Sunday Best & Outside Time

I love how cute all my kids look when they are all dressed and ready for church. I desperately wanted to get a picture of them looking all fancy before they came home all mucked up but it is really hard to get 4 kids to cooperate for the camera. Benny was crying that the light was in his eyes (even after I moved the couch so it wouldn't be) and Lucy was being her normal crazy self and then there was Penny who refused who look at the camera. Ugh, my kids are hopeless!

This week potty training Lucy continued, only with a lot less effort. I haven't tried super hard to get her to the potty, I just check in with her anytime I realize it's been awhile. Overall it hasn't been a horrible but it hasn't been perfect either. She hasn't peed her pants at home at all this week but she has had several #2 accidents (once in her pants and once on the bathroom rug). However, every time we went out she had an accident. I'm starting to just put her in pull ups when we go out which I don't know if it will cause future problems but it does save my sanity.

So besides potty training this week, I did some visiting teaching, the girls and I went to a lunch bunch at the Chappel's home- it was zucchini themed and everyone brought zucchini bread but me! Go me! I brought zucchini pizza boats- and I spent a lot of time rooting through and organizing our basement. The basement part was not fun but I got a lot of things together that we can get rid of so that feels good. Also this week we spent a lot of afternoons outside. With highs in the 70's everyday, the weather has been perfect!

*Side note* Benny has had a much better week at school this week. First week of school- he loved it! Second week- constant sad death march to class. Third week- he loves school again. Hopefully we don't have a pattern on our hands and instead he will just decided to continue to be a happy with school...

Also this week, Penny's mullet was shaved off and now she has straight up little boy hair:

And I baked a birthday cake for my friend Tina and then moments later, this happened courtesy of Lucy and a distracted mom who was trying to sell things from the basement on the internet:

But never fear, we redid it. Tina's request, a chocolate covered frog (like from Harry Potter):

Potty Training Lucy

This week I began the blissful journey of potty training Lucy. I kept to my usual practice, having her ditch the diapers and wear underwear from the get go. Only Monday did not get off to a good start. I was planning on driving the kids to school because with Lucy in underwear I wanted to be home quickly to avoid a mess. But my van didn't start because my lovely children had left the inside lights on so I ended up having to literally run the kids to school. We made it in some seriously record timing to school and then we were almost all the way home before Lucy peed all over herself. So close. The rest of the day was just full of accidents and no successes and since I was pumping her full of fuel her messes were ginormous. Boo.

Tuesday had an equally crummy start, not because of Lucy though. I had the stupid idea that we should walk to school Tuesday morning and this time on purpose. The weather was beautiful and after a day of cleaning up accidents, what was one more? Except we had just been walking for less than 5 minutes when Ben major biffed it- both knees bleeding and a bloody lip. It was super. He was screaming and crying as though he was paralyzed so I scooped him up and ran home. Steven followed behind pushing Penny and Lucy somehow managed to keep up with us all. Once home, I quickly patched up Ben's knees, stopped his lip from bleeding and got him and Steven to parent drop off before the bell rang. The only problem was that he was still acting paralyzed and he did not want to get out of the car. I felt like the worst mom in the world as I let a sweet teacher take my crying Benny out of the car and help him to his line.

After that fun I decided to focus all my energies on keeping Lucy accident free. I was not successful, we still had quite a lot of accidents but this time she also managed to get a few tinkles in the toilet and even a poop. We spent an excessive amount of time in the bathroom that day and Lucy decided to have some fun with sanitary pads:

That night I used ice cream as an incentive to get her to pee one last time before bed. It was a success:

After being at home all day Tuesday I was itching to get out for just a bit so I promised Lucy a trip to the bakery if she went pee in the potty. She sure does love her junk food so she obliged and off we went. Here she is enjoying her "sprinkler" doughnut:

Penny was pretty excited to get out of the house too:

After the doughnut shop Lucy decided to wet herself right as we got home- once again so close! But the rest of the day went pretty well- she only had 1 more accident. Then on Thursday we were completely accident free. I was one proud mama!

Friday was less amazing. I had visiting teachers over so I couldn't watch her as well and she had an accident. On top of that, her and my visiting teacher's little girl decided to flood the bathroom by playing in the sink- the sink does not drain well anymore and easily overflows. After my visiting teachers left I was cleaning up the flooded mess when Lucy decided to color all over the wall in the boy's room. It was a rough morning. However, she did great the rest of the day and only had one more accident. The accident happened while we were at a super fun Rice Krispy Treat Party thrown by the Ormond's. I love that the Ormond's throw so many parties, it gives us a chance to mingle with others and get out of the house.

