Star Wars Lego Set...Broken in Pieces!

Well, this picture is of the beloved Star Wars Lego ship (see next post). The boys took it upstairs after church on Sunday and played with it for hours. Tucker was walking down the stairs with it and said, "Mom, something came off this ship, can you fix it?" Just then we heard, "Crash, Bang, Boom!" and Tucker had missed a stair and fell down the rest of them, sending the Star Wars Lego ship flying into a million pieces. Okay, only about 781 pieces, give or take a few, because a few actually did stay together. It was silent in the house for about 30 seconds as everyone realized what had just happened. Then, there wasn't much to do about laugh and cry about it as we took a picture to remember the moment, then picked up the pieces and started over. It took me about 6 hours the first time to put it together, but only about two to repair the damage so I'm getting good! Tucker told us later that his bum actually did hurt quite a bit from the fall, but he was much more worried about "The Ship!"

Star Wars Lego Set

The three boys have been saving every penny they make or find for the Star Wars Lego set, "Jabba's Sail Barge." It is a $75 Lego set so they have been saving for quite some time. They finally had enough money with a final contribution from Jordan so Jordan and I bought it Friday while the other kids were at school. Jordan kept asking me every 30 seconds or so if it was time to go get the boys yet. He couldn't wait to show them the prize. It nearly killed the boys to wait until after I had gotten Meghann home from school and had some time to concentrate on putting it together, but they waited for me. We spent a good two or three hours putting it together that night, and I sent them to bed promising to continue working on it. I worked on it all the time I watched a movie by myself, "The Devil Wears Prada" since Brady was at the church helping with the roadshows. I worked on it until 11:00 p.m. and started again at 6:30 this morning (I couldn't sleep). The whole family was at the church the better part of today - Brady doing music and me doing costumes - so again the boys had to wait until after we got home at about 1:30 before we could work on it again. Well, we just finished and I have to post the final product! Tucker said we'd better take a picture of it before it all fell apart - does everyone's Lego toys do that? You work and work to put them together, but if you play with them they fall apart. My boys aren't good at putting them on the shelf to look at, and I'm not sure I want them to, but I get obssessed (especially when I've put them together) when they aren't perfect in a few days. Oh well, it's something to overcome, right?

Italian Ice

Yum...we just discovered Italian Ice. Has everyone had it before but us? Well, we don't get out much but Meghann wanted this for FHE treats so off we went. They had all sorts of flavors and you could layer two flavors if you wanted to. My favorites were pina colada and green apple (not mixed, but separately). Actually, the green apple was zingy so I'd mix it with something more mellow. But it was delicious and here we are enjoying it!

First Day

Well, school started yesterday so here are all the "first day" pictures. Everyone had a great day. I am starting to wonder where all my free time is??? I have something planned every day this week and even into next week - just busy things like visiting teaching, primary presidency meeting, hair appointment, etc. but it's taking up my four hours of free time everyday! I haven't turned on my embroidery machine in over a week! Hopefully things will slow down...

Our Last Vacation

We were able to get away on Thursday to Daytona Beach. Our friends had rented a condo for a week and could only use half of the week so we were the happy recipients of the other half! It was RIGHT on the beach, about a hundred steps or so. We spent all of Thursday and again Friday going from the beach to the pool, beach again, pool some more. It was so much fun. That is my favorite kind of vacation - no agenda, no sightseeing, no schedule, just relaxing and enjoying the kids. We ate at Burger King for lunch the first day which is a treat for our kids, then heated up some tortellini soup we had brought from home for dinner. The next day we brought pizza and slurpees back to the condo for dinner. My kids are addicted to slurpees ever since our trip to Utah when Grandma introduced them. They didn't even know we had a 7-11 around the corner from our house until they realized they could buy a slurpee there! Anyway, after our yummy dinner we watched the long-awaited High School Musical 2! I admit - Brady and I are as into it as the kids. We pulled out the hide-a-bed, popped popcorn, and we were all glued to the TV for two hours. Even Jordan, who is four, kept saying how much he loved High School Musical. He's four going on 14!

One of our favorite things we did was rent a beach cart. It was like a golf cart that we drove up and down the beach. In a stretch of beach where there weren't any people, we let each of the kids take a turn driving the cart. Now they all think they are ready for a driver's license! Saturday came all too soon and our last vacation was over. I'm boo-hooing about the kids going back to school tomorrow, but trying to be brave about it. You can see some pictures on the slide show from our vacation.

