couple more shots from the game

we were watching a baseball game so here's someone hitting :)
kids with the green team
J and one of the mascots
kids and Abba

One fun thing that happened was the E and H were on the big screen during dance cam time. They were hysterical. If I can find the right video I'll put it on you tube tonight. Also eating dippin dots from the cool baseball hat cups was a favorite :) Hopefully the players will be suspended and then learn how to behave so the good parts, the family fun and ice cream and silly races and whatever can continue without the craziness.

Young's Dairy and a Dragon's Game

Today DH and Abba went golfing and Nana went to work. Uncle Brian and I took the littles up to Grandpa Thacker's house. We walked around his garden and admired his growing things. Even at 90 his yard is well kept and has many interesting fun things growing around.
The kids enjoyed seeing everything and smelling the flowers and watching the bugs fly about.
After that the 6 of us went to Young's Dairy. It was great. The kids loved feeding the goats and seeing the cows and climbing on the tractor. We had lunch there which was yummy, and ice cream which was even better :)

After we got home we took a quick swim and then went to the Dragon's game. Actually Lu stayed with Nana and UB, they went out to dinner and shopping.

The rest of us headed out to a very exciting game. Bob Evan's was having a sampling night outside the gate so we stopped there for "dinner" and some sliding on the giant bouncy slide. Then we found our seats. The first inning was unbelievably action packed. First a batter got hit in the head by a ball and had to be taken off the filed. Then not 5 minutes later the first baseman and the catcher collided and the first baseman broke his ankle and got taken out in an ambulance. THeN before that first inning was over a huge brawl broke out. Literally every player on both teams was out in the field punching and fighting. There were bloody faces and I don't know what else. The game took an hour break to sort things out and then started again. We eventually left in at the 6th inning. I don't know what happened at the end. I feel really badly about how things went. That is not an example of good sportsmanship. There were tons of families there with their little kids and it was frankly not the all American past time fun filled evening it should have been, it was more of a spectacle. I know most games aren't like that but it was still a bummer. We did have a good time, it just could have been a lot more fun and it's a shame the grown men act like that. It was not the example I wanted my children to see of how adults act when playing games, or ever.

Abba's shots

Starting the day
H and some girl in the front, E and DH in the back on the Runaway Raptors
Plankton Plunge

King's Island

Today we went to King's Island. I tried to take a nice picture of the kids while DH and Abba were in line for tickets. I took several, this was the best, sad I know.
After we got in the gate I took some kids to the bathroom and by the time we were out the big girls were off, never to be seen again until the end of the day so this nice shot does not have them in it.
We had such a fun time. We started by seeing the Dora show, which Lu LOVED. It was her favorite part, she sang and danced along.

E and H were anxious to play some of the games. E won a big bear, H won one too.

We rode lots of fun rides. The carousel, the helicopters, plankton plunge, scooby doo, runaway raptor and the log ride were some. I liked the log ride the best.

While we were doing that in Nickelodeon-ville, the big girls were on "boring" rides like the Beast, the Vortex, and other high speed, high adventure rides.

We lucked out and saw many characters. Lu loved seeing Dora! We saw Jimmy Neutron and Wanda and Scooby and some others.

We also ate. This is Lu with her Blue's Clues blueberry ice cream. We also had funnel cakes (Yumm) and icees and the big girls had dippin dots.

Books & Co and MiMi's Cafe'

Today was a shopping day. We went to Books & Co first. An hour and many books later everyone was stocked with reading material for the rest of the summer. It's our favorite stop.
It's nice that they provide chairs around the stores so we could sit and read and take the books for a test drive before making a final selection.

Then we went to eat. We eat a lot. S had the hugest sandwich.

DH had the yummiest dessert, it was a chocolate pecan pie a la mode that was as big as my hand (as you can see).

We spent some time walking around the Commons and enjoying the shops.

Tonight Dottie and Jim came over for dinner and we watched old family movies.

We made it

We made the drive. It was fine. Driving this summer has been better than any previous driving we have done, I guess because we don't have a baby this year.

It's not fun but it's better.

We watch movies and eat for 100's of miles on end.

