A summer day at the White house

August has not been a very bloggy month for us White things. We have been home hanging out and relishing our lack of schedule for as long as we have it. Five mornings a week, Jeff and I take turns running before it gets too blazing hot outside. Then we spend the rest of the day avoiding the sunny outdoor heat by watching what Olympics we can find, getting things done around the house, and hanging out together. The kids have been playing outside, inside, downstairs, and upstairs all day every day. Three days a week we watch Spencer (age 9). We love having him over--he's a great guy and he get along so well with Jay and Rose. Most days that Spencer is here, the two kids next door come over to play too, so we have a houseful! After lunch when Amber goes down for her nap, the big kids go downstairs for some (usually) quiet computer game time. We have our summer groove going, and life is good.

Let the photo backlog commence. I'll arrange this set in a "day in the life" order:

1. Thoroughly, loudly wake up the parents and take over their bed.

 "I'm Mount Rose-more!" (Rose's version of Mt. Rushmore, haha)

2. Parents take turns running and showering, and then collapse/rest/recover. Amber spotted a jungle gym.

3. Sometimes the mother remembers to have the kids do some chores.

4. Spencer arrives at 8am and playing commences. Sometimes Rose doesn't get dressed in time.

 {Amber follows the big kids and observes everything}

5. "Bike ride of the day"--Jay and Spencer like to go on a morning bike ride to visit Spencer's mom at work (she works at the school half a mile away). They also ride to the park and play sometimes.

6. Rose is not allowed to go on the bike ride of the day because she's to young. We told her when she learns how to ride her bike without training wheels really well, she'll be allowed to go with the boys. We hoped that would be a good incentive to get her practicing, but she hasn't really caught the bike riding bug yet. She can ride without training wheels, but she lacks courage to do it without a fatherly safety net. And she gets IRATELY, flamingly frustrated when it doesn't go smoothly...

[Rose feels every emotion with her whole entire self. This one is pure frustration and anger.] 

7. Snack time! In an effort to avoid fielding requests for food every minute of every day, I have decreed that kids get one snack between breakfast and lunch, and another one snack between lunch and dinner. The morning snack falls around 10am--I told them to wait till then one day when they started asking for snacks at 8:30 (an hour or so after breakfast), and now they often sit watching the clock at 9:50am, waiting for it to become ten so they can have their beloved snack. Their self-imposed time frame cracks me up! When we have Cheezits, practically the whole neighborhood comes tromping through and it becomes something of a piranha-feed with orange crumbs scattered far and WIDE. [Well, it feels like the whole neighborhood, but it's really our kids, Spencer, and the two kids next door. Still, that's a lot of Cheezits. When Jay and Rose went next door for a birthday party a few weeks ago, we wrapped up a Costco box of Cheezits for the gift.]

 If nobody gives Amber a snack fast enough, she takes matters into her own hands. This particular time I found her eating butter, just like her big sister did at that age.

 Sometimes I make a good snack like a smoothie and share it with whoever comes running.

8. Sometimes we go on an outing, but usually we just stay home. One day we met some friends at the Prosser park and there were a ton of kids running around that Jay, Rose, and Amber did not know. So they retreated to a tire swing hidden under the playground. I'm glad they've got each other's backs.

9. Amber's naptime (usually around 1pm) and the much-anticipated video game time for the big kids! They disappear to the basement and I either collapse into a chair and read or try and finish a project. Over the past week, Jeff and I rearranged our upstairs family room furniture and re-did our kitchen desk area. I spent hours online searching for arrangement ideas since I have next to no inborn sense of style or vision, and we are all pleased with how it turned out. The best part was that I used things that we already had. The only supplies I bought were: photo prints, a world map, some extra pencil/marker holders, and a new wall calendar. It is immensely satisfying to create a new arrangement out of the same old frames and shelves. After much drilling difficulty, we hung a shelf at desk-height to save mucho dinero since desks are so expensive. I love refreshing our home with a little rearranging!

The kitchen shelf-desk area. It's designed so everything (including the laptop) can be stored up high out of Amber's reaching little fingers. She still climbs, but it's not as easy for her to destroy this way. Also: the map is a peel-and-stick dry erase world map, so we put an arrow labeled "Mel" pointing to Cambodia so the kids know where their missionary aunt is. We also put stars on Rio de Janeiro and south-central Washington.

The slightly wimpy lil TV gallery wall area--ideally I would put a wider set of shelves under the TV since the wall is so big, but this was a low cost rearrange, so all I did was print a couple new pictures for the frames.

10. Amber wakes up and requires snuggling. Sometimes she cheers up and sometimes she doesn't. Spencer goes home at 3pm.

11. The witching hour begins:

12. Somehow we do dinner and eventually wrangle everyone into bed, hopefully by 7pm. Lots of summer nights, Jay and Rose have sleepovers. This week they cleaned the playroom in the basement and slept there for two nights. They are best friends. They argue and wrestle and disagree like siblings do, but they are true blue friends and spend all their time together. (insert glowing motherly heart)

And that's an average summer day at the White house.

Bee-bo!