So in summary, we had a pretty rough start to potty training but things got better. She never really needed an incentive to sit on the potty, she was usually pretty complacent but sometimes she did need a big incentive to actually get the pee out- you can't have this ice cream until you actually put some pee in the potty kind of thing. And unlike the boys, she does not scream and cry about pooping the potty. Often she'll sit on the potty just to fart and she likes to see her "rocks" in the potty. She has only had one poop accident this week, and that was today. 

Anyways that's enough talk about poop, pee, potties and accidents. On a totally different note, I finished sewing my first ever pair of PJ pants. I had bought a pattern but the English directions somehow got left out of mine and since I was too lazy to go back to Joanne's, I decided to just figure it out myself. I at least had the pattern for cutting it out and after lots of mistakes and with some help of the internet here they are in all their glory. I am so proud of myself for preserving and getting them done: 

 

I promise that that is a Lego hand and not a string at the bottom of the left pant leg.

Ben modeling his new pants:

Steven felt neglected so I took a picture of him in his non homemade PJs:

School!!

After our fun Labor Day adventure it was time for school to start. Benny was pretty excited to start Kindergarten and was pretty fearless. Probably because he only had a half day the first day and I got to be there with him the whole time (they do things differently here in Michigan). Here he is before we left:

Had to get some sibling shots and they did a good job at pretending they love each other ;):

Then it was time to take some pictures of Steven, my second grader. He's an old hat at this school thing so he didn't seem nervous at all:

 Lucy, of course, wanted in on the picture taking fun too so I revised the sign a bit to make it work for her. Here she is zoning out: 

Since parents are required on the first day of school for Kindergartners, Tyler worked from home so he could watch the girls while I went to school with Benny. Without the crazy girls, we decided it was a prefect day to walk to school:

After getting Steven to the appropriate spot, Benny and I found his spot and then I got to go to class with him. We begun the day with a tour of the school and then we did some work together. Here is Benny filling out a book about his first day:

And then he used the word tiles to make every name in our family:

After that the parents got to fill out paperwork while the kids got to have recess. Then it was over and we walked home. Benny's only complaint that day was of hunger, because they didn't get a snack time. Luckily there is normally a snack time so I don't think hunger will be a typical problem.

It was a super easy first day for Ben. He was able to make some friends that day which made him way less nervous for Wednesday, when he had to go to school for a full day without me. He didn't even cry when I left him on Wednesday. Lucy, on the other hand, threw a gigantic fit when we had to leave. She had a back pack on and was apparently under the false notion that she got to go to school too. Unfortunately for me I had decided to walk the kids to school once again. This meant that I had to walk back carrying my normal load of Penny and my screaming load of Lucy. Not fun. I have once again sworn off walking the kids to school.

Labor Day

For Labor Day I decided since Tyler was off and we had no plans we should take a little trip to one of the great lakes. I had a hard time deciding where to go until I realized that I had to take the dog we were watching into account for our decision. Not wanting to take her with us and not wanting to leave her in the kennel for too long, led me to decide on Lake Huron since it was the closest. I also wanted to see a lighthouse which led us to Fort Gratiot, only 1.5 hours away.

When we got to Fort Gratiot the kids immediately wanted to go inside the lighthouse so after taking a picture outside of it...

...we went and got our tickets for a tour. For the first part of the tour they took us into a few buildings by the lighthouse- the pump room where we watched a video and some living quarters:

Then we got to go inside the lighthouse and climb to the top. Steven, who had been so eager for this, ended up getting really nervous and scared about the height. I can't say I blame him because it made me a little nervous too. Thankfully we had a really helpful tour guide who helped the kids through it and we all made it to the top and back without any injuries:

After our fun in the lighthouse we went down to the beach on Lake Huron. It was more rocky than sandy so it kind of hurt to walk on and you couldn't venture too far out due to drop offs and swift currents but we still had a good time. I enjoyed just sitting on the beach with Penny, scooping up rocks. 

Each of the kids took turns walking out with Tyler. 

The boys also had a blast sitting in the water and bracing themselves for the little waves that come from boats. 

