Busy day!

Today was one of those days that just fly by. We went to bed late after discussing the woes of the financial district, and then the Knight came down at 2AM. The kids get up for school at 6:00, so I was a tired mommy this morning. I was ready to throw in the towel (poor me!) when my friend called and asked to go to the gym. I did and I am so glad! I felt so much better after that. Then the Knight and I went to the school to do PTA stuff (another post) and got groceries. We came home for the Knight's nap and I worked on PTA stuff. now it is almost 4:00 and we are headed to Princess's Brownie Bridging ceremony. I hope to post pictures later but I have a MOPS steering meeting tonight too. We shalls see! I hope you are having a great day!

She's tres' jolie, but is she sea worthy?

We have been searching for a family boat for the last year or so. DadOf3 found one on Craigslist that he was interested enough in to take a look at, so we headed out on Saturday morning after the big campout to check it out!

Future Captain Prince?
Princess was checking out the extended swim platform.

It has a potty - oops! I mean "head". All of these new boating terms I will have to learn if we get a boat - we'll see if I can remember them.


The kids thought this door was pretty cool! I of course was worried about fingers being pinched.
She is a pretty boat!

This may or may not be the boat we buy, but in any event, our future boat will be named "Botis" because our van is named "Otis" and it makes me laugh out loud!

We are currently trying to decide if this is the right boat for our family - and let me tell you that takes a lot of thinking about. The price seems about right, so we will see. The strange part about buying boats is that we do not get to "test drive" the boat until we make a serious offer. (We can still back out after the test drive and mechanical check, however.) We shall see if this boat is on our future. If not, it was a fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon. :)

P.S. Can anyone name the movie that the title of this post comes from?

Camera Critters - Miney and Moe and the Knight!

My three year old came up with a new game this week. He would step up on the carpeted cat toy for spoiled cats, and then Miney would pat him on the head! When you are three, this game is hilarious! It got me belly-laughing too!

Camera Critters!

Friday Night Campout!

We had a surprise for the Royals at bedtime last night! We told the Princess, the Prince, and the Knight to get their sleeping bags because it was a special night. Here is Princess with all of her night-time things!
Here is the Prince and the Knight with their night-time things. The Prince did not want to stop for a photo!

Here is my little Knight with a curious kitty! The Knight was so excited!!!!
So, do you think 3 kids can sleep in this little bag?
First, it is time to sweep the deck!

Some assembly required! The kids put the poles together for the TENT! That's right! The kids got to sleep outside last night in the Prince's tent!

DadOf3 putting the tent together!

The Campers were so excited!!!!!!

DadOf3 securing the tent!

Here are the three little campers!

Of course they did not sleep out there all by themselves! We let them play until about 10:00 or so and then DadOf3 went out to sleep with them. The tent was right outside our living room. With the windows open, we could hear everything. There was a lot of running in and out, but they had a great time! I got a Get-Out-Of-Tent free card because I don't sleep well these days as it is. DadOf3 delivered my little Knight to me around 2:00AM. He got too cold to sleep there through the night so he came to bed with me. We were all up this morning at 8:00AM - tired but happy! It is always a fun time when the tent comes out!

Photostory Friday #7!

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

These two little kitties have really won the kitty lottery. They are the sons of a stray cat, and they get to live in the lap of luxury! Here is the Prince (sleeping after a long day of Kindergarten, the kitties, the Knight, and Princess.
These two kitties love to snuggle on the kids' laps!

Princess had to get in on the snuggling too!

GPS - awesome!

DadOf3 found the perfect birthday present for me this year: a GPS! Those of you who know me in "real life" know how much use I will get out of my new little box of directions! I could get lost in a paper bag.

In the 7 1/2 years we have been here, our fair city has built a fair number of toll roads. I don't like toll roads. I avoid them at all cost, but with my sense of direction (or lack thereof) I find myself mistakenly on these toll roads every once in a while. (My avoidance of these roads is my own personal boycott because the city was attempting to make already created roads into toll roads - they didn't end up doing it but it irritated me enough to not want to use their new roads.) My new little toy actually has an "avoid toll road" setting! Neat! We are going to take my new GPS out for a "test drive" tonight! I will let you know how it goes!

Wordless Wednesday - He's Not Heavy....!

Illegal Wednesday Words: Yes, I am trying to teach my 3 year old to stop biting his TOE nails. Yikes!

Birthday Pictures!

Flowers from DadOf3!
Pretty flower!

My Lego cake made by the kids!

DadOf3 found every candle in the house for my cake!

Me and my kiddos. It was a great day!

Tagged!

Mama Zen tagged me for this fun and quirky meme!

