Where did September go?

 I have every good intention to post once a week so that family and friends far away can keep up with our lives...but, then life happens and 9 pm happens...and falling asleep on the couch happens...so here we are.  But, let me sum up some of the life that happened.

The above picture is what my husband who loves me spent his Labor Day weekend doing.  As faithful readers know, we spent the month after we closed on the house painting all of the main rooms.  When we moved in, only the two bathrooms had not been primed and painted.  The hall bathroom, in particular, had a pretty bad cigarette smell.  I could not stand being in there for any time, honestly.  I tried candles (not super safe with 4 kids...one who recently learned the word 'hot'), a Febreeze plug-in thing that was super powerful...which was still better than the alternative.  I also put a car vent air freshener on the vent.  This actually worked nicely in our bathroom...not so much in the hall bathroom.  That bathroom needed to be painted.  It also happened to be the one room in the house with crown molding...which is weird, right?  So, I asked my husband who loves me to remove that molding.  Which he did...and proceeded to peel the paint clean off the wall all the way down to the dry wall.  Molly helped.  She loved it.  But, that meant it would be a much bigger project than we originally intended.  He had to drywall the corner and re-texture the whole room.  And, wait for everything to dry.  Which gave him plenty of time to prime and paint our bathroom (I did help...a little...ok, ok, I got him cold beer..once...I'm the worst)

The result is now we have a lovely hall bathroom that does not stink.  We still want to replace the light fixture and re-glaze the bathtub.  But, those will come in time.  Hopefully before we move.

 Molly has taken to playing with Penny.  A lot.  I believe the catalyst was our putting up the cradle in order to sell it on Craigslist.  She would dutifully put Penny to bed every night.  Our neighbor gave her a new outfit which got me thinking about how much fun it would be to have a little wardrobe for Penny.  As luck would have it, the consignment store was having the $1 sale, so Dom and I went to pick out a couple of 'adorable' outfits for her.  I also requested my friend, Ann, send back an outfit I had sent to her doll of a daughter, Ella.  She generously sent a Jayhawk onesie and Minnie Mouse outfit that Molly thinks is 'sooooo beautiful!'  Bonus, Molly just happens to have a quite similar skirt.

 As I said, life happens.  And the kids play a lot.  We do lessons for a couple of hours in the morning, take a break, put John down for his nap (he is starting to really enjoy listening to books), and then the boys and I learn history, religion, and science.  The boys love history.  They would love for me to read chapter after chapter, but we pace ourselves at 2 chapters a week.  If you are interested, we are using: A Story of the World.  What has been particularly neat for me is that on a few occasions, after reading the chapter, Dom hops up and grabs his Action Bible and finds the same time period because he recognized a name.   All other subjects are going very well without much teeth pulling.  Writing is the one subject that we all struggle with (Dom looks at me in all seriousness and says: Mom, you know I don't like writing whenever I ask him to write a paragraph...oh, kiddo, you have a full life ahead of you of doing things you don't like to do), but our new English curriculum is wonderful.  It is very thorough and has these corny jingles that the boys love.  Next time you talk to them, you should ask them about it.  Eric was pretty impressed when both boys serenaded him with what a sentence is and a noun.

 The highlight of the month was a visit from Grandma and Grandpa.  The kids counted down for a few weeks prior to it.  And then they were here!  Dom wasted no time in convincing his Grandpa that his happiness would be complete if he could just have the Darth Vader costume..and maybe he could get a couple of costumes for his siblings.  Grandparents are the best!

 Also, while they were here, Eric knocked out a couple of projects on his list that would have taken him way longer if I had been his assistant.  And Liz very kindly hemmed several curtains I had bought that were way too long for our windows (but, they were a really good deal at Home Goods!)  She also very kindly hung out with the kids while I went to Home Goods all by myself and Eric and I went out to lunch.  All by ourselves.   But, we didn't just make my in-laws work.  We ate on the deck, made Sangria, went to the beach, and played mini-golf.  Where, as if they needed anymore cool points, both Grandma and Grandpa made holes-in-one on the last putt earning a free game a piece.

Basically, Dom summed it up the morning after Grandma left with this:  You know what is the worst part about road trips?  They are too short!

 Within the first week of moving in, we discovered we were not exactly the only residents of our home.  Squirrels were freely roaming in the exterior walls of the kitchen.  Eric tried to seal the holes, but those guys are pretty clever.  But, we are little more clever and turns out that even squirrels are incapable of resisting the tempation of Gold Fish (those delectable fish shaped cheese crackers loved by toddlers and older through the United States).  Eric trapped two squirrels and introduced them to a new area of town.  We've been scritch-scratch free for a few days now.  #successstory

 John is quite the little mimic.  He will repeat words he hears regularly and has added the word "hug" to his unprompted vocabulary.  He uses it has a request or command to be picked up.  How can you resist a little voice saying: "Hug!" even if you are trying to get supper on the table.  He also will imitate what he sees.  Which in our family is a lot of sports related activities.  He will dribble a soccer ball, throws quite strongly (best seen at the end of dinner when he chucks his food across the table.  He even got a piece of broccoli back in the bowl it was served from), and most recently played some living room football.  Hug and hike and hut all sound very similar.  FYI.  He also imitates light saber wielding, chores, and reading.  And dancing.  He loves to dance.  I need to get a video of that.

 After 10 years, Eric and I decided to change up our bedclothes.  Notice how lovely the curtains drape in the background.  Thanks, Liz!

 A few weeks ago, we started our soccer season.  A perk of having kids 21 months apart and born fall/summer is that they are in the same age division for soccer this year.  This simplifies our lives incredibly.  And as an added bonus, Eric can coach both boys.  And he is a great kids' coach.  After 5 seasons of coaching he knows what he can expect from kids and he helps them play at the top of their game.

 We played our first game last week and it was pretty clear which team was more prepared.  It is really fun to watch a good team...as opposed to a group of kids where one or two players know what to do and everyone else just runs around the field.  I'm excited to see what the season brings.

And, as we have a game in a couple of hours, I should probably get these kids on their chores.  John is on dusting duty this morning.  The low shelves.