Labor Day Labor (and some fun)!

As seems typical fashion for us, we spent most of our Labor Day weekend working on projects and things around home.  We did incorporate a little fun as well though.  We enjoyed a nice evening Saturday night by having some friends over for supper - we enjoyed some adult conversation while the kids had a blast playing together!  My parents also came over Sunday afternoon and stayed until Monday, so that is always some fun times.  But in addition, they surprised the kids by bringing my twin nieces with them as well - lots more play time and fun!  On Sunday night, we cooked out again with my parents, nieces and John's parents - capping off our supper with some homemade ice cream, which was delicious!!

But since we did spend a lot of the weekend laboring, I thought that I would include a couple of pictures of my great helpers.  Blaine loves to run the air compressor and blow off the lawn mower after mowing.  I laughed at him the other day, as I had finished mowing and parked the mower outside the toolshed but had not blown it off yet.  He comes in the house a little later yelling at me "Mo-om - You didn't blow off your mower!"  So I asked him why he didn't do it for me, to which he replied that he couldn't hook it up, but he did have the long nozzle out for me.  As soon as I hooked it onto the air hose for him, he proceeded to completely blow the mower off for me - such a big helper!

 I had two good helpers Saturday morning when making salsa.  Actually, they both fought over who got to smash the tomatoes.  But they soon realized that there were plenty of tomatoes and lots of chances for both of them to do all jobs.  We ended up with about 4 gallons of tomato juice when we were done.  They were great help, even if they bailed on me when it came time to clean up:)

 But, as I said, there was time for play and fun as well.  The girls spent a lot of time playing dress up with all of Ava's dress up clothes and accessories - we saw a lot of princesses going to balls, etc!

 They were also very excited for their slumber party.  Ava originally insisted that she sleep on the mattress on the floor with the girls, but did decide that her bed was more comfortable and ended up sleeping beside them in her own bed.  Blaine was rather upset that he could not have a sleep over with them, but I finally got him settled down when I promised that whenever my nephew, Cody, came over to stay, they could have a boys sleepover in his room.  Blaine does not realize that Cody NEVER spends the night away from home and his mom though!

 Blaine did enjoy helping drive tractor as well this weekend.  The main reason Mom and Dad came over was to bring over a 1000 gallon propane tank that they were able to get a good deal on for us.  So we took advantage of the deal to ensure our propane supply for this winter by filling a larger tank this fall.  Now we just need to get it painted, set and filled.

 The kids also enjoyed a trip down to the ditch - water and plenty of mud of course with the recent rains!  This is a routine thing for us to do, but Aubrey and Samantha don't have the opportunity to do that kind of exploring around their house, so they had a different adventure.

We also got the small walk in door on the toolshed replaced this weekend - another project that Dad helped John accomplish while he was here.  Although we did get some work done, we left plenty of time for play as well and had a good weekend.  We ended up with two very tired kiddos after a couple of later nights and so much hard play!