Summer Fun

Pin It It's not officially summer, but nobody told that to Texas because it definitely feels like summer around here. Brendan started feeling better and was ready to GET. OUT. OF. THE. HOUSE. for a little bit so we got a slip n' slide, which he calls a swip and swide.

It's all fun and games ...




Until she stops letting him win.


And thus endeth the summer fun. At least for the day.

Women of Faith Wednesday -- What's In Your Purse?

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I am totally giggling at this, in light of what I posted this morning about getting old and my eyesight. The prize this week is The Smallest Bible. It includes a magnifier. I just think that is hilarious.

Okay, the question of the week is this:
What's in your purse and why?

At this very moment, my purse contains the following:
- my checkbook/wallet, because when we go places money is usually involved. ;)
- my sunglasses, because it's bright outside
- the church financial report and business meeting agenda, because we just got home from a business meeting at church
- a couple of receipts, because I'm messy
- hand lotion, because my hands look like they belong to a 40 year old
- Burt's Bees lip shimmer in cocoa, because I love it

- it SHOULD have a pack of gum, but my children are thieves

- it USUALLY has a camera, but currently doesn't because I was taking pictures earlier and forgot to stick it back in there

And that's it. I should mention that I'm carrying a new purse right now, so I haven't really had a ton of time to fill it up with junk yet.

What's in yours?

To Sleep, Perchance To ... Sweat??

Pin It Being 40 is interesting.

Some changes have been good. I have more of an "I am who I am" mentality. Or maybe it's more "what you see is what you get." This is a good thing. I'm more confident than I've been in ages. Also a good thing. I'm also more independent than ever before, but I think that has more to do with the last year than anything else. I'm not sure yet if this is a good thing or not. I'm sure if you took a poll around my house, you'd get mixed reviews on that. ;)

Some other changes have been less than fun. My vision, while always less than stellar, has essentially left the building. I am now that person who looks up and down and moves papers back and forth when trying to read. My glasses now correct near-sighted vision, far-sighted vision, and an astigmatism. It would probably be comical if it didn't frustrate the snot out of me!

The main thing though? My body temperature gauge has seemed to just stopped working. It seems mostly okay through the day. It's really hot outside and pleasantly cool inside. We live in southeast Texas, and so that's as it should be. But then the sun goes down and it gets crazy. I'll be asleep and the a/c will cycle off and I'll get all hot and sweaty. Then I kick off the covers. And then the a/c will cycle back on and I'll be freezing. So I pull the covers back up, right about the same time the a/c cycles back off. So now we're in a pattern, which continues until Brendan wakes me up with his demand for chocolate milk.

I understand this will get WORSE over the next few years? Oh my heavens.

I know that those of you who are *there* are giggling because you can totally relate. And those of you who are not there ... just hang on, your time is coming. (But for a preview -- remember the couple of weeks just after having a baby? Um, yeah. That.)

The good news? The one area where I consistently splurge for myself is sheets. I have great sheets. It's a good thing because they get changed all the time!

A Day In the Life

Pin It Oh my goodness, this has been a crazy week! As of this moment, all of our activities are done, except Brendan's Mother's Day Out, which ends this week. Last week, the girls had dance rehearsal Monday and Tuesday, dress rehearsal for recital Friday, and recital was Saturday. Oh, and eight costumes to get ready for recital. Mixed into this was practice for the AWANA musical on Wednesday, dress rehearsal for that on Saturday before recital, and the program on Sunday. Oh, and there was a fundraiser for preteen camp on Sunday, and Gabbi and I were both supposed to be working at it.

(hm ... I was *just* wondering how on earth it was possible for my car to be out of gas. I think as I typed the above paragraph, I figured it out!)

Because our family can never be content to just have a busy week, we felt obligated to throw a stomach virus into the mix. No, not *A* stomach virus. THREE stomach viruses. We're overachievers like that. 3 am Sunday morning, Gabbi was up. 5 am Sunday morning, Brendan joined in. 8 am, Madelyn joined in.

By about 11-ish Gabbi was better. Thankfully. She had a cast part and a solo and had worked really hard. I would have hated for her to miss it. She really wanted to go serve food for the fundraiser. Um, no. Combination of stomach virus and serving food ... notsomuch. I was confident that she would be fine for the musical though.

