…is the new color of Royal and my bedroom. Royal picked it out and I thought “exhale” was the perfect name for a color for a bedroom. :) Well actually, Royal picked white first, and I told him that wasn’t an option for me and if he didn’t care, then maybe I’d paint the room pink. Soon after that he had a bit more of an opinion. :)

We of course had plenty of help from our #1 helper in the house.

And since I know that looking at people painting and finished painted rooms isn’t exactly everyones idea of a good time. Here’s a random video of Willow’s evil laugh.

It has been way too hot here. Way too hot to play outside for more than 10 minutes at a time. So, me and the kidlets have been chillin’ in the basement counting down the days until we get to fly out of here for some relief in “chilly” Washington! :)

We don’t watch a lot of tv around here, we don’t even have cable anymore and Royal and I both have said we don’t miss it at all. We can get our fix on netflix and hulu.com. ;) Jayden gets to watch a movie during Willow’s naptime, as long as he’s managed to behave himself that day, and every once in awhile we’ll watch a Baby Einstein when Willow gets up from her nap - or if the kids are crazy and I’m trying to get something done…like dinner. One of my favorite Baby Einstein’s is Baby Monet, which is all about the 4 seasons and there is a section of the movie when they are reviewing the seasons and it’s just music and the puppet zebra’s dancing all over the place. Jayden and Willow almost always get up and starting dancing all over the room and then they beg me to start the song over again and they keep dancing. I think this last time, we listened to the song and dancing part probably 6 times, which allowed me to video tape some of it. :) (please ignore all the toys all over the floor…we live here….and this mama gets mighty tired of picking stuff up all the time…and when i get more tired of stepping on things than picking them up, they will all get cleaned up and put away….:) )

I think I see some Fireball dance moves in here! Or as Jayden’s been calling him lately “Grandpa FireGoofball”

The kids and I were outside playing with the hose, finishing up watering the flowers, playing on the slides when I thought I heard thunder in the distance.  There were a few clouds overhead which I was glad about because it was helping cut out the intensity of the sun, but I didn’t see any storm clouds.  But, just to be on the safe side I grabbed the kids (and dog) and headed in the house.  A few minutes later I started hearing “tink tink tink” on the roof and windows and looked outside and saw we were getting pelted with hail (along with thunder and lightning) that seemed to come out of nowhere!  I’m so glad I took the time to water all my plants twice today! (sheesh)

And now the storm has passed and it’s super sunny out again - and even more humid…I wasn’t sure that was possible!

The start of the hard work of storing up food for the winter has officially begun.  Well, we really started stocking the freezer for winter a couple of months ago.  When it comes to berries Royal is like a little squirrel, he’s constantly putting them in the freezer, and they always seem to be gone just when I’m looking for them to put on the kid’s plates.  We had big plans this year to go to a berry farm and pick a lot of our own berries, but with the driving time, the amount of hard it work it takes to pick the berries, and the young ages of our kiddos, we decided we’d put it off for another year and re-evaluate next May.  But corn is a whole ‘nother story!

Last year, we froze 6 dozen corn and we ran out way too early, so since you can get the corn 4 dozen in a box, we just decided to get 2 boxes this year.  We started out the morning, by going and picking up the corn right when the stand opened, because on the weekends they always seem to sell out really fast.  Then we headed North to Newton to go check out the peaches at Beck’s Farm and find out what kind of pears she’s going to get in this year.  We were hoping to can a couple batches of peaches in the next couple weekends before we left for our vacation to Washington, but it seems like the peaches just might not be ready yet, they are pretty hard still, and I just don’t have the time or room to buy a bunch of peaches and then have to lay them around the house waiting for them to ripen.  I’m pretty sure the kids would think they were new toys just for them, and I’d have peaches hidden everywhere!  So, if they don’t ripen in the next couple of weeks, hopefully they’ll wait for us to get back from Washington!

Anyway, back to the corn.  Like I mentioned, we got 8 dozen corn this year.  That would be 96 ears for all you out there who don’t like doing mental math.  :) That’s a lot of shucking!  So, I made up a new house rule.  When we got home I said to Royal, “Well, it turns out just like I don’t do dishes, I don’t shuck corn either”  Ha ha ha, I crack myself up!  So, Royal sat out in the garage for about 2 hours shucking every ear of corn.