Last night we stopped in Nashville. We stayed at a motel 8, which was fine. In the past we've stayed at nicer places but in the spirit of saving money we tried this. We will probably stay at one again, I will admit that we are spoiled and missed our Marriott's and Holiday Inns. We got two rooms so Lu, S and J and I were in one together. We were laying in the dark in our two double beds, side by side, singing ourselves to sleep. J and I sang such classics as "In the ghetto, the urban ghetto, the ______ sleep tonight. Ah Whooo Babum Ba Way" and "How firm a mattress"

This morning, after enjoying our complimentary bowls of froot loops, we headed off again and made it by 4 in the afternoon.

We're happy to have arrived and look forward to a nice week.

a recap

the past two days have been scheduled with a departure to Ohio in mind.

Friday morning we woke up and drove down to the new transmission shop with DH so he could drop off his truck. They we took him to work and went to the bank and McD for some breakfast.

We went to Friday swim day, cause kids need to have fun and I need to chat with my mom friends :) It was at Alison's pool and the kids had a great time. Which was nice because of the rest of the day was work work work.

We came home and had lunch then went to do all our trip shopping :( After that we had a fun filled afternoon getting stuff clean around here and laundry done.

Friday night was more of the same along with a RedBox movie "Bella". Kind of weird, I would not recommend it.

Today we got up and started cooking and doing more laundry.

DH and the kids went to karate.

J came home from camp. She had a fun time but was disgusted that they made them wear bright orange life preservers in the lake. After the high adventure trip they had earlier this year and being that she is an excellent swimmer it seemed kind of lame-o. Still it was a good experience over all.

We finished and folded all the laundry and got all the house clean, so we can come home to a nice house.

H went to the Chisholm Water Park for Kolton's birthday party.

We got everything packed. Took Millie to the Steers, got gas and went to the pool store.

Fixed dinner for the Meyers and took it to them.

Then J left to see Batman with friends and S left to hang out.



We got to play with new little Oriah. Lu LOVED holding her and feeding her. She's so tiny and cute. It almost makes me wish we had another.

We had KBT at our house! R won. The game was long (3 1/2 hours).

We made Monte Cristo sandwiches for dinner and apple german chocolate cake for dessert and Heather brought yummy fruit salad. It's always fun to get together and eat and play.

After everyone left we finished getting ready, cleaned again, quickly blogged, and now I will look over my lesson for tomorrow and after church we will hit the road.

Whew!

new list of things I love:

1. RedBox. Who knew?
Yesterday we tried it out for the first time. We watched "Fool's Gold", which was a cute summer romance.
Today "Bucket List", which was really good. For a dollar you can't beat it.

2. Photo shop, with a wizard to run it. Em acted like a body double when we took the world's worst family faux-toe in Florida. We put S's head on and gave her a tan and viola a new pic of us all looking pretty bad :)

3. the $3 car wash with free vacuum.

This morning we visiting teaching, the kids went with me and had a lot of fun. After we went to the mall and spent some happy hours playing on the play land, looking at stuff and eating noodles.
Tonight the kids swam with dad and I read Martha Stewart, who I am so not like.

friends

During the day brother's 6 good friends wait for him on his pillow. Unless they are needed to go into battle or set up a zoo or to go shopping or to act as bombs in an elaborate game that he makes up.
They are Harry Potter Frog. Jesus (pronounced Hey sous) the bear called Hercules, the unfortunate moniker is because he was a Christmas present and H helped him get adopted. Third came FyreSnake, followed by Fuzzy Wuzzy (frog) and SuperMonkey. The newest addition is Pink Death, the dragon. He plays with them every day and it's so cute I didn't want to forget their names.

S and her friend going rock climbing. It's not a "date" and she "doesn't like him". Whatevah :)

I'm just posting this to torture her, they have been good friends for a long time, and he's a really nice young man. That's it.

My Creation

I saw this on my friend Shauna's blog and thought it looked like fun creative thing to do. It was fun to see what images popped up with the search words I used. And to pick one to use.

To make your own:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.

b. Using only the first page, pick an image.

c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The questions:

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favorite food?

3. What high school did you go to?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Favorite drink?

7. Dream vacation?

8. Favorite dessert?

9. What you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. One Word to describe you.

12. Your flickr name (or your blog name or handle or whatever)

the joy of owning stuff...

an essay on irony.

Stuff is sort of the bane of my existence. We need it and want it... and have to take care of it and organize it and make sure we have all million and two pieces that go with it that make it work.

