Renovations

Taking the old and transforming it into something new and even more beautiful, wouldn't you agree?

(The top picture was made to look scary on purpose!)

Nothing Really

I wondered if I would post things on days where nothing really happened of note. It doesn't seem kind to make you read nothing, but then it doesn't seem kind to not post for weeks while we wait for something to happen in our family to tell you about! So if you don't want to read "nothing," feel free to wait for the next post!
Our week has been crazy busy so far. I work every Monday from the time school ends until about 9:30PM, so that's always a busy start to each week. However, this week Rhonda had to take Sol to hockey tryouts on Monday, which is a feat in itself considering she had to corral all 4 boys and get Sol to the right place and provide the requisite parental encouragement! We had Eli's open house at Preschool last night, my first class of my second to last class for School Counselor Certification tonight, tomorrow Rhonda gets her hair cut at 5:30, we have open house for Sol's new teacher at 6 (old one is moving to CA with her husband who was just transferred there), and then another open house for Josh and Brin, Rhonda's cousin and family who are missionaries in Brazil. We might skip that one, it depends on how the kids are doing. Friday we leave shortly after I'm done work to go to the Lake of the Ozarks for the long weekend and enjoy one last blast of summer! So you wonder why we're tired all the time?
No, we don't do this all the time, and in fact we try really hard to not have a busy schedule, we like to keep things simple! However, we know that as the boys get older that will take more and more work!

Bedtime Stories

Not stories as in the ones we read to our kids each night before bed. These stories are the kind that we laugh about with each other after the kids are in bed each night! So tonight we put the boys to bed just after 8, as we do all we can to ensure a somewhat pleasant attitude on Sunday morning, one of the hardest mornings to get everyone all going each week. Just a few minutes ago I went in to put some medicine on Eli's face, and he was lying there all cute with a book covering his face. When I moved it, he woke up, seemingly not all the way asleep yet. Here's the conversation we had:

Eli - "...my book?!"

Me - "I'll give it back, I just need to put some medicine on your face."

I put the medicine on and lay the book back down on his face.

Eli - "That's not the page I was on!" So he turned to the right page and layed the book back down on his face.

We never said our children were normal...

"My"

Ezzie has been talking a lot more recently, and has begun to refer to himself as "my." He is trying to figure out this english language, and it's been so entertaining that we wanted to try to catch some on video for you. Here's hoping I can get it to load, so you can enjoy "my" for yourself!

If you're reading this and don't already know, please say a prayer with us for our mom and grandma, Nancy Bailey, who is beginning chemotherapy on Monday for cancer in her Pancreas. We appreciate all your love and prayers!

Back in school

Well, tomorrow will mark the end of our first week back to school. Solomon and Thad both have good friends from last year in their classes, and seem to like their teachers too! They have been doing pretty well, other than Sol being somewhat challenging the first night of homework (which just happened to be the night I work till 9!) and we are excited about this year, it should be a good one for them! I too am finishing up my first week with kids back to school at the middle school where I work, though I've been officially back on the job for almost 3 weeks now! I know, we start early, crazy but true!:(

So it looks like it's going to rain this weekend, and I really wanted to get the deck stained/sealed/whatever to make it look nice again. Thus, with getting home before 4PM, I decided to start it today! The boys all helped out, and I'll include a couple pics of it, and yes, it is finished! Now we can get back to watching the olympics... We're a bit infatuated with them this year... who am I kidding, every time they're on we are!

Weapons!

I was thinking something the other day while sweeping. Ezzie wanted his broom so that he could join me in cleaning the kitchen floor, or so I thought. Well, I got him his broom and instead of helping me with the floor he seemed to be trying to sword fight with me! Either that or he wanted to play hockey with the brooms, but with no visible puck-like object I don't think that was the case. At any rate, I started to think about my boys and their love for any kind of weapon, with swords and specifically light sabers the weapon of choice at the moment. Not even having ever seen the movies, they still know that Star Wars is the ultimate movie of all time. Might be accurate even! Well, I decided to count up the number of swords in their play area, to see if there might be a correlation between the number and how obsessed they are with them. I only included the wooden ones(which I built with them), not the plastic or foam. You decide whether there is a correlation!

On another note, it will be great to have Rhonda home tomorrow, and we'll even have some cooler weather to enjoy! The high is supposed to be 86, so we'll be loving having the house open again for awhile!

Grandma and Her Grandkids

This post is specifically for my mom, who loves to read to her grandkids and whose grandkids love to sit down with her and a good book for some quality time together. I was waiting for some videos to load and the screensaver came on, and I saw a picture I'm going to try to find and put on here - it's a good memory for all us Baileys!

Sorry to the rest of you if this isn't such an interesting post... You can read another one later!

Pushcart Excitement!

Here is the video of Thad giving his all on the pushcart, and then having it give it all right back to him at the end... A couple of bandaids and some sympathy later and he'll be ok :)

The Day We Built a Pushcart

Today began mostly better than yesterday. Rhonda left us all yesterday for her trip to Canada, and the boys decided that they weren't in the mood for obeying most of the day. Thus a fun night sleeping on the pullout couch turned into straight to bed at 8:30PM, and I think I was the most bummed of all with that!

But like I mentioned, today has been better. We cleaned up the disaster that struck the basement, had some scrambled eggs for breakfast, and then went to work on the pushcart. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of building the pushcart, as I was working on it with the boys, but I did get some pics of the final creation in use, as well as some videos.

Side Note - the video clips at the bottom of the screen are from our YouTube page, in case you want to check out some of the fun we've had this summer!

At any rate, when we had it built we took it out to our front sidewalk to test it out. The results were that the boys find steering much harder when you have to do it with your feet and a rope, and I think were a bit nervous to be riding the contraption! They each took a turn, and the big two went down one after the other with scraped and bleeding knees and elbow (Sol). So after about 20 minutes of practice we headed into the house for bandaids and some rest time! I'll drop some pics and try to embed a video of one of the crashes...