By about 2-ish, Brendan was better. Not really as well as Gabbi was, but he didn't seem to have as much motivation as she did. He went to the final rehearsal for the musical (and did well). Thankfully I took pictures during the rehearsal because he wilted during the awards and slept through the entire musical. He slept from the moment he got his very own Cubbie Bear, through the musical, through the cleanup after the musical, in the car on the way home, and went pretty much right to bed once we got home.

Madelyn is finally better as I'm typing this. Bless her heart, she always seems to get hit the hardest. She had a part in the musical too and had been really excited about it. She was pretty pitiful, so we decided that she could just zip up there, say her part, and then zip back down. Good plan, and it worked out just fine. She missed her group song and her part in the "stomp choir" but was okay with that.

(And um, yeah ... I just realized that I am publicly admitting to the world that I am indeed "THAT MOM" who brings her sick kids to functions. Sorry. I figured that given the other kids who were sick, the virus originated either at awanas or dance, and most everyone had already been exposed. Bad parenting, indeed.)

So that was our fun weekend. Stomach viruses aside, it really was a fun weekend. :) My pics are still on my camera, but I hope today to be able to pull them off and maybe post a few. That's my plan for the day. Well, that, and there seems to be a bathroom that is requiring some cleaning attention. And that is an overshare, I'm sure.

Women of Faith Wednesday -- Summer!

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I know, I know. It's Thursday, not Wednesday. That's one of my summer plans - to learn the days of the week. :-P I seem to generally be running a day behind these days! Maybe in the summer, I'll catch up. Or maybe not.

The question of the day is this:

School is almost out! How will you celebrate the end of the school year?

Well, because we homeschool and because I became a crazed "we have a schedule and we're going to STICK TO IT" mom, we actually finished up our official school year about a month ago. And celebrate, we did! See posts from April - we went to Disneyworld! We were celebrating more than just finishing school though - Jim came back from Afghanistan, hopefully for good.

We really do not have a lot of summer plans. We'll go visit Jim's family; I KNOW his mom is ready to get her hands on him! We'll do some VBS'ing (yes, it's now a verb) and we'll spend time at the pool (hopefully!) and splash park. We'll also do math over the summer, as we finish with programs and recital.

I'm looking forward to a somewhat lazy summer. Nice!

What about you?

The Plague, It is Upon Us

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It's awful. The plague, that is. We know, we have it here.

My child came in telling me she wasn't feeling well. I've been a parent for nearly 12 years, so I have a little bit of experience in children who are not feeling well. I was relatively certain that said child, while suffering from a mild cold, really didn't feel too awful.

But then, this child is not easily dismissed. Since her mother was not giving her the appropriate amount of sympathy, she took matters into her own hands. She knows that fever prompts action around here, so she took her temperature.

And apparently she has QUITE a fever. She skipped into the room where I was and brought me a soaking wet thermometer and said, "I'm sick. SEE?!?"

Wow. A fever of 109. That's quite a sickness you've got going on there, sweetheart.

I immediately sprang into action.
a) What is my child trying to get out of?
and
b) How can I have a little fun with this?

(I'm an awful mom. I freely admit it.)

"Oh honey. I'm sorry I didn't take you seriously when you said you weren't feeling well! You really ARE sick. Unfortunately the only thing that works with a fever that high is a shot, and it might take two or three before you're feeling better. Let's get in the car and go to the doctor right now; they certainly wouldn't want us to wait with a fever that high!"

Evidently this plague is a short-lived one. You could literally SEE the fever drop. Nothing short of miraculous was this recovery.

I love kids.

Question of the day: Why on earth does a thermometer need to go up to 109 degrees anyway?

I Heart Faces - Faces & Flowers

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"Here Mom. Take your dang flowers."

Not Me Monday

Pin It Hey guys!

We are beginning the busiest week of the year, with both the AWANA end of the year program and musical, and recital. I'm trying to soak up some quiet moments while I can!

I do have some not me moments to share!



It is NOT ME who hasn't touched the recital costumes. It is NOT ME who has not a clue what I'm even supposed to do with the recital costumes. It is NOT ME who has EIGHT of the costumes to deal with, and it is NOT ME who knows that at least one of the costumes does not fit. I suspect there is another one that's going to need some alterations as well. Oh, it's also not me who does said alterations with a handy-dandy stapler. Seriously. I've just counted - this is our ninth recital since Gabbi started dance, and the primary use of my stapler has been for costumes. As uncreative as I am, we've had some REALLY interesting methods of holding recital costumes together. Hey, whatever works, right? Oh, and the costumes? They're not supposed to be done by tonight or anything. I'm not that much of a procrastinator. Nope, not me. In case you're wondering? I'm not going to fall back on my status as a "professional" dance mom and not even get to the costumes until later in the week. There's no way in the world that my kids are going to show up at recital with the glue from the sequins still wet.

