FHE - DIY Coldstone

Corey worked late tonight, but he does a good job making sure we still do FHE, even when we don't plan it out in advance or when we end up not having a lot of time. Ice cream usually does the trick for nights when we don't have our act together (which is most Monday nights!).  

We had talked about how it would be fun to do a little back-to-school shopping, but it was too late for that, plus none of them (or us) have money anyway.... The "summer binders" I made (end of this post) were a total fail, so kids didn't earn anything from us for back to school anyway. Natalie earned some from babysitting, and Abi from working for my mom. The rest of the kids don't have $, which led to a conversation about who would be buying back to school stuff anyway (they have a long list of wants... times that by 7 kids gets a bit pricey...) and that led to a conversation about money, then we talked briefly about a new book on Prince Andrew called "Entitled" and how $ messes up kids and families. That led to a documentary on Ghislaine Maxwell (part 1, 2, & 3) as part of our discussion on how it's good for kids to NOT get everything they want. Just a light conversation ha before we went to Macey's for ice cream. Corey thought it would be fun to do our own Coldstone treats, so first we got Red Button vanilla ice cream ~

then they each picked out their topping of choice from the candy isle. So many choices...

It's hard to just pick one...

FHE treats are our treat. Katharine got Mamba's to mix with her ice cream... I'm not sure how that turned out for her, but she looked happy. They're always up for eating ice cream. Oh, also on Saturday, Daniel went to Macey's with Owen and a neighbor Liam, and there was an ice cream eating contest going on or something and Daniel won for his age category so he got a punch card for a free ice cream cone every week for a year at Macey's! So tonight we first went there to see if that was valid for his family too (he said it was, I didn't think it would be). It wasn't.

 

K, so that was FHE. Today was spent as most summer days are ~ playing legos and games. Peter made a "Prince of Egypt" set with Moses talking to Pharoah.

Flip the set around to see the Hebrew slaves with heavy burdens on their backs.

Katharine played legos too, then took a break to play "circles", first Otrio, then Othello.

We also had a little bit of time to be with Baby Mary! 

Eliza and Mary came down from Idaho last night and they flew back to Ohio today at 5:45. We enjoyed having some time to snuggle with Mary! 

Corey took them to the airport around 3 - they went by a place to drop off Eliza's wedding ring first, to get it resized - it's always falling off her finger! So they are getting it tightened. I'm sure Joseph will be glad to have his girls back at home. He survived the first week of school last week. Eliza said that he said he's 5 days in, and he's only 3 days behind! Only they were gone this week, so he can't blame getting behind on being a new husband and father, lol.