Tons of Pictures

Well….here they are…I did fall asleep pondering last night…I don’t think I got more than a minute of pondering before I was gone.  I was SO sleepy. 

Anyway.  I’m not much more awake this morning, but I have too much to do today to sleep in.  *sigh*  I can’t wait for summer to feel more like…well…SUMMER.  haha. 

Now this past weekend felt a LOT like how SUMMER should be!  What a fun time.

Before you look at the pictures, let me explain the two albums.  Acts 24:16: And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void to offence toward God, and toward men.  God is the main thing, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, people are a lot harder to please.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure some people still read this (even though they rarely comment anymore) who might possibly not want to view photos of people in swimsuits (modest or otherwise).  Because I don’t want to cause offence with men, those people should only view the G-Rated album. 

However, because I know how people are, the very fact that I divided it up will make you want to look at the PG-Rated one FIRST, so just let me say if you are the easily offended type and you do that…by clicking and viewing, you are hereby waiving your rights to gossip, think evil, make assumptions, be offended, or etc. about anything on which you may feel differently.  I guess it goes without saying, the Bible frowns on most of that anyway.

Love ya, mean it.  No matter who you are or how you feel about me, what I just said, or anything else.  =)

On to the pictures:

G-Rated Photos VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Don’t forget what I said up there if you decide to look at this set.  If you skipped over everything I said and just jumped down here, you should go back and read it before you click. =)

PG-Rated Photos VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

=) 

Best Intentions

Well, I was going to finish up and post photos from the weekend tonight. 

And I got them all sorted through and websized.  But now….my eyes are rolling back in my head and it’s 11:03 and I think I’m just gonna leave it for another day.  LOL. 

I don’t think I can stay awake to do it tonight.  I had the best of intentions though. 

Speaking of best intentions---ones that I followed through on…let it be known that I filled up KC’s truck with gas, had it washed and vacuumed and windexed, and got some air put back in the one tire that was low for him today.  And then I ironed all his dress pants for the week.  I thought I’d one-upped him in the good deeds department with all that, but then I found out he ordered a new vacuum and some other stuff that I asked for today…before I asked for it.  How does he DO that? 

Okay…my eyes won’t stay open any longer to ponder this strange phenomenon, so I’m going to shut my computer and ponder with them closed.  And with the lights off.  LOL. 

Night.

ONLY 175 Left

Good heavens…my eyes are crossing and I ONLY have 175 pictures left to go through.  I think I possibly took too many. 

I wish I could stay up and finish these tonight but I am in pain and need to go to sleep. 

This might possibly explain better than words, as to WHY…

I have always heard the second day is when it really hits you.  I hope third day is better.  It looks like fun though, doesn’t it?  =)  I would do it again in a heartbeat.  But not in any heartbeats anytime soon…I’d like to be able to lift my head off my pillow again without pain before the next time I decide to do the daredevil thing.  Nobody said fun would never hurt. =)

Now I’m going to fall back on my pillow and not move til morning.  =)

Night.

Back To It

Well, after all the craziness of Friday, we got to chill out and kick back for a great weekend away. 

Unfortunately, today was the day to get back. 

The kids (and parents, too) were sad to see the end of a perfect, relaxing weekend with cousins and aunts and uncles at their family's lake houses. Many thanks to our cousins for hosting us and for the fantastic time our family had...from the moment they picked us up at the dock until this moment when they delivered us and all our bags back to our car at the Marina this afternoon.

341 pictures to go through now....lol. I know what I'll be doing this week. Hahaha.

It was so much fun but tomorrow is back to normal and it’s getting late because I was looking through all those fun pictures of the weekend.  I am incredibly sore and aching because I’m old and having fun hurts worse than it used to, but it was great to be able to kick back and just have a great time.  Can’t wait to get those pictures up…I know I have at least one of the MONEY shots.  You know…the perfect catch at just the right moment…lol. 

I’ll be back hopefully tomorrow when I get a chance to go through and resize and all. 

Night. =)

Insanity

It’s not just a workout….

Insanity is the best word to my life this week and that’s all I have time to say.  Way past my bedtime already! 

Hope to be back in a day or two when things chill out again. 

In the meantime, I have at least 99 things to do before noon tomorrow and that’s very nearly less than 12 hours away now so I have GOT to go to bed.  =) 

Night.

