What works for one child does not always work for another.  As a parent, I try to remember that since we are all individuals, it is only fair to treat each as an individual not all the same.  I was reminded of this the other day.  As a parent I also try to have the punishment fit the crime so please don't go calling social services or anything...
With my two oldest children if they began really getting on each others nerves and picking on each other and wanting to only spend time with friends my solution was they would have to spend more time together.  I would tie their hands together and they would have to learn to work together to accomplish anything.  Usually they would figure out how to work together making a bed or something, whatever chores they needed to do, and end up laughing and having fun trying to do things stuck together after a short time.   
Well, the other day, my second child asked to play at a friends.  His younger brother said, "oh, can he play here so I can play too?"  and before I could open my mouth and say, "Why don't we call one of your friends to play?"  My second son put up a scene about his brother ALWAYS had to play with him and was quite dramatic about it.  Of course I changed what came out of my mouth to, "Really?  And who comes first in this family?  YOUR FAMILY.  Get me a rope!"  As I tied their hands together (I don't tie it tight- they always point out to me they could escape if they wanted) I explained that they would be spending some time together until they could love each other and to my second child I said, "you are to play what your brother wants not what you want- he's in charge."  Moments later my youngest comes to tell me his brother is drawing scars on his brother's face with marker.  I tell my third child to stop, that's not what I meant and I tell my second he didn't have to let him that's not what I meant and to go wash up.  Next?  The third born has filled the sink and is dunking his older brother's face over and over to "wash" it.  I had a chat with my third born that he did not need to take advantage of getting to choose what they do and with my second born that he did not need to put up with that.  Their response?  "Why?  We both thought it was funny."  I untied them and made a mental note and now a written note- don't try again with these two.  Is there any hope?  Anyone who knows any well mannered teenage boys or wonderfully responsible young adults who as children were wild and crazy and on the disrespectful side please comment and give me a glimmer of hope... and how you survived.
Today was not much better, but not too bad until after church.  I got out of the shower to crying and yelling.  I picked up our church bag and told my children it was time to take some stuff out and leave it home.  My youngest said, "pick me! pick me! i want to stay home from church!" and the battle began.  Me trying to kindly explain I was not leaving any people home just "stuff"  in the bag and my son stubbornly stating he was not going because he didn't want to.  Later when it was actually time to go I had to pick him up and buckle him in the car because he remembered he wasn't going, but he was fine once we started driving (and the kids were even still fairly well behaved when the power went out briefly during sacrament meeting).  At home after church one son and his chair fell on my toe and I screamed and yelled and scolded because how many times have I said to sit on your chair the "right" way?  At least once a day since this child could sit on a chair!  It hurt too, and bled, and still hurts.  And I feel bad because then while I was crying on the couch partly because of my toe and mostly because that was the last straw of me repeating myself to no avail constantly everyday for the last few months, and to the point of wondering why I even bother; they all ran to their rooms crying and the one that caused it hid.  At least they tried real hard to obey the first time for the rest of the evening.  I totally get bad mom points today though. 
You can take a deep breath and relate or you can breathe a sigh of relief that you are nothing like me. :)
Enough about me- I since this is my journal, I don't want to forget to mention that my oldest son/second born child won the kid's fun run church does every year in honor of Pioneer Day!  They run 1 mile (I think).  He loves running and seems to have great endurance.  It was sweet to listen to him give his younger brother some advice, "Okay, when you're running, run slower than you think you can, and don't stop, just keep going, if you stop you won't be able to get going again, just keep going (and pats him on the back)".  Congrats to my number one runner. :)

This summer is turning out to be rather on the strange side.  For now that's all I feel I can blog.  So what I will blog... 
So I just finished going through a crazy artist or creative genius (however you want to look at it) spell this week.  Crazy artist mode is where I get a bunch of ideas some I can pull off some not, and I just have to get them out and everything else gets set aside.  My poor husband is a patient gem- I don't think I could ever live with someone who is just like me.  I made my daughter a shirt dress out of one of my husband's old dress shirts and I built a model to half inch scale of my "dream house."  According to my husband it is the first model of the latest floor plan which I revise or completely redo every year or two.  I think it's actually a pretty good floor plan this time and I'm pretty happy with it.  My kids were kind of annoyed with my drawings of the floor plan (because they know I like it and they don't like the idea of moving), but now that we have a model they think it is awesome and are coming up with all kinds of improvements like adding a slide from the roof into a pool.  I'm kind of happy they think it would be cool to build it for real.  Now I just have to convince my husband who was silently adding the cost of just the windows the first time he saw it (I could see the numbers running in his accountant eyes).  It is actually a fairly modest sized home compared to all the houses being built around here and I think quite reasonable.  I'd post pictures, but I'd hate for someone to go stealing my idea. :)  For the record we are not close to moving or building as we have no idea where we would want to put our permanent residence.
Oh, a friend of mine posted about this great blog called catalog living.  I added it to my links.  It is very funny and I recommend taking a peek if you never have.  It made my day.  Now I really should get around to cleaning up my house, the one I have, and then maybe I can stage it, ...and add silly comments like catalog living.

