LA

We spent the past week in LA while Andy had a conference down there. We stayed at my grandma's on Malibu beach and played in the sand and waves every day. My little six year old niece flew out from Austin all by herself and surprised us!! I can't believe my sister let her go and that Ciela wasn't scared at all. The boys had so much fun playing with her. They built forts in the sand, jumped many waves and explored the tide pools. They even earned a little money cleaning up for Mana. They were struggling to finish one of the big jobs of cleaning all the debris up from the side of the house so I stepped in to supervise a little. Tegan was not happy at first when I was telling him how and where to sweep, but within about 20 seconds he was amazed at how clean one corner was, and then the next corner was clean. After that he had the idea that they should each pay me $.50 for my supervision. I thought that was a great idea and that 10 percent was a good earning for me for my supervising expertise. Then I found out they were making an additional $5 each on the second half of the job so they agreed to 10 percent of that as well (Conner was very reluctant to pay me, but the others convinced him it would be the right thing to do) if I would supervise. So I made $4 stnding there telling them what to do. Maybe I should start this at home.

They took their hard earned money to Legoland on Tuesday and each bought several toys at the end of our day there. It was tons of fun as usual for all of us but Conner. He said he didn't like it because all he wanted to do was buy his new toys and I wouldn't let him do that until the end because I didn't want to cart them around all day (we are without a stroller now).

Andy had a great meeting, getting to know new people and learning lots of valuable stuff. We got home on Wed evening and jumped right into two full days of school. A bit tough on all of us, but needed to be done. Now we're spending the weekend re-organizing the school room in hopes to fit the basketball thing in there better.

I was heading to the grocery store yesterday and went buy and open house that I had wanted to see for quite a while so I stopped in. It was the perfect house for us. I loved everything in it. There was a separate school room and space for each of them to have their own room with all their toys in them. I do dream of more space, but know I don't want it until we can also afford to pay for someone else to clean it for us.

Andy is working this morning before church so he'll meet us there. I'd better get the rest of us ready to go. I'll post some pictures from out trip next time.