Another Busy Day

So this week started off science camp.  It’s just a couple of hours a day for the next two weeks.  The kids liked it though and it worked well to have a couple of hours this morning to get some stuff done. 

Poor KC has suffered terribly with his allergies for months now and got up this morning with his eyes all swollen and hurting again.  He’s had ice packs and cucumbers and tea bags and everything else on them off and on all day trying to get them back to normal! 

I probably shouldn’t have giggled and snapped this picture…it will probably come back to haunt me.  LOL.  He did look funny though…lol. 

It seems like it’s working a little bit though because he looked a lot better (although still not quite 100%) tonight.  He’s had all kinds of allergy testing and they said he’s allergic to nothing but it flares up every time he goes outside at our house.  Doesn’t seem to have any trouble outside at other places, but just outside here…so there has got to be a grass or something that they didn’t test him for….and it’s growing in our yard evidently.  *sigh*  Poor thing. 

But anyway.  Life at our house right now.  By the way, Drea, thanks for your last comment…and just because I’m not sick doesn’t mean you can’t come visit…it just means you don’t need to bring soup when you come.  LOL.  =)  Of course, I LIKE soup, so if you wanted to bring soup anyway, that would be alright, too.  Teehehe. 

But don’t bring Dr. Pepper.  My doctor said I should quit.  And my mom said I should quit.  And my taste buds said not to listen to them.  They were outvoted yesterday but today when I ordered a combo that came with a drink, my taste buds got to my brain before my memory did and snuck one in on me. 

I remembered when I got home.  *sigh* 

So I quit for about 28 hours.  Now I have to quit again and my mouth is watering just talking about it.  Who made Dr. Pepper so tasty, anyway?  UGH.  23 Flavors and all of them are delicious.  *SIGH* 

Addictions are terrible things.  Unless you’re addicted to good things…like God.  God is simply amazing and awe-inspiring and I want Him to be the addiction that I couldn’t even think of giving up, ever, for any reason.  Nothing could ever equal Him, His mercy endureth forever.  I can’t imagine not feeling that way…and I’m glad. 

I’ve been thinking about that since last week and the Dr. Pepper addiction seemed to be the perfect tie-in.  =)  So…I’ll be working on not drinking Dr. Pepper…and drinking water (the kind from the fridge and the kind Jesus gave the woman at the well) instead. 

All this talking is making me thirsty.  Ya’ll have a good night now…I’m going to run grab a quick sip (of water) before bed.  =)  Thanks for listening to my rambling.  =)

Back Again

I actually used a “real” camera for something that wasn’t vacation today.  Real, as in, not a phone or iPod camera.  As in, my Canon camera. 

I have SO not been feeling the creative juices lately, so it was awesome to feel some of that coming back. 

I hung around a little bit before and after dropping off and picking up the kids from horse camp today and snapped a few photos.  My ratio of good photos versus probably should be deleted photos seems to be slightly worse, due to lack of recent practice, but I still managed to get a few that I really liked. 

K-man:

He won the happiest camper award for always having a happy smile but he was bummed that camp was ending, so he didn’t exactly look like he should be holding that title when he picked up his award.  LOL

Munchkin got the being awesome and making people smile award.  LOL.  I’m not sure if this is why, but on the first day, I overheard her very seriously telling her instructor that she loved the mucking stalls part and it was her favorite part of horses.  ROFL.  The horse she was riding was named Champ and he kinda had scary eyes but he was super good with the kids. 

Anyway, they had a good time and seemingly did great without me there to supervise (lol).  *Big Mom-sized sigh of relief*

In other news, I’m thankful for my health.  I was a little concerned over some things and had to pray away my incessant worrying, but I got the all clear today, which was a huge answer to prayer.  Who knows, my health could do a 180 tomorrow and God would still be a good God, but He answered prayer today and for that, I’m extremely grateful. 

It seems like (with the exception of a few health worries), I’ve felt a lot of heaviness lift off of me, and a lot of peace filled its place, and I feel more like myself again lately.  Maybe that’s why blogging and other things requiring creative power are coming easier.  It’s easier to be creative if you don’t feel like it’s a struggle just to take a deep breath.  It’s a good feeling.  One more thing to be totally thankful for. 

But…it’s been another long and tiring (in a good way) day and I’m ready to run let the dogs out and then hit the hay…thanks for reading.  I love all ya’ll. =)

ZZZTTTTTtttt….

