August 31st – September 6th

I had a really stressful week last week and Siara rubbed my feet and did her best to make me feel better. We went to the Butterfly conservatory at Thanksgiving Point to get me out. Remi did not like the butterflies on her. She got the creepy crawly shivers whenever we tried to give one to her to hold. The boys of course loved it. The playground was open, finally. Remi practiced going down a small slide on her butt. She usually goes down on her tummy. Link and Locke fed the tree balls, played in the gem tunnels, and built meticulous towers with blocks (Link). With two adults keeping an eye on the kids, I finally got to check out the dung beetle exhibit. We all tried to see how much weight we could push on the dung ball. Siara won with over 200 lbs. The kids look so cute all pushing together.

Nate and Siara turned in their blue jeep because it was a lease and they didn’t want to keep making the payments on it. Plus Siara didn’t want to have any memories of Sengence who paid for it when she was working for them. Nate wanted to get a truck to replace it and he found a big beautiful Dk blue truck with four doors, a lift kit, and many other things that they wanted. It cost them about 9,000,and they had a budget of 2,000. But Siara had an extra 7,000 in Patrion sales this month, so they were blessed.The truck had a sensor light that wouldn’t go off so the dealer replaced the sensor but they light still didn’t go off. The dealer went through and replaced and thouroughly checked everything and finally discovered that the second sensor was bad too. So Nate got a thorough engine check and a bunch of new parts on the truck.

It was Link’s birthday this week. He got to be king for the day and everyone did what he told them to do. He loved it! (It might have had side effects when he had a hard time listening to his teacher the next day). I took him to go pick out a cake and he picked out some football donuts instead. He put four candles on one and blew them out and made a wish to get cars for one of his presents.

Link’s Grandma and Grandpa Martin sent him some superhero cars and a big electric Spiderman ATV and a Spiderman jacket. He rode it all over the yard wearing his jacket. He loved it! He said it was a dream come true (or something like that)

He looked like a pro when he rode standing up. It came naturally to him.

On Friday afternoon we were going to have a family birthday for Link and John. I was pressure cooking some meat for pulled pork when Nate hit a water line while digging a pond. He hit a gas line that last time he dug a hole too. (The fire department had to come out) The pond filled with water and he had to turn off all the electric and water until he could get it fixed. He got the line capped off eventually.

Link and Grandpa’s Family Birthday Party

Link has been liking dinosaurs lately so I got some Dinos to put on top of a cake for him. He was so excited he set them up himself and take them off.

Grandpa got a cheesecake cake from Costco that he had already eaten part of before the party.

Link loved his Spiderman ATV so much that he ate his lunch and cake on it.

Remi really likes treats. She likes using forks and spoons too, but I think she wanted the cake more, so she just picked it up with her hands and gobbled it down.

I bought a Dino piñata for the party. Link picked out little toys to put in it. The kids whacked it lots and lots of times with a plastic bat, but it didn’t even make a dent. Finally we gave them a croquet mallet and it started to get some dents in it It fell on the ground and they whacked it some more and tore it open. It had bubbles, whistles, sticky snakes, chocolate, party poppers, slime that made funny noises (the boys thought that was hilarious), Minecraft glasses, etc.

After that we played Pin the Tail on the Dinosaur. Link didn’t quite get the game. He wanted to do it without a blindfold.

Nate used an extreme bubble machine for the party too.

Lastly we watched a movie outside using the projector and big screen. We all got out blankets and pillows and made popcorn. It was a really nice family birthday get together.