We've been having a good time with Megan and basically having a great summer vacation so far. Aidan and Esme have been in VBS at Uncle Shawn and Aunt Lori's church mornings this week and they are having a GREAT time! Every day they have something to say about what they've done and they are really enjoying spending that time with their friends.
Yesterday we went to the zoo with our friends the Fortunas, and it was terrific. Megan really loved the bears and the snakes, but she had a good time being with all the kids, too. We were all very glad to finally see the new lion exhibit! The stingrays were super cool, too. Jim, Aidan and Mason did the zipline - Jim was just sure that at the last second Aidan would decide he didn't want to do it, but he did it and LOVED it! Both boys wanted to go a second time as soon as they got done with the first one!
Scott came up from Grissom AFB last night, where he is an instructor for a driving course this week. The first session was over yesterday afternoon, so he had a brief break before the second session began today. Megan was SO happy to see him! After the kids went to bed, Scott let me drive the Pontiac Solstice they are using for the course he is teaching. Mmmmmmmmmm! Completely impractical, but yummy.
The kids decided today to use some of their allowance to adopt more WebKinz animals. Esme adopted an elephant, whom she named Ruby. Aidan brought home a striped snake, whose name is now Smokey. They are now happily using up all their computer time for today!
I am surprised, but I have been keeping up with my housework and everything else this week, in spite of caring for an additional child. I didn't get the laundry done until 10:30 p.m. last night, when it is usually done by 4 p.m., but that's okay - I did spend most of the day at the zoo.
Over the next few weeks or months our house is going to undergo a major organization and storage overhaul. Sometime this year we will be changing our playroom's status so that it will also be a home theater - we're going to move the TV and all the stuff that goes with it to the playroom, and reduce the amount of space taken up down there by toys. There are lots of toys the kids don't even play with anymore, mostly because they have outgrown them. Megan will be taking some of them home with her when her daddy comes to get her.
In order to do what we would like, we need to make more room in our entertainment center for DVDs and CDs; there's plenty of room, but right now it is taken up by obsolete photo albums and boxes of photos that no one ever looks at. I'm slowly working on getting all those pictures scanned and sorted in my computer, then double-backed-up so I can get rid of the hard copies.
The kids' closets need to be organized better so that more of their toys will fit in their rooms, in nice accessible places for them. There will still be plenty of room to play in the playroom - we're just not going to store so much stuff in bins along the wall! So if anybody has any good closet organization ideas, I'd love to hear them! The kids' closets have nice shelves, but they're not great for storing toys.
In other news, I have found homes for all 30 of The Glander Family books that I had printed in the first printing. I received requests today for #31 and #32, so I have ordered a second printing! Yee-ha!
I have lots of new photos - from Dad's retirement party, from the zoo, from various and sundry other occasions, so as soon as I have time to unload the camera and sort through them, I will post some!