{the chair}

I bought this little rocking chair at a garage sale 2 years ago with the intention of painting it white for Morgan's room. It was wobbly and scratched, but it only cost $1.00. I couldn't pass it up, even though I had NEVER painted anything in my life.

The chair sat in the garage for the last 2 years until I was finally ready to tackle it this past week.

Before:

It became a family affair. Gerard rescrewed and glued to make it secure:

Please excuse the blurred out newspaper. You know how neurotic I am, and it gave away our top-secret location!


I sanded and painted:

Morgan enjoyed:

After:

I think I may still paint some butterflies or stencil something, but I'm going to wait until I have Morgan's bedding picked out. For now I think it looks pretty cute for my first attempt!

{week in review}

Morgan and I had a lot going on this week while Gerard was at camp. Another glimpse into life while he's at school ALL DALL next year! Wait, not next YEAR....next MONTH!! Wow....

We ran some errands early in the week. It's amazing how much easier it is to run errands with one child as opposed to two!

I worked on my latest project -- fixing up an old garage-sale kiddie rocking chair. I'm almost done and will post "after" pictures later, but here's a "before" shot.



Morgan and I went to the park on Wednesday for our regular Wednesday playdate in the park. It was very different without Gerard there... Morgan had my undivided attention and surprisingly there wasn't the constant "Gerard, stop that! Gerard, be careful! Gerard, come HERE!" in the background. It was nice for BOTH of us!

Big Gerard had jury duty on Wednesday. He was there most of the day but luckily he didn't get picked for the jury. He got home a little earlier than usual so I left Morgan home with Daddy while I picked Gerard up at camp and went to the farmer's market. Little Gerard loves the farmer's market. I usually let him pick out whatever he wants, within reason. If I were to give him TOTAL freedom we'd end up with bread, jam, honey and cookies. This week he picked out HUGE blackberries, blueberries, apricots and yellow cherry tomatoes. And bread. And cookies. And he "bought" me some very pretty sunflowers.




On Thursday I took out the dress-up clothes that Grandma and Grandpa had given Morgan for her birthday. I didn't think she was really ready for them when she turned 2, but now she's all about dressing up. Doesn't she look cute as Sleeping Beauty? (Try to ignore the greasy hair.... she got into the Vasoline and thought she'd use it like hair gel. These pictures were taken TWO BATHS later and STILL greasy!)





And here I make my entrance as Snow White.




Thursday night was Family Night at camp. Last time Gerard showed us the lake and archery, so this time he wanted to spend some time playing GaGa with Daddy. Even Morgan got in on the action.







And finally, on Friday Morgan got to play with Savannah while Shauna and the other girls had their dentist appointments. I think Morgan was in heaven -- this was HER playdate, NOT Gerard's!







Overall we all had a nice week. It rained a little each day, but it was never a total washout for Gerard at camp. I think he even swam all week. One day he was sad because the GaGa pits were flooded, but other than that it was all good!

{camp}

Gerard starts his second (and last) week of camp today. I'm bummed because it looks like the weather is going to be really crappy all week. He's going to be disappointed that they won't be able to swim (among other things) although I know they'll have fun activities planned for inside.

{a character study}

My lovely grocery store (please read that with as much sarcasm as humanly possible) just remodeled. It was my hope that this store would make changes that would make my weekly grocery shopping more enjoyable. Unfortunately, no amount of remodeling will improve their customer service or quality of food. It will never live up to my beloved Wegmans.

One of the changes this store made was to move the bottle return OUT of the store. I mean separate entrances and everything. I mean people park by the bottle return, return their bottles, return to their cars and then drive to the main entrance. Convenient my ass. It's not much of a problem right now, but you can bet I won't be returning any bottles in the middle of the winter with 2 kids in tow.

I actually returned bottles today before I did my shopping and I found that you can tell a lot about the people at the bottle return...

The two young, good-looking guys returning nothing but cheap beer? Probably college guys.

The dirty, smelly man with the rats-nest beard and 2 big bags containing a wide assortment of cans and bottles? Maybe homeless, but certainly one to collect bottles off the street.

The thin, sharply dressed woman returning only Diet Coke cans? Probably a professional, clearly concerned with her appearance.

The man in the suit returning a very small number of soda bottles, all completely emptied and rinsed out? Anal.

And me? I returned 153 bottles of mostly Diet Mountain Dew with a few Diet Cokes and 2 bottles of beer. I can't imagine what they thought about me!

{fun fun fun}

I'm tired so I'm going to make this post short and sweet. We went to a great amusement/water park about 1 1/2 hours from here. We were gone 12 hours, and in those 12 hours we managed to squeeze in 3 hours of driving, lunch, dinner, about a dozen rides including Gerard's first (and second) roller coaster ride, a few turns around the merry-go-round for Morgan, the wave pool, water slides, kiddie pools, one bumped head (little Gerard's), one scraped knee (Morgan's), two tired kids and 2 exhausted parents. We were too busy having fun to take too many pictures (especially in the water park) but I'll share the ones we did take....

{swimming and sponges}

Yesterday was Gerard's last day of swimming. He'll need to take the Red Cross Level 1 class one more time to complete all the skills necessary to reach Level 2. Not bad for a 6 week program!

I tried to take a picture of him with his certificate, but all I got was their superheroes pose. Reminds me of my cousins Allen and Paul.



Today we did another project. My friend Angie saw this idea in a magazine and I thought the kids would have fun making sponge water bombs. They were easy to do and provided hours of fun this afternoon. Here are the directions if you'd like to make them too:

You will need:
sponges
scissors
string
marker and ruler, optional



Directions:

1. Using sponges directly from the package (they are slightly damp and easy to cut) cut 5 relatively equal strips. If you are anal like me, use a ruler and marker to divide the sponge into 5 sections.




2. Repeat with 2 more sponges.



3. Line up and stack the sponge strips 4 in a row, 3 rows high. Center a string underneath the stacks.



4. Tie the string tightly and double-knot to create a ball shape.



5. Optional: use left-over pieces as a bunker for army men. Or to protect cute little stuffed animals. Or cute little girls.






6. Soak and have fun!











LOOK OUT, GERARD!!!