If Only...

If Only...every Monday was this perfect!  The kids had a holiday from school last Monday and it was so delightfully wonderful!  The boys had 20 other boys over to the house for a 4 hour air soft war!  Here's a few pics of them organizing.  I don't dare enter the battlefield.  They 20 boys were pretty delightful in of themselves.  The thing I love about boys, especially teenage boys is that they say the sweetest things to a little ol' mom like me when I start stirring up a batch of brownies.  

 The boys had a blast with their friends.  No major injuries or broken teeth, so that is a success in my book.  I know it's weird that people trust us with their children--right!

I grilled up some burgers and hot dogs.  I called Ken and the girls to hurry and make up their plates before the table was rushed by hungry boys.

 I put the dessert outside since it was such a beautiful day.

 Organizing again... They may re-think having such a large group next time just because it took forever to organize their rounds.  Which means less playing time, but they loved playing with everyone who showed.

After lunch me and the girls painted pumpkins inside the safety of the house.  It sounded like a war zone with the constant "Surrender or Die!", "Gotcha", "Get him, he's a traitor!"  I won't lie there were many, many times I jumped because I thought I was about to get shot.

 Ginger was very proud of the faces she painted and drew on her pumpkin.

 Rose wanted to paint a vampire pumpkin.

 Because you know it matches her teeth!

It was a beautiful way to spend an afternoon.  I wish I had taken a picture of the girls at lunch with all those boys, who seriously dote on my girls!  My goodness they are so sweet!  The girls were in H-E-A-V-E-N and were happy to sit in the middle of the family room chatting with all of Darin and Nathan's friends.

 Here's my pumpkin.  I did an a scary face on side and a silly face on the other.

Oh and did I mention the constant stream of boys running into the house to refill and cock their guns???  Honestly, it's background noise that I love!    

After everyone cleared out the girls set-up our Conference Jeopardy Game.  They were super proud of themselves.

 Nathan was super proud of his 4 pages of notes.  Which he should be!  That boy paid attention to all the talks and wrote great notes.

Rose was very happy to read off the 4 questions she wrote up.  She didn't actually write down the answers to 3 of them.  But she did for one and we even got the question right!

Here's the winners!  Nathan- 1st (Yep, those notes paid off!)  Rose- 2nd  Ginger 3rd.  Of course Rose and Ginger had lots and lots of help from Mom.  Which I just have to say Ken and Nathan gave me a hard time about not taking notes and my only response is that they wouldn't have had a chance if I had taken notes:-)  Mom's got a mind like a steel trap!  Not really!

 It's a fun FHE tradition that we love to play after Conference Weekend.

And Darin, didn't fare too well, but he's a good sport.  Which probably had alot to do with sleeping through most of one session and not taking notes.  He wasn't feeling that great on Saturday:(  Better luck next year.

I wish we had more Mondays off of school!  They are precious and I'm glad we didn't waste the day with pesky doctor appointments and errands.  I'm especially sensitive to that because 2 doctor's offices wanted to cancel/re-schedule appointments a few weeks prior and move them to that day.  I ended up taking Rose out of school two afternoons the week before instead, and consolidated the boys 4 appointments to one day (so they were just absent) so that I could protect our little vacation day.  It was a crazy week beforehand and I so needed to hear the General Conference messages all weekend long and to have a day of pure fun with my kiddos!