Budding Entrepreneurs

Ethan and Jo put a lot of work into this little lemonade stand. They colored in their sign and squeezed all the lemons. They hauled the chairs and table and cooler. They developed a good sales pitch to yell at passing cars: "You look thirsty! I've got something here that can help!" And they had a lot of fun doing it. They didn't care that their only customer was their mom. After about an hour they closed up shop, having run out of lemonade since it was a warm day and they got thirsty.

Tents

We've got a tradition going where every Friday night we make a tent of blankets in the living room and the kids get to sleep in it.

The kids love it and I can usually get them to go to bed a lot earlier. It's a win-win situation.

Busy Bug

Joanna makes me laugh every day. She gets lost in her own little world for hours. She builds and plays with her animals and is always just busy, busy, busy.

She loves the show Dinosaur Train because she loves all things scaly or slithery or slimy or crawly. She'll set up railroad tracks all over the house using different mediums (in the picture above she used blocks but she has also been known to incorporate books or cards or marbles).

When not constructing her own Union Pacific, she is building castles for her favorite toy, aptly named Castle.

Note the "Monster Truck" parked out front

Something inside her thrills at the idea of lining things up and arranging things for display. She has put her skills to good use lately by making me bouquets of "not mommy's" flowers,

as well as bouquets of playdough.

I was informed that all the empty cans are lined up to form the vase

Joanna doesn't move much while sleeping so her bed has become Owly's favorite place to crash at night.

From Soccer to Baseball

Another round of sports for Ethan. The age group Ethan was in this year for soccer had the kids actually play a position instead of setting them loose to follow the ball over the entire field like a pack of hounds after an elusive fox. Ethan still preferred playing goalie.

I think that's because he likes to pretend like he's a soldier defending a fort. Hence the "shooting" at the ball.

When he wasn't playing goalie he was happy to let the more aggressive kids handle the ball while he followed close behind to cheer them on.


And now we're into baseball. Ethan had his first game this past week. He played catcher for the first two innings




and got a hit both times he was up to bat.

Matt got recruited to play first base coach

and as always, the girls were great little cheerleaders.

Joanna called this "Ethan being happy in the sun"

Dirt

How does one keep one's children and house clean when they have this in their backyard?

We're working hard on making our backyard into something more than just a paradise for bindweed. We asked Ethan to help us move the dirt around when it first got dumped. He was a good little worker, but after a while he asked if he could go play on it with the girls because "It's a big pile of dirt and I'm a kid". There's no arguing with the boy's logic.

Yeah. I haven't written many posts lately. I have a ton of adorable pictures and stories. One of these nights when Matt's out of town I'll by some miracle feel ambitious rather than exhausted and catch up.