Mathew is 6

Somehow, this year not only did Ethan's birthday and Mother's Day converge, Mathew's Birthday and Father's Day managed to partner up. As any mother knows, I simply cannot show love to more than one person at a time, so naturally we had Mathew's celebrations on Saturday AND Monday and let Dad enjoy Sunday.

SO!

Mathew requested that his birthday dinner be...roast beef? spaghetti and meatballs? Chicken cordon bleu? No!

Burger King!

Awesome! I can honestly say we have never been to the King of Burgers while living in Arky. Perhaps that would explain the allure.

We planned a friend party for the following Monday and so we let him open Grandma Kathleen's present at the "restaurant". She got him the coolest toy EVER. Zoobs. Seriously. Go get some. Your kids will love them and they won't even choke on them. These are not those dangerous magnet thingies.
On Monday we did the Chuck e cheese birthday party. Mathew requested a vanilla cake with yellow icing and horses in a circle.

Done!




We all enjoyed the games and feats of strength:




Proving even Chuck e cheese can be fabulous.


While I wasn't paying attention, the life sized Chuck e cheese came over to my kids and bestowed upon them hundreds of tickets. Single tickets. You may already know how time consuming it is to feed large quantities of single tickets into the counter machine that makes the chomping noise.

I really love this man. Thanks for your sacrifice.
And everybody's favorite part: the agonizing choice between a laffy taffy and the spider ring.


Happy Birthday Mathew! You are one super kid.

Allow me

I know you are anxiously awaiting a June/July travelogue...but first...

Allow me to recap my day for you.

You'll feel better about yours......I promise.

I fully intended to get up at 6:15 in order to take the dogs for a walk. You might assume that I do this in order to stay in shape. You would be wrong. The vet told me that Tootsie is super fat. It's true. So now I get up to try to slim down the dog. I guess if you can't do it for yourself, do it for the dog. Unfortunately I was unable to gather the strength to get out of the house before the kids woke up at 6:23. So one by one, each puffy-eyed, bed-headed little person requested in that gravelly voice if he/she might accompany me on my walk. Mark hates to pass up a family outing, so soon we left the house with one Basset mut with a broken leash, one obese weiner dog, one boy on a bike, another on foot and two girls in pajamas in a double stroller. At least Tootsie didn't poop in someone's driveway today.

I had packed the library books up last night, thinking we would go pick out new ones around 9 am. Instead we stayed home and watched unhealthy amounts of television and consumed dangerous quantities of otter pops. We did take a few breaks for fighting and sitting in time out.

I planned to make "drip beef sandwiches" for dinner. So I put a roast in the crock pot and assembled the spices in a tea ball. It's a process, but worth it. Mark came home for lunch and let me know he wouldn't be home for dinner...which left ONE person who likes drip beef sandwiches. Yeah.

Well...they make great leftovers and I figured we could just take advantage of the half price kids meals at Dairy Queen. So I go about the afternoon.

I take a peek outside and puruse the garden. I realize that there are alot of tomatoes that need picking and the onions are ready to come out as well. Soon I've got a countertop full of produce and I get a hankering for fresh salsa. I get out the food processor and plug it in. Too bad I unknowinly unplugged the crockpot. About for hours later I check on the roast and I wonder aloud "What the heck?" and then "Crap!". Nothing like a cold lump of half cooked cow to really work up the appetite. This day is rockin.

So I suppose we'll just head to the library and then swing through the drive thru at Dairy Queen. It's 4:30 when we get to the library. We get in and we get out. Requests to play "Magic School Bus" on the library computers are preemptively denied. We take a quick detour to Hobby Lobby to get some material for my calling (Let's hear it for Nursery!). We are sure to break a Christmas ornament on the way out. I was less that charitable, I'll admit. Instead of "that's okay, sweetie, let's go tell the lady and we'll make it right" I hissed, "Didn't I tell you not...to...touch!"

Ah...those precious moments I get to revisit when they're sleeping peacefully in their beds and I suddenly feel like the slime of the earth. Awesome.

So then we're on our way, but the trip wouldn't be complete before I lose it on Megan in the parking lot because she refuses to clip into her carseat.

