Up!

We had a good, productive weekend! We got the living room straightened up and the fireplace insert removed from the house. I've been wanting that done for a few years because we don't use it and it just becomes a flat surface that collects junk! It was quite HEAVY, but after Scott got a dolly from work, it made the job much easier! That was our Saturday project, then Sunday we worked on the kitchen. It is always so easy to pile papers and junk on the end of the counter, but not quite as easy to get them all cleaned off when I decide it's driving me nuts!

I have been on a mission, looking for a big, clear, glass jug to use as a piggy bank. If you remember, while Seth was here, we went to the movie Up! It's the newest Disney Pixar movie and I LOVED it. I really like it when I watch a movie and I can see a message. I don't always know what the point of a movie was, but I got the message in Up! loud and clear! Basically it was about these young kids who had big dreams. They grew up, got married and had more dreams. They wanted to go to a big waterfall, I'm not sure of the name of it now, in some other country and they started saving their money in a clear, glass jar. They would get a good amount saved, then something would happen, like a flat tire on the car, and then they would have to break the jar open and use their savings to fix it. They had to break the jug open about 3 different times. Then, later in the movie, the woman dies before they ever get a chance to go on that big trip. The man ended up going later, so there was a happy ending, but it just struck me for some reason. I have wanted to go to Disney World for a very long time and now the kids talk about going there too. I seem to hear, "Mom, when are we going to have enough money that we can take a vacation to Disney World?" I tell them that when they decided to stop eating and wanting things, I might be able to save enough money. :-) Anyway, I decided that if we don't start saving now, we will never get to go. I want to make sure I go before I die. So now, I am on the hunt for a big, clear, glass jug. I have looked at several different stores and found 2 I like, but if I were to buy either of them, I wouldn't have any money to put in the jug afterwards. I also thought this might be a good way for the kids to help out by putting money in the jug as well. I think that would give them a sense of ownership and knowing that they contributed to help us go on this trip. I told Scott I was going to put all of my money I make at the school and the money I make by picking a friend's son up from school and watching him until she gets off work, into this jug. It may take me a couple of years to get enough saved, but I am DETERMINED to do it! When I get my mind set on something, I'm going to do everything in my power to make it happen. Now if I can just find the darn jug! :-)

The kids are loving school! I have been working in the cafeteria at Corpus Christi until they find someone permanently. They asked me to do it, but I was scared to commit to it. I could end up subbing every day, but just knowing I don't HAVE to, makes a world of difference in my eyes. I worked both days last week and will work all this week as well. It's only for 1 1/2 hours, so it's not a lot of money, but it adds up over time (if you don't spend it!).

ATA Martial Arts

Gage has mentioned to me a few times lately that he would like to do karate. I know nothing about karate, unless you're talking about "wax on", "wax off", like in the movie, The Karate Kid. :-) Today we were out running a few errands and I was going to be driving by the ATA Martial Arts place, so I pulled in. There is another business in this little strip mall called "Dead Rockstar" and I think the kids thought I was pulling in the parking lot to go there and get a tattoo. LOL! I parked in front of the ATA Martial Arts place and Gage got all excited. There was a closed sign in the window though, so I figured we were S.O.L. Well, the guy who owns and runs the place was in there, in the dark, working on paperwork. The doors were unlocked, so we walked in. I told him I was just wanting to get some information about the classes, etc. He was so nice and gave us a tour and explained some of the things to me that we would need to know. He also said that Gage was welcome to join in on a class to see if it would be something he would want to do. Gage was SO EXCITED because tonight just happened to be the night of the class he could attend. He talked about it all afternoon and could not wait until time to go. The class ran from 7:15p-8:15p. We went. Gage LOVED it! He was SO SERIOUS about it and he was trying so hard. I've never seen him like this about anything. He did pretty good too, for not knowing anything about it. One of his buddies from school happens to be in the same class, which I didn't know, so that's a bonus for him. After the class he was so excited and asking (begging) us to sign him up. I really like what they stand for. Discipline, self-respect, confidence, etc etc. The part I don't like about it is that it is $89/month! OUCH! However, I want Gage to be involved in some sort of activity and he didn't want to do soccer this fall. SO, we bit the bullet and signed him up. He was SO EXCITED! He got his uniform and his white belt. They also have a "V-patch" that they wear on their uniform and they can earn stars to put on it. The way they earn stars is by doing things at home like chores, homework, hygiene, etc. Once they earn 25 stars, they can earn the next V-patch. You can bet your sweet bottom that I will be using this to MY advantage! :-) I've already told Gage that the first time he fights me to go, he's done. If he doesn't do his homework without complaining, he's done! (That right there is worth the $89/mo in my opinion!) After we got home he was very excited and practicing some of the things he learned tonight. He was even doing pushups. LOL! The crazy part, is that every time I ask him something, he replies, "Yes, Ma'am!" I love this sport! They have to say "Yes, Sir!" or "Yes, Ma'am!" when they are there, so I told him he should get in the practice by doing it at home. I really am so excited that he's so excited about this! Not to mention that it's great exercise and will increase his balance, coordination, strength, etc. etc. If this level of excitement lasts, I believe he will be benefitting from this in no time. I'll keep you posted! :-)

7 years of bad luck!