6 Quirky Things About Me:

1) I discovered that I actually like running this year! Future goals: 10K, 1/2 Marathon, and Marathon (when my youngest is in school).

2) Today is my birthday!! I actually still like celebrating my birthday. It is a fun day and the kids get so excited! Bring on the cake and candles!

3) My favorite shows to Tivo are Survivor, Criminal Minds, A Baby Story, and American Idol. Kind of a strange combination.

4) I enjoy colder weather better than warmer weather. Fall - here we come!

5) I am a picture-aholic! I take at least one picture every day. Usually I take pictures of my kids and cats.

6) I get to go out to lunch today and still need to shower because I actually made it to the gym this morning! Later-gaters!

Now, I tag....

Shana,
KC,
&
Deb

Camera Critters - Miney and Moe!

Camera Critters!

New School Year Craziness!

Fire ants like onions! Who knew?
After our picnic lunch, we headed out to the water.

I should have packed swim suits. Oops!

The water was difficult to resist!

Splish splash!

All worn out!

The new school year has been crazy upon crazy!

I am so glad that it is the weekend though! DadOf 3 and I piled the kids in the van this afternoon and drove to the nearest lake. We packed a picnic lunch and of course the kids jumped in the water even though they didn't have swim suits on! (We have had highs in the 70s all week! How was I supposed to know that it was going up to the mid-90s again?) I know, I could have watched the news, but by 10:00 I am lucky to make it to my bed to fall asleep! The sofa usually wins!

It was a totally fun day! If I get them uploaded before DadOf3 comes back downstairs, you will get to see some pictures! If not, there is always tomorrow!

Wordless Wednesday - Lego Fun (Big, Bigger, Biggest!)

Weekend update!

It has been a good weekend. We made it to church yesterday and brought along RR. RR is the son of some really good friends of ours from IA. He goes to college down here a few hours away from us. Since he was in the line of Hurricane Ike, we brought him home for the weekend. It has been a fun old time! The kids have had a new big person to climb! We found out that he does not plan to go back to Iowa for Thanksgiving, so we invited him here. :) We know what it is like to not go home for the holidays and we are glad to have him!

I am dragging this morning. My cold went into my chest. I coughed all night long and cough drops were not helping. Yawn! I am hoping to catch a quick nap here in a bit.

Crazier than Chuck E. Cheese!

I took Princess to a little birthday party today. It was at a bowling place down here and my goodness was this place LOUD! It was like Chuck E. Cheese on steroids. Plus it was super expensive. We didn't have to pay because of the party, but the games cost abotu $1 each for the cheap ones! Yikes! With three kids I would go broke there.

Princess had fun though. She really likes the little birthday girl - they are in the same class. For my daughter I will tolerate the sensory overload for 2 1/2 hours. She declared it the best birthday party ever - as she does after every birthday party that we attend.

It was a good afternoon!

I wish I had written that!

One of my favorite blogs to read is the Zen of Motherhood. Today Mama Zen has hit the nail on the head. Go read her and come back and tell me where you stand.

Side note: Is this country really arguing about a common phrase including the words "pig" and "lipstick" that John McCain and Dick Chaney have both used themselves?

Is this country really going to believe that Barack Obama is a sexist because he used this phrase?

Here's one for you: On the Today show this morning, they talked about, in the Primaries, McCain took a question from from a supporter who asked, "How do we beat the bitch?" His reaction? "That's an excellent question." Where was all this "chivalry" then?

Wordless Wednesday - Kindergarten is VERY tiring!

Back to School Night

I went to Princess and Prince's Back to School Night last night. It went from 6:00 until 8:30. The Principal talked, the person the school is named after talked, the PTA President talked. Then it was off to the kids' classrooms. I did a brief stop in Kindergarten, picked up the hand outs, and then sprinted over to 2nd grade. It was interesting. They are expecting a lot from the kids. They can do it, but there are going to be some growing pains. For example. All of the spelling tests are "self motivated". When they take one test, they get to take the second test. It is not like last year when one spelling test went home every week and they had a test on Friday. All of the studying is done in class. I told Princess that I want her to tell me that she takes at least one spelling test a week. It is odd to do it this way because it takes the parent out of the picture. I have lots of spelling tricks that I introduced to Princess last year. I guess we will see if she remembers them. They are also going to have lots of science experiments and math problems, Princess's favorite!

The Prince is going to have a fun year! The Kindergarten team is planning to keep them very busy. I am glad to not be a room parent for Kindergarten this year. It involves a lot of asking for help from the parents, trying to make sure every parent has the chance to volunteer, and dealing with unhappy parents.

Boating fun!

Boating after Labor Day!

Here are Princess, AB, and Prince. They had a blast playing together this weekend on the lake.
My little Knight had fun with AB's mom!

