Rain, rain go away

We are tired of being stuck indoors. It's Memorial Day weekend and we can't even play outside. The kids are wearing pants and I've got on a sweatshirt. Where is summer? Since it was too wet and yucky to play outside we headed to the library instead. They've got lots of great new toys (and some of the old favorites).




I love this picture. That smile is so Ben. And he loves to be wherever his older brothers are even if they don't want him.




Nick is outgrowing the play part of the library. He grabbed his books (Poppleton) and sat down to read, even though he had just complained about reading to me 20 minutes earlier. I did force him to read to me a little later and he fought me at every word. I'm really considering calling the tutor we had last year. He's reading at grade level, but this summer could be really detrimental to his progress if we don't keep pushing him. It's hard to push when we are so busy and he fights it every time we sit down to read. I don't want him to hate reading but that appears to be the path we are headed down.




When we couldn't find anything more to do at the library we headed to Scheels. It's been open for a few months now but I had yet to be out there. I really don't like shopping with the whole family (the boys touch everything they see and won't listen at all) but like I said, we were bored. So we walked around Scheels for awhile, got Nick a new baseball bat, glove and pants. We looked for cleats but decided against them for the cost.



When we had everything we needed and the boys had managed to completely drive me crazy we left. And as we were leaving Zander jumped up on the stump in front of the moose and asked me to take his picture. Of all the boys he is most intuitive as to when I am about to blow. He doesn't always, but quite often, he will do something or say something extra sweet in an attempt to bring me back down. This was that attempt. It worked. Thankfully, when I asked all the boys to pile up there with him he didn't mind and, miracle of miracles, they all looked at me and smiled. Twice. I had to get a picture in front of the bear, too.
 




After all of this we headed out to grab a quick lunch and then back home to hunker down in the house for the rest of the afternoon. We could all use a little sunshine, or even just a break in the rain, right about now.