Monday I announced to my children, "Oh! I have an idea!"  My oldest child said, "Another idea?  You keep coming up with ideas.  Does this have to do with the dishes?"  "no"  "The laundry?"

The reason for her concern was a little while ago a friend of mine who will remain anonymous so as not to get grief from my children, told me she was trying something new at home that they did at a friends cabin.  After each meal they would each wash their dishes, rinse them, dry them, and put them away.  We have been trying this and I LOVE it!  Finally something that works for our family!  I can have a clean kitchen. :)  It doesn't take very long and then I don't get discouraged at the end of the day when I am too tired to care if we have a huge pile of dishes or that no one wants to do the unloading the dishwasher chore.  My husband is kind of wondering what the point is since we have a dishwasher, but I am perfectly happy not to use it.  It wasn't working for us.  Even Henry can do this new system with a bit of help.  I think it uses less water too.  I LOVE it.  So I suppose my daughter had a reason to be a bit nervous, but my "idea" this time had nothing to do with cleaning.  Instead it was an idea of a way to decorate for the art show that evening.

I took lots of pictures and I will probably put them together on a dvd for those that participated, but for my blog I'll just show a few.  The theme was "words".  The first day we either chose a favorite word to illustrate or chose a word from a dish and the third day we sculpted letters using pipe cleaners and tinfoil (and clay at the base).

The second day we illustrated a poem.  The kids could choose from Forgiven by AA Milne or Canis Major by Robert Frost or bring one of their own choice.

I had another class option for the older kids.  They chose to repaint a famous painting, either the ox bow by Thomas Cole, George Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emmanuel Leutze, or The Boy by John Singer Sargent.  Then they had to draw a word out of a dish and somehow incorporate that word into the painting.

 

Word:  monster

 

word:  funky (by my daughter)

 

word:  fly

 

word: Paris (by my son and he titled it:  George Washington Crossing the Road)

Oh, and special thanks to my brother for going to all the school dances and getting photos- I got some nice frames out of it.  :) They look great on my wall don't they?

Hope you had great 4th of July!  We have been taking it easy and been busy at the same -if that's possible.  We didn't go any where for the 4th, but we have been taking care of neighbors dogs, frogs, caterpillars, and plants.  We also had art lessons the last couple of weeks and will be having an art show on Monday.  I'll take pictures and post them after the show.  We just had a sprinkler system installed, hooray!  Now I don't have to drag the sprinkler around the yard or forget about it and have it water one spot for the whole day.  One less thing to think about is always nice.  We also are hoping to get new floors and a room finished in the basement...  It's now looking like it will be the beginning of August.  I was hoping earlier and have been not bothering to clean or vacuum my floors thinking any day...  and have put off cleaning my kids rooms and going through their stuff thinking I would just do it as we rearrange rooms, but I may have to rethink that plan.  We had a nice week with Brian home since he is in between jobs.  He cleaned out the garage and some stuff in the basement and did stuff for church and other little things like that.  We went to a movie- Date Night, I thought it was hilarious!  I LOVED it!  I don't think everyone I know would love it, but I think I laughed the entire movie. I am a big Tina Fey fan and 30 Rock. My daughter asked if I'd let her see it and I told her not until she is married and has kids or she just won't get it.  Other funny things, I added to my list of things I never thought I'd say.  In context, I keep telling my sons to wear shorts- it is 80's or higher and with high humidity so jeans are not comfy and they end up being very grouchy by mid morning.  The other one we were sculpting for art lessons and my son created a clavicle (no surprise there for anyone who knew my family or my husband's growing up), and I wanted to put all the sculptures on the shelf so they would be safe until the art show, but he kept goofing off/showing off with it (another not very big surprise).  Hmm, any other news?  I'm sure I'm forgetting something, oh, here's what I'm forgetting:

June 14, the first day of summer break, rain boots & girls sitting on neighbor's front porch

Sadie's summer cut:

Lazy July days and the garden:

but for now that's it.  Happy July!