K & B Playdate.

I love when Kallai comes over for playdates....the girls play so well together. Yesterday she came over and I took the girls to Jon's parents pool for some summer fun. They swam and played games for hours...it took a bribe of a happy meal to get them to leave the pool willingly:) We had a great time together.

Ahhhhh!

I'm starting to freak out a little...

• I am having a baby in 11 weeks +/-
• We have so much still to buy for him.
• Wondering if he will be early like B or make up for that by being late.
• He has to come out somehow **shudders**

I know it will all be worth it once he is in my arms.

Painting

I am so very tired....yesterday was crazy. Woke up at 5 and couldn't go back to sleep, so at 6 I got out of bed and got some stuff done around the house. Okay, so basically I moved things from one chaotic pile into lots of little organized piles and now my house looks messier than ever, but at least it's organized chaos. I woke up the kid and got her ready to go to swim lessons and then after that we went to one of my favorite places....the hardware store. I LOVE the smell of a hardware store.....seriously, if the Body Shop had an oil named "hardware store" I would buy a lifetime supply. I got new air filters and a can of spray texture for a few smaller sections that needed texture still. Then we went to the feed store to get food for the chickens and the ducks and then it was time to go home.

Once home I rolled primer on the walls of the entry room and the hallway and then I had to get up on the ladder to do the edging. Usually that is not a problem for me, but with the addition of the enormous lump protruding from the front of my body, my center of gravity has changed quite a bit, which made the task much more difficult. After priming I had to lay on a heating pad to help relax the spasms of pain that were shooting down my right leg with every step, then it was time to roll the paint, edge, and do clean up. I finally finished at 10:30.

Today I am SO sore.....and I get to do it all again, only this time in the new office:) Thank God for Tylenol, Bag Balm and coffee!!!

The end is in sight!

We have been living in a state of utter chaos and construction for the past few months and today there is an end in sight!!!

This is what I got to do last night to get prepped for texture

Today our friend Josh is coming over to texture the walls of our new office, the entry, the hallway, the kitchen patches and the hall bathroom(He doesn't know about that last one yet). After that I get to paint! I LOVE to paint walls. I will put on some music and my painting sweats, brew some coffee and go to town. I love to watch something as simple as paint completely transform a room...the whole feel is different afterwards. I'm not doing anything crazy with color this time....just taupe, but it will be a far cry from the white/blue paint combo, complete with a blue rose wallpaper border to separate the colors and an oversize chair rail, which were left to us by the previous owners. After the painting is done, it's time for Jon to put in the baseboards and new door trim. Then we get to move the office and I will finally have a place to put all the baby stuff that has been stacking up all over the place.

I am so excited that I will soon have my house back! I am brewing some coffee and waiting ever so patiently for Josh to get here so we can get started:)

Here are some pictures to show you what our lives have been like the past couple months:

Would this stress you out?

Speak up!

Yesterday was the last day of Brooklyn's swimming session. The teacher gave me her report card at the beginning of class and I eagerly opened it to see what new skills Brook had mastered and what we needed to work on together. Other than a note telling us we needed to do the same level again it was blank. If you have taken swimming lessons at the Aquatic center you have seen these report cards...they have a list of skills with two check boxes next to each one. One box says "Pass" and the other says "Needs Practice". Nothing was marked. As I looked over the skills I realized why nothing was marked; the teacher didn't teach half the stuff on the list! Seriously? She worked on skills that weren't even in the next two levels and skimmed over about half of the skills in her current level. I had been wondering if she was teaching the right skills for that level, but didn't want to say anything about it unless I was sure. She was really a very nice girl and the kids loved her, but it just seemed like she was treating it more like a summer camp than swimming lessons. So when I got the report card and realized that the reason she needed to repeat the class was because the correct skills were not taught to her I went to find the manager. I told her the situation, showed her the report card and asked to have Brooklyn evaluated to see what level she needed to be in. I was willing to have Brooklyn repeat that class if that is where they said she needed to be, with a different teacher of course. The head instructor got in the water and went through the list of skills with Brooklyn. At several points the teacher was met with a blank stare of confusion as she named a skill for Brook to show her, so they really got to see what was and was not taught. After seeing the teacher do the skills Brook was able to do them and the instructor said we could go to the next level! Yay!!! I made sure that they really thought she could handle the next class and weren't just passing her because I was there...that was not my intention. I really wanted to know what level she was so we could put her in the proper class. Having taught gymnastics for 7 years I have seen the effects of moving a child up to a level they are not ready for and I have also seen the effects of keeping a child in a class that they are too good for....neither are good.

Moral of the story folks: Speak up! Have your child evaluated if you believe they are in the wrong level of any class...in the long run it will save you time, money and frustration and will keep your child from boredom or feeling like a failure.