The Very Busy Family

I was off work today. My children start back to school in less than a week; I would have liked to have spent the day hanging out with them - maybe a little cleaning, a little reading, and then out to play some disc golf or ride bikes. Instead, we:
- spent the morning at the pediatrician's office. Both kids had physicals, and they couldn't get them in at the same time, so we had 45 minutes after the Boy's appointment.
- off to the bike shop to get a new chain.
- I promised them I'd take them to lunch. We went to Mai Thai, in Florence, for our favorite Thai food. The place was packed, so that was another 90 minutes down.
- Grocery store. I dropped Buggy's insulin bottle last night and it broke, so we had to get another bottle of insulin. Of course our vet is a pain, and won't prescribe any refills, so we have to get the store to call the vet's office, who then has to check with the vet, and when he finally gets around to it...plus I had to pick up the food for our Girl Scout campout tomorrow night. 1 hour down.
- Drop the groceries and the Girl at home, the Boy gets changed for his golf match, and we rush to the high school to pick up schedules and pay fees (many fees.)
- Haul rear out to Covington for the Boy's golf match. Ran errands and came home to deal with dinner and making my sit-upon sample for Brownies tomorrow night. Back out to pick up the Boy, grab some food on our way home.

Ok, you may not have signed on here to get a look at my day - this chaos is only to illustrate how I've let this summer get away from me. We spent so little of it just chilling out together, and very little of it outside. Of course, a part of that was the heat - it was really freaking hot this summer, but still, I feel like I'm letting the few precious childhood years I have left with them get away from us. The Boy is already 14 and talking about having a job next summer!

Part of this is brought on, I think, by my most recent blog-crush, Beauty that Moves:
http://beautythatmoves.typepad.com/beauty_that_moves/
Her Unplugged Sundays are really inspiring to me, and I would like to try and convince my family to try something like that. At least for an afternoon, once a month maybe? Far be it for me to suggest we turn off college football for an entire Saturday, or whatever, but we should be able to disconnect from the technology and spend an afternoon together hiking or swimming, or something.

Maybe my head will stop hurting then. 'Cuz it really does right now.

Anyway, I'm off to bed. Maybe I'll climb in with the Girl for a snuggle. 'Cuz I still can.

I love Fridays

http://fridayfillins.blogspot.com/ a blog that posts a fun new meme each Friday.

And...here we go!

1. How can I...write this blog when I can't seem to get the editing properties to work?

2. My front beds are full of ... weed(s)...but it's just going to have to wait. I've done my yard work for the day.

3. My hair ... needs trimmed and a good coloring. Soon, my pretties.

4. The mosquitoes had a ... reunion ... on my legs Monday night. They are covered in bites.

5. My favorite summer fruits ... are all of them. I love plums, peaches, berries of all kinds...yum, I'm drooling.

6. Something small just flew by my face ...what was that?

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to ... a good long snuggle with the girl (and trying not to scratch), tomorrow my plans include ... a serious cleaning (and trying not to scratch)... and Sunday, I want to ... sleep! I need it. I'll try not to scratch.

Have a great weekend!

Thank*full on a Tuesday

I've had a rough last two days. Nothing that really needs to be shared, but my confidence took a good shaking and I needed to stop and reevaluate some priorities. So, to try and lift my own spirits, I'm writing a Thank*full Thursday on Tuesday. Focusing on that for which we are grateful is a sure mood-booster. And maybe it will give a little grin to someone else who needs a boost. So this happy Tuesday, I am thankful for:

1. Our first harvest of the year. I'll post pics when I upload them, but we have 3 green beans and 6! cucumbers.

2. A very yummy dinner. The crazy heat wave is still a-wavin', so I made a Mediterranian salad for dinner - tomatoes, cucumbers (from our garden!), red onion, Romaine, chickpeas, feta, and kalamata olives with a red wine vinegrette. Very refreshing and tasty.

3. Pinterest. Oh yes. I have become addicted. It's like shopping without buying!

4. A good feeling after an interview for an interesting job. I don't know if I got the job, but I felt like I had some good answers, and the position is very interesting - something I would like to do.

5. Some decent, fun people to work with. I'm going to miss them when this job is over (finally got an end date - my last day is August 31.)

6. (oh yeah, 6 - I'm feeling thankful tonight.) The next two days off. Love my coworkers, love sleeping in and being with my kids. Days off are winning.

7. McDonald's vanilla cones. Need I say more?

Feeling a little better. Off to play on Pinterest. Have a splendid night.

"Families are like fudge...

...mostly sweet with a few nuts." author unknownI'm in the aqua, big sis is in green, little sis in black and white, Mom is in blue and white, and the guy is little brother.

How do you describe the experience of meeting your long lost sister?

I have written about my big sister in the past here:http://himissy.blogspot.com/2009/06/family-business.html
She and her 5(!) daughters drove up from the deep south (read with a drawl) to visit this week, and I had the pleasure (understatement) of meeting the whole crowd last night.
The girls are lovely - the eldest and my Boy get along great, the littlest girls love him, the Girl and girl 2 are inseparable, and girl 3 is delightful.
And my sister is...great. We agree on a lot. We both dislike eggs (and they make us sick.) We both have big feet and lament the fact that we can't sport the cute strappy shoes. We both have a goofy sense of humor. We love our children beyond measure and are demonstrative about it.
We played Boggle and Apples to Apples last night, and sat up late laughing hysterically at bizarre word combinations like "Cranky Beets" (best band name of the night.) We learned fascinating facts about George Washington - he was a fantastic dancer who was known for a spectacular minuet - and bonded over a shared love of ice cream and hatred of "innards" (as in, offal, or animal organs.) It was an excellent evening, and we have enjoyed their visit immensely.

