The week of June 24 to June 30 was a good week.  I think I remember most of it!  We finished up swim lessons and only Megan had tennis.

Did they learn alot?  I don't know.  I hope so!  They sure had fun.

We were leaving on Saturday to go to Idaho so we had to get ready all week by packing, planning food, etc.  Saturday would also be Bethany's birthday so we needed to have a birthday party with her friends before we left -- since, if you will remember, we start birthday parties at age five and there was no way I was going to back out of that promise to her! 

Before the week got too crazy, so . . . at the beginning of the week, we went to visit Spanish Fork Resevoir.  It was nice!  Sand, clear water, and mountain views and it was free!  Fun times!

We had Beth's birthday party on Thursday afternoon at the splash pad and I think it was a smashing success!  Megan made Beth these cool ice-cream-cone-looking cup cakes.  The cool thing?  They had gummy bears hidden inside the cone! (And they didn't melt!)  You are cool, Megan!

We had ten little girls and Mariah and the twins came and helped me keep track of everybody.  We did play games, too, like What time is it Mr. Fox?, The Farmer in the Dell, Duck-Duck-Goose, the Hokey Pokey, and Beth insisted we play musical chairs . . . which she did not tell me beforehand.  So we improvised with towels and me singing!  Anything for the birthday girl!  We also opened presents, of course.  It was great fun.

The craziest thing about that week, actually, was that I decided it was a great time to paint my floor.  Heh, heh, heh.  Yes, my funky-decorator-side burst out of hibernation with great abandon!  This was my floor before I started:

Those grey areas is where the polish had scraped off.  It's parquet so I couldn't sand and repolish.  I thought I had to just live with it until we could afford to put something new down like new wood or linoleum or tile or something.  Then unexpectedly I came across something on the internet about painting wood floors.  You can paint your wood floor?  I was stunned.  Oh!  And then the possibilities just came flooding into my mind.  If I could paint my floor, I could do ANYTHING with it!  Are you excited with me, yet?  Or are you just scared at what completely unconventional thing I came up with . . . *evil laughter*

So, first we had to move everything out.  Then we had to scrub the floor with powdered detergent.  Sarah actually did most of that while I was at the birthday party.  Isn't she awesome??  She did great, too.  Then we had to put down the base coat.  Then put on the words.  (Megan did the words.  She did pretty great, too!) Then paint on what I wanted to paint over the base coat.  Finally, we had to cover the whole thing with polyurethane -- twice.

The final result is a definite show stopper.  I love it.  No one's got a floor like this one!

Isn't that AWESOME???  It was a lot of work and it really hurt my knees.  I did paint the flowers freehand.  I was going to use a stamp, but it didn't work.  Ah well, anyone can make flowers!  The words say, "And Jesus said, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger."  Since the kitchen is in the center of the house, we had to reroute a lot of traffic.  The kids were great, though.  They were all very accommodating and just put up with the craziness without any complaints.

We put the last coating on the floor as we walked out the door for Idaho.  That way it got lots of time to dry while we left on our next great adventure!