Fashion Show

My mom made two dresses for Penelope while she was visiting. I love them both and since Penelope can only wear one dress at a time ....

Before & After

Panic in the Neighborhood

This is our house. It's on a corner lot with no houses behind it. Our entire neighborhood (like many neighborhood in this area) is arranged so that the garage is in the back of the house. It's great because we have an alley that we use for the garage and the garbage. The kids love it because they can play basketball and ride their bikes in the street with very little traffic.

When we first moved here the field behind our house looked like this:

Brian and the kids spent an entire weekend clearing a large area so that we could use it as an extension of our own yard. Now it looks like this:

This is the start of the 4-wheeler/dirt bike track that Brian made. It also leads to the area that the boys and their friends play in and build forts and hide-outs in:

It might look messy, but to a group of 7-11 year old boys it is heaven on earth. On top of that, I am really grateful to live in a house that isn't surrounded by 500 other houses. Our neighborhood is small and quiet and safe.... just the way I like it.

Yesterday morning we heard a monstrously loud noise coming from the back field. For the last two days there has been a man clearing the field. Looking down my alley to the left this is what I see now that he has finished his second day of work:

This is the view from the other side:

I am telling you, we are in a panic. A major panic! What if we lose our field? What if we lose our dirt bike track? What if they build 500 houses behind my house?!? One of our neighbors told me that they cleared it completely two years ago. I was shocked that the growth that the boys think is a forest for building forts was only two years worth of growth. Here's hoping they decide they have done enough already. Here's hoping we don't lose our dirt bike path/fort building forest/private back yard. Here's hoping my kids don't decide to go through with their plan to sabatoge the man's brush hog the next time he rolls down our alley.

Friday's Feast

I woke up a little too early today and instead of being productive decided to spend my time playing around online. I can't really wash dishes and vacuum while everyone else is asleep anyway, right? While I was looking around the blogosphere I came across this site. They have a bunch of different blog prompts. The one I liked the best is one I've actually seen on some other blogs. It didn't involve a large amount of creativity like the "let's write a haiku" prompt and it didn't have a bunch of personal/offensive questions like the TMI Tuesday site. So here goes ... my first Friday's Feast. We'll see if I stick to it. My Wordless Wednesdays have been lacking lately!

Appetizer
What does the color dark green make you think of?
shamrocks

Soup
How many cousins do you have?
30

Salad
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how honest are you?
9.5

Main Course
Name something that is truly free.
the way my kids love me

Dessert
Using the letters in the word SPRING, write a sentence.
Stupid People Really Inspire Nothing Good.

Egg Decorating Contest

Every year for Easter my Aunt Kathy and her daughters go to a friend's house for Easter dinner. Everyone participates in an egg decorating contest. This is my Aunt Kathy's entry for this year:

Here's Abigail's entry:

And here's Emily's entry:

I don't have pictures of the other entries and this is one of those "everyone wins a prize" contests, but I'd be willing to bet Kathy's was the bestest!

Redneckville 101

Yesterday we decided to treat my Mom to her first (and most likely only) lesson in redneckery. In her 50-something years on this planet she had never before used a firearm. Until yesterday. Here she is getting a 2-minute tutorial from Brian.

And here she is blasting through every single beer bottle we set up for her. She's a natural Annie Oakley!

Here are some photos of the boys and I taking our shots. I just love the way Kenny holds the 22. His arm isn't long enough to go all the way around it yet. I think he looks tough & cute at the same time.

Here's Mom taking a business call. Funny that she was chatting away about the caller's bulldog while we were shooting in the background. I wonder if he was worried for her safety?!? Then I heard her laughing and telling him what she was doing. Of course he didn't believe her at first. She had to say it again and I heard her say, "No, really, I am in Texas and I am on top of this big dirt hill shooting at beer bottles! Really!"

After we ran out of ammo the boys wanted to do a little 4-wheeling. Mom and I decided to be the official photographers. It isn't like we were scared to get in the truck or anything. No, it wasn't that at all. We were just thinking of the boys and how they might want pictures. It was a totally selfless act on our parts to stay out of the truck while they climbed hills and blasted through mud puddles. We were doing it for them. Really.

After the boys got done playing Brian pulled up and hollered, "Ok, you women hop in the back, Chase it's your turn to drive." I was a little nervous, but he did great and it was a lot of fun for all of us.

