A Little Random Catch Up

My dad is on vacation, so I have a bit of reprieve from his "You haven't blogged" texts, but I'm going to get the jump on it and give a quick update to the goings on around here.

For the first time in 22 years of marriage, Bryan took a day off of work to simply be at home. After that one day, we've come to the conclusion that we'll ease into retirement. That conclusion was easily reached when, three hours into the day, as I was cleaning bathrooms, he showed up in every one as I was cleaning it. While scrubbing the sink in the final bathroom, sensing his presence, I turned to look at him, and he exclaimed, "I'm not following you! I'm putting this away!" Perhaps we'll approach retirement in half-lifes. He'll take another day off in, say...11 years. Then one more in 5 1/2 years.

For the last four weeks, I've been listening to Cuckoo ask, "When are we going to have my birthday party?" I finally scheduled it for last Friday, when the elementary school had a weird extra day off. Let's talk about the difference in parties for the big kids when they were young versus parties for the little kids now.

Big kids...Cute, handmade invites for a themed party, full of planned activities. Phoenix had a bike parade party, where each guest brought his bike. I supplied items for them to decorate their bikes, as well as horns and personalized license plates. Star had a Nemo party, where we had a fun obstacle course of all the things Nemo's dad and Dory had to go through to find Nemo. Buttercup had a princess party, where the kids AND THE MOMS dressed up.

Cuckoo...No theme. No planned activities. Just 5 kids here to play.

Big kids cakes... I once made individual cakes in the shapes of the faces of Elmo and Cookie Monster. I didn't know which cakes each kid would want, so I made one of each for each and every person. It took me hours and hours to make them.

Cuckoo's cake... I spent five minutes putting green icing on a 9x13 cake, then sticking some cars, a fuseball, and paper goals onto it to give the impression of the video game Rocket League. We had no candles, so we sang and he pretended to blow candles out.

And you know what? The kids and Cuckoo had just as much fun as the big kids did at their fancy parties.

I bought myself a chainsaw. I'm officially the coolest person you know.

Between the trimming of the driveway trees Star has been doing all summer and the fun I've been having whacking of tree limbs left and right with my chain saw, we've made one gigantic burn pile. It was right next to the even more gigantic burn pile that's built up over the last 5 years. Over the long weekend, we began attacking it. We had a fire going for two days straight. Not only did we get all the recent trimmings burned, we burned so much old stuff we found and burned three Christmas trees from holidays past.

It was quite the walk down memory lane.

And yesterday, the poison ivy started popping up on my legs and arms.

Because for the life of me, I cannot figure out what that crap looks like.

And lastly, I'm starting to panic about this year's Christmas card. It's September, and I don't have a clue what to write about this year. It's been a pretty boring 2016. (for our family. It's all relative.) For 12 years people have been looking forward to our Christmas cards. There may big one big disappointing nothing from us this year.

So, I'm off to do more things. That's what I do these days. So many things.

I haven't read a single blog post in over a week. I haven't checked Instagram for about 2 weeks. I haven't even been on Facebook for more than a cursory look once or twice a day. We're in a phase of SO MUCH TO DO!! I miss you all, but this is how it is for now.

Have a lovely day!