Another great swim party! I can't believe the summer is almost over. How am I going to function having to get up every day and leave my little Mama's Boy behind. Good thing he sleeps in. I'm not sure I'd be able to leave if he was awake and being cute already!

He has been refusing to take an afternoon nap lately though, which makes for grouchy screaming later in the day. Nothing a frozen GoGurt won't fix! What a miraculous invention!

Last night I dreamed that it was the first day of school. I was trying to teach, but Mike kept coming in and talking to the kids. I kept shooing him away, because I had things to do, but he kept coming back. I think sometimes dreams are symbolic. But sometimes, I think they just tell exactly how you feel...

Tony & Jenn and the kids just left. I don't envy their 14 hour drive back home today. Not fun. We had a great time when they were here! All the kids wanted to do was swim, and I don't blame them! We had 2 great days of weather. No storms, but nice and overcast. Tony & Jenn wanted to go to J&K and Krazy Sub. Hope they lived up to all our raves!

Mason had a great time with his cousins, although he refused to nap, and he started a fun "screaming tantrum" where he screams and throws down the toy he's holding and screams some more. It's really a joy to behold. Really. I think the reason this surprises us is that he is always such an easy, perfect baby! He's so happy and good natured, always quick to give a smile. He's enjoying his summer, swimming all around the pool and having friends over for parties. Since I've been home for the summer, he really LOVES his Mama! I'm going to be sad to go back to work in a couple of weeks!

Today the girls came over to swim. Emma, Ashlyn, Gracie & Mason had a great time splashing in the 92 degree pool while Ashley, Erin, Joni & I chit-chatted. So fun! Mason got all tired out, and took a nap when they all left. That meant I had extra pool time -- just me and my book! I'm reading Cutting For Stone by Abrahan Berghese. So good. Just finished Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls, and it's one of my favorites for sure. Lily Casey reminds me a lot of my grandma. I wonder if they would have been friends if they had ever met.

Mason and Brandon are wrestling on the family room floor as I type. There's nothing better than the gut-laugh of a 17 month old little boy to make life seem so perfect.

Today I paid $400 for a 9 lb. poodle to get her teeth cleaned. It was worth every penny.

Curtains are like Kryptonite to Brandon.

I saw school supplies at Target yesterday. Yuck.

BP says the oil leak in the gulf has actually been blocked by a new containment cap. Gosh, I hope so!

The Cutest Baby Video EVER

Mason is so fun right now - laughing, screaming, and rolling around on the floor. Here's a clip:

My Delightful Neighbor

My neighbor drives a motorcycle. A loud, loud motorcycle. He drives it early in the morning. He drives it late at night. He has two other cars, but they are apparently not loud enough. So he drives the motorcycle. The loud, loud motorcycle.

My Summer Vacation, Part 1

(with love to the book Fortunately by Remi Charlip)

Fortunately, summer vacation began! Yay! This is the best time for teachers!

Unfortunately, since I had been on maternity leave, this marked the downhill side of all my time off.

Fortunately, I have been having a blast with Mason (the cutest baby ever to be born). I love being a mom.

Unfortunately, the pregnancy caused me to get gall stones, which are very, VERY painful.

Fortunately, the doctor told me they could remove my whole gall bladder through one incision in my belly button and alleviate all my pain.

Unfortunately, it was still major surgery, and I had to suffer through about a month of attacks before I could actually get the surgery done.

Fortunately, I had Vicodin (and lots of friends and family) to help me through the recovery.

Unfortunately, Vicodin is not always enough.

Fortunately, my husband decided to cheer me up by buying me a pool.

Unfortunately, building a pool is quite expensive.

Fortunately, our stores are doing well and we have the money.

Unfortunately, one of our stores got robbed, which is costly and annoying.

Fortunately, the thieves cut themselves while breaking in, so the police have DNA evidence and a better chance of catching them.

Unfortunately, that still does not replace the cash and computers they stole.

Fortunately, a week later, we took our minds off our problems and escaped to a fun and exciting Colorado/Utah vacation.

to be continued...

This is super addicting...

I found it last year and couldn't get enough.

A beautiful day in Prescott

We're up in Prescott having a delightful time. The weather is brisk and windy and the leaves are all sorts of yellows, oranges and reds.