I did not have a sweet moment in church with my dear son yesterday. I did not observe that he wanted to be held every time we stood up and think "aww, he loves me!" I did not a few minutes later notice that when we stood up and I held him, he could see his buddy sitting a few rows behind me and realize that I was just the means to an end. Chopped liver when his buddy around, that's me. Or not me.

We are not going to, for the fourth time, try to get the HONEY out of the new rug today. My sweet children know that food, especially sticky food, must be eaten in the kitchen and would never flood a tortilla with honey and then take it into the family room and eat it on the new rug. And then they'd never track it all over the new rug. And then they'd never go outside and get their feet dirty and track dirt into the honey that had been tracked into the new rug. Nope, not my kids. For what it's worth, if that DID happen, I would never LOSE.MY.MIND. over it.

(with that said ... anyone know of anything that might remove honey from a rug?)

So ... that's it for this week! I hope to be able to blog a little this week. I think I might have an i heart faces entry to post today or tomorrow too.

Women of Faith Wednesday -- Advice to Self

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I saw this on my friend Amanda's blog and had to follow the linky. As my oldest is growing up, I think all the time about things I wish I had known back then (or maybe it's things I wish I didn't know now!)

So, the question is ...

If you could go back in time and tell your teenage self one thing, what would you say?

(Just one? Really?)

Okay ... the main thing I would say is that when a person reveals their true character, believe them the first time. In other words - when someone shows you that they are a jerk, just trust them. Don't make them prove it over and over. Know that it's better to be alone than to hang out with someone who treats you badly. The Lord will bring good people into your life, trust Him to do so. :)

And because I would never really just say one thing, I have one more thought. Shaving your eyebrows? Never a good idea. Not that I ever did that, or ever would do that. I'm just sayin' ... so, to my teenage self? Put down that razor. Nothing good is going to come from that.

My Not So Interesting Life

Pin It I've been a little antsy lately. I've been wanting to update my blog but really haven't been able to come up with anything to share. The thing is, we've been RUNNING. It's not like we've been sitting around doing nothing. We've been doing tons of things.

We had our co-op end of the year open house. I have to giggle at this - every year, the kids are SO SAD for co-op to end and the moms all get together to do a group happy dance. (Which, to be honest, that's what needs to be recorded for posterity!) We love co-op and will be happy for it to restart in the fall, but there really is much rejoicing when it ends in the spring.

We loaded up and went to the zoo last week too, which was fun. After that, we went to visit my sister and nephew.

The girls also had their end of the year choir concert. This was FABULOUS, as always. Their leader does such a fabulous job with these kids! I had a special treat this year - both girls had small solos. Gabbi sings a lot so the novelty of her singing has worn off a little. Not really worn off, but we know what to expect when she sings. Madelyn though, this was her first. She sang "so, a needle pulling thread" (name that song) and did a great job! This concert is always such a treat. We refer to the choir as the best kept secret around here because it's always amazing that there aren't tons of kids involved. Gabbi has been there from the beginning and we have no intention of her aging out of it anytime soon!

(bored yet?)

I had a fabulous Mother's Day. My kids and hubby spoiled me, and it was nice. A friend called me and asked if she could come over and keep my kids so Jim and I could have a date. Um, YEAH. What a fabulous blessing! Jim and I had a very nice date. (We officially have old people dates now. We went to a really nice restaurant and then went to Target to buy dishwasher detergent. I am not even kidding. Woohoo at the romance.)

This week we've been kind of taking it easy. I'm finishing up our school plans for next year, along with working on my co-op plans for next year. Today we got our van back (WOOHOO!!) Brendan was quite sad to give the Tahoe back; he's such a boy. I was delighted to SIT in my car rather than CLIMB into my car.

(Okay, I'm even boring myself now.)

(and now there is a naked little boy tushie in my bedroom, so I suppose I need to close this anyway and get him a towel!)

And yet more Disney?

Pin It Tired of the Disney posts? I think this is the last one! For a little while, anyway! It just occurred to me to pull out the pics from the other times we've gone, and to do a little comparing.

Here we are in 2006. Brendan was a baby, it was Madelyn's 5th birthday, and Gabbi was 7.


Here we are in 2008. Brendan was 2, it was Madelyn's 7th birthday, and Gabbi was 9.


