pictures of our recent activities

Noah's state project


the "flowers" the kids got me for Mother's Day. I'm not a big flower person, so they got me some of my favorite candies and put them in vases with tissue paper flowers and included some Stewart's orange cream soda and IBC root beer to "water" them. Mmmm. My kind of flowers!


Tommy on the phone with his buddy Cameron.


Rachel in her fly costume


Could he look any more pathetic waiting to open those presents??? Apparently the waiting was pure torture.


Katya playing her viola


Emily's bobble head trophy


a painting that Emily did in art class recently that floored me. She made this for a friend who loves dance.

Friendly (and cheap) can

One day recently Rachel was looking at my can of lemonade and said, "Why do cans say "Hi, me five cents?" I had no idea what she was talking about until she pointed this out:




She went from thinking it was a friendly can to planning how she could collect cans and bring them to Hawaii or Maine to recoup all of that dough we were tossing in the recycle bin.

Just take a left, and then go, and then a left....

Tommy's friend Cameron called this afternoon. Two first grade boys on the phone is quite funny to watch and listen to. I tuned in as they were discussing the bird's nest on the front of our house and whether or not Cameron may have been past our house and seen it. (Cameron has never come over). Five minutes of conversation on our house being the one with the bird's nest in it. And then for some reason, Tommy doesn't think Cameron has actually seen our house. So he says,

"Have you seen my house? Well, there's a white gate....but not a gate...a little thing....but you would see some roses, oh and a stone, well not a stone--I don't know what it looks like." (silence while he listens to Cameron) There's a little stone...it's on Washington, the street is on Washington." (more listening)

To me: "Mom? Are we on Washington Court or Washington Drive..well, Washington Court or...I don't know what the other one was...(asks Cameron) Do we live on Washington St.?"

Me: "We live on Washington Ave."

Tommy to Cameron: "We live on Washington Ave...go all the way to the stop sign and then walk until there's a thing where you can go left. Go left and then go until you see a stone where the little chips are. (whoa, Cameron is confused by "chips") Don't you have those brown things with stuff in it?" (listening...and somehow Tommy feels that there is understanding on Cameron's part) Yeah, there's a stone in those chips." (please understand that we have no wood chips by the stone--there are chips by the roses though--so Cameron would never be able to find the house with these descriptions. As if the gate/not a gate thing was a clear description.)

At this point Cameron asks him if they could maybe have a play date some day to which Tommy replies, "I can't." Cameron wants to know when they could. "'Prob'ly when I'm not grounded and get a lot of green cards." Cam wants to know why he is grounded. "Because I lie to my parents." Later I found out that Cameron's response was: "What? I do that every week to my parents!!"

The commercials check in but they don't check out

My kids seriously do not even come close to the national average for the amount of t.v. watched each week. I think they see about 1-2 hours total. We watch Extreme Makeover Home Edition and American Idol. (Jordin rocks!!!!) That's it. They don't even get to see AI's results show because it is after bed time. AND, I mute the commercials. Except for the Alltell commercials with Chad. We listen to those because we think they are funny. Especially the one where the dude pinches Chad in the arm and the red shirt guy in the orange shirt says, "more where that came from."

All that to say, that when I was on my cell phone recently and it dropped a call, I was very surprised to hear Noah say, in his best commercial announcer voice: "Switch to the network with the fewest dropped calls"!

The Gauntlet

Thanks to my friend Sarah I am referring to May as The Gauntlet. It perfectly depicts what this month is like. I will be thoroughly exhausted by the time May 24 comes along.

Ok, so this is what it has been like around here:

May 1: I subbed in Tommy's class. He still ended up with a yellow card!!! And don't even get me started on the rest of the class. One boy appeared to be attempting to catch butterflies each time we were in line. Weird. We also had a fundraiser night for school at Chick-Fil-A. The HUGE upside of this is that I didn't have to cook dinner so I was more than willing to go.

May 2: Joe's BBQ free day (again not having to cook dinner is totally worth it for me the "anti-cook") and Emily's Sports Awards Night. She was voted one of two "Most Spirited" cheerleaders. I'll have to post a picture of her trophy later--so cute! It's a bobblehead!

May 3: Tommy's birthday!!! He is now 8. He earned himself a green card in honor of his birthday (the idea of being grounded on his birthday was apparently enough of a deterrent). He was so jazzed about opening his presents that he could think of nothing else. He sat next to his presents quite a few times before dinner just to be near them. (No very funny comments this year--unlike last years comments upon opening a nerf gun: "Yay! Now I can shoot myself!") I also subbed that day for a fifth grade class that was very well behaved. No butterfly catching thankfully.

May 4: Subbing for the very good 5th graders again and nothing in the evening except picking Emily up at school after she returns from a choir competition in Flagstaff.

