Therapy

What do you do when your children are napping or have gone to sleep? Might I suggest a little home repair to help you relax and pass the time. So this is what has been keeping me busy. Every free moment I have either been on the internet shopping/researching bathrooms, or taking apart my own. I cannot even begin to explain how therapeutic it has been. My kids are great sleepers (once asleep) so they haven't seemed to mind that I have been riping out the walls while they sleep on the other side. I just wish I had more walls to tear down.











This is our disgusting shower (or was). This part of the tile and green board came off so easily in my hands. I was really tired of trying to clean this and now I know why. The moisture that had gotten in behind the tile was making it a loosing battle. Yuck.





This is the oops. Can you tell what happened? With my massive muscular athlete strength of my extremely buff and cut arms I broke through the tile AND my bedroom wall on the other side. Alas it is so difficult to gage my own strength sometimes.

We will be doing a little sheet rock wall patching on the other side.












This is the before shot. Well almost before because I had already torn out the carpet and removed the toilet.















We had our shower pan refinished once. It was great for awhile but then pretty soon it looked like this and nothing seemed to clean it. This has been the worst room of our house since we first moved in. I am so happy to finally be getting to this project.






This is my bathroom now. Minus the walls and sofette(?) of course. Oh and maybe a few other
little things. Now before all of our out-of- town guests panic over sharing one bathroom between the hoard of us... relax. I have it all under control. I think.

Ward Campout

We attended a ward campout this past Friday in the mountains just east of Albuquerque. I realized at 1:10PM at work that I was supposed to open the campground at 2PM. I dashed home and we left the house in about 35 minutes and opened the campground just before 3. We were very self impressed until it started raining on us and we realized we only had the clothes on our backs. The kids wrapped up in a sleeping bag liner and all was made right with a little grill cheese and tomato soup.








Wesley thinks Luke needs to cut his hair. He was making fun of him with his best hairy drooly Luke impression.

I have been a little bit busy lately. I will blog about it soon but in the mean time- isn't this the sweetest face?! He was 7 months on Tuesday. People have been asking me "Is he starting to crawl?". I wish he was starting to crawl. The reality is he HAS been crawling since shortly after 4 months (well, the inch worm scoot as I blogged about earlier) and crawling on all fours since 5 months. Around 6 months he was getting fussy and it never dawned on me why until Jason said "Well you know he has a tooth right?". He has TWO teeth. He sits as well and very well I might add. And of course for the last several weeks he pulls himself up to stand. So now he is always grabbing onto whatever he can and standing up. Maybe this doesn't seem like that big of a deal but it is way earlier than my other two (Allie finally learned to sit around 10 months for example). They grow up fast enough as it is, does he have to make it worse for me?! I guess it is all about keeping up with your siblings. He is so happy. Allie and Luke can really make him laugh. He seems so willing to just go along with whatever is going on as long as he is in on it. I cannot stop kissing this cute little face. Now STOP GROWING UP!

Allie's "Fork"

In an effort to control petty crime in our little city, I mandated mandatory jail time (a.k.a. "time out") for any citizens caught removing the cushions from our couch. Wesley LOVES to four wheel drive over the downed cushions, Luke is our prime removal suspect and uses the bare couch as his used Hotwheel lot, and Allie has officially entered her "fork" stage and loves to use the cushions to make her forks. She was calling this particular creation a garage. The little miscreant is probably eating on the carpet in there right now...


Luke and Allie infiltrated Wesley's little prison cell this past weekend and took him hostage as you can see...
The Stockholm Effect soon took over and the hostage became a criminal too.


Criminals, every last one of 'em. Don't trust that little face, he's just looking to see if he can fleece you for a little milk...

Hobo Camping

I helped our scoutmaster Scott Griffin this past weekend take the boys to Navajo Lake to earn the canoing and wilderness survival merit badges. I was the wilderness survival instructor and had the boys sleep outside the first night (a few of them had never slept under the stars) and sleep without a sleeping bag the second night. The low was maybe 62° so it may have been the warmest night in the history of that merit badge (well... maybe Florida has us beat). We were able to get away from the crowd by four wheeling along the beach a few hundred yards away from the formal campgrounds.
One of our boys purifying lake water...

On our way home this boy finally taught me the correct pronunciation of Dzilth-na-o-dith-hle, a Navajo boarding school south of Bloomfield, NM. Each of the boys cooked once and we ate like kings the whole time...

Tía Mo Mo "A very nice lady"

Kids say the funniest things sometimes. We were driving in the car today and I had mentioned something about Maureen (who is Jason's 1st cousin but to the kids- aunt Mo Mo). Allie said "Tía Mo Mo is my favorite friend. She is a veeery nice lady." And in a sing-songy voice continued "...she doesn't punch us, she doesn't hit us...." A very nice lady indeed. Wouldn't you agree?