First Week of Summer!

Alex is off to scout camp! 

He's terribly excited. 

"Mom, I don't need shampoo or soap!" 

"Really?" 

"Yep, no bath!" 

Scary.

I will probably need to hose him off before he enters the house on Saturday.

Here he is before he left this morning...

Tutor has been wonderful.

She is patient and full of fun ideas and I just LOVE having her. She is working with both Alex and Rylee. The first thing she had them do was write a paper about "If I could go back in time, I would..." She had Rylee read her paper out loud and then turned to Alex and asked what she had read? 

"What?" Alex asked.

Ah-ha! He so tunes everything out that does not pertain to him. I heard her do this a number of times. Call him to the table. I love it!

My wisdom toothless teens have been hurting and grumpy. They're tired of soft foods and sore mouths and just over all a "joy" to live with. Yesterday they were picking on Alex for his choice of baby-ish Chinese cartoons on Netflix. Truly the show he watches is terribly annoying and geared for 5 year olds but I'm sure it only adds to their frustration to be sitting home hurting and having to listen to this cartoon. Luckily the series is over. Whew.

This was Austin the second day....yes long boarding!

Devree was still down but could at least smile...

 But the THIRD day....look at how swollen Austin is! (He only had three wisdom teeth. Two on the top and one of the bottom. You can tell which side that bottom tooth was on, can't you?)

Rylee is having a "cupcake" summer. She is so into making gourmet cupcakes. She's ordered a book off of Amazon and checked one out of the library. Her first batch wasn't much of a success because the frosting was too soft but they sure tasted good anyway. Between her cupcakes, the fudge and flan I made for the sore mouth kids, this might just be the summer of ten pounds!

James has been working like a crazy man. He's painting the basement, fixing cars, planting gardens, fixing sprinklers, fixing more cars. Here he is in my favorite outfit. No seriously. I love it when he wears clothes like this, it means something is getting fixed or improved. Poor tired guy.

Kambree is working a lot. She's nannying for a friend of mine with 2 Ukrainian imports. She's loving it and she really needs to work. We just don't see her much. 

I have been sick. Like really sick but I'm now on the mend. (I coughed so much it made my should blades ache.) Not sure what this is, but it's a long lingering ailment and I will be happy to get back to my normal self. Any. Day. Now. (That's what I've been saying for the last ten days!)

We're trying a new discipline tactic with Alex. Not sure it's a good one or not.  He got in trouble for lying yesterday. Again. We'll see if this works. When I asked him how he felt about things his reply was "normal". We talked about what is normal for some people is not normal for others and came to the conclusion that his normal = in trouble and that it doesn't have to be that way. So hard to give up lying when you've been doing it for so long.....

On a sweeter note, I made warm chocolate chip cookies per Dev's request -she figured she could mush them against the top of her mouth and eat them without chewing - late last night. Alex came down all showered and I offered him a cookie. He asked if I wanted to hear his dream? Sure? (He's getting ready for bed here, not so sure what dream it is he's talking about.) "I dream of having family and yummy, yummy cookies." 

Oh....

I think he was meaning that he was living his dream? Having a family and cookies?

That or maybe he's dreaming about a different family (one that maybe tolerates lying better?) and makes better cookies?

Nah....I make a pretty mean chocolate chip cookie.