Nicole's Blog

we started our day off by making a "house" (aka secret spy house) out of the huge boxes my bike came packaged in.  the boys, as usual, wasted no time fighting and being mad at eachother.  i'm so over it.  i'm basically running a social skills bootcamp so far this summer (more on that later).  my kids rarely get along and i'm determined to change it. 

at 9am i realized it was wednesday... storytime at the library (i had it in my lesson plan book... aka "schedule" for this summer) and so we threw some clothes on and picked up the house and headed to the library.  the boys were great during storytime.  the storyteller was great as well... she read 4 or 5 books i think and inbetween they did a song/movement.  hudson wouldn't participate... he stayed seated in the same spot he listened to the stories even though everyone was walking and jumping around him.  

after storytime they did a little craft (newspaper people... see picture) and then we picked out a ton of books to take home for the week.  i'm hoping to make the library a weekly thing, and hopefully next week get a little more organized and do lunch (picnic) at bucky harris park downtown).  

when we got home, the county road commission had trucks and a loader just down the road by the high school.  the boys wanted to sit out in the yard and watch (even though the loader was just sitting there).  we spread out a blanket and ate lunch in the front yard.  then we took a walk down to see the loader up close.  boys.  so funny the things they love!

after rest time, porter came downstairs (hudson was sleeping) and by this time the road commission was out front of our house cutting branches from the trees across the road.  porter took a chair and his umbrella and sat out in the yard and watched them.   he kept talking to them and then riding his bike and skateboard for them.  he was cracking me up.  he came in a few times and asked me "can i ask them if they need any help?"

while the boys were resting/napping i whipped up some library bags for the boys out of some duck canvas.  when they got up i let them pick out letter stamps to stamp their name, and colors of paint for their bags.  i love that they picked colors that match and i love the mixed up stamp 'fonts'.

we finished up the day with the installation of hudson's bike seat onto my new bike.  he was FREAKED out to ride in it, though (cracks me up... whenever he's scared he makes up the most crazy nonsense rhyming words like "owie bowie mowie!" or "ovva govva!" "eeemo deemo meeemo!"  HAHA!).  i took him for a spin around the yard and then took him out (because my gears were clicking and clanking and i wanted to check it out) and he said "that was kinda fun!"  back to the gears... this bike has 21 gears.  pretty much about 14 gears more than i need.  i have no idea how to do all this gear shifting... i think my last bike had like 7 gears or something and it was pretty darn straightforward.  i think something is out of alignment or something though because certain gear combinations work and others don't.  i think i'm going to take the bike to a bike shop and have them check everything over and "calibrate" it (is that a term you can even use referring to a bike??) to make sure everything is working properly.  although it was delivered here from, i'm assuming the schwinn manufacture, i had to put together some of the bike and who knows what i dinked up. haha!  i might try to take the boys on a spin tomorrow morning but i'm kind of afraid to mess something up if something is out of whack.