Six Flags

This is the third year we have gone to Six Flags with the kids. Once again we managed not to lose anyone and no one threw up so I consider it a successful day. ;)

The kids are finally big enough to ride almost everything. I remembered to take ibuprofen this year to prevent some of the aches and pains of so many roller coasters!

I don't have a lot if pictures but here are a couple.

Getting ready to ride Superman

Done with Superman!

Chick-fil-a dress like a cow day

Oh, yes, I am crazy enough to take six children out to eat AND dress us all up like cows. (And no, I am not the giant cow!)

Operation "liberate Mama" has commenced

That title should really read something like "operation make-children-independent has commenced", but it's kind of one and the same. 

One of my goals for this summer (there are always too many!) is to teach the kids to do their own laundry. It's a little more complicated than it ought to be with our current laundry set up. We have a frontloading washer on a pedestal drawer. The whole thing sits on a concrete pad about 6" above the level of the basement floor.

What that really means is that I have to stand on tiptoe to see when I add soap to the dispenser. None of the kids can even get close. So I've been stocking up on laundry soap pods that get tossed directly into the washer drum.

I started with the boys and this is the third week they have done their laundry themselves. I go down with them in case they have questions (or forget to add detergent!) but they do it all by themselves. Since they don't really have a full load each week they are stripping their sheets and washing those, too. I'm all about killing two birds with one stone!

They think they're super independent (and all the girls are begging to do their own laundry, too!) but since they're only doing one load a week it's not burning them out.

Even better...it's two less loads for me!!

Fourth (fifth) of July

We didn't make it to fireworks on Friday night. The ones we usually watch weren't starting until 10pm and there was NO WAY I was keeping the kids up that late.

An awesome friend mentioned that her family would be going to a fireworks show at a local park only a few blocks from our house but on Saturday. 

How we could not have known about this amazing fireworks show so close to us? It was awesome and worked so well. The only downside was that because it's a neighborhood display we were really close to the fireworks.

As in a hundred feet from the firing zone! I got a few pictures of the fireworks but none of the great face painting Sara did on the kids.

Happy Independence Day!

Recent activities

Our summer (like every summer) just seems to fill up.

There's helping in the kitchen...

Getting Cardinals tickets...

Going to the park...

Lots of reading...

Snuggling the pets...

Going to parades...

And playing with Mama's camera!

I think she answered it herself!

On Thursday we were getting ready to head to Children's for a couple of hours of speech therapy when I got the following question from a frustrated child:

"Why do we need go a lot of speeches?"