Wonderful Wednesday

We had another gorgeous day and got to enjoy it with Daddy! We hung out around the house & outside, ran some errands together and went to our local ice cream place for a yummy treat.

Today, I am thankful for...

• another beautiful day.
• comfortably keeping the windows open.
• great bargains.
• a great neighbor who happens to be my bff!
• having a home even though it's messy today.

I'm Back!

I've been terrible at keeping up with this blog during the summer!  I'm going to make an effort to do better.  And more than that, I'm going to try to remember to add something special every day.  I'm taking a journey with my friends in a Bible study by James MacDonald called Lord, Change My Attitude.  What a great study!  Every night, we are supposed to write five things that we are thankful for that day on an index card.  So, I thought that maybe I could just write them on my blog.  I'll post my things at the end.

First, I'll try to catch you up.  Our summer activities have included going to the outdoor pool at the YMCA, playing in the yard, going on bike rides & walks, having s'mores, and going to our co-op's park days.  Emily is still in gymnastics and is going two nights a week now that she's on the training team.  Each night is two hours so she's pretty exhausted when she's finished!  The swimming and running around playing all day results in two sleepy kids and one tired mom!  But what fun we're having!  Rainy days are spent doing a little school work.  We haven't been too consistent with doing any summer school work and I keep promising myself that we'll create a schedule and stick to it.  HA!  I'm trying.

Today, we had a park day with the co-op.  It was so nice to enjoy a beautiful day talking with other moms while the kids played with each other at the park.  We had great conversation and didn't leave until 4:00 or so.  We came home to find Hubby in the yard planting some shrubs we bought, so I decided to join in on the yard work even though I was tired.  We accomplished a lot!  We had a huge pile of large pieces of broken up concrete from our old stoop that sat in the yard for 2 years.  I emphasize the word had because I moved them all tonight - all by myself!  I chalked it up as my weight-lifting & cardio in one!  I moved them behind some shrubs near the house where we have a major problem with thistle.  I'm hoping these large rocks will help cut down on the growth of those stupid weeds!  I'll try to remember to take some pictures of the yard and maybe rack your brains about what we can do in our yard to keep from seeing the eyesore of a pool in our neighbor's yard (besides a privacy fence).  Don't get me wrong, they have every right to have a pool in their yard.  I just don't want to look at the big blue thing all the time.  So I want to plant things or do something to disctract from it.  You'll see what I mean when I post pictures.  If we had one, I wouldn't blame the neighbors one bit for doing the same thing.

This brings me to write the five things I'm thankful for today.

 Today, I am thankful for...

• the priveledge of studying God's Word with my closest friends.
• a beautiful day - perfect temps with little or no humidity - so we could enjoy our park day.
• the energy God gave me to help Hubs in the yard.
• having control over food (today).
• Hubs grilling our dinner so that I didn't have to cook!

Summer Break

I really thought that we would have lots of time to relax, do a little math each day, and relax some more.  But so far my plan is not working!  I started a new Bible study on Tuesday, with friends, called Lord, Change My Attitude.  It will be a good one for sure!  After Bible study, we came home to eat lunch and ended up going to the co-op park day.  It was a beautiful afternoon with no humidity and the temperature was perfect.  The kids had a good time even though we stayed for just a couple of hours.  I took Emily's friend home and then headed to my Relay For Life wrap-up meeting, with my children because my hubby had to work late.  It was a very busy day.  Since our Relay team turned in more donations Tuesday night, it pushed our team over $2500 raised, which entitled us to the SILVER award!  We were very excited.  The Relay in our community has raised over $50,000 for the American Cancer Society.  I'm so happy to have been a part of that.

As if the day wasn't full enough, the kids begged to stop at the dollar store to see if they had any silly bands, so I gave in and took them.  Dollar store #1 had none.  Dollar store #2 had none.  It was now around 9:00 and the kids convinced me to go to Wal-Mart to see if they had some.  No luck, but we did find a few other things we needed before heading home....at 10:30!  What a long day!

Wednesday was the day I decided to start cleaning our school room and I began with the closet.  Well, I never really got any farther than the closet.  In fact, the closet is now all over the room!  Does anyone else fill a room while attempting to clean out a closet?  It was close to dinner time and I had to stop.  Thankfully, I was smart enough to put dinner in the crock-pot earlier in the day so it was mostly ready by the time hubs got home.  After cleaning up our dinner dishes, I thought I'd try to do just a little more with that closet and the moment I sat down on the floor, it hit me.  Kidney stone pain!  I was hoping it would pass (both the pain and the stone) quickly, but no such luck.  I took a couple of ibuprofen tablets, which did absolutely nothing.  And because I have a history of painful kidney stones, I had some prescription pain killers and decided to take one.  It took a good 45 minutes for it to kick in but once it did, I felt relief and went to bed.  I slept great that night and haven't had pain since.  I've been drinking tons of water hoping this stone will pass before we decide to go camping again.

Thursday, the neighbor girl came over again.  She's been over every day this week because her parents both work and she's left home alone for almost 10 hours every day!  After getting permission from her mom, we took her to the pool with us, which was very crowded but still enjoyable and then came home for dinner and then gymnastics.  Another busy day!

Today (Friday), I had an appointment for the kids' school assessments in the morning.  I dropped the kids off at a friend's house and went on to the appointment, where I was encouraged and assured that we are right on target.  The kids passed with flying colors and got their certificates.  Yay!!!!!  I picked up the kids and as we were driving home, another friend called and invited us to swim, so we grabbed some lunch and went swimming.  We were home for maybe an hour before the kids went to VBS with the neighbors tonight.

So, as you can imagine, our week was crazy busy and I am so ready for some down time.  Maybe next week will be more relaxing.

How is your summer going?

Overwhelmed in the Summer???

I feel more overwhelmed tonight than I have in quite a while.  It's nice to have things to do, but I need to learn that they are "optional!"  Emily's friend slept over last night and stayed all morning while I did some housework.  We went to a friends house this afternoon where the kids swam and the mom's gathered around the table to make cards and chat.  I didn't accomplish anything because my creative juices were burried somewhere under my grumpiness!  When we left there, we went straight to gymnastics to drop Emily off.  When Katie and I got home, we rested on the couch for a little while and watched Toy Story 2.  This was probably my favorite part of the day!  That didn't totally cure my grumpiness, but it did help a little.  I probably should have just stayed home this afternoon.  After gymnastics, Emily brought another friend home to sleep over, which I approved of; silly me!  I actually love for my kids to have friends over, but today I'm exhausted.  We ordered pizza for dinner which saved me from cooking!  Yay!!!  I sure hope tomorrow will bring more energy because I have a lot do.  I'm thinking that the park day with our co-op might be one of the options that we skip tomorrow.  It's supposed to rain anyway and Emily's friend will be here all day so she won't even miss it!  Katie, on the other hand, is dying to see her friend from co-op, so we'll just have to see how things go tomorrow.

Surprise!

I was headed back into the bathroom to wash up before dinner and as I pass Emily in the hallway, she tries to convince me not to go into the bathroom.  So I'm thinking that someone stunk it up but I became suspicious and decided to investigate.  Come to find out, the girls brought a dead mole into the house and put it in a sink full of water to wash it!  Yes, I said girls.  Yes, I said dead mole!  And yes, I said wash!  Gross!!!  The only girly part about it is that they wanted it to be clean.

So, you know I couldn't pass up a photo shoot!