Today was the last art fair downtown, so I got my last batch of cinnamon almonds for the year. Waaah! They were totally worth it. The routine: I jump out of the car at the light and hurry to the booth while Brandon circles around the block to pick me up again. It works out just perfectly every time!

By the time we got to the movie theatre, I had polished off the entire $4 bag of almonds. Delicious. The movie? We saw Eagle Eye with Shia LeBeouf. Is that how you spell his name? Anyway, it was two non-stop hours of crunching, crashing metal with sweaty Shia running around with a concerned/constipated look on his face. I felt like I was watching the sequel to Transformers (and you know that sequels are never quite as good as their originals...)



At one point, right in the middle of an action sequence, I wondered how many different sound bytes of crashes they had used for the movie. That's how much metal destruction there was. You actually got tired of seeing it, no matter how good the special effects were. I found myself thinking, Oh no, please don't crash again, not because I don't want anyone to get hurt, but just because I can't stand hearing all the noise!

Maybe I'm getting old.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm almost ready to post pictures of the kitchen (with two missing cabinet doors). Today we got new barstools, and I'm ALMOST finished cleaning every dish in every cupboard and then putting it back again. What a tedious chore. I even have to wipe off every can, bottle and box in the pantry! Dust is everywhere.

The annoying thing is that I'm sick...AGAIN. I had a cold two weeks ago, and now I have another one. What is wrong with me? I never get sick! I'm sure it's just because I can't take any medicine. Murphy's Law.

Kitchen Chaos

We decided that we needed new kitchen countertops. And cabinets. And tile. And carpet. And baseboards. The next step? Living through all the construction. Now, more than a month later, after major dusting from the jackhammering of the tile, and getting used to carpet that is the wrong color, and the alarming sound of the air compressor waking us up at 2 a.m., we still have no kitchen. No sink. No dishwasher. No countertops. I'm doing dishes in the laundry room. We're cooking as little as possible, yet eating out as little as possible too.

The extra two weeks spent waiting for the cabinets that had to be re-ordered because some guy measured wrong were delightful. Last week, when the transportation company couldn't find the driver or the truck our replacement cabinets were on, we were a little miffed. Now that the two missing cabinets have arrived, they have the wrong doors. Go figure.

I'm just waiting to see what will go wrong tomorrow.

Where's Waldo

Brody is taller than Daisy!

I should really change the name of the blog to include the third dog -- but Brandon says Ellie's only half-a-dog anyway, so it doesn't matter.






Look how cute Brody is! It's hard to believe he's so naughty.

How many days until Spring Break?

Today was a rough day in the Sixth Grade. One of my students got upset at recess, hopped the playground fence, and started to walk home. He was half way across the parking lot when I came out to get my class and three students came running up to tell me. Needless to say, I went out and retrieved him. After a cooling off period, he came back just as happy and normal as could be.

Later in the day, three girls in my class were mad at each other, thus resulting in meanness and name-calling. Tears were shed, and as usual, there was nothing I could say that could help. Girl fights are much more difficult to deal with than boy fights. Girls are slow to forgive, and refuse to just "get over it" like boys do. Their words are more emotionally driven, so they hurt more and last longer.

Boys usually fight physically, and it's hardly ever personal. It's a flare of tempers or a misinterpreted shove.

With girls, it brews and simmers in a steaming cauldron, until it's good and ready to be served. By that time, the stew of vengeance is so heavy that the one dishing it out needs helpers -- other girls who will join in torturing the poor victim. Oh, to go back to junior high knowing what I know now...

Brody the Devil Dog

Yes, our second store opened. Because of annoying delays, we opened late on December 3rd. It was a very busy December at both stores, and the staff at the new store is so new that Brandon had to work long hours to get it all done. One night, I drove out to help him and we didn't get home until about 11 p.m. When we finally got home, exhausted and ready for bed, we found that Brody (the puppy) had opened the door from the laundry room and all the dogs had been OUT WILD IN THE HOUSE!

