The ocean is freezing! But all the kids jump right in. Even the one wearing the pink cast. She duct tapes a plastic bag around it. It's been really hard for me to take working on the house breaks. If it weren't for my sister Candice always, saying, "Hey should we go to the beach?" I really don't think we would have gone at all this season. And when Candice isn't planning fun family outings she is here helping me move.



  She is constantly making the 45 minute drive to help out for a day. She is on her way here now to help with boxing up more stuff and it is only 8 in the morning. So I just have a second and want to write about this little guy above, before I forget his latest 3 year old moments. Last Sunday we went to have Father's Day dinner at their apartment in Manchester. They live on the 8th floor. We had a great time, and I decided her apartment kitchen is better than my new one. About the time we were packing up to leave Marcus disappeared out the door. By the time we realized this he was gone. Nowhere to be seen on floor #8. It had been at least 10 minutes by the time he was located down in the lobby waiting at the front desk with the concierge. He had taken the elevator down by himself. I asked him how he knew which button to push. He said he pushed "Go, it had a  G on it" That would be ground level. He also said he pushed the "Bad" Button. That would be the "B" right next to the "G" button. Luckily the first stop was Ground level, not basement. Then he would've been running through the parking garage. I hate  those kind of panicky 10 minute moments. I have them way too often.


  He really is becoming extremely mischievous just as you would expect a little boy to act. A house full of sisters hasn't prevented a thing. He loves that we live on a hill and all he has to do is find something and get it to the edge and then, "Whoopee! Watch it go!" So we are always finding stuff down across the street. Yesterday he grabbed the lawnmower out of the garage and rolled it over. We found it in stuck down in the woods across the street. He is always so sorry for his actions, and it is actually hard to discipline because he is so repentant. . . until he does it again, you know.


  I watched him yesterday take the helium balloon he had got at the church the night before into the sun room. The next thing I knew he had opened the door and just let it go smiling into the air as it floated off. I went rushing in and said, "Marcus, you can never get your balloon back, why did you do that?"


"That's not my balloon, Mom. It's Caroline's." His was safely stored in his room.


  The last small catastrophe I wanted to mention Candice swears had nothing to do with Marcus, but was all her daughter Laura's doing. She noticed Marcus has bath toys and she doesn't and now Candice says she insists on putting all kinds of random stuff in there with her so she can take a bath like Marcus. So I put the two of them in the bath as usual when we got done painting. It gives us a break and Laura had paint all over her. She tends to strip quite often and her little bum was covered in white kitchen cabinet paint.
  I was in the living room making little checks on them here and there. . . well, I thought I was. Apparently my time in between checks had gotten a little spread out because the last time I went in, I was shocked to see the entire bath filled. Laura had made a lot of trips into Caroline's room and had hauled out all their stuffed animals and dumped them in. Then she had gone back for the dolls. Three American Dolls along with all their clothes and accessories were in the tub too. Once she was out of toys and stuffed animals to dump in she had started adding Caroline's shoes.
Unsupervised baths are a very bad idea with Laura in the house. That was not a fun bath to clean up from. And Marcus had three very upset sisters.

Some babysitting shots

 Savannah broke her arm running hurdles just in time for the league meet. Since she was out of the running she stayed home and babysit while Brent and I had a perfect date. Four hours at the track with no Marcus to chase around, over, behind, through, or under the bleachers. Kennon got first place in two of her heats at the meet. She didn't win anything over all and I can't remember which events they were but I believe it was the 200 and the 400. I love running lately but the fact is I am the slowest person I know and I always have been. I just didn't ever win a race ever. So it's pretty exciting for me to think that's my daughter out there running faster than other girls. 

 We are loving having a cousin in town. Candice always dresses Laura so cute. Nothing but homemade sun dresses. She went shopping with my older girls one day last week and I was left babysitting the little kids. They wanted to go swimming and Laura didn't have a swim suit. 



I don't think this girl has looked trashy a day in her life before I babysit her. Candice came home to find us swimming and said that Peter would've died seeing her like that. She just doesn't get dirty and run around in a old white T to often I guess.  She loved it!

 Camille set up the pool in the perfect mudhole and Marcus let Laura borrow his t-shirt. Seeing her running around splashing without a swimsuit reminded me of the good old days growing up with her mother. Candice, Ciana and Alainna were called the three little girls in our house. And I have so many memories of these girls swimming in nothing but panties in mud puddles. Real mud puddles. The ones we would find all over the farm and within two seconds my three little sisters were stripped down and swimming away. We had some pretty deep puddles. I never swam in them myself but Laura's mother sure loved to. 

  I found these pictures on the camera taken by Kennon when she babysit all day last Saturday when Brent and I had a long date working on our new house. Which by the way is all painted now! Mostly by me standing on a very tall ladder, completely out of my comfort zone. Brent did the extremely high stuff but we are talking about a three story ladder here. 

