Life full of creative Sunshine.

I've been sort of taking a break from my camera lately, so there are no pictures with this post :(
Anyway, we've been busy around here. Just seems like there has been tons of stuff to do lately. We had Open House and the music program at school, then a wedding, and then mothers day, then paperwork and more paperwork for our house, then I designed another brochure for the ranch. I think this is brochure #3. We've now graduated to a tri-fold. You wouldn't think it would be that difficult, but it kind of is. And very time consuming.
Mothers day was pretty ok. I can't complain. We rushed home from the wedding Saturday afternoon, changed clothes and headed out to the ranch. We had kind of a family weekend up there with all the wives and kids. (our family and then Pete's partner Johnny and his family) We took the kids to the pond to fish and then had a BBQ, watched a movie and then went to bed, got up the next morning and did more of the same. It was relaxing and fun to just hang out. Monday my mom came down for the afternoon and that was fun too.
One day during the week I got this wild hair to get all the kids toys out of the living room/dining room and put them upstairs in their rooms. They had about 90% of their toys down here. I'm really not even sure why I even started doing that now that I think about it. In our old house we had a formal living room and then separate a family room so I kept all of Jake's toys in there. And he was a baby then so it was just easier to have all the toys in the same room we were all in. I guess I just did the same thing when we moved here. Jake was still only 18 months old when we moved in. And then when Megan came along, all of her toys were added to the pile. It's not like they were all over the place...I did have two toy boxes and I got it so everything could be put away tidy. But I was just sick of looking at them. It was time to reclaim my own space. So I spent the better part of an afternoon cleaning out Jake's closet to make room for the downstairs toys. Boy, was that ever a chore. I won't even tell you how much junk I pulled out of there and how many bags of trash/donations I got from just one room. Where did this stuff come from??! Pete helped me bring the heavy stuff upstairs that night and immediately it was like -WHOA -so much nicer down here! Why did I wait so long to do this? the only thing is...the kids seem to be somewhat confused by it. Jake was like, "so...we're not allowed to play down here anymore? if we want to play with toys we have to play in our rooms?" Which is not at all what I was going for. They can play down here all they want...just put the toys back in their rooms when they're done. I explained that to him, but so far there has been very little playing down here and slightly more arguing between the two of them because they just tend to roll around on the floor like monkeys a lot more now.
We had our first trip to the community pool this weekend. It's been smokin hot again. I'm so proud of Jake. Remember last year, I could hardly get the boy in the pool? And then when I did he'd pitch a fit? or cry? or just sit on the side and pout? It's such a difference this year. He's much more confident, less scared, less worried about being cold, more into having fun. He's still sporting the arm floaties, but that's ok. What ever makes him get in and have fun, right? I mean, he'll even jump in from the side. Megan is like a little fish. I just stick her in a little floatie ring and she just kicks her little feet and keeps right up with me. She did kind of go under the water one time and came right back up and said, "I'm ok! I'm fine! I'm ok Mommy!" After we'd had our fun in the big pool, I decided to let the kids go over to the baby pool area. I've pretty much kept that off limits for Jake because 1: he's just too big, and 2: I want to encourage his confidence in the big pool/deeper water...but there was only one or two kids over there (left all alone by their parents) so I said ok. Plus, I just could not leave those babies unattended. These kids were 3 years old and left alone. I don't care if the water is only a foot deep. I don't care if your kid knows how to swim. It's never ok to leave a kid that little all by themselves around water. And it wasn't even like the parents were just on the other side of the fence. No, they were all the way down at the other end of the big pool (which is a Jr. Olympic size). So they wouldn't have even been able to hear if anything was going on in the baby pool. What is up with parents these days? Maybe I'm overprotective?? I kinda don't think so. Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.
It's 10am and already 78* so I think we'll be heading out to the pool again pretty soon.
Happy Sunday.