I suffer from clutter. House clutter, body clutter, mental clutter. We've been de junking but frankly it seems to multiply just as quickly as we get it out of here...and I am not even going to the store very often so I do not know where it comes from.

On the plus side we've made progress on several of our closets, we have many more to go but my plan is to have them done by the time school starts (and I think we'll make it).

Recently we've had a lot of stuff break. Expensive stuff. We had two AC units that both needed repairs: cha ching. Then the fridge: which BTW, 3 trips to our house by the brilliant repair guy later and we still don't have ice at least things are being kept cold which is the more important of the two functions but ice would be nice. Cha Ching (jr). The transmission on the truck needs to be replaced. My car is in the shop with a funky AC error. While driving it will randomly switch to heat, just on the drivers side. Crazy huh? We can't drive 17 hours to Ohio next week with that problemo going on so : CHa CHing. AND S's car randomly doesn't start. We just put in a new battery but yesterday it wouldn't start and then it did and this morning when I went to take J to camp in the only working car on the property it didn't start. We waited and tried again, but nothing. Luckily Alison was able to come and save us and take her to camp. Can I hear a collective ARGH!

On the bright side... we still have food in the stores to buy, although it's expensive.

It seems like there is a lot of not depression but schlumpyness going around. I have many friends, real and imaginary who are struggling with issues some big and some just general blah's. I don't know if it's the price of gas, the lack of an exciting presidential candidate, the summer TV schedule or global warming that's causing it but I am tired of it.

So: 10 things that make me happy (right now)
let's see....

1. yesterday afternoon a HUGE wasp flew in the house when the Kings were leaving. I'm not kidding this was the size of a swallow (African). Debi and I chased it into the bathroom and locked it in. Then last night when DH came home he bravely killed it. H, E, Lu and I were outside the door shouting encouragement. At one point we heard a yell and a struggle, brother wanted to burst through the door and help but we held him back. In the end DH emerged victorious. I am very happy for some of the little known perks to being married (not that!), namely, having your own personal bug killer on call.

2. I am glad that the kids are all healthy. Not a sniffle or tumor amongst them. Yeah!! Good health is something that is underappreciated until it's gone.

3. I am glad that J gets to go to camp this week. I hope she'll have a great time. She wasn't super excited, knowing that it would not be the high adventure king of trip that she loves, however camp is always fun and I know she'll have a great time.

4. I can read.

5. Last night DH and I snuck out to Sonic and got treats when he got home from karate. Very fun.

6. DH has a job that he likes.

7. I have new soap from Bath and Body Works that smells so nice.

8. there are only 5 1/2 weeks left until school starts (just kidding)

9. the Food Network

10. I have the great blessing of spending another warm summer day with my bright and delightful children, swimming, playing, doing chores and cooking and reading together and really is there anything more important?

today's project

E has an airplane room. I've been meaning to paint on clouds and put up airplanes on one wall. Today I finally got around to it and he was happy with how it turned out.

Now we need to hang a couple more models from the ceiling and it'll be perfect!

a close up of one of the planes.

Friends

The kids had friends over this afternoon to swim. Amanda, Ryan and Austin came over and played and swam. It made the afternoon much more peaceful. Having friends always makes the time pass pleasantly.

the games we play

with the rising price of gas we are spending a lot more time at home this summer. Which isn't a bad thing, necessarily.
We have to find things to do to pass our time.
Lu loves to play "Starfall". She needs a partner so we all take turns.

H and E play monopoly, and uno and chess.
Here are the big girls playing their favorite game: clothes folding party :)

Saturday busy-ness

We had a Saturday that was a hair busier than normal.
We started with a crew meeting for J and DH. I thought it would take an hour or two. It ended up taking 4 1/2 but they both felt good about it and J is excited for the next year and DH got a lot of stuff worked out that had been on his mind and feels happy about how things will go. This is really the brain child of our friends Rob and Tori and they do most of the work but DH has been involved in it from the beginning and wants to contribute meaningfully so I know he was glad about the meeting and getting things rolling for the next year.

H had a book club to go to started by her friends Alexis and Kirsten. They are going to be reading the Box Car Children book 1. She had fun.

E went to C's 7th birthday bash. Where he had a blast.

