Seems things are getting a little out of hand at our house. I am not tolerating all of the 'stuff'. Why is it so hard to teach responsibility to kids? We have a playhouse out back that is strictly for Legos, at least in the summer time. Yet, I repeatedly, day after day, find Legos all over the house. I finally had a brilliant idea. Every time I find a Lego, it goes into my Christmas bin. Then they get wrapped up and given at Christmas. It saves me money and it will be like a new toy to them. What gets me, is now when the boys find Legos in the house, they bring it to me and tell me to put it in the Christmas bucket!!!!

I find their clothes and socks all over the house. I told them that when I find their clothes around the house, I will put them in a bin that will get emptied every couple of weeks. If they run out of shorts and shirts, they will just have to wear pants and long sleeve shirts in the middle of summer. (The bucket has not gotten too full, but I imagine come school time, they will not want to be wearing the same clothes day after day after day.)

They proceeded recently to tell me that the reason they are not responsible with their stuff and put it away, is because I never taught them. Well, I have now started laundry parties. Every time I do laundry, which is only 2 times a week, I dump all the clean clothes out on the floor and they find their stuff, fold it and put it all away. The first time we did it they decided that a party was suppose to be fun, so they started throwing the clothes.

The clothes throwing party lasted 15 minutes and then they got to work folding and putting everything away!

When I ask them to clean now, they always ask if things have to be clean my way or their way...like that requires any thought :-)

We have a few bird feeders in our back yard and have enjoyed watching the birds. We would have 10-15 at a time, all lined up on the fence waiting for their turn to eat. I decided that I could not afford to fill the bird feeder every day, sometimes twice a day. So, now our seed is put out more sparingly, but the birds still come around. Here is the feeder we like the best because it gives us the closest view...birds on the window.

The boys have gotten into setting up a small ramp out front (they wanted to make sure these pictures made the blog).

I hope before summer ends that JR can get a more permanent one built for them, so they don't have to keep hauling wood and bricks.

JB went back to the ENT for his ear. We finally got the go ahead to swim without the ear band. The doctor recommended we get another hearing test to make sure the ear drum is doing what it is suppose to be doing (he did not seem too sure that it would be doing the 'right' thing). We will have to wait another 2 months or so to get it checked out. Sure hope that it healed correctly, as far as how sound passes to/through the ear drum.

B went back to the ortho. We are in a holding pattern until some of his teeth drop down more. Sounds like the ortho is leaning towards putting a full set of braces up top - if we go that route, I sure hope it is a part of the phase we have already paid for.

Off to do some reading before time to turn out the lights.