What I wouldn’t give for some Jedi powers right now.  The fan is killing me as I’m laying here in the bed and it’s drying my eyes out and making me chilly…and I’ve got the computer in my lap and it’s an awful lot of work to shuffle everything off my lap and crawl out of the blankets to go turn it off the old-fashioned way.  So basically…I’m lazy and my eyes are stinging like I’ve cut an onion. 

Just admitting my faults and all.  And now I’m going to conquer my laziness and go fix my problem. 

But then the power to throw a few lightning bolts from my fingers from time to time would come in handy for more than just switching off a fan. 

Ahem.  I think that this could be leaning toward a fault worse than laziness, so let’s get off of that.  LOL. 

But wait…first, don’t ya hate when you’re driving and someone lays on the horn at you and they’re the ones who are in error?  Yeah, last I checked, the sign was still up there that said U-Turn Must YIELD and I had the green arrow turning right.  Munchkin was like…I think there’s a train, mom.  I said, no honey, that’s a car horn and they’re honking at me.  One really long, and really loud hooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnkkkkkk.  But they’re the ones who were doing a U-ey and supposed to yield.  Hello, lightning bolts.  LOL. 

Uh…moving on. 

=) 

Today was CRAZY.  I slept like a baby (one that doesn’t sleep through the night and tosses and turns and wakes up every hour or so…lol) and then had to get up early.  I folded laundry, swept and vacuumed, watered all the plants, fed and walked the dogs and got myself and the kids ready to go and then left the house by 8:25.  Exhausted, but out of the house….got the kids to camp and then went over to visit Mom and Dad till it was time to go back and get the kids.  They rode solo (nobody walking beside them) on their horses today.  They were super excited.  K-man’s group leader said he did really good guiding the horse around the barrels.  And K-man was telling me all about how he could show me how to ride a horse now.  LOL.  Then came home and swam in our pool with friends for the afternoon…got the kids all wore out.  And grabbed a sandwich and headed out to Munchkin’s first swim meet.  She was in three heats and did pretty good…second place on backstroke.  Running on crazy.  Don’t know how people do it all the time with lots of kids…I’m still working on my super mom status.  LOL.  I don’t know how I stayed going all day after not sleeping well.  And now it’s 10:45 and I’m hoping it’s a better night…and day. 

Still a lot to be thankful for though…through it all, God’s been good and I’ve been blessed.  =)  And I know it’s hard sometimes to tell the tone when you’re reading something instead of hearing it, and I know I do tongue in cheek a lot…but no joke about God’s goodness.  And the power of His spirit to not show out a nasty attitude when I get honked at and it’s not my fault…unless saying “Uh…hello?  I don’t know why they’re honking at ME” …or maybe considering the thought of a lightning bolt wake-up call…. would be considered a bad attitude.  LOL…maybe a mild one.  Always room for improvement, right?

Well..I have to go figure out why the computer is taking forever and then get off to bed… Night.  ;-)

Musings and Ruminations

Parenting is the hardest, most underpaid, and most un-appreciated job in the universe.  

KC and I talk about it a lot…we have really good kids.  Really.  It just seems that when we turn our backs, they don’t always continue the good-ness.  And that’s what we’ve been talking about a lot lately.  It is really hard to find the balance between being overprotective and never allowing them to get into trouble versus letting them go do all the dumb things kids do so they will (hopefully) learn and grow from them.

I like to observe a lot to try to see what I’m doing wrong or right, and it seems to me, from all my observations, that too much control over our kids prevents them from having a brain and thinking for themselves.  For them to be functioning and mature, they are going to have to learn to think for themselves, which means less control from mom and dad…and also letting them suffer the pain of their dumb moves instead of always fixing it for them.  When it comes to applying this theory to my kids…well…I’m working on it. 

And here’s exhibit A, B, & C of me working on letting go of my kids a little bit:

4-H Horse Camp (three hours in the “wild” without mom – LOL) and swim team practice for Munchkin – double session (2 hours without mom).  Of course, that wasn’t all by my choice…circumstances and appointments sort of played a role, too, but they did have a good day and from all appearances, made good choices without me.  LOL. 

