July - FINALLY FINISHED!!

So it seems as though I have been doing photography stuffs for longer than I thought.  ALL of my editing software and some of my hardware is incompatible with my computer.  Fun.
What this means is that for me to download, edit and save my photos it is a complete 3-ring circus to get everything to work with each other.

But I 3-ring-circused my way through July and August's photos because it was time.

So here we go.

In July, Russ drove to California and got all of the stuff out of our storage unit and drove it all back home.  He and Corinne pulled in reeeally late the night before (late for us is after 1am!), so I got up the next morning and started unpacking.  I knew the kids would be SO excited!!

I was right!
Non-stop fun for days.

And loooooots of boxes.

I must admit though...even though this was all "non-essential" stuff, I was surprisingly overwhelmed with happiness that we had all of our stuff finally and how much having everything made our house feel like Home.

Along with all of our stuff, Russ also picked up a big order of goodies that we'd ordered from our old charter school.
Art supplies galore, LEGOs, and more Marbleworks.
I was unpacking boxes when I walked into the room and found this.  He studied those plans for at least 5 minutes, which surprised me.  He's typically a "dump it out and mash it together" kind of guy, but he happily did it "my" way and followed the instructions to a T.

While this set looks cooler than our other one (which are sadly incompatible with each other), it doesn't work nearly as well.  Who uses plastic marbles?!  ...apparently this company.

More treasures!!
I'm also very grateful for a big ol' attic to store some of these treasures for when we need to pull them out and put them on again.  :)

The toy room had...gasp...TOYS!! 
It was actually overflowing with toys and books.
This was the last photo I took because it got too horrific to even look at, eventually...

More charter goodies!

And more.

And more.
This is a weird sticky-ish material.  

A mixture between playdough and teeny styrofoam balls.

Some more fun stuff from July...
 

Brooklyn took some flowers from my birthday bouquet and put them in colored water.  They were so pretty!  What was most interesting was the who's stem we snipped in half, putting one half in red water and the other in blue.  I was hoping we'd get purple, but nope!  We had a half-red, half-blue flower!

Sam was into kitchen stuffs in July.  There was a lot of lemon juicing and peeling...

Cooking and other experiments...

And even candy making!
Although we didn't have a candy thermometer and I wasn't keeping a close enough eye on our concoction...so we got what resembled glass poop.  Burnt glass poop.

Brook also joined in and made a couple of different cakes--some experimental and one from a recipe.  I was impressed, she needed very very minimal help with following the recipe and it turned out really well!
Proud Momma moment!

The Cheeps were getting big!  Full grown, in fact...
So they went from this...

...to this over the course of 2 weekends.

Out of 16 culled chickens, we got 60+ pounds of chicken in the freezer!

There were also fireworks in July.  Not the kind you'd think...for July 4th, we had a HUGE lightening and thunder storm, so our sparklers got saved for another night of fun.

Russ went out of town a couple of times for work.  It's always interesting to download photos after those trips.  There are usually some really good stories.
...like taking a LONG detour with your beer buddy after being given wrong directions...

 

Construction on the geodesic dome officially got started!  I was surprised, they actually knocked this out in a few hours!

...although getting into it got tricky after awhile.

 

But it turned out really well!  We actually built a 3' wall for the dome to sit on and built a door into it.  So when you walk in, it's about 8' tall in the middle!  It's going to be the coop for our layer chickens.  Then the plan is to start on a much bigger version next year that will be an aquaponics greenhouse.  We'll see!

Brin found this guy while we were all outside, and the kids got a kick out of him!

After the dome was finished, we called our friends the Eddy's to see if they wanted to join us for a fire.  Good food, good friends, good times.

In our hall upstairs, there are two closets.  One really deep coat closet and one long, less deep one.
The latter had nothing in it but one shelf and a rod for hanging stuff.  

NO STORAGE, WHATSOEVER.
Well, there was storage, it was just piling up on the floor of the closet...
So I schemed my plan of attack, which involved painting the inside chocolate brown and painting the shelves creamy white and sliding 6 shelves in for perfect, beautiful storage.

Well...we got the brown paint on, sort of (just don't look at the huge scrapes and gashes that are now in it).  Primer is creamy-ish, right?  And sliding those shelves in?  Ha.  HAHAHA.
More like banging and shoving and hammering those suckers in.
But they are in.

I put everything (more than everything, actually!)  back into the closet that was in there before and took photos. 
This is the right side.

And the left side.
It is packed now!  Packed, but organized, and I LOVE it.
Big kitchen appliances, bulk foods, toiletries, towels, sheets, all of my sewing stuff, all of our photo albums, all of our paperwork, cleaning supplies...and I have room to spare!!!I figured I'd want to do this to every extra closet in the house, but honestly, this holds all I need it to!  So the others can sit...for now.

The kids have been decorating our walls with art.
I ADORE these works that Brooklyn did in Microsoft Paint.
It's Bolt, Mittens, and Rhino!

The sugar cookie fairy comes to visit occasionally.

 

 And rainy season was treating us GOOD.  Tomatoes, yellow squash, cucumbers, zucchini, acorn squash, lavender...that was all good and all...until the rain continued and all of those great plants were over-run by giant weeds!  Alas.

Until next time!