It was a success until...

We have officially entered the second week of school.

Kind of

GG had 3 full days last week while Little Dude had 2 1/2. But judging by their book bags after school on Monday, we are in full school mode.

All of the rain forests have been killed off necessary paperwork has been completed by yours truly.

Now it's time to learn!







GG absolutely loves school! She has the teacher that all the boys drool over kids adore. And the majority of her BFFs are in her class. I'm not sure if that is exactly a good thing since she can be quite the chatterbox all the time>at times, but we'll see how the year goes in regards to that. She's already had her first spelling pre-test. She only missed a few. She spelled them like they sound so at least she tried. Hopefully she doesn't spell like the husband. Heaven help me if she does! Yes, he's that bad!

Little Dude appears to love school as well. The getting up in the morning? Not so much! He's like his momma - he loves his sleep and is quite grouchy when awoken to early. Coffee helps me, but I don't think his teacher would appreciate it if I gave him a cup o' joe. Every day he tells us something he learned. At first it was letters, but then he discovered the special classes, like music and gym. They got to use fruit maracas to make music and threw footballs on the playground.


I am beyond excited that they both are enjoying school. We were worried about Little Dude since he wasn't officially in pre-school, but he seems to be doing well. Me on the other hand? That's another story!

I've been so busy with a resale event I participate in that it hasn't fully hit me that I am the only one home. Although I will admit, I thoroughly enjoy listening to whatever music I want at whatever volume I want!

Oh, and homework. That has started, too. And that is where the success may end! GG's is a bit more involved now that she is in the 3rd grade. I don't think she's thrilled with that. Little Dude, who has never had homework before, is starting the war already. Too often when I am trying to help him do something or show him the correct way, we end up butting heads. He is definitely my son! We had a talk about the homework routine, so hopefully after a few days, we'll get a good schedule going and the battles will cease.

I can only hope, right?



Until next time....

Summer fun

It's a strange addiction. I don't win, yet I continue to do it. It really is true - if it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. But here I am again feeding my addiction.

Contests.

To be more precise, photo contests by Parenting by Dummies. This time it's the so NOT dumb summer photo contest. I have pictures that scream "winner". At least to me they do!

To edu-ma-cate a bit, we are entering month #6 of higher than normal temps. When it's hotter than normal, there's really only 1 thing you can do. Okay, maybe a few things.

There's sprinklers to play in.
Bathing suits optional!

There's sprinklers to get stuck behind
because someone (me)
didn't realize they would turn on
30 seconds after you walked back there

There's shady paths to walk on
when you need to escape the heat

But the best
and my personal favorite
thing about summer
is ice cream

Until next time....

Back to School - We Made It!

We made it! The first day of school is officially under their little belts!

Once he warmed up, Little Dude really fell in love with Kindergarten. His teacher is just awesome and I know this will be a great year for him!

GG also had a great day. She absolutely loves her teacher. As do I. Top that off with her having an awesome soccer coach and I think she will have a great year as well.



Within the next few days, I will do a real post about the first day of school. Right now I am just too exhausted from filling out all that paperwork. I am so tired of writing the same phone numbers over and over and signing my name a bazillion times!





For now I am going to play along with Amy from Keeping Up with the Schultz Family. She tagged me in a back to school tag.

The rules:

• Answer the 5 questions
• Tag 5 blogging friend to play along

1. What was your favorite back to school item to buy?

As a kid, I would have to say a book bag. I could have cared less about clothes. I'm the kids who refused to wear jeans until middle school!

Now that I have my own kids, I love to shop for them. GG loves clothes, as you can see in the snazzy pic above. I love to feed her addiction! For Little Dude, anything we bought was exciting since this was our first time school shopping for him ever. My favorite thing that he picked out was his Star Wars back pack. I even found a metal lunchbox to match!


2. What was your favorite subject in school?

Hands down, math. The only thing I had an issue with was word problems. I took Statistics in college, which involves a lot of word problems. Let's just say thank goodness there was a HUGE curve. I never would have passed without it!


3. Did you ride the bus or get a ride from Mom/Carpool?

In elementary school and middle school I walked. Every morning, minus those when we were fighting, I met my BFF at the corner and off we would go.

Once we entered high school, it was the bus. Sometimes we would get a ride from a friend of my BFF's sister.

We had a bus driver one year, Tony. He was just awesome. The year after we had him, we convinced him to let us take his bus home instead of the one we were assigned. He wasn't exactly going to our street, but pretty close, so he let us on.


4. Did you have a sack lunch or cafeteria food?

I'm sure I packed at some point or another, but it couldn't have been too often because I don't remember. I never had a problem with the cafeteria food. And I will say that the turkey dinner was the best meal ever!