(No, I have no idea why on earth Brendan is insisting on touching Mickey's face in both pics!)

Now here we are with a 4 year old, an almost 9 year old, and an 11 year old.


Noticing that some of us have grown, some of us have grown a LOT, some of us have shrunk a little, and some of us have less hair ... I'm just sayin'. haha. (And um, yeah ... what kind of parents are we that we didn't get a pic of all five of us with Mickey this year? Oh yeah, the kind of parents who didn't want to stand in line for said pic!)

I wish my scanner didn't hate me so much. I'd love to scan in the pics from breakfast O'hana. They are the exact same pics, each two years apart. I'm a big fan of the picture comparing, so those are my favorite.

Bovineophobia

Pin It I made that up. You guessed that, didn't you? I thought it sounded better than heiferophobia or plain ole' cowophobia.

So ... the trip home ... and how it relates to bovineophobia:

We left the campsite at 10:00 on Sunday morning. Ideally, we would have left a little earlier, but it took a couple of hours to pry the baby out of the hands of my girls.

It was an 11 hour drive, which practically means 13 hours after stops for a couple of meals and a couple of bathroom visits. I always forget how the trip home stretches out! We were thinking about getting home at 11, so we ended up not meeting another friend along the way. We should have taken the time to do so. Maybe I would not have bovineophobia now if we had.

So ... 10:30 pm. I had just sent a facebook note that we were in TX and didn't have far to go. Kids were asleep and we were excited to be on familiar ground.

We turned onto the dark highway. Black cows. Black night. Black road. Shriek, crash, screaming.

900 miles driven. Half an hour from home and unfenced cows decided to cross the highway. There were three cows hit and we hit at least two of them. Each side of the car had damage, but (thankfully!) we didn't hit any of them with the middle of the car. Our airbags did not deploy and there were no cows across the hood or anything like that.

The sleeping kids were awakened ... by my screaming rather than the impact. I'm a little embarrassed by that now. Between my screaming and the fact that I threw up every time my eyes went into the vicinity of the cows, we learned that unless there is a need for screaming and throwing up, I'm probably not the best person to have around in an emergency. At least in an emergency involving livestock. There were no injuries to people at all. I was a little bit sore, but even that was minor. My car was repairable, thankfully. I'm very fond of my car and really did not want it to be totaled!

Because I strive for this to be a poop-free blog, and well, when you hit a cow driving at about 70 mph, there is poop involved, I'm just posting a couple of pics. I didn't even realize there were dents on the driver's side until I saw the pics. I knew the mirror was gone, but the dents were a surprise.



And now we're just waiting for my car to be finished. And we're still busy being thankful that the cows were small. Not calves, but not big huge 1500 lb cows either.

Oh - and get this - the DPS officer said that we were NUMBER SIX to hit cows on that road THAT WEEK. Oh my. Let's all hope some farmer fixes his fence before someone is killed!

For the rest of the night, my friend came and got the kids because we didn't know if the car was drivable or not (it was). We just let them keep the kids overnight because the next day was our last class day of co-op, and the kids all wanted to be there. Jim and I drove home ...

... and were pulled over for driving with a headlight missing. The officer said "um, I think this is probably the least of your problems." LOL Um, yeah ... pieces of the car are flying off as we drive, it's covered in poop ... go ahead and pull us over. Thankfully he just gave us a warning and said that he usually tells people to drive more carefully, but in our case, he'd just tell us to watch out for cows. Um, yeah, thanks for that.

It was still a fabulous vacation, and I can't wait to go back to Disney World! I think we'll drive straight through I-10 next time rather than cutting off though! At least if it's dark!

Trip, part 7

Pin It I can't believe I've dragged this out into so many posts. And to the poor people on my facebook, and especially my photobucket, you have to be tired of these same pictures! We're just about done though, I promise!

When we went to Disney World two years ago, I wanted to meet my friend Valerie, who lives in Florida. We decided to get together on our way home at a cabin at a campground on the way. We decided to do that again this year.

It was GORGEOUS and we had a fabulous time! The cabin was right on the Suwannee River. We went for a short walk down the river. Oh, so beautiful!



Then we went on a short drive to another part of the river, Madison Blue Spring. Absolutely gorgeous! Brendan really wanted to swim. Mommy was really nervous about that!


Madelyn was a little timid about it all. She did dunk her feet and wade a little, but mostly she stayed around the stairs. She kept acting like she was going to jump off the platform. She'd walk up there and look down and then change her mind. She did this no less than five times!


