Right Now: Liveblogging the last moments of the day

It's light until very late in the evening right now. The kids will not go to bed until 9 at the earliest. Sometimes we spend a lot of time trying to make them go to bed earlier, but I am rather lazy, and would rather not put forth good effort on a fruitless task. (The downside is limited adult time in the evening, but that's not fun anyway if they keep popping out of their beds.) So right now, I'm lounging in my low-boy camp chair, typing this blog post and trying to see if the kids will actually clean up the random mess of felt pieces, pipe cleaners and Legos they have scattered across the living room and dining room.

I think our camp chairs are actually the most comfortable pieces of furniture that we own. What does that say about us?

I'm playing their favorite music to inspire them...a strange mix of Wiz Khalifa, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and Taylor Swift. I had the marvelous idea to call our dinner "Pasta Bar" and serve the ingredients separately. I think that's why Taco Tuesday is so successful. Everybody ate with enthusiasm (except M, he isn't home from work yet).

My other summer evening trick is to not turn on any lights when it starts to get dark. So it's very dark in here, and I actually have no idea how many pipe cleaners are left on the floor.

Laurel seems to know all the words to Blank Space.

I finally chopped down the jungle of weeds that was taking over the backyard today. I promised to pay Laurel $5 if she filled a whole garbage bag with weeds. But she wandered off after about five minutes and joined Marko in filling and dumping out various water bottles and buckets in the kiddie pool. Then after I picked up all the weeds she was hysterical over missing her opportunity to earn money.

Wow, they really like Uptown Funk. If it wasn't so dark in here, I would take a video of the dancing that is going on. There are still a lot of pipe cleaners on the floor, though.

I'm not sure it's going to get any cleaner in here, so it's time to call it.

No wait, Marko just showed up with the broom. There is hope yet. At least all the pipe cleaners might make it to one corner of the room, along with any stray pasta.

Yep, this is going to be as clean as it gets.

We do baths everyday because we spend a lot of time in the park and I'm paranoid about deer ticks. I'm very excited to read a few of our library picks from today. Marko got "Squirrels" and "Fire Trucks." Laurel and I will continue on with "The Long Winter" - which reminds us how good we have it. And the it will be dark and everybody will fall asleep right away. Probably including me!