Until we saw this ...

Yes that is a dead cow. And what happens when my kids see a dead cow? They yell, "Stop the truck! Stop the truck! Let's get some cow hooves for Sammy!"

Chase stopped the truck.

Kenny jumped out and started kicking at the dead cow.

And returned with three cow hooves. They are $2.29 each at Petsmart so he was pretty excited about saving us a whopping $6.87 by having no regard for this poor dead animal's remains.

This is the reaction I got when they were both back in the truck and I was saying things like, "I can't believe I just saw my own child doing that."

Anyone else ready to come visit us?

He's Like a New Dog

We took Sammy to the dog wash this afternoon. It is just like a car wash. You go inside, put $4 worth of quarters into the machine, and the 8-minute timer starts. There's one nozzle and you push the buttons that you want, just like when you wash your own car. Here's a sign with the list of options that are on the buttons:

We washed him as best as we could in 8 minutes and then made him ride home soaking wet in the bed of the truck so that we could dry him in the back yard. It didn't take long, but he smells a lot better and looks so handsome.

My mom is a groomer so she was curious about the cost of the self service dog washing machine. We came right home to check it out. If we wanted to invest in one for her shop we'd only have to shell out $15,800. What a bargain!

Celebrate!

This is my 200th blog posting. Look at how excited Chase, Kenny, and Penelope are:

My Loyal Boy

I blog all the time about my redneck boys and my cute little puppy, but I don't give very much attention to my boy Sammy. Everyone who knows Sammy loves Sammy. He is such a good boy. He is almost seven years old and starting to go gray, limp a little after only a 1/2-mile neighborhood walk, and sleep about 23 1/2 hours of the day. Still he is a sweet, loving, loyal boy. I have been sick lately and finally went to see the doctor today. Among the six (SIX!) prescriptions he gave me were a really strong antibiotic and a really strong decongestant. The rest of my family is glad that I finally decided to go to the doctor. They know that once I am well again I will be able to smell my sweet, loving, loyal boy. I think a trip to the DOG WASH will be in our very near future. Stay posted!

(PS to Lisa ... Do you have copies of the pictures we took while you were visiting in Jan 07? For some reason all of the pictures I have of the snow are tiny & small!)

The Caverns of Sonora

Last night we had a dramatic change in weather. It was so dramatic that we went from 80 and sunny to 50 with tornado warnings. Today it was cloudy and rainy all day. We decided we needed something to do to get out of the house, but we couldn't really enjoy the outdoors with the weather being only 50 degrees (sorry Julie, I know that would be a heat wave for you!) So we went to Caverns of Sonora. It was really very pretty and a nice thing to do to get out of the house. I have been wanting to do this for quite a while, but as some of you know my plans to go last spring were foiled by a certain golf tournament.
The tour was nice because inside the caverns the temperature is a constant 71 degrees and humid. So it is warm. There's no wind, which is a nice change for this part of Texas. That makes it nice and calm. And quiet. Well, I think it is quiet for most people. Groups of 12 go together. There were five of us (Brian, me, my mom, and the boys) and a couple with their five kids. Their kids were unbelievably well behaved and quiet. It was the mother who was unbelievably annoying. Jennifer told me once that in the south you can say anything you want about a person as long as you add "God Bless Her" at the end of it. At least I think it was Jennifer who told me that. I'd call Jennifer to ask her, but her daughter Haley had her tonsils out today and that is a little more important than the redneck I am about the spend 10 minutes making fun of on my blog. So Jennifer, if it wasn't you, I am sorry. But it was good advice and I am about to use it!
This woman must have been about 24 years old. Try to imagine the most annoying southern accent you have ever heard and then imagine hearing it say, "Oh, baby, take a picture of that!" about 500 times. And add in some fondling and touching. She couldn't keep her hands off from him. I overheard them talking to the tour guide about most of the kids being steps and halves and cousins so I think only the baby was theirs togethers. I am pretty sure they were anxious to get back home to work on rounding off their group into a nice half-a-dozen. At one point during the tour Kenny raised his hand and asked a question about the effects of humans touching stalactites and stalagmites. He knew that the oils from our hands would stop the minerals from forming. He wanted to ask about the ranchers who first discovered the caverns and wondered whether or not they knew that they shouldn't touch them. When the tour guide finished answering his question our friendly 24-year old mama from Texas chimed in with her two cents to let the entire group know that she thought the stalactites looked just like "them french fries from Arby's that I like so much." That is why the name of this posting was almost "She wasn't smarter than my 2nd grader!" God Bless Her.