The Parade

It's the second week of August, and in Grandview that means it's time for the Yakima Valley Fair and Rodeo. Quite a few people from our ward are very involved in 4-H and FFA and this fair. I feel kind of bad that I've never actually been to the fair because I would love to support everyone--but August here is HOT and admittedly, most summers that we've lived here I have been either pregnant or taking care of a baby in August. So I don't feel too bad for not going. It will happen one of these years, I just know it, and we will be drenched in sweat when it does. But not this year--track and field started up in the Olympics on Friday, so we're not going out in the evenings for the next five days. In spite of our non-fair attendance, we always go to the parade, which was conveniently the night before track events started down in Rio.

On Thursday evening during the week of the fair there is a fun little 45 minute parade through Grandview. This year we managed to get seats in the shade at the very beginning of the parade route, about a quarter mile from our house. We strolled down the street, parked in the shade, and watched the parade in relative comfort (as comfortable as you can be in the shade on a 97 degree evening). Sitting at the beginning of the parade was great. We avoided the big crowds downtown AND all of the people in the parade were fresh and full of enthusiasm right there at the beginning. Jay and Rose would want me to add that they also had bulging bags of candy to toss out, joy of joys. I let the kids eat two or three little parade candies and even got into the spirit myself with a small pouch of Sour Patch Kids gummies. I'm not sure what got into me because I've never liked non-chocolate candy much, but I rather enjoyed my sugar coated gummies. I regretted eating that candy almost immediately, however when we were all suddenly ravenously thirsty from the combination of sugar and blazing heat! Talk about cotton-mouth thick-tongued THIRST. But we toughed it out for the sake of the parade.

We went to the parade with Grampa Dan and Grama Leslie, while Jeff stayed home sick. There were beauty queens from all over the valley on sparkly floats in sparkly gowns wearing sparkly crowns. Rose really liked them. There were cheerleaders and marching bands from local middle and high schools. Amber started jumping excitedly when she saw their shimmery pom-poms. There were fire trucks and tractors and miniature cars and old cars and loud cars galore. Trucks pulled trailers full of football teams, swim teams, and cub scouts. There were a few horses pulling carriages. Our LDS missionaries were allegedly supposed to be in the parade, but I never caught a glimpse of them--maybe I was too distracted by the handful of preachers with megaphones quoting the Bible loudly and calling people to repentance. They saved the best for last: the dancing horses. I think they are Andalusian horses--Spanish horses. They are tall with arching necks and lonnnnng flowy manes and tails, and they prance with this floating trot type gait where they lift two legs, hold, then switch and do it with the other two legs. Horses make me happy!

 Sitting with Grampa Dan and Toby the dog.

 Grama Leslie sat in the sun on the curb with Rose while the rest of us huddled in the shade 20 feet behind them.

 Giant blow up apple from Yakima! 

 Amber waved back at paraders every now and then.

 Toby the dog, sitting nobly in the late sunshine near his master, Dan.

 A politician handed out paleta popsicles at the parade. Those politicians were a smooth talking lot. Jay and Rose ended up not liking their popsicles and we stashed them underneath the stroller to keep Amber from playing in their fast-melting puddle.

Amber loves sugar! And mean mother that I am, she doesn't get it too often. But I did let her enjoy a Dum-Dum pop at the parade. She loved it, and got ALL sticky ALL over while she ate it. 

 Not so sure about the paleta popsicle.

 The kids gathered so much candy, plus two t-shirts and two plastic footballs. Groan. I need to lighten up! But I don't love sugar and cheap junk making my house crazy/messy! That sounded harsh. I'm not trying to be harsh. But McDonald's toys, parade loot, school fundraiser awards, trick or treating spoils--even junky plastic road race trophies--all of it makes me cringe. {see exhibit A below}

Exhibit A: This is one of the t-shirts that the kids got during the parade. Delfina's Day Care, with the phone number written underneath. The entire message on the shirt is written in puffy paint by hand. I will say no more on the subject.

 Amby's fingers reached critical sticky mode about half way through her Dum-Dum pop. She said "dih-dee!" and waved her sticky hands in my face over and over. She kept trying to touch my shoulder or my hair and I kept scootching out of her reach. Finally she finished the lollipop and I dumped precious water from our water bottle on her hands to remove the sticky-ness.

And now: beautiful dancing horses!! The sun was low on the horizon shining behind the horses, making photography tricky. And Grandview Middle School isn't the most artistic background. I still could not resist taking a few pictures of the gorgeous horses!

 Rose wore our corduroy cowgirl hat for the occasion.

 Tousel headed blondie watching the horsies.

 Rose pointed out that there were more horses coming.

MANE PERFECTION!!

 The "tail end" of the parade, prancing off down the street.

The loot! They have way more fun collecting the candy during the parade than they do eating it, thankfully. I let them each pick out five pieces to eat this week and saved the rest to hand out on Halloween, and they were just fine with the arrangement.

Rose knows that I love horses and she was SO excited for me to see them. 

"Mommy! Are you so happy? Is this the best parade of your life?" 

Hurray for the parade!