Stray bits...

I didn't post this earlier because Steve wouldn't let me take pictures, and it's just not the same without the pictures, but Saturday afternoon Madison got into my make-up. After the initial shock and the realization that there was no permanent damage to the carpet, I was laughing. Steve wasn't. I wanted to take a couple of pictures, but he actually forbid it, which he almost NEVER does. I cleaned up Madison and the mess while he fumed. His two biggest worries were that she A) might have eaten it and B) if we made a big deal out of it she might want to do it again (hence the no pictures stance) and I'm not saying that those aren't valid concerns. But I know very few kids who manage to make it through toddler-hood without getting into Mom's make-up at LEAST once. In any case, Madison ended up with pale pink MaxFactor Lipfinity (read: next thing to permanent) lipstick across her face and pink nail polish on her fingers, toes, legs, and nose. Then she also managed to get it on the smaller game tv in the front room. That didn't make Steve happy either, but at least it wasn't on the LCD. Steve feels that the reason this happened is because my make-up is down within reach. There aren't any shelves or drawers in the bathroom that are out of Maddi's reach. I feel that the real reason it happened is because Steve and I were both tuned in to other things (I was reading blogs and he was watching tv) and we weren't paying attention to what she was doing. In any case, my make-up has now been relegated to the shelf in the top of the closet inside a make-up bag, because I only use it about once a week anyway. It was easier to do that than to start a fight over what the true cause of the mishap was.

When we go to church on Sundays, Kellen goes to a Sunday School class called Firelight. But they don't run it during the summer, for the most part. So this past Sunday there was a big party to celebrate the end of this year of Firelight. There were games and prizes and food. It was a blast :) One of the long-standing traditions is the yarn maze. They start with Pastor Dave's yarn (specially marked) and make it travel around three trees and a telephone pole. Then they follow with all of the other yarns around the same trees and telephone pole, but not in a straight line. The kids come out and pick a yarn end marked with either a 'boy' clothes pin or a 'girl' clothes pin and have to follow it all the way to the end. There is much back-tracking, un-tangling, and un-tying of knots in order to get to your prize, taking between 15 and 20 minutes on average, but some took longer than that. Now imagine the Pastor's string at the center of all of that. It was designed so that his would take longer than anyone else's! But he had to go inside to lead the second service so by the time he got back outside, everyone else was done; his string was the last one up. Well, Steve felt that would be just a little too easy. So he took Pastor's string and made it take a few detours elsewhere across the yard, and even tried to throw Pastor's prize up in the largest tree. Fortunately, it wouldn't stay and Steve no longer has the ability to effectively climb a tree and put it up there :) Pastor was a really good sport about it, although he kept telling Steve that he wasn't having very good thoughts about him, right up until he gained his prize which was a box of chocolates. Then he decided it was all worth it. While Pastor was inside doing the second service, the kids played lots of games. There was a candy walk (walk the circle to the music, find a number to stand on when it stops, the person standing on the number that's drawn gets a candy bar), a hula hoop contest (I never have figured out how to do that!), and a hula hoop race (everyone holds hands with the hula hoop starting around one person and everyone has to go through the hoop - making it travel around the circle). Someone had brought their little wire-haired terrier to the games and that was by far and away Madison's favorite part. She spent the entire afternoon chasing that silly dog. She would hold onto the leash, the dog would chase after something, Madison would fall on her face, then she'd run after the dog and do it all over again! It was great entertainment for the adults, let me tell you. Madison didn't care one bit that she kept getting dumped on the grass. After all of this fun, my only regret was that I hadn't brought the camera with me! I haven't a single picture to show for all of that fun out there! I just need to start taking it everywhere with me in my purse. That's all there is to it.

The rest of the week has been fairly normal. We have our last meeting with Pastor Dave this afternoon to wrap up Kellen's God and Country stuff, which means he'll be awarded that in church somewhere in the coming weeks. Yeah! Tomorrow is Kellen's last day of school, so I really need to get moving on coming up with a daily structure for the summer so that housework still gets done and stuff. Ugh. Not so much else going on here...

On a side note, I am going to take a leaf from Stephanie's book today. She likes to reinforce her plans to do something by putting it on the blog and then she's obligated. So today I am going to vacuum the house, clean the bathrooms, and fold the laundry that's in the dryer! Alright, time to go be constructive :)