Tonight we did Mexican, then came back here and I kicked the younger girls' butts in Just Dance 2, my new favorite game.

You all know I like to collect siblings like the Girl collects Pokemon cards, but really, when it comes to siblings I find the more the merrier. And this visit has just solidified that belief. Tomorrow we have a little more time before they all go back. The kids will be sad to see their cousins go home, and I will definitely miss them. But how very cool it is that we have new family - and they're stuck with us.

Beans and squash

See item #5 in my fab list of super happy fun summer activities:

"Plant something and make it grow" (or something like that.)

I sent brother and kids out for spinach, lettuce, carrot, and radish seeds. They came back with green beans, cucumbers, squash, and pumpkins. We may be harvesting in November, but they are growing!

Also have spent some more time at the pool, where I did not apply my sunscreen like I should have and burned quite nastily. Because I lost track of time...doing a lot of reading! So I am working on that list, just with some painful side effects.

Friday Ramblings

I saw this sign at the zoo last week. It really needs to be a t-shirt.

I took my kids to work with me today. They spent the first 3 hours fighting with each other, while I made phone calls and grew frustrated with the painters who would not let me get to my desk or computer. I realize how lucky I am that I can bring my kids to work with me occasionally, but I really wanted to knock their heads together. After lunch I put the Boy to work unpacking the new conference chairs and the Girl shredded documents for 3 hours. Stuff was done.

I would like to get a bunch of cleaning done quickly so I can spend the rest of the weekend chilling. My husband and I are having our first date since the start of baseball season, and I want to spend the rest of the weekend reading and sleeping. I love reading and sleeping.

Ooh, and maybe doing something arty-crafty. And taking some pictures, which I have not been doing enough of lately.

But now I'm going upstairs, where my bed is waiting, very impatiently.

It's Sunday and I'm chilling with my bad self, and have not excuse not to blog, but I have just not been feeling the bloggy love lately. I think the main reason for that has been the fact that I have not managed to achieve anything lately, and I've been stressing about nothing. I'm doing nothing with all my fab health goals, and I've been totally lax with all my super-fun summer plans. Part of that might be the fact that I've been playing mama taxi constantly - the Girl was at 4 different day camps for each week of June:

(Spinning a plate at Circus Mojo camp while helping another girl)

This has left me with very little time for swimming and riding bikes. Don't get me wrong, I like my life fine, but sometimes I envy some of my other bloggy mommy friends who make an effort to make their summers easy and relaxed. I'm still working 3 days out of the week, so those two days I'm home, we're busting rear trying to clean the house and do all the things we don't get to do while I'm at work.

But July is here, and the Girl only has one week of daycamp this month, so I fully intend to take advantage of my 2 free days a week. We WILL camp before the summer is up.

Now that I'm sitting here typing, I'm remembering all the cool things that have been happening that I want to share: like Relay For Life 2 weeks ago. My MOMS Club has had a team for several years now, and we always try to make it a party. The more fun it is, the more people come, the more money we raise for cancer research and programs and services for cancer patients in our area. And the more attention we draw to the cause. It was a muggy one, though, and we were some sweaty girls. Especially when we did a Zumba session at 11:15PM. But the rain held off for a long time - we weren't chased away by storms until 2AM.

Last Friday night I took my Brownie troop to an overnight at the zoo. What a very cool program they run there - the theme was how animals adapt to function in their environment, especially those that are nocturnal. We enjoyed having the zoo almost completely to ourselves, seeing the Night Hunters exhibit at night, a night hike, and a bird show in the morning. Before we went to bed, the instructors brought some of their animals into our room so we could see them up close and touch:

(This is the cutest armadillo I have ever seen.)

The floor we slept on was very hard, my back hurt for two days after, and their were cockroaches in the sleeping area (not in a case or anything, real pests. They have an insect house, so they can't spray for bugs. In Chicago, cockroaches were gross, but small. Here they are really freaking big.) That kept some of us awake most of the night. But the trip was excellent, and I would definitely recommend it.

This past Friday, my MOMS Club walked in our town's first Independence parade. We had a great time - it was hot, sweaty, and a decently long parade route, but we will definitely be doing it again. After the parade, we went over to our community building for a festival. Not much there, just a firetruck for the kids to climb in, some inflateables, Kona Ice, of course, an Army band, and a lot of room to wander, socializing and eating with neighbors and friends. We loved every minute of it. Then we all sat and watched the fireworks, which were really good...it was an awesome day. I have pictures...I'll have to post them later.

So you see, we've been busy, and I haven't been focusing on some things I really need to focus on. We will be going to Chicago for a visit in a couple of weeks, but other than that we will be able to relax, and really enjoy summer. And we will camp, darn it.

Oh, we have been hitting those superhero movies. Green Lantern wasn't awesome, but it was fun, and Ryan Reynolds....so pretty. So unclothed for so much of the movie...