Another summer week at home.  We had a stake clothing swap on Fri/Sat, so my plan was to go through all the clothes in the house and donate every single article we didn’t need.  I envisioned a clean and spotless house with oodles and oodles of more space. 

It didn’t quite work out that way. 

I did work on it throughout the week and got the girls to go through their clothes enough to tell me if they needed anything – which they didn’t – no surprise there.  I could’ve gotten a lot more done if I didn’t have a nursing baby and the sundry and constant requests of seven other children.  Funny that.  It turned out that at the end of the week, I did get through all the baby girl stuff and had much more closet space.  (It was so sweet to go through the baby stuff.  I found that there were clothes I could not give away and I put them away in a special place.)  But not everything is back together, unfortunately, and the clothes that got “sorted” in Megan and Mariah’s room are all over the place.  Heavy sigh. 

The girls did seem to get a second wind on their creativity this week.  They started the week with a passion for in-the-dark hide and seek with all the lights off in the basement.  I thought this was a great idea because they were out of the heat and it involved Sarah, Megan, Mariah, Cheyenne, Calianne and at least three or four neighbor kids!  I thought it was a great idea UNTIL I saw the basement with the lights ON and realized that hide and seek entails dumping all the things off a shelf so that a person can hide on said shelf – or pouring out toys or yanking off blankets – I think you get the idea.  Fortunately, they grew tired of this game after a couple of days and decided to play “Hotel.”  This was also played in the basement but involved cleaning all the rooms so that they would be available for “guests.”  I loved that game!  The other great game idea of the week involved a massive card house that stretched throughout all the rooms and hallway of the (newly cleaned) basement.

Cool, huh?  I never dreamed that you could do so many things in a basement!

Savannah has been very busy all week with her theatrical endeavors.  She had dress rehearsal every night.  We went to see her at the family performance Thursday night.  They performed Friday, too, and Saturday twice.  I wondered what we’d get watching Shakespeare performed by teenagers.  But, it was fabulous!  It was probably even better because of the novelty of seeing teens in the roles.  Savannah plays Sebastian who plots to kill the king:

 

Doesn’t she look SCARY???  She did great.  It was really fun to watch her and I’m not just saying that because I’m her mom and I think she’s cool and that she does everything well.  :)

I forgot to mention that it was apricot week here in Utah (when everybody who has an apricot tree got ripe apricots all at once!)  On Monday, one of our neighbors gave us the go ahead to take apricots from her tree, so Monday night we sliced up apricots as a family and froze a whole bunch for smoothies.  On Tuesday I made seven batches of jam.  That really might be too much even for my large family!  Apricots have iron, though.  Did you know that?  And we got them all for free!  I love that!  Thanks, Nancy!!

 

Benjamin just keeps on growing!  He is wearing 6 months clothes now.  He smiles and does his boy laugh for us when we tease him.  He’s great at sucking on his hands and getting any kind of cloth to his mouth.  He can hold toys for a little while, even, when I’m willing to keep picking them back up and handing them to him again.  When we put him on his stomach, he sometimes rolls over!  Here he is helping with the laundry:

What a cutie!