Papacita to the rescue!

Dad has been following progress on the deck. I think it was hard to do from afar because on the first and only day he had free this week, he called and said he'd be down!
Even though the weather only cooperated part of the day they got the new landing built and put on and the stairs reattached! I don't know much about building stuff but that looked like the trickiest part to me so it was very nice to have an expert on site for that stage of the reconstruction.
Honey was happy to reprise her role as water delivery girl! This year she's making good time by using her scooter to get from the front door to the job site haha!

Caution: Men at Work!

Dum Dum Da Dum!

For some reason, Lovey was asking about my wedding dress today and she asked if I could put it on. I decided that was indeed a very good question! Could I????? Hmmmm, it was a boring, rainy day and I knew all of them would get a kick out of seeing the dress that they've only ever seen pictures of.Lovey was the only one upstairs at the time so she came with me when I took it out of the closet. She oohed and ahhhhed over it and decided she'd be my "bridesmaid" and help zip me up. It was all very exciting as you can imagine! The zipper had a bit of hesitation and I was afraid it wasn't going to go but then up it went! Woohoo!!! I think I was even more excited about that than Lovey was about seeing the dress!
now, where did those 3 kids go I wonder.... hmmmm I didn't have a crinoline last time I checked!!!! Any upcoming brides can save that rental fee, my 3 will run around under your dress as you walk up the aisle, no charge!
Once I had the dress on, little Miss OCD wanted the veil in place, the same shoes and wasn't happy that I was wearing my glasses instead of contacts like in the wedding photos. I was surprised she didn't make me change my hair too! She also wanted to do my make up but I was afraid she'd get it all over the dress! Now that I know it fits, I might want to start wearing it more! :))) (just kidding hawney!)
Once I was "ready", Lovey ran screaming down the hall "COME SEE WHAT MUMMA'S WEARING! SHE'S BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Well! The other two dropped whatever they were doing downstairs and were up in no time flat. They were in awe and almost speechless at this sight!

They got their camera and Sweetie raided the vase on the table to get me a flower to hold for the pictures.

All in all a good way to kill an hour on an indoor day!

Pool Pals!

We had a sunny day so the kids wasted no time hitting the pool! It quickly took the heat out of them and they were in and out several times with trips to warm up in the playhouse in between dips.
Teena & I had another great visit while they played. Later on we were joined by our friend Julie and her girls too. Julie had a hard time extracting her two and she told me later that they wailed on the way home "I like Kelly's house, it's so fun!"

I told Boo to get ready for a picture and this is what she gave me. Not sure what that's all about T, but you might want to work on this a little before we do your family pictures!!!!!!!! :)))

Dandy Deck!

Murray and Aunt Cathy have put many hours into ripping up boards and nailing down new ones and have the entire surface pretty much done! It's looking great. There's the tricky part of getting the landing replaced outside the door and reattaching the staircase still to go but we have a floor!
I had to be pretty careful crawling out the kitchen door to get on the deck to take pics last night and I wouldn't want to do that while trying to balance a plate of hamburgers so I guess we will have to finish the rest.
Once they throw on some side rails and put the new lattice on, it'll be ship shape and no longer a life threatening encounter to go out there!

What a whine-oh!

The whining is about enough to drive me the rest of the way crazy! It is particularly bad on Sweetie's part. Any little thing sets off a tirade, mismatched socks, crooked bangs, an unappetizing meal etc will have her on the floor, screaming, whining and crying.

The other night I'd just had it with all the fussing about such ridiculous things! I told her I was going to start keeping track. Every time she whines about something, I'm putting down a little tickmark. If I get to five, Bunny sleeps in my room for the night!

Boys oh boys did THAT get her attention! With about a week in, I've only gotten Bunny one night and she's refraining like crazy! Most days I only get one or two marks, some days she's been up to four but for the most part she is really holding it in. I try to warn her before she gets going and have been really playing it up that I loooooooooooooove to catch her and I get bored when I'm not getting many tickmarks and she is determined that I won't "win"!

One night at supper I saw her getting geared up and said

Me: I haven't gotten to make any marks lately!!! don't you feel like whiiiiiiiiiiiiiining about something?????

Sweetie: (scrunching up her face & sticking it close to mine) No! do you feel like looooooooooooooooooosing????????????????

She cackles when I complain about not having many marks in a day and the other two are supporting her all the way. "C'mon, let's help Sweetie so Mumma will lose! You can do it Sweetie!! we're going to help you!!!"

We've gone from 492 outbreaks from her a day, down to 1-4. It is a remarkable change and I hope it lasts! I can definitely see her thinking about her reaction as things bother her. Much more effort is being put into using words instead of just screaming every time something isn't to her liking. It's been an amazing and fast transformation. I do feel slightly guilty using Bunny against her but I can't argue with the progress so far!

RIP Wyatt

dang. all the photos uploaded in reverse order & I can't get them to rearrange. Oh well. bear with me!

"Dearly beloved we are gathered here today to say goodbye to Wyatt the mole. He was alive and was living his life until Penwiper killed him." and thus went the funeral in our yard today!
PW brought a snack home last night & Murray took it away from him. We weren't entirely sure if the thing was dead at the time so didn't want to chance it reviving in our garbage can. Instead, Murray put it out in the front yard so it could make its escape if it had just been playing possum.

Apparently it wasn't! Today we had Teena & Boo as well as Julie and her girls over for a swim and a visit. Sweetie had gotten cold so went in to get dried and changed. She spent some time on her outfit and her hair and then came back out to play. Imagine my delight as she marches in with her gardening gloves to show THIS to all our guests!!!!!
Luckily everyone was fascinated with the little corpse and gathered round to check it out. I believe a fight broke out at one point when Sweetie was hogging the cadaver and others weren't getting a turn holding it. The sensible mothers gathered their children and got out of here at that point.
My three began planning the burial and funeral. We dug a hole and put the body in and covered it up. Then they decorated the grave with stones, flowers and a stick for the cross. Now, you can't have an animal funeral without proper guests so they ran in and "invited" some of their closest friends to attend.

We can't remember how it came about, but they decided to name the mole "Wyatt". They were very solemn as I took pictures of the gravesite and the "funeral". I didn't realize there was more planned for the service until Murray told me about it later. I had gone in to check on supper but he said it was quite involved. They even had a eulogy as each girl spoke about Wyatt and shared what little they knew about him!

Here & There

We enjoyed another gorgeous weekend and spent lots of time outdoors and the kids were in the pool a few times. I overheard them yesterday playing "Mario Sisters" (instead of the video game "Super Mario Brothers" I guess!). One of them sat on a pool noodle, pretending it was one of the horses that the game characters can ride on. The other makes the horse go by pulling her "Mario Sister" around the pool. Sounds like a good gig if you're rider!


Murray's gotten a good start on the deck. He began demolition last week and greatly enjoyed putting his new sledgehammer to work. Aunt Cathy came by this weekend to help him get some work done.

You can see the badly sloping floor. It turns out there's lots of rotten parts to replace!