We only have one more full day with Seth at our house. The kids are going to miss him terribly when he is gone! We have had a good time with him here. Seth and I did have one little spat, but it didn't last long. We let him know that we loved him for who he was and that it wasn't necessary to tell something that wasn't true to make himself look cool, because we thought he was pretty cool just being Seth. Gage said, "Yeah, Seth, we think you're pretty cool just like you are!" :-) They have been playing so nicely together and have spent quite a bit of time playing outside on the skateboards or in the playhouse, or on the bicycles. I hope that he feels like he's had a good time as well.

Today we spent quite a bit of time at the zoo and then a little bit at the superslide. We did have some rain while we were at the zoo, but it didn't last too long. I posted tons of pictures on Facebook for you all to check out.

Tonight while I was getting all the kids to take showers, it seemed to be taking Emma a LONG time in the shower. Finally, I knocked on the door and asked her if she was done. She said, "Mom, I need some help" and then opened the door, a little reluctantly. She said, "I'm sorry, but I accidentally broke the hand mirror while I was in the shower." The broken mirror was sitting on the toilet with shards of glass all over it and the shower floor. After making sure she wasn't bleeding anywhere, I asked her why she had the mirror in there anyway? It was already cracked before she took it in the shower with her. She said she was using it to see if she got all of the soap out of her hair. Well, I guess that was a legitimate reason for having the mirror in the shower, in a 6-year-old brain, so I couldn't really get mad at her. While I was trying to get the glass picked up out of the shower, I told her, "You know what they say, don't you Emma?" She replies, "No?" So I told her that it's often said that if you break a mirror, you will have 7 years of back luck. She looked at me and said, "Well, I guess that's better than going to jail for 7 years!" Yes, Emma, I think you are right about that! Her glass is obviously half full. :-)

Ducks Unlimited's 2nd Annual Youth Waterfowl Hunting Clinic

Today was a big day for Scott. He has been working hard at getting this Youth Waterfowl Hunting Clinic organized and I'm pretty sure he's glad it's over! Well, I guess day 2 is tomorrow, but that is at the shooting range, so hopefully it won't be quite as crazy.

The kids had a good time at the event. Everyone wins a prize of some sort on top of getting a free t-shirt, baseball cap and skull cap. Then the prizes ranged from DU hand muffs, DU camo shoulder bags to decoys to the grand prize, a youth finisher hunting blind. Gage and Emma both won a bag of decoys. WOO HOO! Just what we needed! NOT! There were a couple of big decoy prizes that all the names got put back into the hat for those 2 prizes and the Finisher Blind. The first name Scott pulls out for the HUGE bag of decoys was Emma. He talked Emma into not taking the prize and letting someone else win. Thankfully Emma was okay with that. So, the next name he pulls out is Gage's! Seriously! What are the chances of that happening? So Scott did the same thing, asking Gage if he could give the prize up to someone else. Well, Gage wasn't as thrilled with that idea as Emma was. I didn't get a picture of him with his prize of decoys because he was pouting underneath the table. I did post tons of pictures on Facebook, so check them out there if you wish.

Seth's 1st week of being in North Dakota is officially over. One more to go. I think he is enjoying his time. Today we went to Barry's Bike Shop to see if we could get the brakes fixed on his bike. He has been saying they haven't been working and wanted to get them fixed. Unfortunately it can't be fixed cheaply, so we're going to have to send that one back home to Iowa. :-) They tried roughing the rims up with sand paper to allow the brakes something to grab onto, but it didn't work too much. They said he was either going to have to change the brake pads to softer ones, which will wear out much faster than the regular ones, or another fix is to get new rims. So, there you go Jari Jo, you are equipped with the information you need when Seth gets home and starts asking you if he can get the brakes fixed on his bike. :-)

