One Happy Sunday

Happy Birthday to me,

and Happy Father's Day to Dave!

Me with Jonathan and Anna. I can't believe I am 30! I can't believe Jonathan is going into FIRST grade! :)

Jonathan's Photography

I LOVE THE PICTURES OF MUTTON AND BISCUIT. BY JONATHAN

Happy Birthday Eve to Me!

Jonathan picked out this really funny talking card for me.

I love how they are all lined up like this. Anna, 4, and my nephew Trystan, 4, and Jonathan, 6, and Justine, my niece, 12. Going into VPK, Kindergarten, First Grade and Seventh Grade this year!

Trystan and Jonathan at the food court.

Anna and Justine at the food court.

I think I figured out that this would be like Dave bowling with 40 lb ball. Would that math make sense? If she is 35 lbs and that is a 7 lb ball? What is the information missing that is needed to solve this problem? (I've been tutoring 5th and 6th grade math too much.)

Anna, 4. Trystan, 5. Jonathan, 6. Justine, 12.

Anna, can you take a picture with Mama? No. I'm busy. (Busy chomping down on that curly fry!)

Present time. Justine picked out a really cute purse in my favorite color, aqua, for my birthday gift.

I will have you know that Trystan (Pictured below!) SIGNED THIS CARD ALL BY HIMSELF!

My nephew, Trystan, is one handsome little fella.

I'm 30, but do I need reading glasses yet??? (They had switched over to rocket bowling (or cosmic bowling?) at this point so there was very little (normal) light. Only the flashing, pulsating, black light kind of lights. Also, it was time to go, because the music was too much for me. Apparently, I do NOT need a hearing aid.
Oh, and I beat my all-time highest score of 72. I got an 81 today, I think! My goal is to someday break 100. I am just proud when I knock any pins down. :) And I liked Anna's attitude today: pretty much no matter what happened with her ball, she would strut away and say, "I NEVER lose!"

Everyday

Jonathan, Jaiyden and Anna playing with dice.

Jonathan playing Monopoly.

Anna made her bed. Wow.

Biscuit and Mutton in an ear pulling battle.

I walked around the corner and Anna was sitting on the couch with Papa Larry reading the newspaper.

I think that section is taller than her!

On another day, Jaiyden was trying to teach the kids how to breakdance.

Dave, Anna and Jonathan watching Mythbusters. I just don't get it...

Anna at Summer Camp

I've always suspected our girl is part pirate. She wears that parrot so well!
She has had a great week at summer camp!

Anna at Gymnastics

So... I think after enduring the last year of ballet/tap, Anna has found an activity that she LOVES. She stays moving the whole time and she has a smile on her face. She doesn't have to mess with any special clothes, tights, or footwear. She gets to climb and jump and swing on ropes. It just goes along with her personality so well. Even as a baby she was scaling to the top of playgrounds like a monkey. (And giving Mama a fit!) She has the gracefulness, the flexibility and the fearlessness that make gymnastics a good activity for her.

Wordless Wednesday

OK: So not really wordless... this is our new nephew Abe. My brother Cory and his wife Erin's first! He is a beautiful newborn, born to 2 of the very best people I know, and his safe arrival and smooth transition home are something I'm so grateful for.
Welcome to the world, sweet baby boy!!! We're so glad you're here.

ATM

We pulled up at an ATM this afternoon to make a deposit. A man who was using the ATM spit on the ground. I detest spitting men. My Mom always said never hang out with a boy who spits. She was right. I said something about it. Jon told me, "I want to spit on the ground when I grow up." I said, "Don't come back home to Mama's house and spit!" And "Girls won't like you if you spit. It's nasty!"
Anna chimes in with, "Mama, I don't want a wife!"
And then, "I mean, no, I mean, I don't want a father!"
Followed with, in complete exasparation at being unable to find the right word,
"Wait! I mean, I don't want a MAN!"
Meanwhile, Dave is outside the car making the deposit. He comes back to the car, and catches Jonathan saying,
"Mama, I don't want to have a wife so I can spit for fun!"
Dave mishears this and says,
"You don't want to have a wife so you can spend your money?"
(To which, I playfully smack him upside the head for suggesting that when you have a wife you don't get to spend your own money!)
Then Jon clarifies,
"NO! So I can SPIT FOR FUN!"
Dave is not a spitter (one of the reasons I married him) and he just doesn't get it. He starts saying, "It really makes no sense to get rid of water that your body could use..."
Then the kids notice another man has gone up to the ATM machine and stepped right where the spitter spat. Jonathan says, "Eww! Gross! He just stepped in that other guy's spit!"
EXACTLY!

