The Himstedt Homestead: Labor Day and such

Well, today I figured out why it's called "Labor Day." There was something in the air that made everything that even had the potential to be messy spill at our house today, thereby requiring a lot of extra "labor" to clean it up. It started at breakfast where Avery dropped his bowl of cereal and milk off of his tray, then James cleaned it up, and somehow it managed to spill for a second time. I turned over a box of open spaghetti noodles at lunch and had to play a game of pick up sticks to clean it all up. This evening Amelia dropped her chalkboard box full magnetic numbers and letters,chalk dust, and tiny chalk pieces. She looked at it in the floor and said, "This is what I call AGGRAVATING!" Shannon is the only one who didn't drop or spill anything today, so I'm fully expecting him to fall out of the bed tonight. Other than cleaning stuff up we spent the day mostly hanging out here at home. I had a riding lesson at the barn this morning, and while the boys napped Amelia, Elizabeth and I had "girl time" at Ingles since we were out of almost everything. James worked on the Jeep some this afternoon.

It was a nice day, and the kids played outside this afternoon. Our flowerbed thinks it's a jungle now that we had all that rain last week, so the kids had fun playing one of their favorite things, farm. They pick weeds out of the flowerbed and "sell" them to each other and me as corn, wheat, grain, broccoli, whatever. (The currency is rocks.) It also gets weeds out of the flowerbed...though right now that is a lost cause. Avery walked around with bark in his hand saying, "Want some chicken?" No vegetables for him. I asked Shannon what one tall weed with a lot of seeds on the end of it was, expecting an answer like, "wheat," which is what it looked like. He said, "Oh, that's what we use to tickle the cows with." Well, duh.

Tonight we had "family movie night" where we rent a kid friendly movie and we eat dinner upstairs on the coffee table in front of the TV. We do it about every two or three weeks, and they think it's great. Tonight's selection was the Bee Movie, which I could definetely never see again and be okay. Two weeks ago we picked Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which if you have never seen is terrific!

Yesterday we had a full day at church. We did the usual Sunday morning thing, and Amelia's choir sang in both services. She looks so small up there since her choir is K-5th grade. Poor thing yawned through the entire song during the first service! We went out with friends to Rib Country (a new restaurant in Cleveland) for lunch. Can you believe three couples have so many kids (see picture below). We went home for naps, then back to the church for an annual event our church does for the community, Sunday at the Park. There were all kinds of inflatables, booths, and a huge car show. James and Curtis took their Jeeps as unofficial entries and parked them in four-wheeling fashion as a kind of "request" for an off road category for next years' show. We enjoyed seeing folks from church we never get to talk to, and the kids liked the slides and "jumpy things," and Amelia's choir sang again. There was an awesome fireworks show too, and they estimated 3000 people were there.

Continuing to work backwards, Saturday was spent mostly at home too, and James went to the hunting club he's a member of about an hour away to put up deer stands. We played outside during the afternoon, and had the Hicks and Davidsons over that evening for dinner, adult chat time, and kid running-around-like-maniacs time. (I've been asked about "socialization" concerning Amelia and homeschooling this year. Not too worried about that!)