So I wonder if that would also apply to religions, too.  Living inside the box, by the “because I said so” rules, preventing logical thinking, also keeps its members from maturing and functioning well independently (or in other words, when their parents aren’t watching).  I’m not referring to anyone specifically, but I did just read a book about the Amish today.  Nothing wrong with a simpler way of life, by no means…I’m very much in the live and let live camp, but…well….I’ll keep the rest of my thoughts to myself…I can’t think of any politically correct, non-offensive way to finish that thought.  LOL. 

Blogging (or online journaling) is the SECOND-hardest, most underpaid, most un-appreciated job in the universe.  LOL. 

Gardening Update Overload

Remember the gardening I talked about?  The one that is trying to take over the world (or at least the portion of the world that I call my backyard)?  Well, I took pictures of it tonight…forgive the grainy pics…it was getting dark and I used my point and shoot. 

This is the cucumber plant and tomato plant AFTER I trimmed them back:

I don’t know if you remember me talking about the raised beds, but I don’t think I ever got around to showing pictures of them.  These are the pallet boxes that my dad got for free from his work.  I just painted them with deck paint so you can’t see the words that were stamped on the sides and then filled them with dirt and potting soil.  =)

The two boxes on the right are peppers (sweet, jalapeno, and hot bananas).

The early girl…she’s been putting off some sweet tomatoes…I keep trimming her back though, and she’s still about to take over the outside light there. 

My dog is not a small dog…and I planted this box outside the window in potatoes and watermelon because they’re low-growing plants, right?  Well, they make my dog look tiny…and hopefully they aren’t a problem to plant together…lol…wonder if I’ll get sweet potatoes instead of those little red ones…or maybe white watermelons…haha.  Anyway, I can’t tell which plants are which anymore…they’ve all grown together and gone crazy.  Oh yes, and there’s garlic in one corner, too…and I think a stray tomato plant from last year.  This plot has evidently got something right in the soil….it went crazy last year, too.   

And the hot banana’s are going NUTS, too.  I picked all these off yesterday when I tied them to stakes because they were so loaded with peppers the plants wouldn’t even stand up anymore.  And you can see the plant…there’s 3x that many still ON the plants.  Anyone need some hot peppers?  I’ll share.  =) 

These next ones aren’t ripe yet but look at these huge boys…they’re called Goliath tomatoes…no wonder.  I put my hand in the picture for scale…I have delicate hands next to these giants.  LOL. 

And this is my $15 fern from the greenhouse down the road.  It’s kinda monstrous, too.  It was so potbound the roots had grown over the sides and wrapped around the pot.  LOL…it was a BEAST to replant.  But it’s doing great!

Finally.  last ones….

Remember that planter I showed you…the concrete blocks that I painted…

Here’s the picture from before,  when I planted it, and then the picture from tonight.  =)

This is the bean plant in the end of that planter.  This one was from seed…and the Munchkin and I already got enough beans off it for one serving each…they were terrific.  =)  No one else in the family likes them, so these three plants in this one container produce just the right amount. =)

And that’s it.  Well, there’s more plants out there on the deck but you’ll have to come visit me to see them…pictures don’t do them justice.  LOL. 

It feels kinda like a greenhouse (or maybe hothouse) on my back deck these days…I love it.  If you read all this, then thanks…hope I didn’t bore you too much.  =) 

I have some other thoughts on my mind but I’ll save them for another post and say goodnight for now. =)  (((HUGS)))

12:00 AM

Sheesh.  That is the time I am STARTING this post.  So sorry, Aunt C…I’m only a few days late.  =)  I never even opened my computer the last couple of days. 

The in-laws wanted the kids this weekend so we had some grown-up time…WOOT.  So we went car shopping.  Didn’t purchase, just window shopped.  We have got ourselves stuck on our car because we drive way too much.  That’s the penalty of long and frequent commuting for business and pleasure…high mileage and low trade value.  Oh well.  We haven’t decided exactly how we want to dig ourselves out of this hole yet, so we’re still driving ol’ Odysseus.  It’s all good. 

And because I love great segues, here’s something else good that’s been waiting on my camera for me to blog again.  KC’s dad gave this to KC’s mom many many years ago.  Times change, things happen…anyway, this little cutie was begging me to snatch it from the clutches of the yard-sale and since it had a double whammy of KC remembering his dad buying it, plus being a handy spot to store little things….well…hooray for make-overs.

