An interesting weekend

Saturday morning my father in law called at 9 am to ask if they could take Nash to Manti with them. I said sure because I knew they were taking my nephew & Nash could use some fun away time. He just got home tonight around 11 pm and it sounds like he had lots of fun. My nephew, Kash, is a year younger than Nash & those two have so much fun together whenever they get to play. Sounds like this weekend was no different as they were inseparable! Nash is pretty proud of the bird nest he found and brought home too. I told him we could put it on the shelf in his new room. You should have seen the boy's eyes light up!

Another reason I'm glad I let him go is that now Samantha has a bit more appreciation of how he feels when she's gone playing with her friends all the time. I think she finally understands why he gets so upset when she says that he can't play with her and her friends. She sure got sick of just playing with Caleb -- he doesn't let her boss him around like Nash does! He'll just walk off if he doesn't like what she's doing or saying! If I had a nickle for every time Samantha whined at me that she was bored this weekend, I'd probably have close to $10!

Yesterday afternoon I was able to go downstairs and work on cleaning all the stuff up out of the boys' room. Travis & I finished painting it while he was home this last time but the mess got left for me to deal with. Caleb was ever so helpful in cleaning up (fortunately he never did get that screw up to the wall and use the pliers as a hammer...yes, he tried but I was too quick for him). After we cleaned up the mess in their room, we had to clean up all the toys that were strewn all over the basement so we can carry the carpet into their room without tripping on something and breaking our necks! My father in law said he'd come out on Monday and help me get the carpet in, the outlet covers on & the bunk bed set up. Now if I can convince someone to come finish the lights & help install the bars in the closet, I can move the boys down! After that I'll have to get someone to take down the top bunk in the room upstairs so I can paint the blue walls pink & then have someone turn the toddler bed back into a crib. Sounds easy enough in theory! We'll see how it turns out!

I also manged to get some weeding done yesterday. My flowerbeds have managed to slip away from me this year thanks to Brooke's fussiness. The flowerbed against the back of my house where my hollyhocks are is the worst! Seriously, if you saw it, you'd die! And considering how much neglect it's had this year, I'm astonished that one of my hollyhock plants actually reaches the roof of the house! If I can get it weeded, I'll have to take a picture! Maybe I should take a picture before so you can see that I'm not exaggerating about how bad it is!

Brooke started acting like the screamer again about Friday. It's lasted through today even. She's running a bit of a fever. I can't decide if she's got a touch of the flu or if she's teething or perhaps something else entirely. I say teething because you can see her two front bottom teeth (since not long after she was born actually) and Caleb started teething at 2 months old too. I know there's a flu bug going around and she has pooped 3 times this week already (normally she's a once a week kind a girl). She had shots on July 6th so I'm pretty sure it isn't related to that. Who knows, perhaps it's because she just misses her daddy.

Brooke slept long enough yesterday that I was able to get all my non maternity clothes out & get them hung up in the closet and my maternity clothes out. I was just going to send all my maternity clothes to my sister to list on thredup.com and then I remembered my sister's friend is expecting. So, I just sent them all over to her. I'm glad they are going to someone that I know that can use them. Even though I've said I'm done having kids & Trav's been "fixed" I guess it hadn't sunk it yet because it was a little bit sad to take all my maternity clothes out and give them away. Every other time I've taken them out, I've taken them out knowing there's a good chance I'd see them again in a few short years. It's sad because it's the end of a certain time period in my life that I guess I wasn't ready to say good bye too.

Yesterday morning after Nash left I took the other 3 kids and went to town to do some school shopping. I just went to Kmart thinking we'd be able to find a few things and put them on layaway. Yeah, $225 later.... Sam's done except for shoes and maybe 1 or 2 more pairs of pants. With the shirts she picked out and what I have at home to finish making for her, she should be set until the cold weather arrives and she needs long sleeves again. Caleb found a Diego backpack he just had to have and was quite upset when we got home and he realized it wasn't with us! I know they don't really use backpacks in preschool, but I got it anyway. We also found him some new shoes and 2 pairs of pants. Depending on how much I have stashed away from when Nash wore a 3T Caleb should be done too. Now I just need to take Nash to get a few things. Since we had such good luck at Kmart for the others I think I'll just go back there & put another stash on layaway (I love layaway & wish the other stores wouldn't have gotten rid of it).

Today I went down to my mom's house for about 6 hours. I just went down to pick up some eggs and ended up staying. My dad and then my mom held Brooke and finally managed to get her to sleep. Once she was sleeping soundly she was laid on my mom's bed. I didn't want to wake her up by moving her, so we stayed and she slept for 3 hours straight. I was glad because I knew she needed it. During that reprieve from screaming, Caleb & Sam helped my mom make lemon bars and then Caleb helped my mom make brownies & a cake while I played the card game golf with Sam and my dad. My mom's parents stopped by for a short visit & got quite a kick out of seeing that I let Caleb swim naked at my mom's house.

Tomorrow Caleb turns 3! Holy cow! Where did that time go? I know I say that with every birthday one of my kids has, but seriously, time NEVER went this fast when I was a kid! Did I enter a time warp or something? This next week is going to be a full one (again) and then Travis will be home on July 24th. We've decided that for our family vacation this year we're going to just go to SLC and do something different each day that the kids haven't necessarily done before. Should be fun!