Camping cancelled

1. This past week we were invited to go camping with a bunch of families in our ward.  Leo said he would take the kids and let me just stay home and relax.  But I was game and planned on going as long as we borrowed an air mattress.  We were going to go here, to Surfside Beach.  There's no water or bathrooms, but you can drive your car up on the beach and set up your tents right there, so that sounded really cool, and our friends are ultimate campers and have a camping toilet thing.  So not too bad there either.

2. Unfortunately this is what the beach looks like currently.  It's covered in Sargassum seaweed, and thus in dead rotting critters that lived in the seaweed, and hordes of mosquitos that breed in the wet soggy stuff.  Our ultimate camper friends went and only lasted a few minutes before heading home.  They had gone the night before the rest of us (the joys of homeschooling and owning your own company) and they let us know how bad it was, so luckily we were saved the trip.  My kids were pretty devastated though.  We had already packed and everything.  Elena cried for over an half an hour.  Leo and I were bummed too.  :(

It's so bad, they're clearing sections with tractors that are near people's houses.  

3. Luckily, our friends Truston and Brittney threw a party at her parents' house (her parents are out of town--what a rebel, eh?)  and we spent six hours swimming in their pool.  Leo and I took our fire pit and once it got dark we roasted marshmallows and made smores in the driveway.  It was so much fun!

 4. We spent the rest of Friday and Saturday doing chores.  We were supposed to clean the church on Saturday morning, and the kids and I were so exhausted from swimming the night before that Leo snuck out without anyone waking up and went and spent an hour cleaning the church alone, before calling us at 9 AM (we were all still sleeping) to ask us to come help. What a sweetie! Luckily the other family helping showed up about then too.  Then Leo and Ana went and helped paint a theater for a kid's Eagle Scout project in the afternoon.
5.  I swept our our garage on Saturday.  It was gross.  There was tons of animal feces in one corner--I think either stray cats or more likely, that possum that we always saw around last year.  Yuck. We also found a nest of gecko eggs.  We are not kind, we didn't leave it there, instead we rinsed it out with the hose.  I was thinking of posting a picture (courtesy of the web) but they're just so ugly, I changed my mind.

 6.  This was Isabel's and Sebastian's preschool group this year.  It was fun, although once Austin moved away, it was too frequently that I had to teach.  I think the last couple of times I taught, it ended up being play time with not even an attempt at doing any craft/preschool activity.  Oops.

 7. My red poppies and ranunculus have given way to a plethora of yellow.  Love it!  Makes me happy every time I look out my window.

 8. Beds are overrated for kids.  Sebastian slept in that box for two nights before we took it out.  What a goof.

 See, overrated.

 9. Elena set the breakfast table for us the other day and added a note for every person in our family along with something they like.  It was sweet.

 10. A picture of Ana, as promised.

11. Ana left for girl's camp yesterday.  Good times.
12.  I've given up sewing maternity clothes and am sewing costumes for Kayli instead. Really, it's so SOOO SOOOOOOOO much more fun.  :)  Definitely my happy place.

 13.  And that's it.  Peace out.