Summer Surprise: I have no free time

I've been terribly lax in posting, and I regret it. The past four weeks have been a blur, but as near as I can remember here is what I've been doing:

• We had our relatives, Mullets of Ohio, stay with us for two weeks. Josiah and Eli reminded us what it was like to have toddlers in the house and in turn we got to hug babies every day, much to our brothers relief. Apparently our house isn't really baby-proof. We girls got to watch "North and South" with our cousin, Josiah got to see a cow up close, and we had a mini-family reunion for two weeks.

• I babysat for two days, which is good because I need the money. The one child, an almost two year old boy, needed some discipline. This is why I hate babysitting: The kid needs to be spanked, and I can't spank him. But temper tantrums aside(his, not mine), it was a pretty easy job because he napped during the afternoon and all I had to do was sit and watch TV.

• I had a guest for a day: Natty the farm girl. I don't have much experience with sleepovers, and I think Jen was very disappointed with my lack of desire to do things like curl hair, paint nails, stay up until one in the morning, and generally be chatty and frivolous. But we did watch eight hours of "Little Dorrit", and Natty showed us her longbow, which we all got a chance to shoot. I do hope she had fun!

• We went to a Good Cheer family conference in Des Moines over the weekend. The conference was on Biblical Fatherhood, with Kevin Swanson and Scott Brown as speakers. I feel like we got to a lot of conferences- it's like a annual home school family vacation-so I guess I don't really get excited about conferences anymore. But the speakers were good, and the boys loved swimming in the "fake chemical water" hotel pool as opposed to our "natural lake water" pool.

• Yesterday I made stays. Stays are like a corset, only not quite. Stays are what ladies wore in the 18th Century. Mrs. T, A lady who has historical knowledge and great sewing skills, was gracious enough to let me come to her house to make the stays. She worked with me for eight hours at no cost. We used zip ties for the boning, and it's really quite stiff. You can see in the picture the patterned inside lining; the outside is plain white. It was a long day, but it would have been much longer and harder without Mrs. T's valuable help!