He wasn’t alone though, he had Jayden (and Sam) out there with him keeping him entertained with a measuring tape.

But don’t worry, it’s not like I didn’t do anything.  I was in the house, cutting all the kernals off the cobs.

and then doing some more…

Royal and I got smart this year.  The last couple of times we’ve done this, we cooked the corn on the cob and then stuck them in an icebath to stop them from cooking, and then we’d cut the kernals off as fast as we could.  The cobs were usually still pretty hot because we’re both a bit impatient and we didn’t want to wait until they were completely cool, and so I always left the project with burned finger tips.  But after complaining to Royal’s mom about my sore fingers, she oh-so-wisely suggested that we cut the kernals off and then cook them.  Genius!!!  And it took so many fewer batches of water as well!  We’re getting smarter over here folks!

I just am always surprised that all the corn fits into so few bags.  96 ears of corn, and we have 20 bags of corn to stick in our freezer!

I decided to forgo (or at least postpone a couple hours) Willow’s nap this afternoon, and the kids and I headed to the zoo for Friday’s Wet-n-Wild Days with our friends from StrollerFriends.  A firetruck shows up at the zoo and starts spraying water off and on for about 3 hours.  We had lots of fun and it was perfect weather for it!

Jayden was a bit timid at first.  The water was cold and you never knew when the firefighter was going to turn the hose on you, but he eventually followed Lunden into the puddle that the water was creating in the middle of the field.

I knew Jayden was getting serious about things when he came back and asked for his goggles.  The kid kills me!

(and I’m sorry, but do check out the outfit on the girl that Jayden’s arm is conveniently blocking the face of… i guess she’s taking wet-n-wild to a whole ‘nother level!)

Eventually, they turn the water off for awhile and let the kids play in the puddles around the field.

And thankfully I had a few dollars in my wallet, thanks to Royal always giving me his spare cash and we strolled out of the zoo eating a couple green sno-cones!

It was a rainy, rainy 4th here.  Luckily, thanks to all my Washington roots, I’m totally used to that.

After church, we came home and the kiddos popped some confetti poppers, went through a few boxes of snap-it poppers, and Royal lit off some worms and smoke bombs.  They thought it was awesome!

In the afternoon, after a pathetic attempt at a nap by Willow, we headed over to Nick and Sabrina’s house.  It was still pouring down rain outside, so the kids played inside for a little bit.

But my Washington side came prepared with a towel and extra clothes because you just can’t play inside all day on the 4th of July!  So, we drug the kids outside to find some puddles to jump in and a dirt pile to play in.  Funny thing about the dirt here in Kansas when it gets wet….

…it totally sticks to everything!

Thanks to the kids little to no naps, they were a tad cranky, so we kept feeding them popsicles to keep them happy.  I think they ended up have like 3 of them.  :)

We also let off a few more fireworks in the street, pulled some confetti poppers, and popped a few more boxes of snap-its.  The kids loved the snap-its so much, that Nick headed back to the fireworks stand and came back with a box of 50 boxes of snap-its.  The kids opened and popped every. single. one.

There were so many popped snap-its on the ground, it kinda looked like it snowed.  :)

Thankfully the rained stopped in the later afternoon and we were able to light off the rest of our fireworks and let the kids try out some sparklers.

Later that evening, you know, when the kids were way past tired and were crashing from all the sugar we fed them, we finally went home and got the kids dressed and ready for bed, then we drug them outside on the driveway to watch the country clubs light off all their big fireworks.  We had a lot of fun and the kids managed to sleep in until after 8 this morning.  :)

Royal’s father’s day started out a little rough.  Jayden woke up at 6:30 with a wet bed.  I got up, changed Jayden and his bed.  Willow woke up at 7:15, also with a wet bed.  Royal got up, grabbed Willow and Jayden and put them in the bath, then went out to the kitchen to finish doing the dishes from the night before.  About 5 minutes later he hears me yell from the bathroom, “Um, Royal, I need your help!”  Willow had pooped in the bathtub and I was frantically pulling kids and toys out of the tub before someone grabbed “something” and was like, ‘what is this?  a new bath toy???’  Luckily things went a better from there, but nothing like being reminded first thing in the morning what being a dad is really like!

