House O' Sullivans

One thing I've learned recently: major house projects should be avoided if you appreciate your sanity. I spent nearly two weeks patching and painting the kid's rooms and I am done. Done and done . They do look pretty amazing though. After 10 years of abuse, they were looking beat up and dingy. We also added carpet, realizing that with an increasing progeny comes an increase in ambient household volume. The carpet serves to absorb a small measure of the chaos.     The girls in their brand new room. Ooh la la! Hallee wanted to paint the room orange (the color of her favorite animal--the tiger) and Sophie lobbied for blue, so we painted their room both colors. It turned out more awesome then I'd imagined. Last week Casey Bert turned 44--a nice, even, divisible by 11, double digit number. We cooked him an amazing homemade waffle breakfast that morning and then the kids organized a treasure hunt for him to find his hidden gifts. Success....

A couple of weeks ago I heard a knock at my back door. Soph, Hal, and Zeke enthusiastically rushed to open it. There was an envelope stuck in the door but no one in sight. The kids grabbed the envelope and disappeared downstairs. I was busy with the baby, so it wasn't until several minutes later that I asked them who the envelope was from and what was in it. They shiftily answered, "Oh, there was nothing in it and we're not sure who it was from." I asked them where they'd put it, and after considerable questioning, found it ripped and crumpled in the art bar trash can. The envelope was addressed to "The Killers" from "The Enemy." Inside was this note, written by our back-door neighbor, Blake (the college-aged son of our bishop): I could not stop laughing!! I tried to get my kids to tell me what they'd written to Blake to get this brazen (and hilarious) response, but couldn't get any straight answers from them. It wasn't unti...

The past month and a half have been a blur. Here are a few of the things that have been happening:  In April, I spent a week in Cedar City watching Kristen's kids while she and Troy were living it up in San Diego. That episode marked the first major road trip for me solo with my kids and I am pretty proud of myself. Keeping the kids fed (including a nursing baby) and pottied over 260 miles of open road and then managing a household of nine kids for the week was epic stuff for me. I pretty much felt like a super hero when I was done. We've been busy the past couple of months with lots of family gatherings, temple trips, dinners, movie nights, family home evenings, and other events. Casey's parents left on an 18 month mission to Nauvoo earlier this month and Kay's family moved cross-country to Louisiana this week. Last Saturday marked the first official workday at Casey's parents house. All of the siblings and their families will come together once a month to...