We drive the 15 ish miles from Hobby Lobby to the Dairy Queen not far from our home. I pull up to the big menu thingy and I order 4 kids meals. I'm trying to "be good" and resist getting something for myself. I finish ordering and expect to hear something in the ballpark of "That'll be 7.50" and instead it's almost 14.00. I think, "huh". So I pull up and realize I'm at Sonic. Dairy Queen is one fast food joint to the south.

Seriously?

So by now I am....shall we say...irritated? I've decided I'm getting myself a Big Mac. I DESERVE IT. (You know I do). As I drive down the hill to the McDonalds, I look through the kid's meals and realize that instead of a banana, they gave me apple slices. So I get in the Mcdonalds drive thru line...I'm taking mental inventory of my fridge and seeing if I can come up with something in there that sounds better than the burger that I will most assuredly be burping all night. After 45 seconds in that line I pull out and drive up the hill. Back to Sonic and get the stupid banana. He tells me to keep the apples and I think to myself, "uh... yeah I am!"

We get home.

The kids eat and I don't have the oomph to cut the watermelon that had mentally persuaded me to pass on the Big Mac.

Kids are fighting.

I call it.

Bed time.

Megan only comes out to "tell me something" seven times.

They are finally asleep and I feed the dogs and do the dishes.

My house smells like beef and I'm hungry.

Feel better about your day?

Blogging block...

Oh my.


I am having quite the hard time sitting down to blog.


What's a girl to do when I've already missed Father's Day, Mathew's birthday, several cute (to me) episodes with the kids, Fourth of July, swimming lessons, a visit from Grandma Kathleen and a week long Anniversery trip with my honey (10 YEARS!).


I just can't face it.


It's too much of a time commitment.

Okay...you know I'll do it, but for some reason I CAN NOT move forward in any fashion but chronologically. So get ready to revisit June...Mathew's birthday review is forthcoming.

You may now breathe.

The wait is over.

The summer fun continues...

We are now in the winding up weeks of summer.

Swimming lessons are finishing up tomorrow. All three kids turned into fish, after an initial refusal to get in the water.

Don't you hate to be that mother that is excited that school is starting up again? I do. I feel guilt over it. I want to be that mom who cries when she watches them walk into the school with their big backpacks on. I'm the mom who celebrates with a bagel at Einstein's....with cream cheese. It's not that I don't love spending time with my offspring. I do...I really do. But after about 5 weeks of "spending time" with each other, the joy starts turning to bloodshed and ridiculous amounts of time spent in time out.

Besides. I just love school. I love the supplies and the artwork and the dinner time report on each child's day. I thrive on routine and I especially love that part where they hop out of the car and the say "I love you, Mom!" and I get to answer back "Have a great day! I'll see you after school!"
Don't you just love that?

So we've got the rest of this week, then a week with Grandma Kathleen, and then one more to get ready for school and BAM-O! School's in!

Until then....maybe we'll continue to:

Play with the dog food

Swim

Be gorgeous

Eat and draw all over our ourselves ("washable", my patootie)

Feed the hissing "ducks" batches of bread that didn't taste quite right (maybe I forgot the salt?)



Get creativeKeep our toes cool



Hang with the neighbors on the lawn (this is 98% of our summertime schedule) And yes, Laney LOVES to do that upside down thingy.

Take photos of ourselves in the van on the way to Walmart....whatever it takes to entertain ourselves.How many weeks do have, again?

Ode to the 7 week summer.

So summer is cruisin right along.

I hate to admit it, but I have previously dreaded summertime (just a bit). Outside of a good roadtrip to Utah, summer felt like fights and too much television and long bouts of boredom.

But this summer has actually been really fun. We swim. We bike. We library. We swim. We redbox. We bbq. We swim. We chuck e cheese. We drive-thru zoo.... And then we swim.

I admit I haven't officially bathed my children in 10 days. My neighbor, Jennifer, says that since we are having a daily swim lesson, she considers them sanitized in the chlorine. I'm absolutely on board with this theory. Though I'm thinking I better use my GPS to find the tub before the Sabbath.

Granted, there have been moments when I lost my cool and requested my children to please find somewhere to be other than "all up in my business", but all in all...I am completely digging (am I such a white girl?) having my pups all to myself.

I love them.

Now if we could just get Mark off of work for 7 weeks....