Weekend Highlights

I know it's Wednesday, but I'm just now getting around to blogging about last weekend. The part of the weekend that started after soccer games and ended sometime on Monday afternoon, that is. I know Monday isn't technically a weekend

but since I was woefully unprepared for the weekend to end, I'm counting Monday.

After leaving the soccer game, I realized I had four children to entertain on my own until about 6pm when Brandon would be home. We headed out to Academy (Sports and Outdoors!) to pick up something other than knit pink shorts for Emerson to play soccer in, and a pair of shin guards for Aidan since, oh, there was some shin guard drama on Saturday morning. (sidenote: I cannot say or think about "Academy" without singing the "Academy, sports and outdoors, the right stuff, the right price, Academy!" song in my head from their commercial. We ended up also getting Aidan some new soccer socks to match nothing that he owns that he will soon be wearing with every outfit, because he's my Aidan, and almost left the store with new fishing poles and a water slide. But I showed restraint.

On the way home, I passed by a sign for a neighborhood garage sale. Desperate to kill a little more time before having to listen to how bored my kids were for the next 6 hours, I decided a drive-by was in order. I wasn't counting on seeing anything I needed, since it was noon on a Saturday, and all good garage-sale shoppers have scooped up the really good deals by 8am.

I'm always on the look out for cheap stuff for the kids, and for the last several months we have been talking about replacing a shelf we have downstairs with some sort of buffet table or chest with cabinets or drawers that would serve as "closed storage". Every now and then I turn around and see Harper digging through my card stash or the books I currently have on these particular shelves downstairs, and I would love something that I can "close" and keep out of sight and out of mind. I didn't want to get something too pretty and new, since my children have a way of destroying everything in their path. If something gets colored on, spilled on, or puked on, it needs to not be the end of the world. I have been thinking of finding a cheap piece of furniture, then painting it. I have a lot of dark wood furniture downstairs, and I could use a piece to brighten the room up.

Anyway, I turned the corner in this neighborhood, and find this in a driveway:

Solid oak. Needs some work (especially the top). Needs new hardware. And $25.

Twenty-five dollars, people. If I screw up the whole "needs work and I plan to paint it" part of my plan, I'm only out $25. The people were so desperate to get this chest out of their garage that they even delivered it to me, since I had no truck and four kids in my van.

$25 and they delivered it.

The weekend was going to get even better, for Emerson anyway, when she discovered that mommy was going to let her wear her new dress to church on Sunday. I'm picturing a somewhat-Elmo-themed birthday party for Emmy next month, and had found this precious dress on etsy that the seller wanted too much money for.

Enter: Mandy's friends who know how to sew.

Result: Ridiculously cute dress (and matching bow!), ridiculously excited little girl.

Emerson could not have been prouder of her "LaLa Elmo dress" and showed off to everyone at church last Sunday, since clearly this dress is too cute to just sit in her closet until her party next month.

And yes, we are still working on "dress etiquette" and modesty, why do you ask?

Monday morning found Brandon at work (I'll tell you what he built at work later), me folding the five loads of laundry that I had managed to wash on Saturday, and the kids running in and out of the house, determined to release every bit of the lovely air-conditioned air out the back door. Dane got off the bus that afternoon, and greeted me at the door with this smile:

The tooth is out! The same tooth that has been loose for over a month? (OVER A MONTH) finally fell out at school when a classmate's head reared up and smacked Dane in the chin, releasing the tooth from its gummy grasp. To hear Dane retell the story, the tooth flew out of his mouth, across the room, and everyone instantly fell to the floor, searching for the baby tooth while Dane's mouth quickly filled with enough blood to fill the pond behind our house, or at least require a couple of tissues to quell the torrent. He came home with the biggest grin I have seen since the pocket knife of 2010, and a little yellow treasure chest containing the tooth.

More to come about what Brandon's been up to this week!