We went boating again this weekend. It was a very fun time. We are getting into the time of year where it is actually good to be down here in TX. It is getting colder up north but we can still do things like go swimming and go boating.... I guess we can go out as late as October and it is still warm enough to swim in the lake. :)

Music!

I have a little time this morning so I added some music to my blog. I made it to NOT start automatically when my page comes up. You need to click on the play triangle if you want to hear.

There is one song called Cinderella by Steven Curtis Chapman that I cannot get out of my head. This will make it easy for me to listen to as I blog! Yep, I am that lazy!! Ha! I hope you enjoy it too. If you are an emotional person, you may need to keep the Kleenex nearby!

Have a great weekend! I hope to see you for Cameral Critters tomorrow. I have some funny pictures of the kitties to share!

Photostory Friday #6!

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

Photo Story Friday: Scouting Friends

I have written about Princess and AB before. They have been friends since Kindergarten 2 year ago. This past summer our families spent a lot of time together. AB is an only child, and I think he enjoys being in our chaos. Princess likes to escape to AB's house where it is quiet and no one under 7 lives there! Last weekend, Princess and AB went to a local store and sold Popcorn for AB's cubscout pack. I was not there but I sent my camera with AB's Mom for some pictures!
Princess and AB were NOT happy with the lack of customers. They had had a Lemonade stand earlier this summer and flagged down lots and lots of people. This day was rather sparse. They had to put in two hours to cover the time slot, so they had to find ways to entertain themselves. It was a hot, hot day so they hid behind the popcorn sign in an effort to find some shade. AB's mom had packed snacks and lots of stuff to drink too. The kids had a fun time and sold a little popcorn too!

Cold

Today while my kids were waiting to get on the bus, Princess said that she was "so cold!"

Now if we lived in Iowa I could understand that. It is getting unto the 40s at night now.

But we live in Texas. It was 75 degrees!

I need to toughen these kids up! Yikes!

Wordless Wednesday - School Lunch!!

Church on Sunday

It is funny the way things work out.


My littlest kiddo, the Knight, had to go to the doctor last week. He had some bumps under his arm. I took him to see a pediatrician on Tuesday. This was not our normal pediatrician, they were both booked and I wanted to get him in asap. In my opinion the doctor we saw was a bit of a quack, but he gave us a referral to a dermatologist. As I left he made a point of saying that the wait to get in to see the dermatologist was 6 weeks. I told him I would just stop over and see what they had available because the clinic was right across the street from the hospital. He (very rudely in my opinion) told me that I should just call because it would not matter if I went over or not anyway.

Little did he know!

I talked to a very nice receptionist who could not help but be charmed by my 3 1/2 year old. It just so happened that there had been a cancelation and the Knight could get in to see the dermatologist the very next day at 1:30! Ha ha, Mr. Pessimistic Pediatrician (PP) man! The Knight also managed to con her out of 4 stickers. (He was quite upset earlier when the PP neglected to give him a single sticker even though he could not have been better behaved there.)

So, the very next day we were off to see the Dermatologist, a very nice lady who rarely sees children. Yet, she was MUCH better with my little boy than the PP.

Anyway, my little Knight had caught a virus that caused lots of little wart-like-things to pop up under his right arm. She had a treatment for him that did not hurt in the office. About 4 hours later when we had to wash off the medicine, my poor little guy was hurting something fierce. He was a trooper though and slept through the night that night. The next day he was as good as new except for the blister marks under his arm caused by the medicine.

The blister marks turned to scabs as the week progressed, When it came time to go to Sunday school on Sunday, we were not sure whether to send him or not. We either had to explain why he had 25 little scabs under his arm or risk them accidentally picking up my little Knight under his arms and hurting his boo boos. As we signed our kiddos in at Sunday school, the printer that prints the kids names on stickers ran out of sticker paper right as it was printing out the Knight's name. We took this as a sign and opted to take him with us to church instead.

This is where things get interesting.

The sermon was all about little children and Jesus telling his people to "Let the children come to me." My little Knight could not have been better behaved in church either. He took turns sitting on DadOf3's and my lap and just cuddling. People all around us were watching him. They smiled at him and waved.

He was supposed to be there.

This was the one and only time DadOf3 and I had ever taken the Knight to church. He much prefers Sunday school where he can play and color and make a craft.

If not for the boo boos, the Knight would have been in Sunday school instead of church.

If not for my walking over to the hospital from the clinic, he would not have had the boo boos.

If not for the decision to take him to the non-regular pediatrician (something I had never done before), the Knight never would have gotten in to see the Dermatologist the very next day.

The Knight was supposed to be in church.

"Suffer the little children to come unto me. For to such belong the kingdom of Heaven."

It is funny the way things work out.