In my house I have two budding artists. Lauren and Katie. Lauren has been taking an art class this summer, and Katie is wishing she was taking an art class.
Lauren's art work.
Lauren's art work.
Katie's art work.
More of Katie's art work.
And at the final piece of Katie's art work, also known as crayon on wood. The Jackson's went to Hawaii, and we went to their pool with our cousins, aunts, and uncles!
Last Wednesday I went to pick up Lauren from dance class, and had Mark and Katie in car with me. As we were driving Mark informed me "my heart disease is hurting me." Now considering he is six years old I determined that his chances of heart disease were probably minimal at best and ignored him. He continued to complain about his heart disease.
Upon arrival at home he was sitting on the kitchen floor, again complaining about his heart disease, so I finally decided something must be bugging him and asked him to show me where it hurt. He put his hand on his chest right around where is heart is located, and I questioned him if that what hurt. Before he could answer he spewed forth the contents of his stomach.
Apparently it was not so much his heart that hurt as it was his stomach. We will be working on anatomy.
While the rest of you are doing whatever it is you do on a Tuesday, this is what I am doing. Fifty unemployment cases. Its a new record for those of you keeping track. (FYI, all these pages you see are my required reading, photocopies of the cases and each page is copied on both sides, do the math...)
Last Tuesday my secretary handed me this stack with a wicked smile on her face....(just kidding, she was actually quite sorry about the case load), so I have spent the last week reading nothing but unemployment cases, and quite frankly I am sick of cases and reading. So next time you ask what the last book I read was and I give you a snarky look, you will understand why....
Its tradition in our house that if you are female, and you are three years old, you get to go to dance class. After three years of watching her older sister dance, she was more than ready to be following in her footsteps.
Katie had her first class last Thursday. I was a little nervous about this experience. We discussed it for a few days prior and when asked about what was expected at dance class, Katie would respond "Be nice to the teacher."
I signed her up for a ballet/jazz combo at the studio where Lauren takes dance lessons, and is on the company team. (VIBE it's the best!) Katie wanted to take her backpack, because Lauren takes her backpack every week. She is also quite determined that she needs a pink dance trophy like Lauren. For that she will have to make the company team and compete. (Believe it or not there is a team for the girls her age.)
She walked in the door and announced she was there for her "pink dance class." It was a small class with only one other little girl.
Our next feat, company try outs at the end of June....she will only have three classes under her belt at that time....so this could be interesting, but she really wants that trophy.....
I spent Memorial Day weekend in Idaho. It was the first Memorial Day since my dad died, and Ciarran and I wanted to decorate the graves with Loretta, because that is something she always did with my dad.
Unfortunately Loretta wasn't feeling well enough to go out to the cemetery, so Ciarran and I went together, decorated the graves, took pictures, and then took lunch to Loretta and spent the afternoon with her.
Don't we look cute? This is our parents grave site. 
This is Bill Green, Loretta's husband who passed away before she married my dad.
This is Grandma and Grandpa Holladay, Loretta's parents.
This is my Grandma and Grandpa Hales, my grandparents.Lately Katie has taken to sneaking out of bed. She will sit at the top of the stairs, or at the middle landing or even on the stairs. Sometimes she will make enough noise I will hear her, other times I will discover her when I am going upstairs for some reason.
This is how I found her last week.....
Last weekend we enjoyed a fun visit from some friends that live in Boise, the Tanners. Darrin brought his kids Issac and Shelby down to Utah to play with us!
First stop, Discovery park. (They have a super fun play ground!)
Here is Issac and Mark walking across a "bridge."
Darrin and me, trying to keep up with five kids!
The tire swing was a popular choice for Issac, Shelby and Lauren.
Mark found a "rocket" and I could not pull him out of the dang thing. He blasted off into space several times.
Katie was out of control, I would see a pink flash run past me and assume it was her. At one point she was on a bridge and a boy about her age tried to push past her. The next thing I saw was her giving him a hard and fast push to the chest and telling him "no!" He was a little stunned by her behavior, but he got the point. Yeah she is going to be fun to date when she is 16....
Next it was on to the Jackson's pool. We only spent 3 1/2 hours there....and even then they whined when we told them they had to get out.
After dinner, we took advantage our our backyard. Lauren and Shelby were moving so fast and furious, all I could capture were blurry pictures!
They liked the swings too.
Issac's new favorite sport is lacrosse, and Mark didn't want to be left out of this activity, so Darrin was trying to show him how to throw the ball to Issac.
Katie got her hands on Shelby's pink lacrosse stick and ball....and well need I say more?
Later in the evening Shelby and Lauren talked me into doing "glitter" nails and then they retreated to the basement for their slumber party which included playing on the Wii.
