Summer is Here and Time is Flyin'

Wow have the past two weeks flown by, I apologize for leaving you hanging. A little bug has been floating around the house and has kept us up at night and our hampers filled sky-high with laundry. We're happy to report we are out of the woods and are finally on the mend.

Since school has been officially out for 2 weeks now, we have been catching up on a lot of things.

Like organizing our rooms:

(It bothers me that the doors and hardware in this hallway don't match the rest of the house, and haven't for almost 5 years, but apparently not enough to change it.)

The following shots DID bother me enough to make the kids pick up their room:



If this is what their room looks like now, I fear for their teenage years...


They were proud once they had it "spotless", not quite my version but I take what I can get these days.

Tommy has taken his train obsession to a whole new level. He is constantly chasing me down to play trains with him.


Here he is parking all of his trains in the "Shed" we built out of regular old wooden blocks.

Mommy has no plans for a train table or any fancy bridges, roundhouses, mountains, etc. Mostly because we don't have the room for one and I've been eyeing a pair of Reva Ballerinas for years...only slightly joking.


I love this little stinker. I snuck into his room the other night to check on him and he was talking in his sleep--about trains. So he is officially eating, sleeping, and dreaming trains.

We've been in the pool an insane amount.


I thought I'd never see the day when this would happen:

Or this:


This one cracks me up, I don't know why...



This year we are REALLY having fun in the pool. Both girls are on the same swimming level and it allows me to relax a bit especially when Tommy is taking a nap and it's just the 3 of us.

There's nothing less refreshing than drinking a piping hot coffee when it's 98 degrees outside. I've finally joined the 21st century and am really getting into iced coffee.

It totally helps me avoid the caffeine headache if I forget to have a cup in the AM, and gives me more patience and energy for these two no-nap queens in the PM:


When Tommy is napping, you'll often find us in the pool.
If not, we're probably inside killing time. We are finally playing Memory the appropriate way, taking turns and turning over TWO cards at a time instead of SIX.


We've been painting our nails.


I've had a lot of fun digging in the trash for our lost iPod.

At least the gloves make it feel as glamorous as possible.

We've been writing in our journals.

I struck GOLD with this idea. Goodbye loose papers all over the kitchen counters, coffee tables, floors and doors, the spiral bound notebook is our new best friend. The girls each have their own and are loving filling the pages with stickers, glitter, stamps, water color and whatever else floats their boat.

Instead of roasting our own chickens lately we've been picking up rotisseries from the grocery or my mecca The Fresh Market. The girls call it "Chicken Like the Children" in reference to the first Nanny McPhee where the children tricked their nanny into thinking they were eating their baby sister by eating chicken off the bone...bad description, very cute movie if you're looking for something to watch this summer. I love me some Colin Firth.

Anyway, if you're still awake the thing they love most about chicken is the wishbone.


Elle was so excited that she finally won, although she can't ever keep her wish a secret.


One last thing and then I'll let you go. I usually set some leftover chicken aside to make quesadillas for the girls, or chicken salad. One of my favorite ways to use leftover chicken is this:

Why mix up your own spices when this kit does it so perfectly for you? There are a lot of variations on the back, I like to add a can of white beans, a can of diced tomatoes, an onion and green pepper to make it go further. I also pick up some shredded Mexican cheese and green onions to finish it off.

What do you do with your leftover chicken?