this 1st picture is the handy work of wren. she loves pulling the covers off the vents in this house and putting things in them. like shoes or toys or her feet.
it keeps her busy so i just let her do it.



the other funny thing she does is she untwists the little metal door stoppers and pulls them out of the walls and carries them around. that trick is a bit more annoying because i have to search every doorway to find where they have come from. but it's cute. everything about this age is so very cute- even the temper tantrums.

as i'm blogging i am listening to tyden and shaeya behind me. they have a measuring tape and shaeya is showing tyden how tall she is gonna be when she has her own horse ranch.
yep, she's still as obsessed as ever....she got to ride "duke" her great aunt and uncle's horse last weekend and has not quit talking about it. AND she rode him in the lake, AND she jumped off his back into the water, AND she slept in the cabin right by the horses....

so ty and shaeya are playing behind me, wren is in bed, and i'm holding a wet, sleeping tekoa wrapped in a towel- she's getting too big for my lap- but she's sick and she just puked. she's pretty much looked like this most of the day-



except for this morning.
she was perfectly fine when i loaded them all up and took them with me to the gym (yes, i'm joining a gym and yes, i feel extremely guilty about leaving my kids in the kids room there for an hour and spending all that $ on myself). i'm sure she infected every kid there- but i didn't know then that she was sick. i mean she did cry quite a bit when i left her there to go work out, bit that's just really not out of the ordinary.

the 1st day i worked out there -monday- i took them into the kids room and told them they were going to stay there while i worked out. tekoa looked around, then looked back at me and calmly said, "if you leave me here i will cry."
and she has stayed true to her word.

but about the gym, i'm figuring if i'm going to be taking care of the kids mostly on my own for the next year, it would be worth it to invest in an hour to myself a day.
AND it does feel great to be working out again, AND the gym is only about 2 minutes from here, AND dave and i are going to hawaii in december....

what does hawaii have to do with working out, you ask??
well, this will be our 1st vacation alone together since our honeymoon 10 years ago. and by then i will be done with 10 years of trying to get pregnant, being pregnant, and nursing. 10 years.
and i'll be leaving the kids for the 1st time.

and if you're still not making the working out/hawaii connection then.....anyway this post is getting long....and so boring....

here's some pictures of the big dig-





and the kids watching them dig.
they were not as into watching as i was...something about the heat and the bugs.....i don't know i wasn't really listening.....



and these are of our night at the fair. which was actually a lot of fun.











well the fun started after tekoa stopped screaming and crying through every ride.
you know, sometimes you have to push your kids a bit. i knew my little dare devil would love the rides if she just gave them a chance. and she did. she only cried through 3 or 4.

speaking of koa, she perked up a bit ago and wandered off my lap to join the other kids. and she promptly returned crying and saying that, "shaeya said to go away cuz i have germs..."

shaeya. ever the kind, compassionate one...