Fun with friends

 Fun with the Mullen Kids last night as we enjoy a night with friends in their beautiful new home. Jake has SO much fun eating delicious smoked ribs that he gags himself and christens their gleaming hardwood floors with his official first vomit......alllllll over the floor. That was sexy. And awkward. And like good friends do (especially good friends with 4 young kids of their own) we simply all jumped into the great puke clean up and moved along with a lovely evening. Way to make your first puke a memorable one, Jakey boy!

 Last weekend we hosted the D'Iorios here, and the kids gleefully harvested a mountain of blackberries. We ate some....but as they didn't discriminate very well between ripe or unripe, I later cooked them down into a delicious hot berry topping for ice cream (some sugar fixes even the tartest berry!) and we ate them with sponge cake and vanilla ice cream. Good work kids!

 On our way to a family night function at Nates school this weekend. Julia insisted on flowers in her hair, and with an abundance of black eyed susan's blooming in our yard her wish was easy to oblige. They came home adorned in face paint, with a multitude of balloon creations, danced out, and happy as clams as I tucked them into bed at 9:30, tired, but deliriously happy.

Friday morning I had to head out to a Dr appointment. We had finished breakfast and I was upstairs trying to make myself look presentable......while a dress up party was underway downstairs. This was what I came downstairs to :)

We are deeply entrenched in summer here at chez mangan. The kids are happy and easy, Nate is working and studying and for the most part we are used to the drill, I am thrilled to be crutch free, if limping and lurching around a bit, and while our life is still small (ie we aren't able to do things like the zoo, this was to be our second week at the beach and I cancelled it due to my weakness, the kids don't seem to know that anything is lacking in their world. In fact, we are finding a lot of joy in small things. We have started playing school, which is a blast, and the kids have no idea that what we are really doing is practicing the testing that Luke is about to undergo for Kindy placement. It helps to have a WCASD reading specialist in the family, who was eager to tell me all about how they test the incoming kindy kids and then sort them. We have been doing some fun math and reading things around here lately, and the kids love it! I'm so not a teacher, and I'm so not one of those "MY KIDS HAVE TO BE ADVANCED" people, but when the kids clearly want to learn things, and we are limited in where we can go and what we can do....well? Why not? So. Thats new. I feel like summer is winding down quickly, yet at the same time many of the best weeks of it lie directly ahead of us. My Mom is coming up from the beach this week to spend some time with the kids since we didn't come down as planned and she misses them. We are going to do small things ~ our pool. Maybe the Goshen fair (Super hick fun). Maybe Milky way farm. Definitely some decorating as we have some big plans around here ~ we are getting rid of the remaining two rooms of carpet and replacing them with hardwood, and beginning the search for a contractor to finish our basement. Mom is the only one I trust to help me with that stuff, I am officially decorating challenged, and my impetuous nature leads me to just say "whatever! Thats great!" and that is a bad way to make important decorating decisions. Hence, Mom. So this week is Mom Mom week, next week is camp week at a nature center, long camp, too, 9:30-2;30, which will be good as it will begin this transformation to no naps (I say this and its 4:30 and all three kids are still napping......these kids who in 4 weeks are going to be in school all afternoon, oy). and then the following week Luke has his Kindy testing one morning then that afternoon he and Jules are going to go visit Grandma and Grandpa from Tues afternoon till Friday Morning, which will thrill them. After that? Labor day......and then SCHOOL! Kindergarden! I get teary, but then when I step back I'm okay with it. He's ready. He really is. I know it. Luke is going to do great.