Starting in middle school, we also had a salad bad and a baked potato bar. Yum!!! We also had Pizza Hut days once a week.


5. What was your favorite memory from school days?

Oh, where to start?!? I could go way back and say playing Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego in the computer lab. But there's also the English class when the husband and I were first dating. Chemistry was also a fun one. I really don't think we learned much about chemistry.

Stage crew was always fun and good for getting me out of class. Or the time I skipped class and a Cabbage Patch kid ended up on a roof. Of course walking home from detention from said skip day was also fun. For whatever reason, we thought cutting through the golf course would be a short cut. Apparently I never learned that the route I think it short rarely is.

I could go on and on. As you can see, I have quite a few fond memories of school. But like I said, I am beat!


The 5 blogging buddies I'm tagging? I'm really tired so I'm taking the easy way out. If you have a kid going back to school this week, like Shell or Kmama (hint, hint), play along. Let me know if you do so I can stop in and read!





ps. Please don't feel obligated to do this. It's just for fun, but I know we are all busy with back to school/end of summer stuff!



Until next time....

Not Mom of the Year. Or am I?

My steals deals

PINT is up for sale. Here's your chance to host an awesome Meme! Proceeds go towards childhood cancer. Check it out! Maybe you help. Or even host!


Until next time....

An obstacle course and a cow

Last Saturday was our local Community Day. Yet again I get roped into volunteering to help, and as it turned out I wasn't even needed.

Let me back up and start from the beginning - the fun part.

I wanted to get a good parking spot so we got there when the whole thing started, at 1pm. As it turned out, that was never going to be an issue. Maybe because it's only year 2 of said Community Day, but there really weren't that many people there at any given point in the day.

The husband joined us, which was equivalent to pulling teeth. I needed a way to get Little Dude home so he wouldn't drive me crazy get bored when it came time for me to sit at the Girl Scout booth.

Little Dude had asked to do the climbing wall. We didn't think his legs were big enough to get very far, but we let him try none the less. Surprisingly he made it half way to the top. That's about 20 feet up! But then his foot slipped and he was stuck. Apparent;y 50 pounds is not enough weight to let him slowly descend back to the ground. Once we got the guy's attention, he had to climb up and pull Little Dude back down. But all in all, his climb was pretty impressive.

After seeing her brother do it, of course GG had to give it a try. She made it almost as far up as her brother. Again, pretty impressive. Much better than I could have done! At first she was disappointed, but as we pointed out, along with her friend's dad, she made it further up than he did. I love when a girl can do something better than a boy!

I really wish I had the video to show you. I spent over an hour last night trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. I did manage to get both of their climbs on video on my phone. But when I finally figured out how to upload it to my computer, the darn things were sideways!

Again, smart phone, dumb user!

But I did mange to get a picture of Little Dude going through the inflatable obstacle course - the one he was too little to get through last year.




The big event was Cow Patty Bingo. For those of you not familiar with this, let me explain.

There's a fenced in area and in this area a grid is painted on the field. A cow comes and is let into said area. The job of the cow is to do it's business on one of the squares. Whoever bought that square wins money.

Just like leading a horse to water, you can lead a cow to a field, but you can't make him poop. And believe me, they tried! Maybe next year, they should feed Candy some fruit before she comes out!





As for my time volunteering, I said I would help and they were watching me walk around with my kids for a good 2 hours. I couldn't' very well blow them off. So off to help I went. At any given time, there were more volunteers/Girl Scouts than there were kids who wanted to make our little craft. But I did stay to help clean up, so my time there did have some sort of purpose.



Until next time....

Frogs, ear wax, and popsicles

GG chillin' out with her new buddy, Mr. Frog.

Frog made by me

Pattern provided by The Aquamarine Celestine


















Little Dude playing with Kelper, a prop from the puppet show at our library.

The theme of the show - never judge a book by it's cover. Two scuba divers thought all sea life was scary or boring. We laerned they are fun and not always so scary!

The song Little Dude learned at the show - Dancing in my underpants (ugh!).













Random funny stuff my kids say -

GG~ if you stick you finger in your ear and get some wax on your fingers, rub it in and you will become a wizard.


Little Dude~ if you lick a blue popsicle, you will become a mom

GG (in retaliation)~ if you lick a green popsicle, you will become a dad



If only the birds and the bees were that simple!



Wordful/Wordless Wednesday hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom, 7 Clown Circus, and Two of a Kind Working on a Full House


Until next time....

Deadlines and School

Until next time....

Rah Rah Rah - Shoot me now!

Anyone who knows me in real life knows that I am not a fan or cheerleaders. Nor was I ever.

