4 the love of siblings

Julia adores her big brother - almost to a fault. Her favorite toy is whatever Sam is playing with. Her favorite activity is being in Sam's space. For the past two weeks the kids and I have been in a downward spiral of boredom, laziness on my part, and the most annoying of toddler behavior. (Screaming, tantrums - she actually foams at the mouth they are SO bad)
All of these in combination have made our household edgy, grumpy, annoying, and majorly bummed out. Thank goodness school starts on Tuesday!! Not necessarily looking for a way to escape the plethora of bad attitudes, we have been doing our best to get out of this funk as I call it. Brian took Sam to GanderMountain to purchase some fishing lures while Julia and I read stories under the giant willow trees in our backyard. (Ever since I was a kid I've dreamt of reading books under a shade of a weeping willow.) Brian has taken the kids fishing a few times as well.

In the midst of all the frustration there have been pockets of brightness - Julia continues to do well at potty training (as long as she goes bottomless she doesn't have any accidents), Sam has moments (actually 15-30 minutes) where he'll play with his matchbox cars by himself), and Julia
brings smiles to all our faces when she sings the ABC's or counts to ten. (something she started doing two weeks ago) I wish I could upload a video of her singing and counting. It's adorable all run together - especially the L,M,N,O,P part.




We plan to squeeze out every ounce of joy we can of our last summer weekend - no crabbiness allowed!
Tonight we're roasting marshmallows over the fire, the guys are sleeping in the tent and thanks to Merranda's idea I might check and see if we can go bowling tomorrow.
What are YOUR plans for this long weekend?