I went to a baby shower for Holly.

By the time all that was done it was dinner time so I fixed dinner and then we headed to Lowes to get the supplies for a long awaited project: S's new bed.

7pmish we have our supplies and start the bed. Lu helped with the measuring.
9 pmish we are making some progress as DH stapes on the pillows and the sheet.
10:30 the finished product. It looks really cute. We have a fluffy headboard with pink and tan and chocolate dots on it and then her comforter is the same colors in stripes.

Friday Swim Day

This morning was a little cooler than usual so I wondered how many would show up for Friday Swim.
We ended up with 9 moms, 1 dad and close to 30 kids. I didn't do a headcount but that's what I counted in trying to remember who was there....which shouldn't be too hard to do since it was only 4 hours ago but my brain is lacking :)
Anyway it was very fun. I love visiting with the other moms. The kids LOVE playing with their friends. I would have FSD 3x a week if it was up to me. Very fun.

random snapshots from the day

two little puppies sleeping in my bed...we need a bigger bed :)
Lu finding something to do. She's a budding artist.

Last night he beat me (thanks to dad's help) This morning S won but he gave her a run for her money.

Fixing lunch. Both girls like to help in the kitchen.

The picture I most wish I had was tonight we went to the the Whitworth's to can food with Nikko and her family. It was quiet the assembly line. At one point we had powdered milk in the air and all over Russ' shirt. It was pretty funny. ...guess you had to be there.

Fablehaven by Brandon Mull

I got this book to read with E. I thought he'd love it. We started chapter one right on the heels of How to Train Your Dragon and he did not get into it.

I brought it on our trip to Florida and he never had time for it (no surprise). On the drive home I picked it up and read it. I loved it. It transports you into a magical world that is full of delightful surprises and dangerous beings.

H is reading it now, I hope she likes it and after I told bub that I read it he was jealous and now wants to listen. Since we are having much more boring days post trip I think it will have more appeal for him. It's a absolute must read if you have kids who like magical stories. I hope the library has the series so I can find out what happens next :)

The Things They Carried by Tim O Brien

Our ward book club read this some months back, I don't know how they liked it. My mom liked it and kept telling me I should read it. Then S was assigned to read it at school. She did not like it. A couple of days ago I saw it in her room and was between books so I picked it up. I like to read what the girls are assigned but don't always keep up. Anyway I figured I'd give it a shot.

It's a memoir of sorts, it's fiction but he was there and writes about his experiences and remembrances. O'Brien, the author, is a college graduate who got drafted to go to Vietnam. After the war he came home (finished grad school) and is now an author. This is one of his stories. He writes it like a memoir and I suspect it partly is.

I really liked his story telling style. I do not usually like war books. Birth books are more my style, or cook books, or well, many other kinds of books. War books and fix it books and books about politics would be lowest on my list of books I want to read. From time to time I do though. And sometimes I like them. I liked this one. I was happy he survived, and sad when others didn't and I felt like it gave a good description of how things were there, at least for him.

The thing I did not like was the liberal use of the "F" word. I have noticed that in other Vietnam books I have read as well, I am not sure why. I was going to say that maybe it's the nature of war that brings that out in a solider, and I could see why...but I haven't noticed that about other war books (WWI and II come to mind) so maybe there was something different about that particular war. Or maybe since it's closer to our time and people just are not as careful about their language and it was war that is why. What ever the reason I was very surprised that this was required reading for the juniors at S's school last spring. She said when they discussed the book that word never made it into their discussion, nor did the teacher say anything about why it was chosen. Sadly I am not surprised since the girls have also been shown rated "R" movies from time to time in the name of historical accuracy or whatever.

Back to the book, he started out talking about the actual physical things they carried with them. The C rations, and weapons, good luck charms, pictures from home, etc. Then he moved on to the emotional "things", the guilt, fear, hope, beliefs, wishes they carried. He ended with the things they took home with them: some snap shots and dog tags but also ghosts and memories and experiences. This was all woven into a skillfully told story that was relateable.

