All Savannah has been talking about is the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana concert on TV tonight. We are leaving tomorrow and Savannah had to take a shower before bed. She ran up and took her shower in like 3 minutes. I really don’t know how clean she got…but she didn’t miss any of the concert. We didn’t have the 3-D glasses at first. Savannah came and asked if we had any. I thought we may have had some but couldn’t find them. Later Sam saved the day when he pulled out a stash of 3-D glasses from the back of a drawer in his office. The kids were so excited. Well at least Karson and Savannah. They had a blast dancing! Max was working with daddy outside packing up the show trailer. There’s a lot to do, and in typical Durocher fashion, it’s mostly been left to the last minute! I don’t feel too stressed though. It’s been a long day, but I feel like I have gotten so much done. Which is a great thing when you have four kids and one of them is a baby!
Today I cleaned the kitchen (again) and the basement and our bedroom. I also did 7 loads of laundry! Some of you probably don’t even do seven loads in a month! But I usually have to do 1-2 loads a day. The seven loads is because I washed all the towels, bathmats, sheets and blankets, plus all of the clothes in our entire house that were dirty. I don’t want to come back to any piles of laundry. I tell ya, I wish I would have taken a picture of my bedroom before and after I cleaned it today. Seriously, it’s a total transformation. I don’t think it has ever been so clean – not even when we moved here. I got rid of a lot. I put all our old clothes that we need to get rid of in our closets – so that’s a job for a later day. Then I moved everything around and vacuumed and dusted and I love it! It’s amazing how different it feels. Savannah said it looked like a hotel! She’s so funny.
On another note…some background info: we have several DVDs that we have had around for a long time…like 4 years. And most of the kid DVDs are ruined due to careless little fingers. So we haven’t seen Nemo (except on TV) for like 2 years and the same with many of our other favorites. So today, we took about 8 movies up to Gamestop because for $1.00, they will repair your DVD. No guarantee it will work, but it was worth a try. And we are so pumped because they look awesome! The kids watched Nemo earlier tonight and they loved it! It’s one of my favorites too.

Today was a tough day. I went out to the show to touch up some outlining that had to wait till the two parts came together and found that the paint on the bottom edge of the marquee was peeling. You can see from the picture how the marquee has a strip of aluminum all around the edge framing it. I just painted directly on it. The enamel paint should have no problem bonding to it. I painted it 2 weeks ago! So I get there and the paint just on the bottom of the marquee all along that strip of aluminum was peeling. There was actually moisture under the paint…which of course caused it to peel. I don’t really understand how the moisture got there. Last night was the first night it was exposed to the elements…and it had to be from the dew I guess. The only thing I can think of is where the edge of the aluminum strip and the panel come together there may have been spots that didn’t get filled in with the paint allowing a spot for the moisture to collect and seep in under the paint. I am not really all that smart about how paint works but that can be the only way I see that this could have happened. I was really frustrated because we have a bit of a time crunch now…and I have to clear coat it tomorrow. I am praying that it will be fine and I won’t have another situation like that to deal with tomorrow. So what did I do about it…well, I decided to scrape the entire strip (about 1 inch) and then paint kilz primer on it. I wasn’t really sure that it would fix it for good…but that’s what I did. Then I painted over it and fixed up all the touch ups and now it’s done. It looks pretty good. I was pretty happy about how it came together. I had to paint the two pieces separately and so I used a tape measure to measure the points when one part of the ship or tree would end on the trailer so I would know where it would be on the marquee, but then I had to measure 15 inches in, because as you can see the marquee is shorter than the trailer. It will be fine, because we are going to mount some jolly roger flags on either side of the marquee and then all along the top as well. I think it will look pretty cool. The thing that made today frustrating was that I had taken the kids with me. I didn’t really think this would be a problem because it should have only taken me about 20 minutes to touch it up. But it turned into more like 2 hours. I hadn’t brought any snacks and the boys were fighting (irritating each other) which they rarely do. Jasmin was actually less maintenance than those two. And I don’t know what was wrong with Karson today, but it was bad. He whined and screamed and complained SO much today. I had had it by this evening and after dinner put all the kids right to bed. They were all asleep by 8:30. I think he was mostly just really tired, but there wasn’t an opportunity for a nap today. Tonight Sam left to go be with his mom and sisters. His mom is not doing any better. It’s hard. I was sad that he had to go tonight.

Check it out!!! We are so pumped. Doesn’t it look cool? Sam and some of his pals got the marquee attached tonight… Tomorrow I will go put a few finishing touches on it and then Clear Coat on Thursday!

Max’s moustrap

We’ve had a little mouse running around our house lately. Thankfully he was caught last week while we were at camp. Daddy set a trap, but Max wasn’t sure the Victor trap would do a good enough job, so he created one of his own. It consisted of a box lid, with an open flap on one end. On the inside of the box lid he applied a thick layer of glue stick. Then knowing he needed some good bait, he got a piece of American Cheese from the refrigerator and cut it into quarters with his scissors. He stuck the cheese to the inside of the box lid and face down he propped a block under one end. When the mouse comes in to eat the cheese off the box the lid would fall on him and he would become stuck to the box and therefore trapped. Can you get any cuter than that?  We did not even know he had made it till we returned home from somewhere and discovered it!

Mermaid

A tiny detail most people probably won’t even notice.

Pirate Flags

These are the flags at the top of the pirate ship…it will make more sense when the Marquee is attached.

The trees on Pirate Island

Here you can see the trees on Pirate Island.