We wore the boys out, and this is how we found them after we finished doing nails. Last Wednesday night, around 11:00 p.m. I was down stairs in my basement, minding my own business, in other words picking up the mess my children had made, when all of the sudden I found myself in the dark. No power. Now a basement is not the best place to be in the dark, because well it's dark to begin with, and then you factor in no lights what so ever and the fact I set my cell phone down somewhere in the basement, so I could not even use that for light, you get the picture on my darkness.....
I felt my way to the stairs and headed up them. I could tell by the darkness of the neighborhood that my being in the dark was not a result of my forgetting to pay the power bill, because my neighbors seemed to be having similar power issues.
I figured Lauren was probably still awake and probably pretty close to freaking out, so I headed toward her bedroom, and sure enough I was met on the stairs by one freaked out nine year old. She informed the the power had gone out, just in case I hadn't figured that out..... We headed toward the laundry room in search of a flash light. I found one working flashlight, (that would be the fault of Mark and Katie, who like to take my flashlights and run down the batteries in the process of destroying the working parts of the flashlight...grrrrrrr.....) and one working "crank" light.
As we pondered what to do in the dark I decided hanging up the wet clothes from the washer seemed like a good option....(FYI, even if he power had been on I still could have hung up my wet clothes, I am very anti dryer, unless its socks and underwear.)
With all of the bedding out of my guest bedroom due to the flood, my kids thought it would be a perfect opportunity to make a fort. 
Well, at least someone is finding joy in my misery.
"Lakers Rule!" this was found on nearly every surface that you could write on in my house growing up. Rest assured it was not me that had a fondness for the Lakers, but rather my brother Jeron. Not much has changed since 1983.... In his mind the Lakers still rule.
Jeron came for a brief visit this week, and since it was the play off game against the Suns, we of course had to watch the game. I let the kids stay up past their bedtime to be indoctrinated by Jeron as to how and why the "Lakers Rule." 
My kids pretty much think uncle Jeron is about the coolest person on the planet. I am wondering if I need to be concerned....????
I have always wanted a house with a pool. I envisioned myself sitting poolside, cool drink in hand, basking in the warm sun, with wonderful trashy magazine or book. My children happily splashing about, beckoning me to join them in the water...
Well I have a pool, the only problem with my pool, its inside the house as opposed to outside. Not exactly the poolside I envisioned...
As you could see from my Monday post, we received quite a bit of snow. It was very wet snow, and when all was said and done there was probably an inch on the ground. By the afternoon the temperature was warming up and the very wet snow began to melt, and melt rather quickly.
Little did I know I had a gutter that was clogged. What does that mean? Well all the snow melting off my roof was not draining into gutter to eventually end up in my yard, it was falling off the side of my house and into two window wells in my basement. Yep, another flood. (Different room this time, wanted to spread the wealth around.)
This is what I saw when I went into my guest bedroom on Monday afternoon. Yes, that three inch line you see in the window is the level of the water, just waiting to pour into my house for that pool I have envied all these years.
It slowly dripped off the window seal onto the floor. When I first saw it I was completely overwhelmed. I knew there was nothing I could do until all the water drained out of the window well, so I just turned around and walked away, hoping that my problem would go away....
No such luck, it only got worse as more water drained in the room and the carpet and pad became completely soaked, with standing water on top. Rick was a HUGE help in aiding me in this situation. Lauren had a dance practice, so while I was gone he started water removal with the steam cleaner. 
After dinner we removed all the furniture out of the room, including this wool rug that was soaked. I put plastic down on my craft table and then put the rug on top with fans to dry it out. Because it was wool, you can only imagine the smell, a lot like wet dog.
Next came the industrial blowers to circulate air under the carpet with the hopes that one day my carpet and pad might be dry. This time because there was sooooo much water I was able to achieve that tropical oasis in my house. I came home from work on Tuesday, and with a day of those fans blowing all that moist air around, and I could swear I was living in Florida. Now where is that cool and refreshing drink I could use that about now.....The verdict is in. Gallstones. Yep, I am going to be sliced and diced. (Date has yet to be determined.) Its a good thing, don't want to experience that pain again, and I do believe it will cure a few other things as well. What do I mean by that? Well for several months now I have had a pain in the right side of my body extending from my lower back up to my right shoulder blade. It has been an annoying pain, and it would come and go so I just attributed it to sleeping wrong, or sitting at my computer too long. Thanks to the comment from my cousin Brooke, I now know its related to my gallbladder! So take the sucker out!
I promised you I had a wall or two still to fill up in my living room, so here is one of the projects that now has take up residence on my wall. 
The raw materials. One frame, on clearance for $13.66. Some black and white wrapping paper. Sticks from my yard, two small birds nests, and five birds.
Here is the finished product. (Sorry about the glare from the flash.) But I filled in the frame with the wrapping paper. Spray painted the sticks red, cut out green leaves from card stock, and hot glued everything together. It now resides in my new refurbished living room.