Talk about disaster! Every single stuffed Christmas decoration was shredded. Even the three-foot Santa that stands by the door! Shredded. Ripped up. Demolished. Broken and chewed up ornaments. Shattered glass from ornaments everywhere. Potpourri strewn about and ground into the carpet, all the pillows off the couches, hair and scratch marks on the couches, three different pee spots, and a big pile of poop in the dining room. It looked like we had been robbed! Even the drawers of the coffee table were pulled out! How does that happen?

The worst thing was that we were both exhausted. Poor Brandon looked like he'd been hit by a truck! So I sent him to bed and started the big clean up. When I was telling my mom, she said, "So, did you call the pound to take Brody back?"

I told Brandon we should change his name to Lucifer. He's so naughty.

I forgot to tell you that under the tree was a package from my friend Cindy. On top of the package was a bag of chocolate ornaments. When the dogs got out, all that was left was the bag and bits of the foil! So guess what I came home to the NEXT day? Diarrhea in the laundry room all over the rug and tile. Yuck. At least neither of them died.

We wanted to go to Prescott for Christmas for a couple of days, but every boarding place we called said they'd been booked for months. I guess we should have thought ahead. We had places for Daisy and Ellie, but I can't really ask anyone to take Brody if I want them to be my friends afterward...

So, that's my life right now. Recovering from busy times at the stores, traffic school today (just as torturous as you might expect), and a naughty puppy ruling my life. Good thing he's cute!

Bazooka Bubble Gum Song

Just taught my class this song today. They LOVE it.

HP7

I just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What a great book! I LOVE LOVE LOVED it! A very satisfying end to a phenomenal series. If you haven't finished it yet, DO NOT READ ON...

Things I loved:
1. Deathly Hallows -- not a place! What a creative and fun story line. I liked how the search for the hallows played against the search for the horcruxes and ended up being the test of character.
2. The reappearance of all the characters! Everyone from every book appeared in this one and they all seemed to get what was coming to them -- good or bad!
3. Neville. He has always bugged me, but in this book, he really stepped up to the plate. His parents would be proud. (See #6 below.)
4. Snape's story. We knew why he was fixated on Harry as James's son, but now the whole storyline with Lily got us thinking.
5. Answers from Dumbledore! I was so mad at him in book 6. Now I know why he did what he did. I especially liked his admission that he was not perfect, but a selfish man who loved getting all the attention. Very interesting.

My questions:
1. What happened to all the teenaged angst that was so prevalent in book 6? Ron loves Hermione and Harry loves Ginny and Joanie loves Chachie, right? There were a couple of mentions of Harry and Ginny, but Ron and Hermione spent the entire book together and didn't act like they were more than friends except for one extremely minor scene in the end(and a couple of compliments in the beginning).
2. How did Neville get the sword of Griffindor? Am I missing some connection between him and the goblin?
3. I find it unbelievable that Harry would say the taboo name of Voldemort, resulting in their capture. No way.
4. Poor Hedwig. Why?
5. No new magic! I was bored with the same old thing each time! If it wasn't Expelliarmus, it was Stupefy! If it wasn't hiding under the cloak, it was using Polyjuice! I have to admit, I wanted a little more creative magic! I don't know how I expected them to know any more than they did in the last book though...they didn't go to school this year!
6. Why didn't Neville get to finish off Beatrix Lestrange? Maybe that would have been unrealistic, but it would have been the greatest revenge.

About the epilogue:
1. I can't decide if I think it's cheesy or not. I love the characters so much that I was happy to read about them in the future. However, it was so contrived, with revelations coming through strained dialogue. Maybe JK just wrote it to avoid having to answer the inevitable interview question: Do Harry and Ginny end up together? How about Ron and Hermione?
2. We know Harry and Ginny have two boys: James and Albus Severus. What is James's middle name? My guess is Sirius. Also, their girl is Lily. What's her middle name?
3. They saved Draco's life! And his mom saved Harry's! I think their long-standing feud would be lessened by the experience (and the healing effects of 19 years). I found Ron's bitterness toward his child hard to believe.

That's all I'm thinking about right now.
Maybe more later.

I did something really stupid...

I got a puppy.
A brand-new puppy.
Not potty-trained.
Does not sleep through the night.
I might as well have a newborn baby!

But look how cute he is!

What's his name? We can't decide between Rocket and Brody. He seems to answer better to Brody.