Zip Zip Hooray

And I wonder why I am exhausted.

We have had a whirlwind week.

Here are a few highlights-- Greer turned the big 13.

Yikes another teen.  Heaven help us.

Byron helped the girls make the cutest flip flop cookies

out of Nutter Butters for her pool themed party.

 Greer planned it all-- just handed me a shopping list

put the rest of us to work.

She played a series of "Minute to Win It" games...

from seeing who could eat a donut the fastest

without it falling off a string....

  to moving Oreos from the forehead to the mouth using

only facial expressions, to playing "Junk in the Trunk"

where they had to shake their booties to shake

ping pong balls out of empty Kleenex boxes..

Of course, I was too busy running around to take many pictures.

But I did get cute ones of them swimming in the 84 degree pool

(thank you Gobily's for spoiling these kids).

 And I got pictures of some of Greer's food spread--

her flip flop cookies, her Veggie platter with the sign: 

"take a dip"...

 Her blue Kool-aid:  "Pool Water", peach rings that were labeled

"life preservers", licorice labeled "pool noodles"-- you 

get the idea.

She obviously knows her way around Pinterest.

 They roasted S'mores, played, giggled and jumped

on the trampoline.  Greer must have thanked us ten times

for such a fun party.

Kind of nice to get thanked when she did most of the work!

 The next morning, Holland and I got up before dawn

to help out at the Bubble Run.

My friend Jeanie and I set up and manned the Baldapalooza booth.

We were the charity partner for the race.

 It was pretty cool-- for the first time they've run the race 

here in Boise, they had over 7 thousand participants.

Not bad.

 The race track snaked around the fair grounds

and was filled with lots of families covered in

colored foam and bubbles.

 Case in point-  here's Holland along with two other friends.

And they were just the volunteers.

 I think everyone got drenched and dyed.

 If not running through the "bubble bogs" in the race...

certainly at the end when they had a field of foam

they launched out over everyone and everything.

 It was a blast.

We came home tired and happy.

Oh, one more thing.

This is what Greer unwrapped from her family.

Can you guess what her present is?

It is all she wanted and my husband (aka MacGyver)

built a top notch- much higher quality one than we could get on line...

drum roll please...

Zip Line.

 It goes at least 200 feet across our upper yard.

And hasn't stopped being used since he put it together

Saturday afternoon.

 Even Kean is addicted to the speed.

That's him on  Byron's lap.

Trust me, it's a bit scary the first time- stepping off at the top

but once you go, you want to go again and again.

Musical Rooms

Big sigh over here.

Kean was back to his normal self.

Still don't know what yesterday was all about...

but I'm relieved it's in the rear view mirror.

We had horse therapy today...

Candace's daughter joined us to help lead Romeo.

She's this tiny thing that just muscles that big ol' horse around.

Amazing.

 We were excited to hear that Kean's old regular ride--

Reba is with child.

Can't wait to see a little one next Spring.

As for the rest of the family?

We are EXHAUSTED.

A month ago, Greer and Reese put together a presentation-

complete with charts, sketches and outlines-

to convince us to shake up all the kids' bedrooms.

So as of tonight, Kean is back in his own room (yippee),

Holland has moved from the big room downstairs to

Reese and Kean's old room

and Reese and Greer now have the big room downstairs.

Hope you followed that!

Trust me, it was a lot of furniture moving.

Dos Amigos

Taco night at the Barker Casa.

Kean ate two at dinner... then ate another one when his

dad got home from a meeting.

 Whoa... and not even on Steroids until next week.

 By the way, I'm hoping no one comes over to the house for a few days.

This is what our family room looks like...

No- we don't typically have our washer and dryer in front of the couch.

 We had to replace our water heater and the new one Byron got 

for a smoking deal is massive.

Listen to this little adventure- to put it in, he had to pull out our washer, dryer,

the shelves they sit on and the cabinets above.

Simple, right?

Wrongola.

As we removed the top cupboard, Byron backed out the last screw holding it up--

and water started spraying out of the wall like a fireman shooting a hose.

It was crazy-- we were all running around trying to turn off our well,

turn on every faucet in and outside the house to try and bring down the water pressure.

