Cousin Time!

Uncle Jordan and his kids visited us for the weekend while Aunt Leah had a much needed rest at home. The weekend was full of playing, church, playing, movies, playing, food, playing, sprinklers, and playing.

Zariah enjoyed doing Peter's hair before church on Sunday. Peter was not as enthusiastic about the project, but was a good sport nevertheless.

Zariah and Maverick were both eager to help water the garden.

Sophie was practicing her babysitting skills. She loved getting to help watch the babies.

I snuggled Maverick to sleep while Jordan got Zariah and Legend to sleep one night.

We did a little park hopping the morning of Memorial Day.

That afternoon we pulled out the swimsuits and sunscreen and ran through the sprinklers. Bryan prepared a delicious dinner of hamburgers, hot dogs, and sides. Popsicles served as dessert.

Then everyone came inside, washed off the grass and sunscreen, and watched a movie while Jordan packed up the car.

It was fun for Topher to be one of the bigger kids this weekend. He and Legend played well together and didn't require the same level of supervision that the littles needed. 

Thanks for visiting guys! We love you!

A Fresh Coat of Paint

We rearranged our great room to make it more kid friendly for cousins to visit (a babyproofed section, blocked off from other, less baby-friendly areas) and I realized I never wrote about updating this space. I'd been wanting to paint the room since we moved in, but it wasn't high on the priority list. Finally back in March I decided I was tired of staring at beige walls and old yellowed light fixtures. I bought several paint samples, painted stripes on the walls to compare colors, then Bryan and I made some choices. I painted the room in a weekend, it took longer to switch out the light fixtures and buy and install the TV cabinet and storage cupboards. We still need to add knobs for the furniture and a top for the TV cabinet.

I love the way it turned out.

Before:

In progress:

I've now painted so many walls that I don't need to use tape, I can just paint the edge freehand. It's a longer process, but seems to give a better result. We went for the bold, dark blue because we thought it went well with the brick. We chose a warm gray for the other walls because we were concerned if we painted them all dark blue the room would be too heavy. That cupboard in the corner is holding all our board games and most of our art and school supplies. I love that we can tuck them away. Once we put the extra cubbies (brought down from Topher's room to create the baby barrier) away, most of the visual clutter in the room will be gone.

Eventually I'll hang pictures back on the walls, but for now I'm happy to see their pretty painted surfaces.

Keepsake

Topher delivered this note to me recently. I figured out everything except the first word. I asked him to read it to me. "Dear Mom I love you." And then he told me I need to keep it forever.

What a World, What a World*

Apparently my front door got so hot that my wreath melted. For real.

*Anyone know how the title connects to this post?

Sooooo Close

Here we are again, limping our way to the end of the schoolyear. I'm ready to put aside the role of taskmaster (at least regarding school). The kids in school are ready to be done with assignments. Topher is ready to have siblings that have time to play with him again. Peter has one week left, the others have two.

We can do it.

I'm pretty sure we can do it.

I really hope we can do it.

A Long, Long Time Ago

Yesterday had some rough patches. After more yelling and arguing than I wanted to be part of, this picture popped up in my memories. It helps to see them when they were tiny and sweet. This brown-eyed boy is 16-month-old Peter. I'm putting it here so I can find it easily to look at and calm myself when the 17-year-old version is out of sorts.

Read To Me

Make Your Bed

Peter worked off his prom tickets (and outfit) last week by cleaning up the basement and working in the yard. We need to regrade the backyard to prevent the basement from flooding, so we decided to see how much we could accomplish. Peter and I worked on this for several days. His job was to break up the grass so it could be pulled up. He kept saying he was playing real life Minecraft. Spoiler, he prefers the computer version.

Bryan suggested that since we were going to pull the grass up in that section of the yard anyway, it would be a good place to put a garden bed. He gave a major part of his Saturday to getting this task done, with Peter assisting. Once they had the bed placed, I filled it with soil and planted a few of our seedlings. It was after dark when we finished.

It makes my heart happy.

PROM!

Peter checked off a high school milestone on Friday evening. He and his friend Amelia went to prom!

They joked that this was what social distanced prom pictures look like. 

According to Peter (and Amelia, we talked after church on Sunday), the dinner that came with the dance wasn't great, the music was mostly hip-hop and R&B which was hard to dance to, and that led to only a few people dancing. The good news? Peter and Amelia were in that dancing group (when the music allowed) and still had fun chatting with friends.

Lady M

Phoebe is currently reading Macbeth for her Language Arts class. They were given the assignment to either draw or find a picture online that represented one of the characters. She chose to use her drawing tablet to create a picture of Lady Macbeth. I think it's amazing!