Summer of 101 Continues

Here's my problem right now. I spend so much time just sitting--sitting and nursing the baby. While this is happening two things occur: 1) I watch hours of housework reverse itself before my eyes in a matter of minutes and can do nothing about it, and 2) my mind has nothing else to do except scrutinize my house and plan projects to improve it. I have redesigned our kitchen several times (it really will be perfect by the time we actually do it), I have designed built-in cabinets in the family room, I have redecorated the kids' rooms, I have dry-walled/painted/re-shelved my laundry room, I have transformed our garage complete with shelves, paint and concrete stain, I have created art for the dining room, I have planted a garden and landscaped the yard, I know what our screened in patio should look like and I have built a computer desk specific to our needs. Oh, this is all in my head of course, and some of it on paper. The problem is that I have way too much time to think up these grand schemes and no time to actually do any of them. This situation can get a little frustrating, I guess, but at least my mind is still functioning. Someday I hope to get something done.

Here are some things we have accomplished from the infamous 'list', however insignificant they may be:

#5 Go to library story time. Twice, actually. This was my first outing by myself with all four kids when Connor was 2 1/2 weeks old. I managed.

#25 Finger paint with pudding.
This was also right after we had done #81 Play in the rain, which explains the swimsuits. Pudding was a good one and in my opinion, better than real finger paint. And you can eat it.

The masterpieces:

#18 Go see a movie. We all went to see Toy Story 3 when my dad was here and everyone did great, excluding half a container of drinkable yogurt all over Marissa's shirt. Good movie!

#66 Run through the sprinklers and #14 Go swimming. We've done both a lot.

#65 Play hide and seek. This seems to be a daily game, though I've never taken part--probably due to nursing the baby and scheming up ideas instead.

#19 Make paper airplanes. It was a good thing we did this one when Jared was home because as it turns out, he spent considerably more time as a child making paper airplanes than I did and had way better designs than me. All of them ended up on the roof so Jared, setting the example, climbed up there to get them. Now all my kids want to get on the roof. After he jumped off, they all started begging to jump off too. Go figure. #33 Have a marshmallow fight. This was another success. Marissa just dumped her cupful on the wet ground before actually catching on to the whole 'throw them one at a time at someone' thing, so hers was basically a sticky clump by the time she picked them all up. Good times.#56 Go to Burger King. This, I must tell you, was not one of my ideas, but there's one close to our house and it has the classic, sticky, fast food playground that my kids adore. What's a few more germs anyway?

#31 Act out a scripture story. This ended up a lot like the marshmallow fight except we decided to use crumpled paper instead. Any guesses about which story? Here's a hint: my kids only pick ones where you get to stand on something really high (like a tower or a wall). Yep, Samuel the Lamanite. Luckily we are really bad shots so, true to the story, I don't think Erin got hit at all. Should've used marshmallows, or arrows.

#23 Fireworks. On the Fourth of July we just walked outside, since the babies were asleep, and watched different shows around town and the neighborhood. Then we crashed our next door neighbors' personal fireworks show which turned out great, and bonus, we didn't have to buy any fireworks. They even gave our kids a bunch of sparklers which they have never done before. Next year, we'll have our kids wear shoes before handing them hot glowing ember spraying sticks. Lesson learned.

Oh yeah, Erin says this is her fireworks shirt and she saved it for like two weeks until the big day. She's right, though; it does look like fireworks.#90 Make popcorn. Easiest one ever.

#93 Take a bubble bath. Okay, also pretty easy. Just add bubbles to their regular bath.

#71 Go for a walk and listen to sounds. You actually couldn't hear a whole lot above the cars, planes, air conditioners, our own feet and the baby crying, but we did hear dogs, crickets and frogs too.

#99 Find nocturnal animals. This was one of Erin's ideas, possibly from watching Dinosaur Train or Curious George... or just because she wanted to stay up late enough to find them. We walked around our house once and found our cats, frogs, fireflies, maybe crickets and mosquitoes. I got bit 4 times.

#15 Find shapes in the clouds. It was really, really bright out so we couldn't look for that long. But we found dogs, dinosaurs, unicorns and monsters.

See the dog?#73 Make Orange Julius. Yummy! The kids were plugging their ears because the blender was so loud.#91 Make a fruit pizza. This started out as (another) cooking disaster. Don't try to make the sugar cookie crust on one of those pizza baking stones. I've tried it twice and it doesn't work. One was raw and one was too crispy and stuck to the stone. This one worked and it was so, so good. I will definitely make this again. Great design too, if I do say so myself.#92 Write a nice note to a friend. I'm not sure if Erin's notes made it to their recipients, but the goal was to write them, not deliver them.

#59 Play a game on the computer. They love Starfall and PBS kids.

#28 Sleep with cats. I love this one. Believe it or not, this was not at all hard to do. Here are only a couple of examples.Oh man, am I frumpy! Postpartum rocks. It is seriously a mystery why I can't fit into my normal clothes say, 5 weeks after having a baby. I mean, there's no baby in me. I tell myself every time not to even attempt the 'try-on' until maybe 3 or 4 months later but it never fails. I always do and I never fit. Seriously, I'm mystified.

#63 Make a collage of words and pictures. The kids cut out things they liked, mostly food. Mine was the note to Jared. Let's just say the kids were done a good hour before I was. There's probably a reason I haven't made one of these notes since BYU. They take forever! But Jared truly appreciated the effort. And like the note says, he is the greatest!See the baby? See the mess?By my count, that's 33. We have 4 weeks till school starts so we better get cracking on those other 68.