25 Things...

...You Don't Know About Me and Could Go Your Entire Life Without Knowing But I Feel the Need to Share Them With You

1. I keep waiting to feel like a real grown-up.
2. I can take an entire year to read a novel, sometimes waiting a month in between chapters. I will pick it up and put it back down. I will remember all the characters, all the plot. I can recall books vividly long after I've read them. But I can watch a movie and have absolutely no recollection of it. Like the other night, I watched Housesitter with Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin. I have seen that movie several times but it was like watching it for the first time because I could not remember what happened.
3. I hold my breath when I am driving by a cemetary. It is some stupid thing that I started as a child, and I can't seem to stop doing it. I don't even believe in whatever superstition that first prompted me to do this, but even to this day I do it without thinking.
4. I am a selective Starburst eater. Don't ever share a bag of them with me because you will never get your hands on a red or a pink one.
5. I never edit anything I write. Whatever comes out, comes out. Even in college, I would just get it done and I wouldn't fine tune it or revise it at all. Looking back over what I have written gives me a panicky sense of self-doubt and loathing... and I just want to rip it all up and bury the pieces in the trash. That's why I try to write these posts asfastasIcan and then I hit the PUBLISH POST button.
6. I have an enlarged thyroid with nodules on it and it makes my throat hurt and gives me a hoarse voice. Sometimes it is hard to swallow. Sometimes it makes my throat full and I feel like I can't breathe. I can see it sticking out of my neck, and it makes me feel really self-conscious. I find it fascinating that I have had three diagnostic scans/ultrasounds, been to an endocrinologist twice, and have had blood work done repeatedly, and no one has offered any treatment plan for this problem. Yet I can go in to the Dr. for any other thing and they whip their prescription pad out like a gun in a holster.
7. I am secretly quite scared of cats.
8. I have two cats.
9. I stalk the mailbox every Saturday for my USWeekly celebrity gossip magazine. It gives me an inoordinate amount of joy.
10. I always use my parking brake. Even though I now drive an automatic and live in the Land of No Hills.
11. I almost always wear lipgloss or lipstick to bed. I have no idea why I do this. I also can't back my car out of the driveway with naked lips. Must have gloss.
12. I cut my own hair last week. It actually turned out quite nice.
13. I hate McDonald's coffee. I think it smells like rubbing alcohol and sausage biscuits.
14. I have a hard time eating my food if the server has those big stretched out holes in their ears. Tattoos and other piercings, don't bother me much, but I totally lose my appetite with those big gaping ear holes. I just don't understand... why? Why???
15. I want your approval even if I don't like you very much. I don't know why. I just want people to like me even if I don't like them.
16. I think a lot about when the kids leave home. Dave and I will be in our 40s and I think we will have quite a lot of fun. When I am not crying my eyes out over my babies being all grown up and gone to have their own adventures...
17. I think about having a third child every single day. I can write down about 20 reasons why I shouldn't, just off the top of my head, but I still think about it every single day.
18. I am always very chatty and friendly to drive-thru people. I mean, if you're going to see people on a daily basis, you might as well have pleasant interactions, right?
19. I blush easily and I have absolutely no poker face.
20. I have a favorite child. (But it changes from one to the other about every day, so I think it is okay.)
21. I want to own a small boat someday. But I don't want to go fishing. I just want to drive it around the lagoon and look at all of the scenery.
22. I can never keep track of when it is my turn at a board game or a card game. Even if I am just playing with one other person, I sit there like an idiot until the person is forced to say, Um, it's your turn.
23. I love the color blue.
24. I think my kids are extraordinary and I will never be convinced otherwise.
25. I don't like to drive on the interstate. All those cars and semis and motorcycles just hurtling forward so fast... it scares me.

Wordless Wednesday

My 30th Birthday Trip to Tampa!

SO! as usual, I took too many pictures, selected some favorites, and uploaded them in some random order.The kids colored this Dr. Seuss crown at the Aquarium. They wore them around and looked so cute.
Anna is 4!
Jonathan was just thrilled to have some time to color. He had gone about 24 hours without any drawing or anything, and I think he needed it. Instead of a toy, he picked this little fat book of photos of oceans, beaches and animals around the world, and he looked at it most of the way home.
Me at lunch with Jonathan. See his eye? That is from where he fell out of bed and hit his eye on the bedside table. I didn't even look at it until the next morning. I just figured he was scared from falling out of bed, not hurt, and I got him back to sleep fast. So when I saw it, I said, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYE? And he said, Um, I fell out of bed, remember???? Oh.
Evasive maneuvers.
There were a lot of interesting things to see at the aquarium. But the kids were both fascinated with this cart full of different types of shells. They listened intently to the educational volunteer. I think, especially with Anna, it came down to that they were allowed to touch these things... so they were automatically cooler and more intriguing than all the stuff behind glass.