Happy St. Pat's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone. Here's a picture of me that my mom took with her camera phone. This headband makes me miss being a preschool teacher!

The Energizer Bunny

Here are pictures of about 1/4 of the things my Mom has done since she's been here. She got here Friday and she's been to the boys' fort with them, on the 4-wheeler, on the trampoline, to the duck pond, to the park, Easter shopping, to the spelling bee, to the air show, to our favorite barbecue pit, has fixed everything that needed sewing in the entire house, has mopped my tile floors, has groomed Penelope twice, and sanded & re-stained my picnic table. In the same amount of time I think I may have washed the dishes once or twice. Oh and I think I may have sent Kenny out to get the mail today.

How Do You Spell Competition?

Today was the county spelling bee. There were 26 kids that competed for a chance to win a spot in the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The children who competed ranged from a seven year old second grader to a 13 year old eighth grader. To be able to compete in the spelling bee the student had to have won the spelling be in his/her school. I thought the bee was only open to 4th-8th graders, but somehow there were a couple of 2nd and 3rd graders in there. Some of the kids were so tiny and so cute! Some of them were bigger than Brian! Regardless, they were all great spellers and they all received a lot of praise for making it to this level.

Here's Chase just before the spelling bee began this morning. He told me that he was a little nervous, but he seemed calm and confident to me.

This picture was taken during the practice round. The parents were only allowed to take photos during the practice round because they didn't want us disturbing the kids. Chase's practice round word was STOIC. He spelled S T O I K ... but thankfully it was the practice round. About 75% of the kids got their practice round words wrong. The purpose was the teach them how to work the microphone and what questions they were allowed to ask. They were allowed to ask:

"Can you repeat the word?"
"Will you use the word in a sentence please?"
"What is the definition?"
"What is the language of origin of the word?"

During the first round 14 of the 26 kids were eliminated. Chase made it through by correctly spelling the word CANDIDATE. By the time the kids had registered, learned all of the rules, practiced one round, and gone through a round we had already been there well over an hour. They gave the kids a short break. This was nice because Chase was able to come visit us in the audience and saw that his teacher had come to watch him. His teacher came to sit with us and we all gave Chase words of encouragement and advice.

The next round was another big elimination round. By the time it was over there were only four kids left. Oh, and Chase wasn't one of them :( His word? PSALM. He thought the announcer said SOLEMN. You can contest the judge's ruling on that basis, but when Chase was at the microphone he had asked the announcer to define the word and then he still misspelled it. On that basis they think he should have been able to figure out it was PSALM instead of SOLEMN so he was out.

He wasn't upset at all. We are all proud of him for making it this far and we'll let him decide if he even wants to try again next year. As we were getting ready to leave we peaked in on the beginning of round three. The first word they had one of the kids spelling was INGURGITATION. Yup, a word I use every day. Don't you? That's what I thought. It was a fun morning. Maybe we'll do it again next year.

To Do List

• I got a 100% on my BIO quiz
• I finished writing the paper that is due tomorrow for RDG 3333: The Reading and Writing Process
• I created the "Topic Circle" that is due tomorrow for RDG 3332: Components of the Reading Process
• I returned the 12 overdue library books we had and renewed the one book Kenny is still reading
• I finished a scholarship application (with essay) that is due this week
• I turned in all of the financial aid paperwork I had to turn in
• I remembered to give Chelsea the children's dictionary I have been promising to let her borrow for about a month
• I emailed Michele that information about the math class we need to take this summer
• I finished the online assignment for RDG 3331: Principles and Practices for Learning to Read
• I mailed Lisa the Tastefully Simple order forms
• I bought a gift bag for the raffle prize I am donating for the spouse's dinner tonight
• I picked up the dog at the groomer's

And when I finished all of this I came home and found my reward on my doorstep:

Even though my list is only about 1/2 way done this should really help me get through the other half with a much better attitude. Listen to the oh-so-difficult preparation directions: Add 14 oz. of Tequila and 6 cups of warm water. Freeze. Enjoy.

Thanks Lisa!!!