keepin' up with the joneses...

It seems like here lately, when I finally get to post, it's like a hodge-podge of subjects and stories. Anyway, here's another one to recap the last couple of weeks around our place.

First of all, a couple of weeks ago, Matt and I got up early on a Saturday morning and decided to start building the kids a play house. We've been wanting to do this for a long time but never could decide on a layout. After going to visit my friend Kandy and seeing the clubhouse her husband built their boys, I decided we needed to 'Just Do It'. My dad came up and helped and we got the 4 corner poles set in the ground as well as the floor on. Then last weekend Matt and I sanded and painted all these iron bars and we got 2 of the 4 sides up. This next weekend we hope to finish that part, put on the roof and build the steps. Eventually this thing will have a rock-climbing wall, a slide and swings. We are going to enclose the bottom of it and use it as a little storage building for all our pool supplies/rafts. It's taking longer than we thought--but the cool thing is that we have built it almost entirely from wood that we had laying around (left over from when they built our house). So far we've only had to spend about $50 on some treated lumber for the handrails and some screws. Yay!

Here is a pic of the kids in the 3 foot hole I dug for the first pole!

Matt singing "She thinks my tractor's sexy!!!" ha ha

Last weekend Brooklyn got to have 2 of her girlfriends over to spend the night. They played "spa" and even got Grant in on the action taking off their toenail polish! Thankfully he is only 5 and still considers it an honor to be involved in whatever his big sister and her friends are doing. He can be talked into doing almost ANYTHING for her for a small price (usually a quarter! ha ha)

Here are the girls 'at the spa.'

You didn't know I was a pedicurist too, did you?? haha

Here is one of them signing Brooklyn's "Slumber Party Pillowcase". We'd gotten it a few years ago and it came with markers for the girls to write messages on it. I finally got it out and they decorated it all up. It turned out very cute!

Sunday we celebrated Father's Day and my parents 34th wedding anniversary! Afterwards, we went home and started working on the playhouse again. By the time we were ready to quit we were soaked in sweat and burning up so we hopped in the pool. To our suprise, Kinley climbed the pool ladder all by herself and hopped in with us!!

Grant started feeling sick that night and was running a fever. I held him like this the whole time we were in the pool. Poor guy! (we took him to the doctor today after he woke up with his eyes sealed shut with green crusty stuff (Wed.) and found out he has a BAD case of pink eye! ick!)

On Monday, one of Brooklyn's other friends invited her to go to the Jonas Brothers Concert!! What an honor!! I wasn't sure about letting my 8-year-old daughter go somewhere that HUGE and BUSY without me..but I also knew this was probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for her. (the tickets were $87.50 and we were being offered it for FREE!)

Since she was getting to do something SO fun and SO cool, Grant was pretty disappointed. He says she always gets to do all the fun stuff (and he's really right). Soo....Matt and I decided to give him his first "date night" with the 2 of us. He could choose anywhere he wanted to go to eat and anything he wanted to do. I also let him ENTIRELY pick out my outfit, jewlery and hair do! He was very specific about his requests. He said he wanted me to #1: Wear my wedding ring. #2: Wear this specific dress (that you see in the picture). #3: Wear high-heels.

Ha ha. I thought it was so funny that he had totally picked out EVERYthing for me to wear, told me how to fix my hair and even picked out earrings and a ring to match this dress. I felt WAY overdressed but I didn't care. This night was ALL about him and I was willing to do/wear just about anything his little heart desired. He also got himself all spiffied up (dressed to match mommy). He put his necklace on, gelled his hair (as stiff as a board!) and put on some cologne. He looked like a little replica of his daddy!

For his date, he picked that we would go out to eat at Barbies (Arby's) and we would order chicken, curly fries and a 'mocha shake. Then it was off to the movie theatre to see "Up."

The poor little guy pooped out on us before we even got to the resturant and I couldn't resist snapping a quick pic of him snoozing!

It's a lot of work taking mommy out on a date, huh buddy? Maybe this is why daddy always conks out early on date nights too!? ;o)