Gabbi, on the other hand, walked up and jumped. I was shocked! Look at how blue the water is!


As we were thinking about getting ready to leave, someone pointed out the snakes on the stairs. Yikes. Then Madelyn kicked one of Brendan's shoes off of the platform by the stairs. I was fully prepared to bid a fond farewell to the shoe; no way no how was I going to get close enough to water moccasins to rescue a shoe that's close to being too small. Valerie's husband saved the day and got Brendan's shoe. Bren was very glad, he loves those shoes! LOL So, we survived, shoes intact, and nobody was bitten by a snake!

We thoroughly enjoyed Valerie and Clif and their family! I was a little concerned, as was Valerie, that the girls might try to stow her sweet baby away into our car!

Okay, so that's it for the vacation. I do have one more post regarding the *interesting* trip home. Drive 900 miles and get within about ten of home ... and ...

to be continued!

Trip, part 6

Pin It Day 7, our last day in the park. We went to Animal Kingdom.

We started out at Tusker House with a breakfast with Donald Duck. This was our first time to do this breakfast and we all really enjoyed it.


Another required pic of kids with Mickey.


Brendan REALLY wanted to get his face painted. He told me earlier in the week that he wanted to, but it was raining so I told him we'd talk about it later. He saw the face painters and asked "Can we talk about it now?" So sweet! He was a very cute little pirate!


Madelyn had to have hers done too. She chose tiger eyes. This was her first time seeing herself in the mirror.


Just a cute pic of the two of them showing off their newly painted faces.


When Animal Kingdom closed, we went back to the resort. The kids went swimming for a while, then we went to one of the resort's programs - a campfire and singalong, plus an outdoor movie theater. We made s'mores and ate popcorn and just enjoyed the night. Unfortunately, one of us was way too tired to stay for the whole movie ... that would be ME, and Gabbi. So, we went back kind of early. The two little ones wanted to watch the movie and then got distracted by the pool, so they stayed and went swimming again.

We had every intention of going back to the Magic Kingdom the next morning before heading out, but then we woke up. We were all tired, and it was Saturday and we just couldn't handle more waiting in lines. We'd already spent seven days in the parks and had sucked out all the fun we could handle, I think. So, we went back to the pool for a little while. It was nice to just relax before heading back home.

It's funny, we always start planning a trip to Disney with the attitude that this will be our last one. We kind of did that again this time, but I guess it was mostly half-hearted. We know that we very much want to go back. We've kind of picked a date and a savings plan and can't wait to go back. There's just something that happens there. Disney magic, pixie dust, I have no idea. It's nice though, and I want to hold onto it! Funny that looking at long time financial goals and knowing how CHEAP I can be that family vacations are a priority. They are though, I wouldn't trade the memories we're making for anything!

I have a couple more vacation posts to come! You're waiting by the edge of your seat, I know. ;)

Trip, part 5

Pin It And now for day 6!

We spent this day at Epcot. We spent the morning being lazy and then going swimming. It was nice and a little relaxing.

Then we met our friends at Epcot. Brendan went on a date after we got off Test Track. LOL


Then we were attacked by sharks.


We got all the kids good and caffeinated. These two, with the little one added in, were deep in conversation pretty much every moment we were together, as were the older two.


We had supper at Akershus. It occurred to me just a little bit ago that this was probably our last princess meal. Kind of sad. Brendan already wasn't terribly interested in the princesses. Gabbi played along for the benefit of her parents (good girl!) and Madelyn still enjoyed them quite a bit. It cracked me up that Madelyn loves Snow White. Wanna know why? Snow White has a squeaky voice, which apparently appeals to my squeaky voiced small child. Brendan wouldn't take a picture with Snow White or Aurora, but he did decide that Ariel was kind of cool, and that he would get in a pic with her.


I thought this was a good look for Mad.


Then the sad part of the evening. We had to say goodbye to our friends. And this is the only pic I took of that. I can't believe I didn't take a pic with Becky, or get Gabbi to take a pic with Jim and me with Dan and Becky. Oh well. I did get a cute pic of the older kids.
(Note to Becky -- I am SO GLAD y'all joined us for several days of this trip! We were all blessed to have time to spend with y'all. It was great having Tour Guide Dan to show us some things we would have missed. We love y'all, and I thank God for giving us friends with whom we can just pick up like no time has passed. I really hope it won't be too long before we see y'all again. Love you guys, every one of you!)