The before shot is missing a few handles because I had already dug into taking it apart before I remembered to grab my camera.  The coffee had nothing to do with my getting ahead of myself…I’m sure my body was not racing ahead of my brain at all. 

I painted the velvet sectioned interior, and then covered the bottoms of each part in fabric.  It turned out totally adorable and I actually have worn my watch several times now that I know where to find it…lol. 

Also, K-man graduated from Kindergarten and Munchkin passed second grade.  Now I have a 1st and 3rd grader.  *gulp* 

The pictures didn’t turn out at all from either event, but I did get this one of K-man and his teacher/assistant.  They were awesome.  Munchkin’s teacher was great, too, but I didn’t get a picture of her.  And both kids teachers loved the little gardens.  =)  Yay. 

I think that’s about all the update.  Tonight we went out with friends…had a great time and I am the weirdest cross between wired and tired right now.  Guess that explains the 12:48am blogging while my eyes are burning.  (Just for you, Aunt C…LOL…oh yes, and I’m sorry I missed your call tonight…didn’t hear the phone or get your message early enough to call you back…will try to get with you tomorrow.)  Anyway, my brain is on but my body is tired, so I guess I’ll go see if my body can control my brain. 

One last thing before I go….this instagram pic I took today.  I finally got all my plants planted and not in these rootbound tiny cups that were slowly being tortured to death on our roasting back deck.  I was laughing because I brought these two wilted guys in to get them soaked up again, and I turn the water on a drip so that the water doesn’t just run through them and not do any good.  And as I watched the single drip make a tiny burrow into the soil, I thought…sheesh…my poor plants.  They know no end to suffering.  First dehydration and sunburn, then chinese water torture.  LOL. 

I could hear them crying out for mercy.  Poor plants…my house is like death row for green things. 

On the bright side---there’s sunshine.  rofl…sorry.  That was really bad.  No, I was going to say on the bright side, once I get things planted in dirt with lots of growing room, they seem to thrive.  My garden for example…I had to trim it back today because it is already attempting to take over nearby things…like yard/steps/neighboring plants/etc. 

Somehow it’s now almost 1 and we have to get up early to go get our little hooligans in the morning so I HAVE to get off. 

Goodnight.

Mini Gardening…

SO I think these lovely herbs will be super for an end of year teacher gift…I helped the kids make them today.  I did the hot-glue parts of course…and they picked out the pieces they wanted to use and put them together.  Both mini-gardens are in $1.00 dishpans from $1-Tree (so approximately 10x12 inches in size…)

This is Munchkin’s:

And K=man’s:

I’m not sure who had more fun putting them together…lololol.  Probably them…because they were less perfectionists about it than I was…lolol.  Oh well.  They both turned out adorable! 

OH yes, and all the plants are edible herbs except the one that looks like rosemary (it’s actually lavender and I’m not sure if it’s edible or not…it was just pretty and scented, and they didn’t have any rosemary left…lol).

I ended up having to work on mine a little more, too…the dogs ate the swing.  Twice.  The first time, I fixed it…but then I gave up…and crossed my fingers that the missing wires from the swing fell through the cracks on the porch and didn’t end up in their intestinal tracts…*sigh*  crazy animals. 

ANYWAY…speaking of the crazy animals, I have to go walk them again and it’s almost past my bedtime again…so

Goodnight. =)

Guilty, guilty, guilty

So lots of people have fell off the blogwagon….I was so bummed about that….and then I realized I wuz one of them. 

Ain’t that the way it goes…we are all judge-y and then we realize we’re guilty of the very same thing. 

I go through that exercise daily…when I remind my kids to put their stuff away and then look at the counter and realize I didn’t put MY stuff away. 

I’m still a work in progress. 

Speaking of works in progress…

My herb garden….or my Borrowers garden…you know, the little people who live in the walls?  I loved those books when I was a kid.  It’s still a work in progress…a new fascination of mine…you can find all kinds of genius ideas if you look up “faery gardens” on pinterest.  That’s what I’ve been doing instead of blogging…hahaha. 

Anyway, life just keeps chugging along…school’s almost out…just one more week….summer is upon us…yowza….

Oh, almost forgot…bye-bye Verizon, hello T-mobile.  And I have unlimited texting now so text away!  So far, so good.  Hooray.  =)

And I have nothing else really important to say, so I’m just gonna go away and sleep.  Somehow it got late.