He used to just have two on it. I’m not sure what happened recently. 🙂

He used to just have two on it. I’m not sure what happened recently. 🙂

One of the rules for going to the water park and being able to run around on their own is that they MUST come and check in at each safety break. These happen every two hours and are announced on the loudspeakers—and they clear the pools. We’ve had a few issues with them not remembering and they’ve been given warnings. Today was the last day for warnings, so Katie had to sit out for 15 minutes (past the end of the safety break, for a total of 30 minutes). I figure that’s small payment for the stress she caused me having to go hunt her down (and not finding her on the first go-round).



There’s a long story behind this but suffice it to say we’re almost at the finish line.

She was a hot mess when it happened—she was afraid it was going to bleed like a bloody nose. I literally had to hold her and have her breathe deeply to calm down. But then she was happy!!


Getting her tooth pillow ready!

We might have just discovered that Owen left the basement freezer open. Who wants to come for ribs Saturday night? Not kidding. We have four racks of ribs in the sous vide.



At least they told me we needed milk when we were at Sam’s Club this morning. #thestruggleisreal

In the shade, all the time.


So I included him!

She sits next to me at the table when I’m working.

MEOW!


I buy too many shoes (on sale) for Katie to remember what styles and sizes I have so I have to keep a photo collage to reference when I’m out shopping. Today we had to redo it since it hasn’t been done in about 2-3 sizes.


Owen is harder to buy for—here’s what was in his closet. 🙂


They were just getting done with morning camp and we were just arriving to go to the playground!

Katie loves the pole.

They still like the baby swings. The only rule is that they have to get in and out of it themselves because I am too old to be picking them up, putting them in, and trying to wrangle them out.




It’s hard to get back to sleep after you’ve been awoken at 3:30am by your dog screaming (seriously, that’s the best way to describe it…and it’s seriously awful) because she’d gotten her mouth/snoot/teeth hooked between the bars of her crate and her paw was bleeding from scratching at it.
If Tom wouldn’t have been here I’m not sure what I would have done. We didn’t even have tools big enough to cut the wires—he had to bend them with brute force until they broke.

We wondered what on Earth was going on…until we realized it was raining again. She must be REALLY messed up from that lightning strike.
(Much after the fact we both said we really wish we would’ve gotten a picture of it because it was truly unbelievable. Honestly, I had thought about getting a picture but I had left my phone upstairs because we hadn’t expected to find anything insane…and we were too wrapped up in extracting her safely to worry about it.)
So we bandaged her paw and Tom stayed up (since it was almost his normal waking time) and I was up—trying to calm down—until about 6am when I finally crashed.
This is the solution Tom had come up with by the time I rolled out of bed at 9:30.

It’s not perfect but we really don’t want to let her free roam if we can help it as she tends to move around quite a lot at night and wakes us up.
She doesn’t seem too worse for the wear. Thankfully.

Ha! It’s not who you thought, is it? (We sold our couch in preparation for a new couch that is taking longer to arrive than we initially planned.)


So Owen snuck into our bedroom and was caught using the iPad that had previously been taken away twice, including for the rest of the summer (and then lying about it). Owen was the actual guilty party but Katie knew he’d done it.
I want to take away the new Xbox they’ve been promised, but after some discussion with Tom, we’re not taking it away but the date they get it back will get pushed out if they keep making bad decisions. (Owen has had two major bad decisions since. I’m hoping he gets it by Christmas.)
We’re not even a week into summer break and I’m done.

Katie was playing at the neighbors and came like this—they were doing hair and dressing up. She loved the earrings.


Okay, one of my personal hells: A garage sale. Last minute. In the rain.

This is a community-wide sale that we only found about Thursday so we didn’t put much effort into it. And since it was rainy we didn’t really have much to do anyways so I sat there and worked on business and blog stuff the whole time.
I did have a helper for a bit.

And a cuddler.


She needed to change her clothes to go to the dentist and her first attempt didn’t cut it (bike shorts that are meant to only be used as undershorts for dresses) so I suggested the skirt. Then surprised her by suggesting her Tangled heels. She was so damn cute…






Time to make guacamole with jalapeños from the garden!! I’m sure I’ll spend more overall than if I went and bought them but the convenience is worth it. 🥑🌰🌶🍹

Grannie and Papa wanted to celebrate Katie’s birthday since they won’t see her on her birthday so the kids helped make rice crispy treats!



Granny took on the huge challenge of cleaning up both kids rooms and switching out too-small and seasonal clothes…and one of the last things for Owen was a sock matching party.

When your stepsister texts you at 10:30pm and says they are in town and wonders if you can meet the next day for dinner? Of course you say yes. And invite them over for a home-cooked meal and campfire with s’mores.
