For Labor Day Weekend, we Labored...and then played!

It seems for 3 day weekends, some people I know have these amazing fun filled weekend getaways, camping trips, staycations, or what have you. We, well, we labored. Labor Day weekend 2007 was spent assembling our swing set. This year, we built a trundle bed for the girls. I use the term "we" loosely." If Steve takes offense, he can get his own blog! :) For now, I take 97% of the credit on this construction project.

I will teach my girls to swing a hammer, assemble a caster, and sweep the saw dust, dang it!

Our house is not very large so I keep tweaking with the arrangement of the 3 children and play room and sewing room in the two bedrooms that are available. Lindsay and Caroline have had side-by-side twin beds (my favorite arrangement but leaves little room to play) bunk beds (HATED them - too hard to make the beds, change the sheets, etc.) and now we settled on a final arrangement: bed with trundle. We (I) took apart the bunk beds last week and figured I could use the top half as the main bed and I found plans online for a drawer style trundle bed. Saturday found Steve working in the yard and me prepping the plans and buying the materials and rounding up the tools. (BTW - we really need some more tools!) We got thru a good portion of it (with a couple more trips to Lowe's) before calling it quits and saving the rest for Labor Day on Monday. Sunday was a day of rest...and watching Steve's foot balloon mongo huge! Apparently while in the yard, he had a run-in with seemingly harmless ants. Not so harmless, I think! Both ankles, his right one especially, are covered in bites and his right ankle is so swollen! So, Monday, we I get back to business on this trundle project. Monday was a hot sweaty humid day. I finally got through the construction. Now all that is left is the sanding/primer/paint. That will be easy. Truth be told, I could not have done it without Steve. He made me a sandwich(!) and we tag-teamed several parts of the project. The girls even got in on the action helping to attach the rolling casters and sweeping up saw dust.

The mother of all backyard pools - yup - that is a water slide back there, like the kind at a water park.

We had been invited to a swim party/dinner at Debbie's (Dad's wife) sister Janet's home. They live in East Mesa in a beautiful home with quite the pool. This was not your average pool party, I will tell you that! Janet's husband Mark is a big kid at heart so when it came time to build the pool, he went all out. The pool is not only HUGE but filled with so many cool features, the best being the water slide. Holy Moly. It puts a lot of water park slides to shame! Due to some errors in design, it takes you for quite a wild ride with hair pin turns that leave you breathless even before you hit the water! At night, it lit up inside with changing color LED lights. It was pretty cool. From the top of the water slide tower, you could see the whole East Valley. The kids all loved it and being that it is not a water park, there weren't really any rules so the little guys got to go on it and go with floaties to help them as they hit the deep water. We joked that when Andy came down the slide, it was like the tidal surge from Hurricane Gustov! Hahaha! Molly, Lindsay and I enjoyed the diving board as well, working on our beautiful olympic perfect dives. Yeah, not so beautiful, but fun anyway!! I didn't know Lindsay could dive off the diving board and she did great! Molly talked me into diving off the rock cliff above the water slide. It was crazy but fun nonetheless. Dinner was yummy with my dad's smoked brisket and all the sides you could imagine. We were well fed. Steve was on Kate duty - she really enjoys the pool and chillin' in her Daddy's arms. We were alarmed when she all of the sudden started screaming (I know, big surprise) but it seemed to come out of no where. Then we noticed a black thing in her eyelashes. Turns out she was probably screaming because of this ant that was now stuck in her eyelashes, drowning in her tears. It was so sad. We thought she may have been bit because it looked really swollen but it seems OK today.

The girlies above enjoying the water - it felt great after a hot day of work. Katers and her boyfriend Daddy. She is looking kinda goofy, no?

Anyway, a good weekend accomplishing a little bit and having a good time with family and friends. Sure, I would have liked to have completely finished the trundle but we will get there. At least it went smoothly.