Sunday, November 8, 2020

Return of the Party House

Round 2 of life with the cousins! This time we had a much better set up. We put doors on the downstairs den and a queen bed in it, and we dug Stephen and Claudia's bunk bed out of their storage unit for their 3 girls to sleep on. No more air mattresses! Claudia also dug out a bunch of cube organizer shelves for the downstairs bedroom/schoolroom.

With Stephen getting his new job at the City of Tucson (YAY!), we found ourselves with 3 people working from home. Aaron's home office is set up in our bedroom, and he kindly helped me get a pretty good set up in our walk in closet. Stephen got all his office stuff set up in the Cactus room where Elliot was sleeping, and Claudia's room downstairs doubled as the classroom for the girls. 
Elliot and Eowyn play SO well together. They have a similar sense of humor. Honestly I hardly see Elliot during the day when the cousins live with us. My favorite is when I would go into their bedroom and find a new giant sign taped to the wall and find out that they started a dinosaur club. And a robbing school. And a Ninja school. 

These two get along now! The days of choking and scratching each others faces is in the past! Ethan calls Annie "Nannie" in his thick German sounding accent, and it is adorable. 

It wouldn't be a fall without some prickly pear pickin! Stephen shared my enthusiasm for juicing and jellying. 

Prickly pear smoothies for the win

A baby still lives here. He did an impressive job of  sleeping while the kid pack cavorted all around him up until about 4 months old. After that he started needing a quiet place to nap. 

The hair chalks were a huge hit with everyone except for Aaron, who had the unfortunate task of cleaning it out of our carpet. Apparently kids rub their heads on the floor. 

The morning light is just perfect for magna tile color shadows! Elliot usually sleeps through this activity. He's the one night owl out of our pack of bloodlings. 

Home church

Isaac's first time swimming! They opened the pool down the street by reservation. They limit the number of people in the pool. At first it was limited to 10 people, which meant that our household of 11 couldn't all go at the same time! They since increased it to 25 people which still feels spaced out in a pool that size. 

Just dance youtube videos are a popular form of exercise around here. We don't have the video game, but watching the video of other people playing it is an acceptable and free alternative.

We spent many happy hours at this here park. We started driving to this corner park instead of walking to the one down the street because it is less crowded. 

Our local school gives out free lunches for every kid age 1-18. On Fridays the bags have food for the whole weekend. This is what it looks like when you get Friday meal bags for 6 kids. Crazy!

Collecting dead beetles by the lake. I think Claudia was a little disgusted, but the kids and I had a great time.

One time Stephen thought he could teach the kids Blood Rage. We were all shocked when team Eowyn and Elliot got in trouble for playing with the pieces instead of focusing on the game. I had to take over for them so that Stephen and Brianna could get closure on the game. 

Each of the kids had a small jar of slime. One day when we cleaned them up, Ethan's was missing. We looked all over the place but didn't find it until a couple days later- stuck between two pages of my scriptures!

Couches are not for sitting on. They are for making forts. 

A bunch of bookkeepers! Stephen and Claudia joined Ashley Bookkeeping over the summer. I'm happy to have some more co-workers, but it was a little bit of bummer how much time we had to spend working instead of playing in the evenings. 
 

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