Twelve Makes a Dozen

Apr 4, 2018

Work Party #2

Today was a rough work day. Mostly because things changed in the middle. So way back before Christmas when we found out that Dog Walker and Cat Lover would be living with us, we started making The Apartment. It meant we had to move kids around and if you remember, Crafty moved upstairs with the girls and we borrowed bunk beds from Bossy to fit everyone in.

Today when we were cleaning Curly's room and moving Crafty back to the basement, I texted Bossy to find out when she wanted to swap out beds...I didn't mean today!... but that's what happened. Drama Queen brought her truck over after work and we swapped the beds. My sweetie decided to clean the carpet in Curly's room before we reassembled his bed, so that added an extra project. And to make it even more complicated, Prima Donna wanted to learn to clean carpets because she just moved into an apartment and had to clean the carpets in her old place. So my sweetie gave her lessons while he was working on our own.

Are you confused yet?

No before pics... too embarrassing!

Suffice to say, the rooms aren't quite finished and the hallway is still crowded with stuff, but we made even better progress on the long-term goals, so that's good.

This is what I want to be doing!

Our fun activity was a trip to Kohl's where each kid was allowed to spend $10 on whatever they wanted (within reason, of course). I had $25 in Kohl's cash, so that helped to ease the burden. I was impressed at how careful some of them were with their money. Crafty bought 3 nice shirts and Baby Doll found a couple of cute shirts and some hair ties. It was a fun and happy day.

Tomorrow I think we are planning to plant the garden if we have good weather. Maybe I should pray for rain...

Apr 3, 2018

Not Your Ordinary Spring Break

Last week my sweetie told the kids he was taking off this entire week because it was spring break and he was planning 5 work parties so they better get ready. Of course they complained and whined, but today he got them all up early and they spent several hours cleaning the garage. It wasn't fun.

But along with the work party, he also planned 5 days of playing together. So around noon, Drama Queen took the kids to Little Caesar's for free pizza. I'm super impressed that Little Caesar's held up to their commitment to give away a free lunch if the #16 team beat the #1 team in college basketball. The kids said they were well prepared and they only had to wait for about 10 minutes in line.

After the giant work party was finished mid afternoon, we played dodgeball and basketball at the church and then after baseball practice for Curly, we went to see a movie at the free theater. We even stopped at Rubio's for free churros.

Can you believe the kids actually asked me what time the work party starts for tomorrow?

I'm not sure they will like it much... bedrooms are on the list...

Apr 2, 2018

Easter Weekend

We have had a beautiful Easter weekend!

On Saturday, we participated in a couple of candy scrambles, first the one at Smiths where my three youngest scored a ridiculous amount of candy as well as several free coupons for soda, fruit snacks, and pudding.

Just from Smiths!

Not long afterward, we arrived at the city egg hunt where Sport and Crafty had been setting up. It was crazy ridiculously busy, but there was still plenty of candy left for all the kids. I was watching Curly's age group and he got caught up in trying to grab the large basket in the center. He didn't get it, but he did get a huge welt on his chin where someone smacked him with their basket.

The rest of Saturday was spent dying eggs and watching conference. My sweetie decided we needed a contest, so he made up some categories and "voluntold" me that I would get to be the judge. It was incredibly hard to choose!

And today we had a lovely dinner with some of the kids and we watched the last two sessions of conference. The kids got Legos and candy and that silly bunny hid about a 6 dozen eggs around the house.

Now things are pretty quiet. Taco and Burrito are spending the night since the kids are out of school all week. My sweetie is planning work parties and play parties all week long. Hopefully we can have fun and be productive at the same time.