found some felt to make a project. Amelia was the source of the whining. She likes to whine right next to my ear, like somehow it's my problem she is bored. I ignore her until she speaks English, give her ideas that usually induce more whining. Sometimes she gets an idea like making salt dough, sewing a heart pillow, or making slime that makes the dread whine stop. The first part of the week she did not whine because her little mind was reading a good book.

Thursday Amelia's second grade teacher came over to babysit. Yes, you heard that right. We lucked out with the best babysitter ever for a couple hours. The kids contentedly read books, played games, and chatted while I was gone taking photos of Mrs Belieu's newest granddaughter. Amelia made a heart pillow with the baby's name embroidered on the heart. I got to hang out at the field in the muggy heat with a sweet baby, two new parents, and a photographer needing some encouragement. Kathi, my Jehovah's Witness friend, is also a photographer. We enjoyed the outdoor newborn session trading tips and tricks. I was quite pleased the baby went to sleep rather quickly after a bottle of milk. Once again it was a hot day, over 100 degrees. We cooled off at the pool for an hour then went to the county fair. I was crazy this year and went on wristband night to the carnival with 5 kids alone. Josie started off the fun evening by barfing all over herself, 15 times. She was not feverish and quite happy in spite of her tummy issues. Towards the end of the evening she was spitting up foam, happily spitting up foam. Phillip dunked her pretty thoroughly at the pool so I was sure she was spitting up water trying to clear her system. We visited Amelia's 4th Grade Ag project displayed in the 4-H building, Mrs Roach was there with the founding couple the project was based on. The kids loved all the 4-H animals. Evelyn loved to pet the goats and sheep. She even got a horse to lick her hand. Josie's eyes were huge as we walked along admiring the animals, real animals is quite an experience. The highlight for the kids was free reign on the approved carnival rides. They kids split up, Amelia and Phillip riding the faster rides. Everett, Evelyn, and Spitty Josie were with me. Amelia lost us after the first ride, that dulled her excitement a bit until the next ride. Everett was thrilled to ride the ferris wheel with his friend (a girl) from kindergarten. He said she kissed him first....what?! Well, I just kissed her back he reported. He is banned from the Ferris Wheel already. Evelyn got to ride the train and airplane rides about 6 times each with her cute friend Ellie. They were both so excited, holding hands, and picking out the pink airplanes to ride. We finally got to bed after 11 pm!

Friday we were all lazy bums after our late night. Evelyn napped off and on all day. Josie woke up at 5:30 still not feeling well. She ran a low grade fever but did not exhibit any more tummy issues. The older 4 kids all slept together in Phillip's room. Amelia slept with Evelyn. Everett claimed the floor for his bed. They slept together Saturday night as well! Amelia got to watch Descendents over at Katelyn's home from 4-9 pm! The girls wanted to watch both movies, Lisa even had cute theme snacks for the event. Disney did not show the new movie until after 9 pm so she did not get to watch the second movie. I got some food shopping done. The boys and I watched the new Power Ranger movie with popcorn and doughnuts. Amelia got out the face painting kit before the party. She painted a cute whale on Evelyn's cheek, a zword on Phillip's cheek, and three colored lightening strikes on Everett. I was quite amused as he showed me how to activate the lightening bolts by pressing them in the certain order while making zapping noises. It was all quite elaborate.

Amelia's friend Rachel had an "era-themed" birthday party. The guests were invited to dress up as a character from their favorite era. Amelia was quite thrilled with the Victorian prop dress I had in my photo props. She went to the party dressed as her favorite American Girl, Samantha.  She came home with a tie-dyed shirt and stories about Rachel's dad dressed up as a 70s Disco dancer. The boys amused themselves with the face paint. I was not paying close attention since the boys were amused and playing quietly. Phillip finally showed off his creation: he stripped naked and painted his entire body, his butt crack was black, he painted his privates a nice shade of blue to be an elephant. I caught Everett trying to paint his blue as well. He barely had time to start so he was unable to finish. I sent those boys off to the tub. It was quite hard not to laugh. The boys got haircuts right after dinner. Everett insisted on a haircut just like his Dad, you know a striped down the middle with two stripes down the sides?! I humored him and cut his hair to those specs. He was quite pleased with the effect. I heard him chortle each time he walked by a mirror! Our day ended with a nice fireworks show, part of the fair entertainment. Wait, it almost ended with happy displays of fireworks. Josie changed that once the kids went to bed, she was up until past 11 pm with the same tummy troubles as Thursday night.

Today in church Everett strutted into the chapel with his crazy hair. He preened over his hair in front of the deacons. After the meeting started he snuck up to the stand and tried to sit with his favorite Priest, Jakob Austad. We frantically tried to convince Everett that he could not sit on Jakob's lap and that he had to leave the stand. If he could have sullenly kicked rocks down the aisle I believe he might have. Jakob gifted Everett an entire box of Pokemon cards with a promise that they would play Pokemon this coming week. Evelyn's eyes light up when we walked to our row, Jen was sitting there all ready for church! Jen finally came to church tattoos and all. She wore her longest dress and curled her cute hair. We were all surprised the church did not burn down. Ha ha ha. Jen said we have the most interesting service she's ever been too. Maybe that girl will be converted after all! Jen stayed at our house on Thursday night. Her husband decided to leave and get a divorce, finally after years of talking and threatening. She was left without a vehicle or place to stay until he leaves. Sounds like he decided to stay a bit longer and help move her stuff into the new rental they are renovating before he takes off for Kentucky. We love seeing Jen, but hate the circumstances she is in right now. Glad she came to church before we move away. Brother Austad came over after church to give Jojo a priesthood blessing. Everett point blank asked him why he is so fat. Blush, I recalled the same story involving me, a nice chubby man, and a quarter he gifted me, "Mr, why are you so fat?" Karma baby! Brother Austad is the nicest, most spiritual guy in our ward. He is quite thoughtful and very talented with visual arts. He is having gastric bypass surgery soon to change the hormonal outputs in his stomach. I was so glad he explained to the kids what their responsibility was during the blessing. The kids all kept quiet and concentrated on the prayer. We are so blessed.