Scott leaves town on Monday and will be gone for the week. I intentionally left some of the "things to do" for us to do next week, to hopefully break up the long week with Scott gone. However, he was quite busy all this week trying to get everything ready and organized for the Youth Waterfowl Hunting Clinic this weekend, so it probably won't be too different. Except that I'm quite sure I won't be as lucky next week in the supper department. It just worked out all week that I haven't had to fix supper! Sunday we ate on the run because of Church League Volleyball, Monday-Wednesday we ate at Family Bible School, Thursday we ate at the Flicek's since they had invited us over a few weeks ago for a BBQ. Then last night we went to an open house for a friend who's son is leaving on Tuesday for Taiwan to be a foreign exchange student. Oh, and tonight Scott wants to eat at Texas Roadhouse for his birthday supper! I hate cooking, so this week was a treat for me! Next week will not be so much of a treat, I'm quite sure! Oh well, all good things must come to an end, right?

Oh my!

Oh my! I didn't realize it had been so long since I last blogged! Sorry!

Let's see..........where do I begin?

I suppose I'll start at this past Saturday. We got up bright and early to travel to Brookings, SD to meet my sister, Jari, and her family so that we could bring my nephew, Seth, back to North Dakota with us to spend a couple of weeks. He has never been here before, so he was pretty excited about it, and so were we! We've had my niece Katie, when Emma was just a baby, and then last year my nephews, Dustin and Colton, spent 2 weeks with us. We sure do (and have) enjoy(ed) our time with them.

After we picked Seth up, we headed back north. We stopped in Tuttle to spend the night there and then headed home on Sunday afternoon. I posted some pictures of Seth's adventures on Facebook, so you can check them out there if you wish. He went out for a short spin in my kayak. It took a little coaxing, as he said he is afraid of the water and can't swim. We assured him he would be fine with the life vest on and he was careful not to get too far from shore. After he was back on land, he said it wasn't too bad. :-) When we got back here Sunday afternoon, it wasn't long before we headed to the park to end our season of church volleyball with a tournament. I think we got home around 9:00p, so it was a long day.

We haven't done too much else as of yet. The boys have been outside playing on their skateboards. Seth is teaching Gage how to do a few tricks on the old skateboard that he brought for Gage to keep. (Gage was pretty excited about that!) They've also been out riding bikes and trying to figure out how to do bunny hops. I will be surprised if we don't have to make our first trip to the emergency room in the next couple of weeks!

Our church's Family VBS started this week. We went last night, tonight and tomorrow is the last night. I was thrilled to death when I realized that I wouldn't have to make supper but a couple of times for the entire week! WOO HOO! It's like a vacation for me! Monday night we made clay bowls that are going to turn out so nice once they have spent some time in the kiln. Tonight we beaded some jewelry and tomorrow night we will go out to some church members' house and have a hot dog roast with s'mores. It should be a great time. I like that it was for families this year. Seth has enjoyed his time. He doesn't seem to be shy at all and just talks to anyone who will listen. :-) He kind of just fits right in. He did mention tonight that he misses his Mom, so give us a call tomorrow Jari Jo! :-)

We have had some warmer temperatures this week. I could reach 100 degrees tomorrow, which I am NOT looking forward to. I have been loving these mild temps we've been having. It might be a great day for Raging Rivers, although Seth has mentioned he's not fond of swimming. (I guess that makes sense since he said he can't swim!) However, there isn't a whole lot of swimming that goes on at Raging Rivers. It's pretty much riding an inner tube around the "lazy river" and then there are some water slides that you ride down in tubes and a couple of bigger water slides that you go down without tubes..............you might find yourself without your bathing suit when you reach the bottom if you aren't careful! That reminds me of Restibutia, who is an Eddie Murphy character in a movie that I can't remember the name of. If you've seen it, you know exactly what I'm talking about!!!!!!!

I'll try to be better on the blog updates. :-)

S.W.A.P.S.

