Mid week

on tuesday we dropped frankie at art camp and headed to shelly's where she helped me sew christian's merit badge patches onto his sash. i think if everything went well with my machine (no threading malfunctions or other weird things) i could probably use it by myself now. but, throw one kink at me and bam, i'd be done for.

that afternoon the summer fun of having non-stop kids around all the time (except for that week in paradise;) got to me. i asked alexis to babysit, which she so joyfully agreed to (and didn't try to barter for her camping trip at all) and told matt we were going to get my free birthday burger from red robin.

#birthdaymonth

after that we headed to lowe's to talk more about the projects we've been talking about for 5 years. we're good at talking about projects. like the fan we want to put in the formal dining room. that room is stifling hot in the summer and freezing in the winter.

this was part of the tuesday problem and i pondered this most of the day.

invisible mother. yes.

one night we took a north carolina pulled pork dinner to streeters ("too much vinegar!" said everyone but me) and texas sheet cake - more of my regional fare. then i went to run an errand and came back to our sheet cake looking like this:

frankie came upon me as i stood in amazement, and said "sorry mommy, i did that. sorry!" i sent her up to her room for a few minutes (that beautiful cake!) and got severely reprimanded by the big kids for yelling at her (which i did not. ever since i stopped yelling *much*, the big kids have a very skewed sense of being yelled at). they rescued her and we "bonded over the messy cake" according to alexis, and "we should thank frankie, because otherwise we wouldn't have had this much fun." oh the joys of raising toddlers and teens. everyone's a critic! we did spend quite a nice hour chit chatting and eating salsa's chips and white sauce (enjoying having a salsa's employee in the hizzouse) and the destroyed sheet cake.

little miss upearlyeveryday has been coming into our bed and going back to sleep in the wee hours.

 i can dig it.

the rest of the mid week was more of the same. drop off at art camp. pick up from art camp. drop off at art camp. pick up at art camp. dinner. pool. repeat. 

poor chris worked m-th and then again on saturday. that's 48 hours. 

cha-ching.

lexi is still loving her nanny job. i should rephrase that. she loves the kids, ("we're like, best friends.") but not the responsibility of working full time. and lack of being able to sleep in and watch grey's anatomy alldayeveryday.

more summer loving up in here.