Also last night had a nice, relaxing dinner with Nana and Papa and Holly Hall. Ate outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather but seems like summer is almost over.

We are getting the boys involved in the Pennies for Peace drive to raise money for building schools in Pakistan and hoping our friends/family can help out. If you haven’t read, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, go get it…it’s the true story of this amazing man’s journey to build a school in a remote part of Pakistan and now he has gone on to build 55 schools and counting. He’s coming to speak on Bainbridge at the end of the month and I can’t wait to hear him. Anyhow, this is where our pennies will go.

What can you do to help? It’s easy…all you have to do is SAVE YOUR PENNIES and the boys and I will come by to collect them (they have decorated collection containers, they will help count out what they collect and will drop them off to the donation center). No amount too small, this is about teaching the boys about charity and helping other people. It’s going to be interesting because they love their coins and giving them up might be a struggle, but they are also excited about the idea of other kids having a new school to go to.
That’s the deal…let us know if you want to participate. We will be collecting pennies all week next week and the following week as well. If you are from out of town and still want to donate…you could send a dollar bill and I will exchange it for pennies at the bank.

Thanks,
Kendra

Our boys just love helping with tools. We started last night to take off our front deck, it was unsafe and an accident waiting to happen. Carlos was hammering away at the old boards while Levi measured. I think Dee got more done when the boys came in for naptime, though. It looks great! More about naptime later.

While the deck work was being done I was inside cleaning. We are trying to make the place nice for our house concert tomorrow night with Holly. I did some deep, deep cleaning. We got all the carpets steam cleaned and the bedding all washed. The floor swept, the carpets vacuumed….you get the idea. Lots of work to do! Things are looking mighty fine despite the boys trying to undo all that I’ve done.

Back to naptime. Carlos was a nightmare. If anyone has ideas on how to get a 3 year old to sleep then please fill me in. It was more than a battle. We were trying to get the boys all to sleep early because we were going over to Patti’s retirement party at 2. Carlos was in our room singing and laughing and grinning whenever one of us would go into the room. We left the front door open, Dee was working on the deck and I went out to mow the lawn. I came in periodically to check on our non-sleeper and each time, of course, he was still awake. I finished mowing, brought a load of laundry up only to find that my sweet young son had locked the back door. I wasn’t happy but went around to the sliding door and found that he had locked that one, too. I banged on the door and he finally let me in, all the while grinning ear to ear. Turns out he never did take a nap, so he learned a hard lesson and was dropped off and the Fisher’s house while we went onto Patti’s party. Yea, he was pretty shocked to be dropped off, that’s for sure. This boy needs some definite wake up calls. Anyhow, I eventually picked him up from Fishers and joined the party again and he slept in the car and awhile at the party, it was great to see everyone and celebrate Patti’s retirement.

Came home, did some more work to get ready and fought Carlos once again at bedtime. It’s draining!!! Looking forward to tomorrow, time to unwind a little with some mindless tv.

Nathan….I’m watching your favorite movie, 9 to 5! 🙂

Sometimes, after a day of battling the children and feeling like you just aren’t sure whether or not you’ve “won”…a sweet moment like this happens. Trey loves his May-May. The kids love the Veggie Tales Larry’s Silly Songs dvd (thanks, Nana) and want it played whenever they get a chance to watch a movie. The songs are catchy but I seriously find myself humming them in the car, when the kids are listening to a book on cd and I’m up driving in almost silence. Let me reword that…when there’s nobody fighting about toys or who’s touching them or Trey screaming “No Junie B Jones, want Lightning McQueen!”, that’s when I get some quiet driving time and those damn Veggie Tales songs creep into my head. There’s no escape. I’m sure my folks thought the same about my music in the 80’s!

We’ve got swimming lessons today and many of you have asked how Carlos is doing in the water now that he has a new teacher. It’s GREAT…she doesn’t put up with any garbage from him. The first day he cried from the moment he got in the pool until he got out. It wasn’t sobbing, he was fine and doing everything she asked him to do, just cried while he did it. Yesterday he started crying the minute he got to the pool, and I had to remind him that he had half an hour before his lessons even started so he might want to save the tears. He stopped immediately, amazing. I think he realized that the crying didn’t work for the lessons, though, and got in the pool with no fuss and had a good lesson. We’ll see how it goes today.

On the speech front…as many of you have also asked about (notice a pattern here!?!? Carlos doesn’t like change!) We had speech with Julia again yesterday and she tried a new approach. She took Carlos to play for the 30 minutes, no work, just play, to win him over. They had fun in the sandbox and burying his hands and was excited about it. When she asked him if he wanted to come back next week he said, “no”. I kept trying to remind him of the fun he just had and he still said “no”. He’s not easily won over, this boy.

We’ve got swimming today, then I’ll have to do an attitude check and see if the kids are all up for more fun…and maybe enjoy this sunny day and head to the Point Defiance Zoo. We haven’t been all summer and they love it, but we’ll have to see. Wish me luck…four toddlers at the zoo! I’m sure I’ll have plenty to blog about tonight and I may even try to get a picture or two.

for sure.

I got forwarded an Ebay listing today from a Mom’s group from a mom who sold some Pokemon cards that her kids snuck into the grocery cart. I laughed out loud and shared it with as many people as I could. This mom is hilarious and her blog is funny reading, I can relate to her 100%! Here’s the link to the blog if you want some funny reading, enjoy! http://mom2my6pack.blogspot.com/