May 5: Breakfast with some friends for me. :-) Rachel and Noah had a birthday party 1-3:30. We went to some friends for pizza and games with another family. It was fun and again freed me from cooking.

May 6: Church and then nothing. What a nice feeling.

May 7: Field Trip with Rachel to see Cinderella at the Dodge Theater. Katya went to the junior high orchestra's concert with some friends of ours to hopefully inspire her future with the viola.

May 8: Noah had a 7:30 ortho appointment to fix a wire that had popped out. The second such thing to occur in one week's time. I think it's because of all of the teeth he is wiggling viciously to remove them from his mouth. I subbed in the first grade class next to Tommy's. We'll just call them the Tattlers. Tattling is truly an art form for those kids. That night we had Katya's strings concert. They actually sounded pretty good. The people who were letting their babies and toddlers wander around the place just about sent me over the edge though. And there was one lady who actually answered her cell phone during the concert. And we wonder why the children of today don't have any manners.

Today: I babysat for a friend and the kids had a half day of school. Noah and two of his friends played PS2 for much longer than I am willing to admit I allowed. It was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and they were having a blast and weren't saying that there was nothing to do so, yes I took the easy road on that one. They may end up with carpal tunnel but it was quiet and peaceful for the afternoon. We had to go to school at 6:00 for the 4th grade's "State Fair" where they show off their state report projects. Noah had Texas. He did a good job and true to his form was finished with the whole thing by Saturday afternoon even though it was due today. He sooooo does not get that from me. After that we had to go to the District offices to see a piece of art that Emily had done that was chosen for the art show. Emily had to be at church so we had to have a friend take her while we went and admired her art. Come to find out that she had two pieces there and we only found one. Hopefully she'll be bringing them home at the end of the year so we can see it.

So, you're wondering what we'll be doing to keep ourselves busy over the next two weeks? Just in case I don't get the chance to tell you later, I will now.

May 10: I'll be subbing for what has been dubbed "the most difficult class at the school." We simply call it "Katya's class." Apparently it should be an interesting time for me. I've been told to feel free to send anyone to the principal's office that I need to. He knows them all too well! For lunch I will be heading over to Tommy's class for a Mother's Day Tea Party. They'll be singing songs like "My mommy has a first name, it's M-O-M-M-Y"--and I know this because I had to practice the songs with the Tattlers. Don't tell Tommy though, he wants me to be surprised. Emily needs to be picked up at 4:00 from an extra choir practice and then we head over to the elementary school at 6:15 for a 3rd grade musical program "Goin' Buggy" for which we had to make fly wings and eyes for Rachel.

May 11: Subbing again in Katya's class (if I'm still functioning after Thursday). Sam and I are going on a date. It may be a very quiet date if the most difficult class in the school whups me.

May 12: Party that night for a friend.

May 13: Mother's Day. Little known holiday celebrated in remote areas of North America.

May 14: Subbing and babysitting that night for my favorite baby in the whole world, Jackson. Sam will be spending the day in Mexico as well.

May 15: Emily's choir concert.

May 16: Babysitting during the day and then going to the elementary school for a look at the electric circuits project Noah has been working on. They've built a house or a store out of a shoe box and rigged it with circuitry or some such thing. I'll let you know when I see it.

May 17: Rachel has yet another field trip--this one to the Rocks & Minerals Museum. I've already gone on this one each of the previous two years we had a 3rd grader, so I'm hoping my services will not be needed. Once you've seen the museum there really isn't a draw to go back--the rocks do not grow more interesting to me over time unfortunately. That afternoon Emily has a yearbook signing party and an ortho appointment.

May18: 8th grade dance after school and elementary school yearbook signing and ice cream party.

After that things start to thin out until Emily's promotion on the 24th. It is a low key ceremony held at school at 8:30 a.m. My mom was considering coming in for that, but thankfully (no offense to my mom) she couldn't find a flight that would work for her. Having a house guest just might have really done me in.

I'm also trying to figure out how to keep my precious little darlings occupied this summer. I am Julie the Cruise Director on the Summertime ship and there must be exciting things planned...well, er, things anyway, exciting or not...or we could very well have a mutiny. I've already been making well placed comments about the fact that we are going to work on our math facts and memorize the states and capitals. They are very excited about that.

Oh, and did I mention that my washing machine broke? Nice. A family of seven does not go without doing laundry for more than a day so this should be interesting once it finally gets fixed since we are on day 3.

You all are exhausted after all that reading now aren't you? But what is cool is that I'm not. Well, not tonight anyway! :-) The side effects from my wonder drug and best friend Gleevec seem to have lessened. (except for that pesky swelling!) I am not 100% by any means, but I have energy and am not sleeping ridiculous numbers of hours! Praise God for that!