Summer of No Sleep

That's my theme for this summer...No Sleep.  It's not really how I started planning out the summer, but it seems like that is how it has evolved and I'm just rolling with it.  My plan was to have a relaxed, not too much structure, lots of impromptu play dates, staying up kinda late but not too late and sleeping in kind of summer.  Well as soon as school got out, my children who I had to drag out of bed at 7:30 for school every day, started getting up at 6am.  6!  I kept telling them to go back to bed and they kept telling me to get up and make them breakfast.  Guess who lost that battle?  My only satisfaction at not getting to sleep in was that I would be putting them to bed early to make up for their early rising.  Yeah, right.  Lose again!  They were staying up until 9:30, 10, sometimes 11:00 before they finally made it to bed, and they continued to get up before 7!  It has proven to create some slightly cranky, irritable, whiny children at times, but for the most part we've been having fun.  Here is a quick update, I thought about doing a bunch of different posts, but I'm cramming it all into one!

Lunch dates at the zoo with friends!

Both kids are trying out tennis this summer.  Jayden, who said he would go but was going to refuse to play, loves it!  Willow, who wanted to play because of tennis skirts and sparkly racquets, so far doesn't really like it at all.  :) Ha!  I'm determined to get a tennis partner out of one of them (Jordan lives too far away...or is it me who lives too far away....)!  :)

Our street seems to be having a major turnover this summer.  3 of my neighbors have or are moving, 2 of them had a house full of kids.  And 1 of those houses with kids have my kid's best friends living in it, so before they left us we had them over for a sleep over!

A few days after this sleep over, the kids and I headed up to KC to stay the night with our friends up there, who also have 2 kids who are such great friends with my kids!  All of our best friends are moving out of town....guess it's time for me to leave too! (wink wink...right Royal???)

This is what I got to listen to on the 2.5hr drive up to Kansas City.  I know, totally dangerous to video tape and drive at the same time.  But I swear I was like 1 of 2 cars on the road, this is Kansas people, the road doesn't turn, you drive straight for days, I was very, very careful, and really I was quite lucky I even got this video because I was just guessing as to wear to point the camera, since you know I was staring at the road.  :)  Enjoy my friends, enjoy.

I'm pretty sure Willow is taking a selfie here...

My friend Kerri has a house on 5 beautiful acres.  I want to be her neighbor, real bad.  If I can't live near my family, living next door to Kerri is high on my list.  They have a kid-sized Polaris RZR that Jayden and Kyle drove all over their field.  It had just poured down rain for the 3 days prior to us coming up there, so there was lots of mud to drive through and power sliding around corners.

And because this is Kansas, the next day was sunny and warm.

The drive back to Wichita was much more quiet.  Ha! I wrote more quiet.  I'm totally leaving it.  More quiet, not quieter.  hahaha :)

Then, just this past Saturday we get a call from our neighbor and they asked if we wanted to go to the drive-in with them.  I had just thrown Willow in the shower, it was after 8, and my initial response was, 'No', but then Royal reminded me of my theme for the summer, and well, we must keep with the theme of no sleep, right?!?  So, I grabbed Willow out of the shower, we grabbed pillows, blankets, and camp chairs and 5 minutes later we were out the door heading to the movies.  Royal had never been to a drive-in before.  What the????  So it was a special treat for him too!

All the kids made it through the first movie, but then everybody but Jayden crashed during the 2nd movie.  Jayden, that kid, can make himself stay awake for ever.  It was 1am when the 2nd movie was over.  1! and he was asking if we could stay for the 3rd movie.  Uh, no.




Our summer of No Sleep is off to a great start.  Papa shows up in a few days and then a soon after that we will be on the road heading to Washington for more sleepless nights with our cousins!  I keep telling the kids we have at least 5 days in the car, they can sleep then!  :)