You could say I may be biased on this subject. I base this opinion on the cheerleaders I went to school with. They were so overly perky and happy that it made me nauseous or they were snobs. Sometimes both.

And quite frankly, our HS football team sucked! 10+ years later, they still do! Who would want to cheer them on is beyond me.


For the past 2 years GG has been bugging me to be a cheerleader. Sometimes I really think there is a stork somewhere out that drops babies at houses. A child who wants to be a cheerleader could not come out of this body!

But I'm wrong. And I also caved on the matter.

She wanted to sign up at the end of last school year. I told her she never brought home the papers for it and by the time we found out when the sign-up date was, we missed it. There is a possibility I may have thrown that paper away. But I swear I just saw the word football on there. Not cheerleaders and football.

A week ago we saw some cheerleader-y girls hanging papers around the neighborhood. Turns out these papers were for a 2 day long cheer camp. For only 20 bucks, I figured why not. She could get this cheer crap out of her system. As I signed her up and handed over the money, I realized that day 2 of this camp was the morning after our Jimmy Buffett concert. That would only make taking here that much harder.

Jimmy Buffett post coming tomorrow, complete with Jack Sparrow (yum! or not!).

The camp was 3 hours long both days. The high school gym was incredibly hot. And with my dislike of cheerleaders, I just could not bare to sit there longer than I had to. I did arrive early to pick her up so I could at least see a bit of what she was learning.

You could tell every time GG did a move or a jump that she was in love with what she was doing! And I must say, she was pretty good, too. The girls who taught the camp were pretty awesome as well.

Award for participation
and best jumper!

I think I may be coming around on this whole cheerleader thing. It looks like next year I will not only be a soccer mom, but a cheerleader mom.

Just no minivans for this family!



Until next time....

The value of money

While I'm trying to find my sanity, go check out some more Post-Its!




Until next time....

Incredible but not Edible

Last Wednesday Little Dude went in for his yearly check-up. We did have a few issues, but all in all, it went well.

He's grown 4 inches in the past year and weighs a solid 50 pounds. I'd beg to differ with that number. Try picking this kid up and you'll see what mean!

While we were there I had a few dietary matters to discuss. There are certain foods that seem to give the little guy the runs. I think I've narrowed down that list of foods and most of them appear to be milk related.

The doctor wrote us a prescription to have blood work done. Yuck!

GG was at her Grandma's that day. With 1 less kids, going to the lab would be so much easier. I tried to explain to Little Dude what was going to happen. What I got from him was 10 minutes of repeating the same thing over and over...


Let's go and not get this done with!


Poor kid! But we needed to know!

Yesterday the pediatrician finally called with the results. Little Dude has a very slight, nothing to worry about allergy to egg whites.

Excuse me? The boy who had dippy eggs for dinner the night before with no adverse reactions is allergic to egg whites?!

I'm not saying the doctors are wrong, but this kid eats eggs and things with eggs quite often. I guess I could really start to pay attention to what he eats that may contain the culprit, but milk is not on that list. I guess I'll have to bring this topic up when I take GG in for her appointment in a few weeks.


Does anyone have a kid with an egg white allergy? Is there something I am missing and need to pay more attention to?


Until next time....

Who's in charge?

hosted by Foursons



Dear parents at the playground yesterday ~ What the hell?!? I thought about placing the blame on your kids, but really, you are the ones supposed to be in charge and keep them in line.

Rosie's mom ~ Rosie's a dog, by the way. Letting your children play at the above playground in bare feet - not smart! Ignoring them was not wise either. You needed to hang up your phone and listen to your children who were trying to talk to you. Waiting until your children stepped on sleeping Rosie to acknowledge them is just beyond my comprehension.


I would also like to extend this letter to the group of unsupervised children, 8-ish and under ~ Where were your parents and why did you all think it was ok to keep running in and out of the gate to play in the bed of Daddy's truck? As if knocking 2 parents with young children out of the way as you barged back through the gate wasn't bad enough, one of you almost poked your eye out as you knocked the toddler in your group on the ground, causing him to scrape up his face!

Of course that little act did get Daddy to abandon his Quarter Pounder. Unfortunately all he did was roll his eyes and tell you to calm down. Never mind you almost poked your eye out on a metal gate!

Signed ~ Me who feels like Mom of the Year because I knew where my children were the entire time.



Until next time....

I am putting in my request

I am going to a Macaroni Kid event tonight
Hopefully that will make things all sunshine & rainbows
As long as I avoid the Chik Fil-a playroom!




This appointment may or may not go well.

Not only will I have both kids with me
(will they be like Kool-aid or the Oil Spill?)

But I have some things to discuss with the dr.

Until next time....