 They are making brownies. With aprons and everyone getting a turn to measure, stir . . . 
 and taste. 

Picture perfect. 

 They were all cooked and waiting for us when we got home. 

And they cleaned up too!

I love finding this stuff on the camera. It really is so awesome when your children start taking the pictures. 

The day our trampoline rolled away

Caroline is always complaining that she's the only one that never has a friend over. I don't have some kind of rotation schedule it's just that the other girls are always on the phone planning stuff with their friends and Caroline never thinks of it until she's the one being left out after school. So one morning last week we got up and I happened to think of calling her best friend to see if she could ride the bus home to our house. They got off the bus and spent the first half hour jumping. Then they came in for a belated afterschool snack. While we were working on that we heard faint sirens going off outside. It sounded something like a warning siren and Kennon became concerned, of course, while I continued to run around cleaning etc. About 2 minutes after that

the sky suddenly darkened and the power went out. Kennon ran over to the window to check out the current conditions and happened to see our trampoline taking a violent roll down our hill. She was screaming for me to get out there and save it (The kids paid for half of it)  . . while I was screaming for everyone to get into the basement in case of . .  I don't know. . .Tornado?? 

I hadn't bothered to tune into the message that was being broadcast via the siren and there had been a tornado an hour away the week before. So we all ran into the basement which was now completely pitch black at 4:30 in the afternoon. I found candles and we sat in the room with no windows for about an hour all the while reassuring Caroline's best friend that we were just being cautious and No, her parents weren't dead. My cell phone doesn't get reception at our home usually so we really felt stranded and out of the loop. Finally the hour passed and I ventured out and was smart enough to get into the car and listen to the radio because we had been unable to find any batteries of course to run any inside. I listened to several news broadcast and finally determined that it was safe now since no one said anything about a tornado a coming. Then I drove the best friend home, taking necessary detours to avoid the power line wire that was strung out across the road the trampoline just rolled over.  As she got out of the car she turned to Caroline and said, "Caroline, I am never coming to your house again!" 

Which I thought was hardly fair. To pin the storm and power outage on a 7 year old. We carried the trampoline back up the hill and it was mostly intact. Or I guess it is because we are still jumping on it. We had no power or water until the next morning and my two oldest daughters seriously couldn't handle it. I kept trying to get them to just relax like we were camping, but they thought it was such a trial. Even though we drove downtown, picked up pizza and then hung out and had a picnic in the dark just the seven of us. Kids these days. 

Mitt Romney announced his candidacy for President of the United States today 15 minutes from my house. And of course I was there. 

This turned out not too flattering of his wife Ann but it happens to be the picture where he shakes Marcus's hand.

The event was held at a local farm in a big field and we all ate Mrs. Romney's famous chili. Former Senator George Lovejoy (our realtor) introduced me as his friend and fellow mormon. I was doing fine on my own talking to him but as soon as he had to tell him I was a mormon he immediately got the moving on attitude. I guess he figured he already had my vote.

And look.  His wife Ann is really beautiful. 

Candice and her sister in law that lives in Boston also scored some tickets thanks to my friend the Senator.  

Brent has informed me that our house is voting for Ron Paul so I felt a bit like a traitor yelling Go Mitt! But either way.  Hooray that I am living in NH for the election season. 

Caroline's 7th Birthday fell on a busy Monday. It was so hectic we didn't even get any pictures of her surprise visitors straight from Tennessee.  Uncle Peter, Aunt Candice and cousin Laura arrived. That's okay though because they will be here all summer. Hooray!

 Caroline wanted fondue for her party so I just made a small ice cream cake to go with the fruit and chocolate.

Once the partying was over we put our house guests to work. Peter followed Brent around all day while Brent cut holes in the side of our house to fix things like the upstairs shower faucet. Let's just say we bought a very leaky house. Luckily I happen to be married to a plumber that doesn't mind doing the work on tall ladders. 

Candice has been inside helping with the painting.  Why do my children hate their mom in bib overalls so bad? They are horrified that all of our new neighbors keep meeting me in my painting gear - the same overalls everyday. I gave Candice the cute painting outfit to keep her happy. 

 Along with lots of little helpers. Caroline insisted that she needed to borrow my "safety goggles" for the heavy duty sanding she was asked to do.

 

It's hard coming up with jobs to keep everyone busy. 

Peter and Candice had to leave us this week to start his job in Manchester. So now I am just trying to squeeze a few hours of painting in everyday while the rest of the family is off at work/school. 

Besides our new busy remodeling schedule we also had Savannah break her arm last week, Marcus pick up two new bloodsucking ticks, Kennon get three first place finishes in her last track meet, Camille sing and dance on stage in her mother's high heels for the grade school show, and that's all that comes to mind. 

Stay tuned for some before and after photos of our big house project.