::long weekend::

Not long as in long in time--long as in, looooong.  Lots of work to do and lots of whining and fighting.

But that's ok.  I love the kiddos, and I've been around the block long enough to know that along with the good stuff comes the hard stuff.

Kris has been out of town this week, he's at a continuing ed course in LA.  Frenectomy.  Anyway, it was a tough week for that considering we just got back from our San Diego vacation late saturday night and the kids' first day of school was wednesday.  But then again I never like Kris to be out of town, I always miss him!  Lucy has really missed him.  With the boys when they were her age, they didn't even seem to notice that Kris was gone.  Lucy asks me every day, several times a day. "Where's Dad??"  And when I do something she doesn't like she bawls and cries for "DAAAAADDDDDYYYYYYY!!!!"



Anyway, the start to the weekend was finally getting our screens installed on the doors.  I ordered them back at the beginning of July and was hoping to get them in about two weeks.  Well, obviously that didn't happen.  But they're fabulous and we'll really appreciate them next summer!

Lucy's poses are hilariously ridiculous.

Then I took Max with me to see Star Trek while the kids got to know a new sitter.  She seems nice.  Max and I had fun.



Here's Max employing his superb photobombing skills as I tried to take a picture of a great spot for Sandy to practice riding his bike.



Today (Saturday) was a busy day full of errands and laundry and tidying up.  We went to Target for the THIRD time in a week, and Sandy only threw a couple of small fits instead of mega huge ones like the other two trips.  So I guess we have to appreciate that.

Sandy's been having a couple of weeks of 5 yr old existential struggle and grief. Oh wait, no the grief is mine. He hurts his feet kicking against the pricks, but he also hurts the pricks.



Kiddos pretending to be cookie monster with their lunch cookies.  It was a really pretty day today.

I spent the rest of the day trying to get the kids to help me clean and organize.  It was only incredibly frustrating.




We (I) did get some stuff done though, and I didn't kill anybody.  It was a success.



Though honestly I almost did kill Sandy twice.  Friday night I was exhausted and trying to get done with work so that I could clean up the house.  I walked by Sandy's room and looked in.  Whoops.  That was my mistake.  Evidently Lucy and Sandy had been very busy taking out every picture book in Sandy's shelves and spreading them all over the floor.  And probably walking on them.  I almost cried.  So we all pitched in and cleaned that up.

Today I spent lots of time cleaning up the toy storage boxes in Sandy's room, getting things organized and put back together.  I finished up and then 10 min later I went back into his room and of course he had dumped up every box I had organized, plus he had pulled out a few extra to add to the mix.
I yelled.  I don't often yell.  We got through it and neither of us ran away from home.  So it must've been a success.

Tomorrow we've got Stake Conference and a lot of laundry to put away.  Kris should get home too.  So we should have lots of good stuff to look forward to.