et tu Jenny?

Yes, I know. I have committed the worst possible blogging crime - I have neglected it for an entire week! Please, my 3 loyal readers, forgive me. I have good excuses! OK, I have excuses. With the Big Birthday Party this last Sunday we had relatives coming to stay and cookies to roll and cakes to bake and decorations to buy. And then after that it was dishes to wash, and upset tummies and sunburns to pamper, and scooters to ride, and hours to sleep in. And, of course, there was Harry. Dear, sweet, time-sucking Harry... and I haven't even cracked Deathly Hollows yet. In fact, I don't even have it in my possession yet (grrrr at Amazon.com) but I have been rereading everything and just started Goblet of Fire (#4) last night. I still have about 2000 pages until I'm ready for the latest one (because the plot got so danged complicated that I have completely forgotten what happened in numbers 5 and 6!).

Anyway, brief (lol, as if) recap...

Thursday we started the day out with a nice long walk with some friends. The kids spent most of the time lallygagging (I can't believe that word was in my spell check, lol) and filling their pockets with rocks. We did find one really interesting one though - a little chunk of petrified wood - but I think I accidentally left it in the car and then DH cleaned the car out and it ended up in the trash. :( That family ended up giving the kids a rock tumbler for their birthdays though! I was just remarking to someone a week or so ago that I had been longing for one, kept getting offered free ones from relatives, but DH would never let us bring one home. I guess if you wish hard enough somebody hears. :) I think we read some dinosaur books later? I can't quite remember - which is why I"m such an avid blogger! Horrible memory!

Friday morning BIL came over to help DH with the fence. Have I blogged about that? It blew down in a wind storm but our insurance is only covering half the cost because the wood was rotted. *roll eyes* It's a 20 year old fence. What do you expect? So DH is doing the work himself so that he can have it done for the amount they gave us. Anyway, that meant that school for the day was of the Practical Arts sort: carpentry and baking (Cassia and I made cookies while the boys worked on the fence). Later in the day I had Cameron start working on his record book for 4-H. Yes, we just started the record book that is supposed to be turned in on the 31st. Yes, the one where we will be out of town on the 31st and need to mail it in before then. Yes, it's still not done and I'm probably going to have to drive it out to BFE next Monday to get it in on time. Yikes.

Saturday was all about preparing for the party. We had a combo party for Cassia's 4th (July 15th) and Cameron's 6th (August 4th) birthdays on Sunday. It was Harry Potter themed, of course. All the kids LOVED mixing potions with Dragon's Blood (cherry-pomegranate juice), Essence of Goldfish (carrot juice), Lizard Gizzards (green Odwalla Super Food juice), Frozen Clouds (orange sorbet), Pixie Tears (club soda), and Goblin Spit (lemonade). They also seemed to enjoy making their own wands out of wooden dowels and sparkly pipe cleaners. The broom races were not a big hit. The Sorting Hat (giant felt sorting hat made by a friend of mine) with the big cavernous mouth full of House Badges to wear was a hit with some but a very scary proposition for others. In the end, only one child flat out refused to do it. It was a great party and I was quite overwhelmed with the generosity and thoughtfulness of our friends. :) I remember back when Cam turned 3 and he so desperately wanted a kid party but we just didn't know anyone. We did know two families (both of which were actually at this year's party!) but only one of them could come so it was a pretty lame party, lol. He didn't mind, but I was really sad about it. Ahhh, we've come so far!

Monday I spent the day recovering. I was just exhausted! I literally spent most of the day laying on my bed reading. I felt like I was coming down with something, but nothing really materialized. I actually wrote that day down as a school holiday on our attendance sheet, lol. I called it "Birthday Party Holiday." The kids birthdays both fall on the weekend this year so we can't really take a holiday for those anyway. ;)

Tuesday started with ballet and once we got home I actually managed to get Cameron to do two exercises in his math workbook to make up for some of the time we've missed. We then continued with his 4-H record book work and he drew some story pages to illustrate the projects he was in this last year. I still need to download and print some photos of him doing his projects for the photo page... not sure when I'm going to get around to that. Yep, I'm definitely going to end up driving to our leader's house to drop this off on Monday. I also read another dinosaur book to the kids and Cameron actually did a narration on the Magic School Bus In the Time of the Dinosaurs. At first he said that he couldn't remember what happened but as I prompted him a bit he remembered quite a bit. He drew a really cute picture to go with it but I wrote the narration in ink and it soaked through the back of the paper and made his pencil drawing very hard to see. :( Note to self: pencil only!

Wednesday Cassia, Greyson, and I slept in until almost 9:00!! I couldn't believe it! That put a damper on the entire day and by the time I was ready to "crack down" and do some schoolwork, it was already 1:00 and time for us to go to Park Day. Unfortunately, no one was there again. Summer is not a good time for Park Day. So we spent about half an hour there, riding new birthday scooters, and then we went to go pick some things up at the Treasurer's house that I needed. We hung out there for about an hour, chatting, and then came back home again with plenty of time to do that schoolwork! Um, ok, maybe not. The kids dove into a new Color Wonder set they had gotten and started drawing all sorts of cool pictures. Sneaky me said, hey why don't you draw a dinosaur! Cam drew a pretty cool T-Rex and I read them a couple dino books to set the mood.

And that brings us to now where the kids are riding their scooters out back and I am itching to get back to Harry Potter while ignoring the pile of laundry that's laying on my bed waiting to be folded.