Little Bit of This

And a little bit of that :) Our church held a sending off BBQ for a sweet family who are being called to minister in another town at one of our church plants. It was a pretty great party, with the BBQ smoking brisket, hotdogs, hamburgers, pulled pork--the works! I jumped in to help serve, since our youth intern was flying solo. Plastic gloves for covid-friendly serving, y'all :) There was also a big slip-n-slide for the littles and a dunk tank for the bigs. The kids lined up to phone-video our pastor's son getting dunked :) There was also a push-up competition, the volleyball game that was at Caelan's grad party, and nine square in the air--an inexplicable crowd favorite. Graysen played with his broken arm in his pocket, to make sure he didn't reinjure. X-rays tomorrow and we'll see if he's all healed up :)

One Labor Day weekend project was moving our six not-so-little babies into the coop with the big hens. It turns out, our Lavender Opringtons ARE the big hens! That's good because the Prairie Bluebells are pretty dainty, so Ma and Aunt Docia can stick up for Mary, Laura, Carrie, and Grace. Hopefully we'll have blue eggs in the next two weeks, I'm so excited!!

Doesn't Muriel look happy with the volunteer sunflower that grew by our barn on a sunny, blue-sky day? She wasn't in trouble yet for spooking the new chickens by the fence. It wasn't long. But that same day my Cali girl friends were sending pics and super cute selfies of what they were doing with their families that day--kayaking, Six Flags, a Latin music festival . . . Graysen and I were home doing chores, while everyone else was a work. Then he left to go for a walk with the ones who came home, so I sent a selfie of me and my chickens. Lol :)

While my bro and his sweetie are meeting with our pastor and his wife for premarital counseling, we've been hanging out with Mr. M :) He brought some LEGO to build with Graysen. He threw the ball to Muriel and was so tired he laid down on the concrete for a "nap." Graysen taught him a new song, which has been stuck in my head ever since . . . "Chicken wings, chicken wings, hotdogs and bologna. Chicken, macaroni. Chillin' with my homies." Make it stop!! :)

We also started the monster task of pulling all our seasonal clothing tubs out of the shed in order to pack for cooler weather. Buck wanted everything brought out, the school tubs, the giant block tubs, the lawn equipment, etc. so he could sweep behind and look for mousies. There were mousies! They are so cute and hoppy, but we don't want them in our shed.

I told the kids to just dump out all the vacuum bags of clothes in the living room, so we can start sorting. The nice thing about vacuum bags, is everything smells as clean as when it went into the bags. This cuts down big time on laundry. We usually just rewash the really wrinkled stuff. Anyway, it was all laid out on the floor--at least a month too early--and Mr. M decided to *help* by jumping into the pile repeatedly. He also tried on one of Buck's zip up jackets, which, had it been the right color, fit him a lot like Boo's costume in Monster's Inc. :)

I saved out one tub of big blocks for him to build with, and he enjoyed it until I wouldn't let him climb the shaky blocks to build the tower taller. He wanted "Aunt Buck" to come and help him because he was taller. I had to remind him a few times that aunts are girls and uncles are boys, so it is Uncle Buck :) We worked through a super-tired-kid meltdown, and ended the night finishing LEGO and looking at a Clubhouse Jr. magazine. Whew! Auntie skillz put to the test ;)

Labor Day itself was a lot of yard and chicken work, sorting and packing, and checking a ton of stuff off of our to-do lists. We made breakfast for lunch and Buck grilled chicken sausage for supper. Caelan wanted to go to her college group hang-out time, so we decided to do one of our escape room boxes as a family before she left. This one ended up being Mexico City, and because the game encourages the players to step into the culture of the featured location . . . we pulled up the suggested Spotify playlist which made Graysen say, "This makes me want chips and salsa." From which thirstiness resulted in a run to the garage to grab the Mexican sodas Buck recently brought home :) We completed the challenge, Caelan headed off to do college-y things, Gabby worked on her college class, the guys watched football, and I came within millimeters of finishing Crime and Punishment, but just could not keep my eyes open. (I finished it this morning, all 550 from-Russian-translated pages of it, wheweee!!)