S.W.A.P.S. stands for "Special Whatchamacallits Affectionately Pinned Somewhere". The Girl Scouts promote the girls to make little craft things with a pin on it to trade with other girls, to promote friendship. It's a neat idea and it's fun to see the other S.W.A.P.S. that Emma brings home. On Monday morning we made a quick run to Hobby Lobby to pick up a few items to make our S.W.A.P.S. and got right on it after we ate lunch. I even came up with an idea of my own to use instead of stealing someone else's off the internet! Emma really liked them and it was easy enough for her to help by sorting and bending pipe cleaners. These required the use of the hot glue gun, so I certainly had to help with that. After making just a few, Emma was losing interest. I figured that would happen, but the problem was we needed 60 of them! (At the time I thought we only needed 48, but after I read the paperwork that was emailed to me, I saw that there were 12 more, PA's and Camp Directors, that needed to be made.) UGH! Thank goodness for us, our dear friend, Elise, stopped by to drop off a DVD we had loaned them. After showing her my battle wound with the hot glue gun, she volunteered to stay and help us because she didn't really have anything else to do. Needless to say, I was THRILLED to death! I didn't realize how long this project was going to take! Elise stayed and helped for 2-3 hours (I lost track of time) and we still weren't done! I finally finished them up just before supper and that is when I discovered we needed 12 more to total 60 S.W.A.P.S. I thought to myself, "That's tough shit! I had no desire to make even one more!" Well, my other side won the internal argument and I ended up making 12 more. Yesterday after camp I was excited to see Emma's S.W.A.P.S., only to find out they didn't do it that day. I had a whole extra day to work on them! UGH! Oh well, I was glad to have them done. Anyway, today was the big S.W.A.P. day. When we looked in Emma's bag, I found the ziploc with LOTS of the ones we made still in it! I asked her if they didn't do it and she said they had. When we got home I counted out 41 of those stupid things in her bag that she didn't trade with anyone. AARRRGGGHHHH!!!!! What a waste of time! I asked her why she didn't give them all out and she said she didn't have time. WHAT?!?! Don't ask everyone to make SIXTY of these things and then not give them time to trade them! I told Emma it looked like we wouldn't have to make anymore for quite some time. She didn't really like that idea. What the heck else do we do with them? Elise, would you like to have some to trade with your friends? :-) I told Emma she better take that bag of them back with her tomorrow and hand them out to the girls who didn't get one. I might have something to say about this in the Girl Scout office the next time I visit. (I sound so mean, don't I?)

Prancing Ponies Day Camp

Emma had Day 1 of her Girl Scouts Prancing Ponies Day Camp. It was a LONG day for her. She got on the bus shortly after 8 this morning and she got back around 6:15 this evening! I could tell she was tired as soon as she got off the bus. However, she wasn't quite as tired as one of her friends who could hardly keep her eyes open! LOL! It was pretty cute. Another one of the little girls who is in our Troop came off the bus crying. I felt really bad for her. I asked Emma why she was crying and she said that she just wanted her Mom. :-( I hope it goes better for her tomorrow and Thursday, if she decides to go. Emma was pretty tired, but I still had troubles getting her to fall asleep. She just gets overly tired and has a hard time winding down I think? I believe 7am is going to come pretty quick for her tomorrow! She was excited that they got to ride some horses today, and got to go out in a canoe! The weather wasn't too terribly bad, even though it started out kind of chilly. We'll see how she does with Day 2 and 3!

We're excited that my nephew, Seth, is coming to stay with us for a couple of weeks before school starts! He has never been here before, so Gage and Emma are very excited that they will get to show him around the big city of Bismarck. :-)

I spent most of my day doing laundry and getting pictures ordered. I had an email from snapfish for free shipping. That's about the only time I order pictures because shipping is so darned expensive. I know this is almost embarrassing, but I ordered pictures from Feb-Jun and there were 787 pictures in my shopping cart. YIKES! I wonder how many years that will take me to get put into scrapbooks? Better yet, I wonder how many years it will be before I get to the dumb things? I need to stop taking THAT many pictures! I was so tired of how slow my computer was going and sorting through pictures that I didn't even bother with ordering July, since I knew there were probably 1,000 or more from the 4th of July alone! I need to get my crap together and get my scrapping table organized and get to work. I'm not even sure when was the last time I scrapped? That's just terrible!

Another year older

Today I turned another year older. But, I feel a whole year younger! :-)

It was a great birthday! I have never had so many birthday wishes before in my life, thanks to Facebook! :-)

The day started out with breakfast in bed, served by Gage and Emma (All by themselves!). They made me toast with peanut butter and butter and a glass of iced tea (without the ice). I needed it too, to wash down the dry toast. How sweet of them to do that without any prompting from Scott, since he wasn't here.

We stopped by the Capital A'Fair again today. I am the proud owner of a new hammock swing! :-) I tried it out in the tree in the backyard and it was awesome! It's going to be a great spot for reading and it's compact enough that it can go back and forth with us to Tuttle.

We had volleyball tonight for church league. Unfortunately I didn't know we played a 5:30 game and a 7:30 game so we had to forfeit the 5:30 one. Next week is the end of the season tournament. I really enjoy playing and hate for it to end. However, it won't be long and the fall season will start up indoors.

We ended the evening with some Stamart ice cream! :-) I am excited about that place. They have CHEAP ice cream! :-)