We finally got it to stop-- and boy, did we ever have a mess.

We were absolutely amazed to see that 8 to 9 years ago, when the cabinet was hung,

a screw was accidentally driven through the protector metal plate and right on through

the copper pipe.  It is a wonder we hadn't had a flood many years ago!

 MacGyver spent half the night cutting out old pipes, soddering new ones

(oh, and did I mention the smoke detectors in the house all went off at that point?),

checking the other pipes to make sure they weren't damaged- by cutting out the drywall,

and  removing the now- soaked insulation.

These pictures are from today-- not last night.

So you can see we are slowly getting there.

I'm just grateful I have a husband who can do pretty much anything--

include fix a massive mess!

Pyros

Okay, I'm feeling much better today-- ready to keep moving forward.

I really do have much to be grateful for.  Kean is doing well, the girls are

all healthy and we have a warm, wonderful home where we can all be together.

Who needs much more than that?

The rain finally stopped this afternoon (maybe that helped improve my mood)

and it was so nice, Byron built the girls a fire in the outdoor fireplace.

 Kean wanted nothing to do with the fire-- but

the girls are a different story.

They'll spend hours out there- telling stories, poking the embers

and making s'mores.

p.s. I don't think I've taken a single picture of Reese in the past

year where she's not doing some funky wannabe model pose.

Sigh....

What the Hail?

Usually, it is quite beautiful here - weather wise.

Most days the girls play outside or as pictured on this day

help their Grandpa plant a new tree. 

Today was quite different.

While Keanut napped the weather went from sunny to scary.

From light to very, very dark.

I was out picking tomatoes for dinner and the sky seemed to literally be boiling--

with clouds in the distance looking like they could easily turn into a tornado.

Literally minutes after I got back into the house

the heavens angrily opened and rain and hail poured out.

This picture was taken after things settled down.

 But just take a look at the evidence.

The girls were kept at school until the craziness passed.

Byron was drenched to the point his cell phone in his pocket wouldn't work for an hour until it dried out.

So glad Kean slept through most of it.

I thought the windows were going to break from the hail hitting them.

What a wild afternoon.



Our Monet Moment

Over Spring Break we did something I hope I don't live to regret.

We moved Kean in with Reese and gave Greer her own room.

Greer's new room is painted a deep Bordeaux red so we had to do some major redecorating to

take it from a vintage cowboy look to a young girls room.

Since we couldn't find any art that was just right, we decided to make our own.

And what fun that was!

 Greer sketched herself on a piece of paper and I then tried to replicate it on three small canvases.

We painted it together.

It's supposed to be Greer.

 Byron's the real artist in the family.

He took this old dresser-- and I mean old.

It was my best friend Stacy's dad's and probably his dad's or grandfather's before him.

It had a bazillion coats of hideous paint and these old locks on the front that when Byron

popped them out-- they were patented from the 1880's.

 It turned out beeyootiful and is perfect for Reese and Kean to share.

A Guilty Conscience = A New Mailbox

We woke up the other morning to find this. Ouch. It seems a young man was coming down the hill at 4a.m. and "lost control".

After hitting our mailbox, he cut across the road, took out the neighbor's fence and crash-landed in to their horse pasture.

The police immediately knew who the kid was... because he left quite the calling card-- he left his truck in the pasture and took off on foot. The cops towed his truck and went a callin' to his home. I guess his dad answered the door (just after 4am) fully dressed and ready for the day-- but had no idea where his son was at that hour. Hmmmmm.....

My best guess is he was hiding somewhere-- drying out!

So poor Byron schlepped to Home Depot to buy a new mailbox. This is the 3rd time we've had to replace the darn thing (due to wacky drivers)! And we live out in the country!!!

Here's the good news. The next day, I was coming home and lo and behold, there, working on the neighbor's fence was a young man and his father. I stopped, rolled down my window and asked him if he was the one who took out the fence. He sheepishly replied yes. I then asked him if he'd be repairing our mailbox next. He was surprised and shocked. Get this, he had no idea he'd smashed into our mailbox. (See my theory above). Long story, short, the very next day, he installed the new box and left us a check to pay for the cost of the box.