We spent the morning at El Dorado where the kids played at a playground, Sam chased some birds, we went for a little hike, and then the kids went swimming.  Royal wouldn’t even put his foot in the water because the lake looks so dirty, so I waded in the water with the kids.  So far, no one has grown an extra limb or anything  :)

The kids got Royal a sno-cone machine for Father’s day.  While in Arizona, Royal was making sno-cones with my parents margarita machine about every hour, so I thought since it is approaching triple digits here in Wichita that he (and the kids) might like some ice treats here too.  I never seem to get to eat mine, because the kids finish theirs off so quick they move right over to mine and help themselves.

Summer is here!  Woo Hoo!!  And boy is it hot and humid!

Our strawberries are going crazy.  There are more ripe strawberries each day than we are able to eat!  Royal managed to pick these out of the garden today for us to stick in the freezer.  This is what was left after both the kids ate a ton first!

We also took the kids to Target today to pick out a new pool for the backyard, since both our pool and splash pad bit the dust earlier this year.  I know it’s going to come as a shock, but Jayden picked the dinosaur themed one.  It came with 2 blow-up dinosaurs, has a slide, and a waterfall.  The kids played in this for hours!

We found our first red strawberry of the season tonight!

Then we played a little baseball.  Jayden wanted to be the pitcher.

Royal was the batter.  Look how fierce Royal is in this picture.  I’m guessing it’s because when I was the batter I smacked one way over the fence into the neighbor’s yard, and well, Royal doesn’t like to get shown up by a girl (or really anyone for that matter…).  :)

Scooter even joined us in the yard this evening.  She’s kind of like a dog and follows us down the street if we take a walk, but she’s always about a house behind us, like she’s guarding us, making sure nothing sneaks up behind us or anything.  She also managed to catch a HUGE bird tonight.  But she decided to play with her food before she ate it and gave the bird a chance to get away before I got a picture.

There was a also a little hide and go seek.  But in the backyard there are not very many places to hide.  Under the slide was Jayden’s choice.

We just had the scariest tornado storm I have been in so far since we’ve lived here, which really isn’t that long, it’ll be 2 years in June.  About 10mins to 5, I called Royal at work, because Royal was suppose to be driving up to Kingman for a business dinner this evening, and asked him if he was still planning on going.  He said he’d just checked the weather and he figured he was going to be okay to go.  He says this to me as I am hearing the tornado sirens go off on the WSU campus over his phone (I can’t actually hear any tornado sirens from our house if I am inside).  I’m a little freaked out and say, ‘Well, I’d rather you not go, but if you think you’ll be okay, then fine.’  I finally got my computer to start loading the live feed of the storm while I am hastily shoving food at the kids and I sit down at the table with them to watch the forecasters and stare out the window to make sure I don’t see a tornado.  15 mins later or so, Royal calls me and says he’s heading home because there is a tornado spotted on the ground about 6 miles away from the airport.  By the time Royal called me I had already grabbed the kids, Scooter-pants, the computer, the camera, and was in the basement office.  Jayden and I had just talked about what to do if a tornado ever came around a few days ago, and when I ran upstairs to grab my purse and came back down I found Jayden like this.

He was “hiding from the tornado”.

He had built his own shelter!  So, clever!!!  But I made him move his shelter into the office where I was watching the weather people and the radar.

Willow made sure Baby Stella was doing alright.

Here’s a picture of the storm after the tornado warnings had passed and we went back upstairs.  It was just rain, hail, thunder, and lightning.  I had to take it from inside the window because the wind was blowing it sideways and I would of gotten soaked.  Sorry, but I am just not THAT dedicated to providing you with storm pictures.

And Jayden’s swimming lessons got canceled this evening because of the storm, but it looks like now he could practice in the corner of our backyard!!!!