Too Much Fun

I know a long while back I already mentioned this , but it's become second nature for me to hear my children laughing hysterically (not just a good belly-laugh, but complete hysterics) and immediately tell them to stop what they're doing, whether it's good clean fun or not. This is because the extreme happy emotions they're feeling generally turn to extreme angry emotions and become a fight. I took a video of this hysterical fun. Right before I grabbed the camera Alli was laughing uncontrollably, which toned down when I turned the camera on. And, in the video Evan is being a bit of a pain to Alli, and then she ends up getting irritated with him. The video is a little dark. I should've turned the light on, but I was afraid they would stop playing and I wouldn't get the full effect. Also, you can get a glimpse of my constant battle with laundry. The pile grew before it was all over, but I'm happy to report it's been folded and put away.

Drew's 8th Birthday

Drew turned 8 on Saturday, so we had a little family party at home for her. We had everyone over for dinner and grilled hot dogs, and then had cake and ice cream. I made the cake myself, and I was pretty proud of how it turned out. I even made my own homemade buttercream icing. Drew got lots of really nice gifts including some clothes for school, pajamas, a movie, some money, a new Webkin, and her very own ice cream maker (which I have to admit I was pretty excited about myself). We got her a new bike. Her old bike was out in the front yard close to the road, so Andy asked her to go out and move it and when she got out there, the new one was waiting for her. That picture is her genuine response, which I thought was great. We were unable to get all of her little friends together at the same time on a weekend, so we're having 2 little girls over to go to the movies and spend the night on Tuesday. I guess that's the advantage to having a summer birthday. We seem to always have trouble working around everyone's schedule on the weekends for her birthday (the disadvantage) so we usually end up doing something during the week, and her birthday seems to drag on for several days and several events. She loves it, but I worry about her becoming more spoiled than she already is!

The 4th of July...sort of

This year we did absolutely nothing on the 4th of July. We talked about it, but ended up just relaxing that day. We didn't feel too guilty about it because I had taken the kids the week before to see fireworks down the road from our house, and because we knew we were going out on the lake on Saturday to see fireworks. We had a really nice time. Andy's uncle and his wife went with us. His uncle isn't much older than him, so they have kids around the ages of our kids, so they were all excited about being together. Of course, I wouldn't be me if I didn't forget something, and this time it was my camera. We ended up leaving the boat at the lake overnight (Andy has a friend who lives on the lake) since there were quite a few people trying to load their boats on trailors as soon as the fireworks were over, so we went back Sunday afternoon to get the boat. The kids wanted to ride around again, and this time I remembered my camera. They all got a chance to ride on the tube by themselves, and then they all three rode together for a while, until Drew decided she'd had enough. They had such a good time. On Saturday they were a little nervous about it, and the water was really choppy from all the boats out there, but Sunday they were much more relaxed about the whole thing. Here are a few pictures of the kids on the tube (or tuba as Evan and Alli call it), and a little video clip.

Teach Your Children Well...

This morning as I was cleaning the kitchen, Evan came in and asked for some milk. There was just a tiny bit left in the container, so I told him to just drink it out of the bottle instead of getting another cup dirty, and then I immediately thought of the bad habits I was teaching him that I would have to deal with later. Of course, I wasn't bothered by it enough not to take a picture and think he looked really cute at the time. Oh, and that big red spot on his cheek is from him falling out of Drew's bed in the middle of the night and hitting his face on her night stand. It was fun searching for bandaids at 2:00 in the morning.