My Alarm Clock

This is why small town living is so interesting. The Blair Marching Band has been practicing for a 4th of July parade every morning this week. Our little subdivision must be the perfect little parade route because they walk up and down the roads at 8 AM each morning. It just makes me giggle when towards the end of the video they pause and turn towards our house to play a song. By the way, this is from my bed! As you can see, there is no sleeping through this!

The General Way of Things

Summer is an interesting time this year. The boys don't have any kids in the neighborhood to play with. So they have to get along with each other. Not always such an easy task. We have spent some time at the library. The summer reading program is going well. The pool has been off limits since I couldn't find a swimsuit for Bree and I couldn't find my swimsuits I already owned until today. Fortunately, I found a swimsuit for Bree at Wal-Mart the other day for $5 that will work nicely. I'm still not sure about going to the expensive pool in town. We went to the carnival earlier in the month and enjoyed that a lot. We have ran errands in Omaha and spent some time with Omaha friends. But mostly, they have played with toys and video games to keep happy.

I have been trying to clean up said messes and trying to unpack those last few stubborn boxes. I also have to prepare for a garage sale I am having July 29th thru the 31st. All of that stuff we packed up to stage our Omaha house that we weren't sure if we would need in our new house is going! There is also clothing the kids have grown out of and toys! So much fun!

Then comes the last chore of which I am sorely unprepared for. I am trying to decorate our house. In our last house, it began to feel like I was in a museum dedicated to the Jensens with all those family pictures we had up. I wanted to go in a different direction with this house. I actually want to have decorative pieces and a few family pictures. I went shopping at Hobby Lobby when the home decor was 50% off and got some fabulous deals! I struggled a lot with finding something I thought would look great together in our living room, but I think I finally found it. I'll post pictures when we get the painting done and put items on the wall that belong there. This is really hard for me though. I'm just not sure. I am convinced that I was born without the gene to decorate a home. Creativity is not my thing. So let's cross our fingers that I will be able to pull something off.

Neighborly Turtles

We have started to meet our neighbors now. It only took about 2 weeks, but they have started coming over. It's like a turtle. The turtle sees something drop into his vacinity and it is time to pull himself back into his shell. You might say we were startling to see move in with all those trips with the U-Haul truck and the three boys running around everywhere outside. Of course, seeing all the people helping us move in. And a dog can be quite an alarm bell ringing site. So you stay in your shell for a suitible amount of time... in this case, two weeks. Slowly, you begin to peek out and see if everything is still ok. Let's see, no dog barking incessantly: check! None of our children running through neighbors yard and screaming bloody murder constantly: check! New neighbors wave at us when they see us peeking out: check! Everything must be ok!

While Dave and Kev were working on putting the playground set back together on Friday, the neighbor behind us came out and was trying to reach through the fence to pet Shay. I talked with her (Chris) and her husband (Kim) for quite a while at which point they must have assumed I was ok people. Of course, they only did this once I said hello to their son (college age guy) who was walking their cat (yes, I did say cat) in their backyard.

On Saturday, when Dave and I were working on cleaning up and sorting our garage more, the guy to the south of us, Buster ("Once I die, there'll be no more Busters in the county"), came over and said hi to us. Very sweet older gentleman who we found out through conversation must use a cane because he was run over by a tractor when he was 3. Seeing that Buster had ventured out of his "shell", the neighbor directly across the street, Red, came over too. He was also venturing to organize his garage that day. He said it took him 15 years to get up the courage to tackle that job again.

Very friendly neighbors all around so far. I keep waving at the others I see as I drive off to go places. Eventually, I would like to get some cookies baked up and take them over to them all so we can properly introduce our family to the neighborhood. Then there will be no need to hide in their shells just because the Jensens have come to town.

The Way of Things

I am a very anal retentive person in case you don't know me very well. You may have guessed this though from previous posts about everything being in it's place. So when things gets outta whack, I get frustrated and grumpy. Same thing for schedules. I love schedules! I love To Do Lists! I know. I am a freak. But this is just how I am. So the first couple of weeks of summer, I am usually a pretty grumpy person until we get things on schedule. Also, getting the kids trained to put their stuff back where it belongs when they are done playing with it. This year, things have been compounded by moving and trying to get everything where it belongs to begin with.

So yesterday, I planned. I began giving the boys chores to do each day and setting up a schedule for how the day would run. So they boys understood when they got up today that the day would go as follows:

First, we get breakfast eaten. This is cereal for everyone so Ryan can help the brothers get this setup if Bree lets mom sleep in. The boys are allowed to watch TV while they eat breakfast. But once it is gone, they will need to turn it off. Then the chores were to be done. Today I then let them watch a movie with some popcorn while I got some laundry done. We'll then have lunch and Bree will go down for nap. The boys will then get their video game time (which is dependent upon them completing their chores from the day before). By then, we will start getting things ready for dinner and the evening activities. If we need to run any errands, that may be the time.

Of course, I'm not so crazy that if the schedule needs to be changed, I can't flex it. I do. Often. In fact, this isn't the normal schedule because we are expecting bad weather here and we don't have the playground setup yet in our new backyard. Ok. So I am a little bit crazy.