::the electrician::

My dad found this awesome "snap-together" electronics kit and gave it to Max for his birthday.
Max adores it. He's been playing with it every day. Before school he gets it out and works on it and then when he goes home he goes straight to it and continues his work.


This kit is really nice because after I helped him the first few projects he got the hang of it and could do them on his own. They're not messy or dangerous, and there are 300 different projects in this kit.

Awesome, right?

The other day he made a radio. And he found a box for it. Then he pretended to be a stranger that I'd never met, here to show me his awesome electronics. He was an electrician.


A very serious electrician.


We talked about what he was doing and how it worked. It was pretty fun. Until we had to start all over and pretend the same thing again. That wears me out. But anyway I'm glad he's been having fun with the kit.

Sandy likes to watch him. Sandy likes to watch him do anything and everything.

It's no wonder. He's a pretty interesting guy, this electrician.

Thanks for such a great present Dad & Mom!!

::max is seven!!::

Our sweet big monstrous Max is now seven. It's such a crazy thing that I can't really wrap my mind around it.
He turned seven last week while on our trip to Phoenix.
Poor guy, we drove half the way the night before his birthday and drove the rest of the way on his birthday morn. Unfortunately for him, he came down with a cold just as we left town. So he slept awfully and he had stuffed up ears and a yucky cough. Driving down from the mountains into the Phoenix valley just about killed him. I think he felt like his ear was going to explode. At one point, about an hour outside of town we got stuck in construction. Max was bawling, Sandy was screaming and I thought I was going to die. If there had been a cliff handy I would've gone off it. Luckily everybody settled down and we made it to our hotel.

Oh, but it was before that the festivities started. Max had requested a couple of weeks ago if we could put a little present under his pillow and say to him "Good Morning Sunshine!" or something to that effect to wake him up. So we did it. But we forgot what we were supposed to say and so we said "Rise and shine Buckaroo!!" It worked just as well though and he was excited to wake up to a little gift. We got him a watch with Pluto on it. It reminded me of the Mickey Mouse watch my parents gave me when I was about his age.

Once we got to the hotel took the boys swimming right away because it looked like that day was going to be our only swim worthy weather. Sadly again for the Max, the little water slide at the hotel was closed. But he had fun anyway. Sandy did awesome swimming even though it wasn't really that nice out. It was kind of breezy and cool. But he was way into it. I can't wait until the next time was can take him swimming. Whenever that may be!

Then we went back and he opened his presents. He was psyched about them, thank goodness. Then we headed out and picked up some Jimmy John's sandwiches for dinner along with a yummy b-day cake from Trader Joe's. After that we put the poor boy to bed and it took him hours and hours to wind down enough to fall asleep.

I think all-in-all it turned out to be a pretty good day. I hope so anyway, we only turn seven once!

::stink, stank, stunk::

So here I am, back to the blog. I'm almost caught up with all the bunches of stuff (like the 30 loads of laundry for example) that were waiting for me to get done while I was out of town for three weeks. Almost.
So what really stinks right now is that it's snowing. And it snowed all night. We've gotten something like eight or ten inches of snow. I'm bummed because when I got back in town all the snow had melted and we could actually walk on the sidewalks. So we got to be outside for a bit. But now it's back to snow. I know spring will have to come sometime, I just don't know when!

But speaking of stinky, when Kris picked up Sultan from the "dog hotel" we realized there was a problem. He really really stank. Luckily he's not a super stinky dog normally (ok, some of you with sensitive noses may disagree, but this is my opinion) Some dogs just stink all the time, and he's not like that.
Except for this time. It was terrible. And it's super expensive to get him groomed out here. It used to cost us about half what they charge out here when we lived in MO.
So anyway, Kris took matters into his own hands, thank goodness. He donned all his dental protection and went for it in the bathtub.

Poor Sul looks pretty relaxed here, but in reality this is how he felt in the tub:

If I saw any other animal making this face I'd run far far away, but sweet Sul is much to nice to ever try to do anything mean.



All this fun didn't help the little boy down the hall that was supposed to be in bed.

Finally the fuzzy guy got all washed and clean and went to sleep on his bed and dry off. I'm so glad Kris is brave and strong and took care of the stink. Because I'm not sure if I would've lived any longer with it. And Sul is so strong it's hard for me to do stuff like wash him in the tub.

Even though he's cute and still tries to lick you while being bathed.

When we got home there were piles of mail of course. Max had several birthday cards as well as a package from Uncle Kelly and Aunt Lechelle. It was a cool molding kit with different colored clays. We were supposed to make a couple of shapes that would be refrigerator magnets. Max was super excited, so we did it.

They turned out cute and he enjoyed it.
But his favorite part was taking all the leftover stuff and mashing it together. He played with that stuff the entire rest of the day and the next as well. By the end it just looked gross.

He especially liked working with it on the radiator in front of the window for some reason.



It finally dried up and I talked him into letting me throw it out. But what fun in the meantime!

Otherwise we've just been cleaning up and trying to get things back in order after the trip.
I have a bunch of pictures and stuff to post from the trip and visits. I hope nobody will mind reading about things pretty long after the event. I just couldn't keep up. I like to take pictures too much, and then it takes me a while to work on them and decide which ones to post. That's always hard for me.

So look for some more fun stuff as soon as I can get slightly caught up with life the universe and everything.