As a mom I carry a lot of things. For many years I carried a diaper bag with diapers and wipes and snacks and crayons. Sometimes with a little doll or soft book, sometimes with a Jedi knight and a hot wheels car; always with tylenol and keys and a lip gloss on the bottom (in case I ever had time to remember that I was more than "mom"). I carry groceries and laundry baskets and book bags and gym bags. I carry forgotten math assignments to school, sleeping children to bed and $5 in my pocket to pick up girls from dances and buy ice cream on the way home.
I also carry hopes for the children's future and dreams for them and me. Fear about not doing well enough and about how the world is going. I look back on the events of my life and find ghosts and things I'd rather not remember and also many things that have shaped who I am. My experience could not have been more actually different than his but I could still relate. So if you can get past that word I'd recommend it, it was thought provoking and thoughtful.

home front

The problem with going on vacation is you eventually have to come home. And real life is never like vacation. We had a wonderful time, relaxing and playing and being with our family.

Now we are home with sand in every corner and broken things to fix and mail to sort through.

DH is tired. He actually went to bed last night at 10:20 (late enough that we could have watched Iron Chef like I wanted to but that's besides the point). He never goes to bed that early. Having all that fun wears a person out :)

Yesterday we had family cleaning hour. The girls were pretty cheerful about it. The most cheerful was Em, the one girl that doesn't technically belong to me. We unpacked all the suitcases and the girls washed the dog and cars. DH fixed my car (it needed a new battery) and unloaded the box. We scrubbed and then nuked the pool (how does algae grow so fast) and had FHE.

Today we had car stuff to do. Someone (S) got a ticket on the way home from church for having no proof of insurance in her car, after she was pulled over for having expired tags. The nice officer didn't ticket her for that though, which was really kind. So this morning we took her car and the sub to be inspected. Went to our friendly neighborhood State Farm office to pick up proof of insurance, went to the sub court house to register S's car, then we split and S went to the local court house to get her insurance ticket waived and I went to Lowe's to buy new smoke detectors because in a freak occurrence yesterday all ours went off at the same time and made a horrible racket which none of the kids responded to at all, even though it took me a full 20+ minutes to get a ladder out of the garage and haul it around the house pulling down alarms.

Now we meed to start on our summer chores list (you know the closets that need organizing and fans that need dusting)

But first I have to hunt down some MIA library books and try and find the Work and the Glory 3. We have the full set. J is reading them and somehow 3 is missing. People borrow books from us a lot and I don't remember who has it :( Which I know I shouldn't talk because almost 2 years ago I borrowed movies from Joy and I returned (eventually) all but one that some how got lost and I still haven't replaced it :((( Sorry. I really will bring you a new copy...soon.

random pictures

end of the trip

The fourth of July was our last full vacation day. In the morning the boys all went golfing while the girls went to the outlet mall.
After lunch we hit the beach for a last afternoon of soaking in the sun and catching some waves.
Friday night we cooked out then headed over to the Commons to watch Fireworks.

We stayed up late packing/talking.

It was a great week.

Saturday we hit the road early and drove.all.day. Interestingly enough we all made it home close to the same time. We left first and drove drove drove. Nana and Abba took D & G to breakfast (getting rear ended on the way but no one was hurt) then to T&D 's for some Wii and visiting before they went to the airport. Then they headed home. D&G flew to Chicago, had a lay over, flew home. We actually pulled into our driveway as they were collecting their luggage. The Ohio crew got home shortly after that. It's a long travel day no matter how you cut it...but worth it. Everyone had a great time and said they were not ready to leave.

This morning the suburban wouldn't start. I felt very grateful that it didn't have trouble until we were home.

Today we went to church. Tomorrow we'll fix the car.

learning new skills

Lu takes her first ride on a boogie board



Em practices with her new skim board

Gulfarium

Today was Gulfarium day! Yeah. It's small but fun and you can get really close to the animals, and the keepers always have time for a chat :)




We watched the dolphin show where the kids had front row seats around the walkway.
Then the sea lion show (which was my favorite), it was funny.
Third was the inter species show.


We got snacks and watched the keepers feed the sharks and take care of a parasite on one of their tails.


We got to spend a lot of time at the touch tank playing with the animals.

After the Gulfarium we went to Fudpuckers ~ our favorite alligator feeding place/lunch spot!
Emma had the gator:) I had a very delicious crab cake sandwich.

When we got home we went down to the beach and had the loveliest time. It was not very crowded and the kids rode the waves and Dani and I sat with our books. It was perfect.

Tonight we are having KBT #3.