Too busy to blog :)

Next weekend is Paul's family reunion, and we're hosting it here in Utah. That means we have three of his four siblings headed this way for a weekend of fun. The great news is that we get to have some of them arrive early and spend extra time with them. Because everyone lives so far away (Arizona and Washington), we don't get to see each other much. We are thrilled for our kids to see their cousins after not seeing them for a couple of years. I've been busily planning activities and hope we don't bore them to death ... or run them too ragged. ;)

In the meantime we're enjoying our summer. We haven't had a free Saturday this summer yet due to our trip to Omaha, the CF walk, and helping my sister move. But in a couple of weeks we'll have a Saturday with time to actually get something done at our house. Paul has started the process of putting our fence back up since it was removed during our addition. There is just a small piece that needs putting back up, but until it's done we're not fully fenced. We're okay right now w/the ages of our kids, but we might as well get it back up before cousins of younger ages arrive and need it. :)

I've also implemented a new kitchen rule to keep my kids from munching all day. We have hours where the kitchen is open, and the rest of the time the kitchen is closed. If I didn't implement this, my kids wouldn't eat breakfast until 10 a.m. and then they'd want snacks all day long. I can't believe how quickly they have caught on to this. Even Shayla, when she wants to eat something, says, "Mom, is the kitchen open?" If I say no then she accepts that and waits. Hopefully it'll also help them eat better meals since they aren't snacking all day long.

Once things settle down after the reunion I'll also get doing the math activities I wanted to do this summer -- hopefully! Both Tyler and Becca need to learn their times-tables, and Zachary should practice addition/subtraction. But until we're done preparing and having the family reunion that's falling by the wayside. I still don't get how people home-school. I would have great intentions and then neglect their education when other things came up ... just like I do EVERY summer! :) We are having them read and finally joined the summer reading program. My kids love going to the library, but I'm a little embarrassed to say we haven't been for something like three years. (I'm not TOO embarrassed about it, though, because we buy lots of books from Scholastic and book fairs, and they use their school's library during the school year. They've read plenty without visiting the city library, which is a small library anyway.)

In any case, when I'm busy next week having fun with Paul's sibs I probably will be too busy to post. How will you ever survive without a blog from me for a whole week? ;)