Ghetto Barbie

Some kids have the Barbie Dream House.

But the lucky kids build their's out of scrap wood....it's way more fun.

This has the added bonus of freeing up funds for the new hospital wing. These ladies are in dire need.

Toothpick crutches don't pay for themselves.

High Fashion

The girls are feverishly producing one-of-a-kind clothing for their barbies. There is felt and hot glue EVERYWHERE.  The messes have reached unprecedented proportions. 

I keep finding these adorable little miniature accessories all over. They melt my heart!

Barbie-size sheet music....charming!

An itty bitty box of chocolates...precious!

Little toilet filled with melted chocolate......oh. Oh no.

No no no.

Bored level way up

We have now resorted to ice pack races.

Oh, who are we kidding, you know I love it!

A Playdate

Sometimes, even the big boys need to get out of the house and burn off some energy.


We found Ethan a perfect playmate.

Everly and Aaron

Best buddies.

Nearing the end....gotta get it done!

Now, I know I said that we only need to go to the Drive-in to complete our Summer Bucket List, but actually we still have one other thing....Minute-to-Win-it games. 

They sound so simple. The perfect FHE activity...right? 

Yes. Except I don't have any of the things that 99% of the minute-to-win-it games require...balloons, straws, paper cups, candies, empty tissue boxes, you name it.

So this is our last day at home and we are gonna run to the store for a few supplies.

And as long as we are picking up Skittles, we should do this cool thing I saw on the internet:

Skittles and warm water...very cool!

We played the skittle/straw game:

And we played this other game with paper cups and balloons that was 100% successful and reducing my kids to tears because it was so hard.

And eventually we decided that it would be fun to build cup towers and see how high we could get.

Not exactly minute-to-win-it, but close enough!

Getting resourceful

Sooo....here's the thing.

It's still summer. 

We're out of money.

We're out of ideas.

The bucket list is SOOOO close to being checked off (can we get a stinkin kid's movie at the drive-in, for cryin out loud??).

It is hotter that the blazes of he_ _ out there.

And due to unprecedented levels of fighting, we are on a break from technology.

It's time to get creative.

Batman and Mini-bat!

If you can't play on the laptop....make a paper one. (You'd be surprised how much they love doing this.)

And don't forget a good ole fashioned game of "Santa's sleigh. Maybe I should tell them that there are supposed to be more reindeer than Santas.....

General Legos....Lego Conference....Henry B. Lego

I wonder if we could get this in the Friend?

Henry B. Eyring giving his General Conference address. 

by Megan Hufford

Haven Park

The weather is getting pretty nice, so we are spending long stretches of time at Haven Park. This park is great because it has fantastic climbing trees:

A sand volleyball court perfect for digging holes:

(Everly and her best buddy Aaron)

And newly installed swings just Ethan's size:

Boots

Freeze it. 

Freeze time now. 

I can do that.

The kids love this puppet show at the Library so much, so  I figured we should probably make one for ourselves. 

We scouted out a suitable produce box on our next trip to Aldi and chose the least offensive duct tape from the Walmart selection (we wanted blue, but the silver was preferable to the redneck Hello, Kitty! camo).

We had fun printing and laminating different animals and characters and soon we were in business.

A sliver of winter sunshine

I think God knew today that we were going to batty if we didn't get out of our house. 

I think He sent us a beautiful sunny day (in January) because He knows us. And He loves us.

And he doesn't want us to hurt each other. Or say something we'll regret.

We need to take off our huge poofy coats and slide down a slide.

We needed to make a pyramid in the dirt.

We needed to practice outside and not worry one bit about who might be listening or disturbed by 7th grade trombone skills.

Thank you!!

We'll just dip our toes in....

Summer is coming to and end. We've been in school for over a month and we are back in the swing of our routine: early morning seminary, after school sports, co op, preschool, homework. 

And driving!!!

Driving myself anywhere I want to go. 

So we drove on out to Lake Olathe to enjoy the sand and have a picnic. We brought our digging tools, but no suits or towels because we wouldn't be getting in the water.

Holy smokes. She's a beauty. 

Anna enjoyed her sandwich with a healthy sprinkling of sand.

They settled in to soak up the sun. We've been indoors a lot, due to the broken arm thing on top of the school everyday thing. You can only walk around the block so many times.

Pretty soon they had their shoes off and their pants rolls up.

And in no time at all they were:

Oh well, who are we kidding?

Might as well go for it.

I love the most

We aren't the best at most things. We're not so great at sports and school is hit and miss. We sometimes eat lots of treats and exercise sporadically.

But we are first class Make-Believers.

Naturally

We thought it would be fun to try on a little lipstick.

Which made this an absolute certainty a couple days later.

The price we pay

Sometimes I see a fun idea online and we are in that place right between boredom and desperation that inspires me to go ahead and mix up a big batch of homemade moonsand. 

Four.

Baby oil.

Have you ever tried to remove oily flour from a carpet?

I pray you learn from my mistakes and never have to.

Master Builders

For the last several nights, Ethan and I have been working on the Ultimate Pirate Lego ship. I love that he wanted to do this with me. He made the main body and the wings and the cannon and the shields and the anchor and the captain and the crew. So...mostly everything. But he didn't bat an eye when I suggested a helicopter propeller and and back up captain with self-destruct button and hot-chocolate lever... which pretty accurately represents the day to day of raising a teenager.

I love this kid and when we aren't fighting, we really get along.

Project hand-me down bag

We sometimes find bags of girl clothes on our doorstep. 

Because when you have six kids, people stop asking if you could use some clothes. They just know you could.

Sometimes we keep them and wear them and sometimes we just take them to Saver's with all of our old clothes.

And sometimes we have a fashion show.