90 Degrees...Inside!

Last week Brady came home from work and immediately looked at the thermostat. It was maxed out at 90 degrees. I was baking banana bread, plus making dinner and I didn't know that it was so darn hot...well, I knew it but I guess I'm used to sweating in the middle of the summer here because I can't afford to keep the thermostat any cooler. Anyway, we knew we had a little problem when the house was that hot and the a/c was running non-stop so we called a repairman. He came the next day and found a leak in the valve that carries the freon. A tune up and a few gallons of freon later, we were back in business. Our electric bill came a few days ago - around $350. Ouch! It hurts to stay cool...

Check out my Slide Show!

Wet N' Wild

It's the last week of summer vacation and we're trying to make every day count. On Tuesday we decided to take the kids to Wet N' Wild. We didn't tell them where we were going so they were trying to guess where we were going the whole way there, and they were very surprised when we finally arrived. Surprised and thrilled! We had so much fun there. The whole reason we went was because they were offering a special - if you bought one day you could come back the rest of the year for free. So when a few of the lines for some rides were too long to wait, we didn't worry too much because we'll come back when there aren't so many tourists. The best way to describe Wet N' Wild is roller coaster meets water. We went on a few wild waterslides! It was a lot of fun and everyone was pretty brave - even Jordan! Courtney took the bravery award though, she kept right up with Brady on rides that even I was too whimpy to go on!

Family Picture Wall

A few weeks ago I got the bug to change all the frames on my "family picture wall" to black. Why didn't I think of that in the first place? Don't ask me...but I loved the new and improved wall. I love the all black frames and the arrangement of them all turned out much better the second time around. Wonder how many holes are in that wall now?...

Make Up Lesson

Aargh! Where does the time go, and why did I tell Meghann she could start wearing make-up with the arrival of 7th grade? I swear she's aged five years in the two days that she's been wearing it! I wonder if she'd consider giving it back to me for another three or so years, and then she can be my twelve-going-on-thirteen daughter instead of my twelve-going-on sixteen daughter! She was so excited to be learning all about make-up, and Courtney (who is 10) was so excited to be in the bathroom with us snapping photos. She can't wait until it's her turn! Meghann looked darling in the end, and really, you can't tell she's wearing it...it's a subtle beauty (that was in my make-up lesson!)

My Chocolate Lover

Jordan is such a chocolate lover. Today I asked who wanted chocolate frosting on their donut for breakfast. He said, "I do! I love everything chocolate. Except chocolate beans!" Hmmm, I might actually eat beans if I could find some chocolate ones!

Saturday Entertainment at the Nixons

We watched my friend's five kids on Saturday. Combine that with a few neighbor kids that came over to play, and we had a full house! Brady attended the wedding of two institute kids in the morning, but gratefully, he was home in the afternoon to help me entertain them. He took all of the boys outside and showed them how to blast off a 2-liter bottle with a cut-off hose. They were having a great time! Then he blew up these huge balls and they played with them for a while. That evening we went to the church where Brady conducted a ring ceremony for the couple who had been married earlier in the day (they have some non-member family). It was a nice occasion and Brady did well on his first ever ring ceremony!

Lift Off!

Wednesday was a launch of the space shuttle. We were traveling home from Tallahassee and weren't able to go out to the Cape so see the launch, but our good friends(and shuttle chasers)the Shepherds took Meghann, Courtney, and Tucker with them to watch it lift off. Brady, Spencer, Jordan and I watched it from the front yard. All the pictures I took were fuzzy so I'll download one from NASA's website for my blog. It will be much more impressive that way!

A Get-Away

On Tuesday Brady and I were able to go to Tallahassee for an overnighter. It was work-related, so we attended meetings much of the time, but it was nice to drive for four hours without having to answer the "are we there yet?" question. We ate dinner at Chili's with all the CES Florida faculty and their wives and it's always fun to get together with that group. I traded babysitting with a friend - she watched mine overnight and I watched hers all day Saturday (I think I got the better deal!)

A Little Project... Okay, a Big Project

The girl's and I got a hairbrained idea to paint their bedroom. We started when Brady was out of town last week - probably so that he couldn't talk us out of it. It was a much bigger project that I had imagined it would be. The primer went up fast so I thought, "this is no big deal" but as I was drawing all the lines for the stripes, I knew it was a bigger deal than I thought originally. But, we perserverd and Brady even pitched in to help at the end and did a little handiwork on the closet doors. It turned out so cute and the girls love it. They helped a lot with taping, painting, and putting the room all back together again. The sad part was pushing the beds and dressers back against the wall and covering up all of our hard work! But it was a fun project to do with them. Now the boys can't wait to paint their room and get their hands on a paint brush and roller.

Visit from the Casablancas

We were so excited to have the Casablancas over for dinner on Sunday. They will be leaving in a few weeks for a mission to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay so it was nice to see them before they leave. Here's a picture of the family with Justo, as well as a cute one of the kids.