July in Review

Well.  It appears that an entire month somehow managed to go by without me.  At least that's what you might assume if you read my blog very often.  I just haven't been in the mood to blog lately I guess.  That, and I'm having problems with getting my pictures to transfer to my computer and it's so frustrating that I just avoid trying.  I haven't even been in the mood to take as many pictures.  Hopefully I'll be able to do better...

So, here's what we've been up to this month...

My husband has been working a lot.  It's pretty messy work :)

He brought his work truck home a couple of days.  The boys all thought that was the greatest thing ever.

The littlest two rode with him while he backed into the driveway (big thrill!) and the four year old got to ride with him when he took the truck back out to the shop (a 30 mile drive).

The nine year old went with him one day to get new tires put on the truck in the town 100 miles south of us.  That was a big deal for him.

4th of July - We live in a great location for viewing fireworks - just a short walk over to the football field where we usually sit to watch them.

We've also been enjoying watching our local moose herd - though I was a little worried about my pot of cherry tomatoes this morning, when one walked past my bedroom window at 5 a.m. It was fine though.  Surprisingly he didn't eat them.  He must not have seen them.

The boys have been growing like weeds, as you might expect.  Hard to keep up with them and keep everyone in clothes that fit.  Thankfully we have a great thrift store in town.

We've had some rain, including big thunderstorms yesterday.  The boys know just what to do with that...

Obviously, find the nearest puddle and jump in.

There has been a lot of "schooling" too, but don't tell the nine year old.  He thinks he's just playing.  This is a dandelion stem he found.  We measured it - 27 inches!  He's also participated in the summer reading program at the library, and attended two different weeks of Bible camp.  This actually is the key to my idea for homeschooling this year.  I'm not going to call it school and we're mostly going to do fun things - projects, experiments, etc. and reading.

My husband decided to shave all his hair off (which I don't have a picture of at the moment).  He's been doing the comb-over thing for years and was sick of it.  So he had me use the clippers to cut most of it off before shaving.  The four year old is always extremely afraid of getting his hair cut (read: panic attack).  This time he took the scissors outside and started trimming on his own.

Now I know.  Most of you would run out there and be angry with the kid for cutting his own hair. Not me.  This has been such an issue for him.  I kept a close eye on him, but let him clip away as long as he wanted to, then offered to buzz the rest of it off.  Of course he didn't want anything to do with the clippers, so I told him I would use the scissors if he would sit really still.  It turns out he was so afraid of the clippers that he was motivated to sit still and let me use the scissors.  It took us a good hour - between the two of us - but it got done, and it doesn't look too bad.

He had cut it so short with his own cutting that I had to cut it as short as possible.  But he let me do it, and now we won't have to cut it again for quite some time.

I usually try to do all the guys at once, but the timing didn't work out this time.  So now I still need to cut the 9 year old and 2 year old's hair.

When our neighbors flood irrigate their yard, our playground floods.  It was really bad the other day. We had a good three inches of standing water in the playground, and water running out our driveway and into our neighbors.  The four year old walked out into it and told me, "It's really deep."  I wasn't real happy about it because they always do it in the middle of the day when I need the playground, that was the THIRD time that week.  Talk about frustrating.

We came across an old hat that used to be my daughter's when she was this little (she's 20 now).  She was nicknamed the "little bum" and this was her "bum hat."

Looks like it has a happy new owner.

Despite my lack of posting, it has really been a busy month.  Along with everything I've already mention, we've had several different weeks of VBS (Vacation Bible School) to attend, started a new weekly ladies' Bible study (meeting at my house), attended the annual Green River Rendezvous here in town, had doctor appointments in Jackson Hole (77 miles north) for the two younger boys, made an emergency trip to Rock Springs (100 miles south) to get a new lawn mower (that's the closest Walmart), and I've been reading like crazy (working on book #11 for the month.  I've finished my reading goal for the YEAR of 52 books, but I'll post about all that tomorrow.)

We also had a week of stress when our landlords decided to camp out in front of our house, and wanted to do a bunch of repairs which meant they were in and out of our house multiple times every day.  They also dug up the septic line from the house to the tank - which meant digging up our circle driveway - to put heat tape under it.  A wise move, I'm sure, but such a pain.  They promised they "wouldn't be in the way" and they were nothing but.  Anyway, it turns out the house was her parents' house, and she got all sentimental while she was here and decided she wants to move back into it.  So we're going to have to move again.  We have a one year lease, so there is no rush - even though she was really pushy about it - but it's just such a pain to have to move again.  But who knows... maybe we'll find something we like even better.

So there you have it.  Now you know what we've been up to.