Jonathan and me.
This great horned owl was amazing. I've never seen one up close. When it blinked and turned its head, I swear it looked like some kind of Jim Henson Muppet. It didn't even look real. It had the most incredible eyes.This was Jonathan in front of a HUGE fish! I think it said it was some kind of grouper. It meaning the sign, not the fish. If the fish had actually said it was a grouper, I would never question that.
The kids were really into the pictures! I kept saying, this is Mama's birthday trip! Look at the camera! I felt sort of bad until I heard another mother telling her 3 year old: No ice cream unless you stop giving me that dumb cheesy smile! Give me your REAL smile! (She was adorable and I could see nothing cheesy or dumb about her smile. UGH!)
Me and the kids checking something (was it fish? I'm thinking it was probably fish!) out at the Florida Aquarium. Which I highly recommend. If you are the marine-life loving sort of gal I am.

Jonathan is a pretty strong swimmer now. But he still likes to be given rides around the pool. He pretends I am Buttercup (the horse) and tells me giddy up and whoa and kicks my sides a little and even pulls on my "reins (my hair)" to get me to turn. I think it is far more fun for him than me... But I am just happy that he still lets me hold him in the water and play with him. I wonder how many more summers before he gets too cool for that. :)
Anna signed I Love You to me during the penguin show at the aquarium. She kept tricking me into raising my hand during the question/answer session. She thought that was just hysterical. Jonathan was sitting down on the floor with all the other kids, and he raised his hand to ask a question about the penguins. Most of the kids would raise their hands, get called on, and forget what they were going to ask in the first place. OR, they would ask something completely off the wall or something that had already been covered. But Jonathan asked, Do these penguins come from Antarctica? I was so proud of him that he was able to articulate his question so well, that it was a thoughtful question, and that he had the courage to raise his hand and ask it in such a room packed full of people. Way to go, buddy! (The penguins actually came from South Africa.)
We took an hour long detour on our way to Tampa to see downtown Lakeland. I wanted to eat at a local place, and we found this little place. Because it was right in front of the ONLY available parking spot anywhere. I had an agenda to eat some good Cuban sandwiches and black beans while on this trip. We all ate, and the bill came to a whopping 14 dollars... But they didn't accept credit cards!!! Jonathan immediately said to his Daddy, I TOLD you that you would need to use REAL MONEY someday! He was right. We had to go next door to an ATM and get some REAL MONEY.
View from hotel room.
Dave's PT Cruiser crossed over to the 100,000 mile mark on this trip.

Anna enjoying a Shirley Temple at the outdoor water playground at Florida Aquarium. Anna got the idea that people only spoke Spanish in Tampa, and so she was practicing all of her Spanish words she knows. When a hotel waiter walked by her and said, Hola! she beamed up at him and said, HOLA! She was so thrilled that she got to use one of her words.
What a goofball! He had so much fun. He was just off running around the water playground and I had to lure him up to the shade to drink his Shirley Temple. I was worried about them getting dehydrated. It was so hot and we were outside so much.
Irony: After being thrilled that Dave reserved a feather-free hotel room (because I dislike birds so much and am freaked out by feathers {I used to think I had an allergy, now I realize it is more like a psychological aversion}, I spent a great deal of time at the Aquarium trying to get pictures of various birds. They had an amazing exhibit of birds. (I guess they were all water birds native to Florida, which is how they worked their way into an aquarium?)

Anna checking out the view. The kids LOVED the hotel. The view was amazing. There was so much going on in the harbor and down on the third-floor rooftop pool. We were 17 floors up and the elevator was so speedy it made our ears pop.
Jonathan and Anna not quite getting the point of the hermit crab photo opp.
More views from the hotel room.
Anna did her own hair. :) She is so pretty...
And I think she knows it.
This is the pool we swam in. I kept saying we were 17 floors up from the pool, and Dave kept reminding me that we were only 14 floors up since the pool was on the third floor. I was quite impressed with this pool. There were palm trees in huge planters in the water... but Jonathan said it was not a big deal. He was also unimpressed with the towering palm trees inside the hotel lobby. He kept shrugging his shoulders and saying, Seen that before. HOWEVER, a certain display case in the hotel gift shop caught his eye. "WOW! Look at all those giant pencils!!! How do they even sharpen those??!! (We were in Tampa... they were cigars. Even the cashier was laughing when she overheard him say that.)
After the pool and before dinner, we walked along the riverwalk. We saw a woman driving her boat with one hand and texting on her Blackberry with another. It was sort of funny, since it was a relatively busy waterway, and she was precariously near some VERY nice yachts. Also, with the way she was dressed, she looked like she was a business commuter. Maybe that was her commute home from work and she was tying up loose ends at the office before her weekend began. It was just humorous to us.
Jonathan at the aquarium.
Me laughing with Jonathan, saying how we could take these spiny lobsters home to Papa Larry for dinner.
Anna being silly by the hotel pool. She put my flip flops on her hands and Jon's Crocs on her feet.
Awww! Aren't we so cute!
Me in front of the hotel (the tall Marriott in the background).
Forcing a photo with the kids before they ran for the pool. It was enough of a hassle that we made them get all that stinking sunblock on before they could get in!
Mama loves her baby like the fishies love the sea...