There were some sketchy people around us but one of them was nice enough to offer to take our family picture. Only I should have been smart and had the ocean behind us in the picture instead:

And on the way home, after a week of fighting naps, Lucy finally lost the fight

Last Week of Summer

Well friends, it is official! The last week of summer vacation is OVER! As much as I have loved the lazy mornings and fun outings, I am so ready to get back to a more structured day and to have a little less fighting and whining in my house.

On Tuesday we went to Elizabeth's home for a pot luck brunch with some ladies in the ward. I had fun helping Laci fill up a bazillion water balloons for the kids (actually we only managed to fill up like 40 out of the 400) and then watching all the kids use them all up in less than 5 minutes. Elizabeth tried to get them to play a game with the balloons but was completely unsuccessful because all they wanted to do was throw them. no surprise. There were also a few new ladies there that I finally got to meet. Being in Primary I rarely get to meet any of the new people.

That afternoon we went over to Jen's house for a shaving cream party. The shaving cream fight only went over well with Benny. The rest of my kids were pretty lame about it. Steven got angry when I tried to get him and then wanted to wash it off immediately (he refused to get in the pictures because he needed to wash off). Lucy wanted nothing to do with it and went and played in the sandbox on the other side of their yard. And Penny, well there were some tears when I put some on her:

At least Benny and the other kids had a blast:

Us grown ups got pretty well covered too:

On Wednesday the boys got to go meet their new teachers. I always find meet the teacher night kind of awkward (even when I was the teacher). It seems like the teachers are always waiting for me to make conversation and since I don't really expect that, my mind always blanks out. It was even more awkward because Steven has the teacher he had for Kindergarten. When she looped up to first grade last year, I chose not to keep him in that class but now she's looped up to second grade and he was put in her class. I'm not super happy about that and I'm sure she can sense that. It's not that she's a horrible teacher, I'm just not sure she's the best fit for him. He needs someone who will keep him in line and keep him from being lazy and I'm not sure she does that. Fingers crossed that I am wrong and that it ends up being a wonderful year. On a brighter note, Ben's teacher seems really great!

Also on Wednesday, we started dog sitting for someone in the Ward. I am not a fan of dogs and would not have agreed to this but my dear sweet husband agreed to it for us. She is a Yorkie and her name is Mellie. Tyler keeps saying he would totally love to have a dog like this. The boys like having her around, although the novelty has worn off at this point. Lucy has really warmed up to her, she was a little nervous at first. Penny can finally be licked by the dog without melting down. And me, despite the fact that this dog is fairly low maintenance, I still have no desire for a dog at this point in my life. She's just another thing to worry about. Now for an overload of dog pictures: 

On Thursday we had our final summer play date at Mercer Beach. The weather was perfect and the kids behaved themselves. I should have documented the niceness but I didn't. Shortly after we left the beach it down poured and hailed, crazy Michigan weather. 

On Friday we went swimming at Bethany's pool but we only lasted an hour and a half before Lucy threw a ginormous tantrum because I refused to go into the FREEZING cold water with her. She hadn't napped all week (and is still refusing too) and I think she is super over tired because we have had lots of these melt downs lately. I hope when the boys go back to school, that I can get her to take naps again.

On Saturday, our table was officially finished and ready to grace our dining room. Tyler did a great job and it is so nice to be able to fit us all- and then some- at the table! Now we just need some more chairs or a bench or something else fantastic. 

Saturday afternoon Tyler and I headed to the Eastern Market in Detroit for a date. This is a huge Farmer's Market and it was a good time. We enjoyed getting lunch from a food truck- a spicy but yummy taco. We loved seeing all the different veggies and fruits that are out there- one seller had jumbo onions that were truly jumbo sized- and I bought some yummy strawberries. There were pretty flowers for sale too- I really wanted these gorgeous purple ones in a hanging pot but we had ran out of cash by the time we got there. We also walked down this sidewalk tunnel that was full of Jamaican wear and incenses- it was pretty sketchy. And at the end we came across this antique shop that seemed to go on forever. It had lots of super fun things. Here's a pic of us just outside the market:

Then that night I had a Girl's Night Out at Blaze Pizza. It was arranged by Angie but she ended up not being able to come and she wasn't the only one. There were a couple others that flaked out and Bethany was 40 minutes late and Ranell didn't meet up with us until the very end. I was so grateful my bestie, Laci, came or I would have been on my own eating pizza. After eating the delicious pizza we went to JoAnn's and 5&Below to do a little kid free shopping. We decided a selfie with super fun sun glasses was a definite must:

And to end this post, here's a picture of Penny doing what she does now- getting into trouble!