Middle Child's Day 2013

I really wanted to celebrate this day.  We have a middle child.  I'll admit sometimes it seems that the oldest and youngest get the most attention.  Nichole is the first one to do most things and Jr. Jr. is still the baby even though he's not a baby anymore.  He gets a lot of attention.  Poor Jr. sometimes doesn't get enough attention.  But not today.  Today was his day.  Middle Child's Day, August 12.
So we celebrated.  We celebrated by letting him vacuum when he volunteered.

We celebrated by me reading a book to him, just him and me.

We celebrated by letting him play a Wii game of his choosing.

We celebrated by letting him pick the cart when we went shopping.
We celebrated by letting him get away with a few things.

We celebrated by going to a barbecue.  But not just any barbecue.  A barbecue for jugglers.
Look at this guy's face when he saw what some of the jugglers were doing.

It was so nice to go to the barbecue.  It felt like old times for Jeremy and me, just like being back in the juggling club at BYU so many years ago.  In fact one of the other people there was one of our former clubmates from YJuggle.  Good memories.

Jeremy and I both had the chance to juggle, since our kids were thrilled with the bounce house set up.

 

 click on the picture to see Jr. Jr.'s face behind Jr.

Our middle child enjoyed his day.  He especially liked going to the barbecue.  Here is what he said about it:
"The best part of my day is the barbecue.  The food, mostly the bouncy house, mostly watching the juggling, and mostly having fun."

Two out of the three kids were asleep by the time we reached home.  It's nice that they were tuckered out from having so much fun.

It was a good day.

Kids, Get Out of the Yard

What would you tell the kids if you saw this in the yard?

"Get out of the yard.  Stay on the deck."

In a place where seeing deer and even moose in your yard are not uncommon, it wasn't a surprise when one of the kids said, "There's a raccoon in the yard."  We visited my cousin and his family in Wyoming recently and I was very impressed when the oldest child explained how he thought through and figured out that this was a raccoon.

"Oh, wow.  Yeah.  O.K.  Kids, get out of the yard.  Stay on the deck.  There's a raccoon over there by the shed.  It is a wild animal so we don't want to mess with it."

The kids did a really good job of listening and staying out of the yard.  A little while later my cousin's wife, Annie, came back from shopping and her son told her about the raccoon.  She came to the yard to see it.
"Is that a raccoon?"
When I looked back at the raccoon, this is what I saw.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.  Some cat trying to fool us into thinking it was a raccoon.  But c'mon, if you saw that, the shape of the body, coloring, ring tail, wouldn't you have deduced it was a raccoon?  Heh Heh Heh.

KAT's Kreation- gecko earrings

Years ago, I made a lot of beaded jewelry- bracelets, earrings, etc.  As you can imagine, with little kids, I don't do nearly as much with those tiny beads now. 
One of my favorite pairs of earrings I made was a pair of geckos that I still wear often.

For Nichole's birthday this year, I wanted to make her a pair of gecko earrings in colors she liked.  Since she doesn't have pierced ears, I found some clip-on earring attachments at a Jo-Ann store so she could wear them on her ears like me.

She was very happy with the result  Unfortunately, her ears are not used to having things clipped on them, so she can't wear them for very long at a time.  She does like them, though and I'm happy for that.

National Sleepyhead Day

Jeremy found out about this holiday yesterday and let me know.  In Finland, July 27 is National Sleepyhead Day.  Traditionally, the last one still asleep wakes up by being thrown into the sea or by having water thrown on them.  So in our home, after the older two woke up, we went to pay Jr. Jr. a little visit, armed with a squirt bottle and a water pitcher.

Don't worry.  I'm not that mean.  I had the kids pose for the picture, then took the squirt bottle and pitcher and this is what really happened among the children:

Much nicer, don't you think?

So, who was the last one to wake up in your family this morning?  How did they wake up?

Water Party!

Question:  What do you get when you take a bunch of Primary kids and throw them a Summer water party?

Answer:  You get wet. You get very very wet.

We recently had a water party for the kids in our Primary and it was so fun.  I helped with a couple games.  One was me holding mason jars while kids tried to squirt water guns into them.  Some of the kids intentionally missed.  Another game was throwing wet sponge balls through rings to/at a friend (usually me) on the other side.
I got soaked.  Seriously, I think I had one dry spot on each side of me.  My back and front were saturated.  You can see in the picture, my shirt and shorts are usually lighter colored than they are here.  Nichole was more interested in her popsicle than smiling for the picture.  Great treat after a party like that.

The instructions for the sponge balls came from the website that used to be for FamilyFun Magazine.  Instead of using 5 strips, I used 3 strips from 3 sponges, though (I still cut them into 5 strips, I just used 3 from each).  They worked fine like that.  The rings I cut from cardboard then wrapped duct tape around them.  I taped the two rings together (different kids have different heights) and taped them to the pole from the volleyball net where we were having our water party.
Later on I helped fill water balloons and since I was already wet enough, I just sat down in the puddle of water by the spigot. 
On a hot day like that was, I kept pretty cool by staying wet.  Thanks, kids.

I Did It Again!

When Jr. was 2 years old, he drew on his face with a sparkly pen.  I was so proud of myself for not losing my temper.  I don't always lose my temper (though I admit sometimes I do), but the kids don't always do things (when I don't lose my temper) that are blogworthy.
This morning, my current 2 year old did something that I'm proud to say I didn't lose my temper over.  We were cleaning off the kitchen table and there were some containers of poster paint to put away.  I put them back in the package they came in and figured I'd just set the package on my bed while I was working on other things and put them away in the closet later.  Off I went to do other things. 
At one point I saw Jeremy in the living room with the older two kids, but I didn't see Jr. Jr.  I checked in his room; he wasn't there.  I checked back in the living room; he wasn't there.  Hmmm, maybe he was in my room.  Why yes, he was.  The talented kid was able to get the paint containers out of the package, open them, and do some finger painting on our bed sheet and mattress and box spring, besides dripping paint on whatever was lying on the floor at the time.
I called on Jeremy for help and as he was leading Jr. Jr. to the bathroom to get his hands cleaned off, he reminded me to grab the camera.
So, here you go:

Even though we didn't lose our temper, Jr. Jr. was still upset when he had to get cleaned up.

Well, we still have a long day of cleaning ahead of us, so if you'll excuse me...

Catch of the Day

This is what my husband made for a family he home teaches.  A wearable balloon sculpture.  They had a yard sale today and were able to get some attention with one of their kids walking along the sidewalk wearing this.  At the yard sale, Jeremy also made small balloon sculptures for people.