Magic Tree House

Leah has been listening to the Magic Treehouse story on CD every night at bedtime - and we only have one... so I figured she would enjoy it if we checked some of the books out of the library and read them a few chapters at a time. The surprise has been how much Lincoln has liked them as well. They are getting really good at listening and imagining for a long stretch of time and usually want me to read four or five chapters in a sitting. It's been really fun to sit and read with them and the Magic Tree House website has a passport that you can print so you can keep track of which books you've read - that's almost as fun as the reading itself!

Whew! What a Week!

So, this last week was spent in an attempt to retrain Peter to sleep through the night - which means I didn't get a whole lot of quality zzz's. I also got called to serve in the Stake as the Relief Society Secretary - right before Youth Conference and our Stake's big production of Savior of the World. Everyone is pitching in for this last week of crazy rehearsals and we're trying to organize the meals for 300 kids every day! It's a good thing Grandma Marynel was here this last week! She absolutely saved my sanity! The kids had a blast playing with her....

They made paper hats,

had their portraits drawn,

went on a scavenger hunt,

And went swimming a couple of times in the brand new swim suits Grandma brought.

Peter just smiled a lot and looked charming in an attempt to make up for sleepless nights.

Thanks Grandma for a great week of fun! We love you!

Texas Memorial Museum

It is soooo hard to wait for Grandma to get here! In the interest of distraction and sanity (mine), we took the bus up to the University to visit the Texas Memorial Museum - although I think they've given it a new name that I can't remember...

The kids thoroughly enjoyed looking at the bugs and dinosaurs and animals and fish. They taught me all kinds of things I didn't know - like skunks are afraid of hedgehogs. This is what I get for letting them check out all those animal books and National Geographic videos from the library!

All said however, I think the favorite place to visit was the fountain near the bus stop...

If you tell me my house is a mess....

...I will tell you that Peter is teething. I swear, that boy has about 5 teeth coming in at once right now. The result? He doesn't sleep very well - and correspondingly, I don't sleep very well. This leaves me in a semi-comatose state for most of the day and renders me physically incapable of cleaning my house. Oh, I definitely see the mess... and it makes me anxious... but when it comes to actually cleaning it up I feel a disturbing apathy and have absolutely no desire to do so. My method of coping with this is to try to keep my destructive kids out of the house for most of the day, but inevitably, I will turn my back for a few minutes and all of their clothes will be scattered across their room along with all the toys they simply dumped on the floor. I keep thinking I'm going to vacuum one of these days, but that would require a visible surface to vacuum. I'll have to bite the bullet tomorrow though as my MIL is coming in to town and I don't want to look like a total slacker. Thankfully, my DH will actually do a lot of the cleaning in a rather endearing frenzy when it's his mother coming to visit. Luckily, my mom already knows I'm a slacker so no harm done. :)

Worth a Thousand Words...

This is how we found the kids when we went in to check on them last night. Despite all their bickering and teasing, they really are good friends.