Summer time

Well, summer is here, and I am actually surviving quite well with all four kids all day. I am also slowly but surely doing all the work that needs to be done before we move. The packers come a week from today. I should just permanently glue a paper bag over my mouth to breathe into, but other than that I am handling it well. I am not as down as I was last week, although I know when we actually leave I will probably have another bout with sadness.

I have been a busy bee though. Alternating in between channeling Bob Villa and Martha Stewart. Our house is in need of repairs that we didn't get called in before we put in our moving notice, which means we either fix it ourselves, or pay out the nose for it when we move out. We are opting for fixing it ourselves. So far in the past few days, I have patched walls, spackled things, painted, and have begun the process of changing every light bulb in the house, even the flood lights in the car port. Sometime tonight I plan to change out the living room light switch.

I also narrowly averted disaster. Lindsay had left a bag of crayons in the car. Beloved crayons, that were hers at school and her teacher gave them to her. Well, this being summer, and Texas, when the bag was retrieved, it was blob o' crayon mess. I blew the dust off the filing cabinet in my mind marked "Preschool crafts from church", and pulled out a muffin tin. I put on an excited face and told Lindsay that we were going to make special rainbow crayons. She became excited and before I knew it, all four kids were at the table with me peeling the paper off the blobby mess and breaking up the crayons. Even Hannah "helped". Ryan got tired of peeling, so declared himself trash person, and had fun catching the paper everyone was dropping and putting it in the trash. So I didn't even have to clean up. It was one of those rare, cool moments where I actually felt like I knew what I was doing as a mom.

We tossed the muffin tin in the oven with Lindsay standing guard. Once they were melted, we let them cool and then popped them out. The kids are excited for this afternoon, when I promised they could test the "rainbow crayons" out. So that will kill even more time today. (A hint, for my mom friends that want to try this activity, use a silicon muffin pan if you have one. It made popping the cooled crayons out super easy.)

So things are going well. None of the nightmare I was scared of with all four kids running around crazy in the house all day or anything like that. This is starting off to be an easy summer. Now we just have to get that one small "moving across the country" thing out of the way. (ACK!)