Water Camera

I had a water camera that I used this summer to take pics while we went tubing and at Sea World, and I finally got the pictures developed! It was funny, I had found a bunch of old disposable cameras and ended up getting about 10 developed at once and it was so funny to see what was on those cameras! Riley at camp when he was 7, and he accidentally got someone elses camera about halfway through camp, so we have a bunch of pictures of some older girls that we don't know!

Here are some from tubing (with Trista, Chris, Kenzie, Gary, Joe, Mark and Tristan!):





And from Sea World (with Tina, Bennie and the kids):

First Day of School

Today was the kids' first day of school! They are both going to a one day school this year. Riley goes to a middle school where he learns American History, Life Science, and electives Geocaching, Cartooning, Mythbusters and Photography. Regan's is all specials, art, PE, music, speech and Spanish.

They both loved their schools! Riley's has a boy's club that meets a couple times a month and he's already met a lot of the boys from school and Regan's school has a monthly park day, so they are both happy to be out making new friends again.

End of Summer

It's been pretty boring around here lately. I thought I would finally tackle the carpet, and started ripping out one hallway and realized the padding had been very heavily glued down, and the tack strips weren't coming up without some serious tools, so I abandoned my pursuit of wood floors for a bit. At least until I get better tools, and my big strong man is home from work to help!

And then we had to put the truck in the shop. The rear a/c hadn't been working in a while (it would click whenever we turned it on) so we had just been running the front a/c on super high, until that started clicking, anyway, with 100+ degree temps this time of year, the kids were sweating, and then we were sweating, it was time to get it fixed, but required me to be stuck at home without wheels for almost a week! Which if you know me, you know that's like a death sentence!

So we've been stuck at home, trying to organize and get ready for school to start back. I spent the last couple of weeks ordering curriculum and now that it's all in, and piled on top of the dining room table (I mean, the home school desk!) it's time to sort through and get it all ready to go on Monday (wow, summer is over already!).

And here's the Mont-ster, he has decided he wants to be an outside cat, but we haven't come to that conclusion yet. He just likes to sit and stare outside, until a door opens and he tries to kill you by running right around your feet to try to get out. He's so cute though.


And here's Regan at a birthday party recently, she had fun sliding down the water slide. She asked me on the way home if I thought she was too young for a boyfriend. I was like uh, why? And then she asks how I knew that dad and I would get married. Ack, a little serious for 8 years old! But apparently there was some boy rocking a Spongebob bathing suit that she thought she could see a bright future with. I'm not ready for that!


So, that's the update on our end. Not a lot going on, just getting ready to get back to our routine and get some order in this house!

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Regan's Video

Forgot to post this last week, but this is Regan on the trampoline at the mall! She did great, and loved it, keeps wanting me to take her back there.

Suncrest Farm

It's been a pretty laid back week for Riley and me, we just stayed home, ran errands, and got stuff done to get ready for school. But Regan spent the week at Suncrest Farm! Since it never worked out to have her birthday party over the summer, she decided she would take a week of horse camp instead of a party. And the great thing was, 2 of her Girl Scout friends were going the same week, so she had buddies there.

And she had a great time! She came home every day exhausted and full of good stories. She got to "adopt" her favorite horse, Louie for the week, she took care of him, brushed him, fed him, saddled him, and rode him all week. One day they learned about the mounted police, one day they learned about vets, and one day they took the horses to the lake and got to swim with them. That was her favorite day!

So this is the official end of summer for us. I'm waiting on a few last curriculum orders and as soon as they get here, we will be back to the daily grind!

Riley, Camp and The Oasis

With Regan at camp, it was time for some boy time! I took Riley to see Despicable Me, we spent one day at Gattiland, and then on Friday night, we took Riley to the Oasis. We had a gift certificate that we won at NYOS almost 3 years ago and never used. I wasn't sure it would still be valid, but it was, so we ended up having a nice, cheap dinner at one of the hottest places in Austin! It was hot too! But nice sitting on the deck and watching the sunset.

We had our consultation with the lady that did Regan's assessment and found out that Regan has mild dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia. The good news is that with tutoring and some specialized work in a few areas, she will not have to struggle with this forever. She just needs some extra help right now to learn how to deal with these issues. So we will be starting tutoring soon, and I'm looking forward to learning exactly how to be able to teach her this year.

On Saturday, Regan came back from camp, both kids had a great time, I have gotten great reports about both of them, and I'm so happy they had the opportunity to go and have such a great time!

Oh, and Regan's cheer this year (Sunflower Girls was their cabin name):
Who Rules? God Rules!
What Rocks? Camp Rocks!
Sunflower Girls, Sunflower Girls,
Can't be stopped! Can't be stopped!
(But she liked the Pink Power Puffs cheer better!)
P-I-N-K Praise high!
P-I-N-K Praise low!
Pink Power PUFFS!

Off to Camp!

Sent from my G1 phone

Girl Days!

While Riley was away at camp, Regan was really wanting to spend some quality girl time with me. I am only too happy to oblige! She had an interview first thing Monday morning with a one day school that she will be going to next year. We were both apprehensive about it, until we met 2 of the teachers, they were both super nice and they liked Regan immediately (what's not to like, right?) And she loved them because they had dogs (Whippets) that she thought were totally cool! So she will be going every Wednesday for "specials" which are art, music, speech, PE, Spanish, recess, and character building. She's very excited to make new friends and be back in a "school" type of environment, and this is a good compromise!

Riley will also be going to a Wednesday one day school, a different one, his is only for middle school, he will learn American History, Earth Science, Cartooning, MythBusters, Geocaching, and will help produce (or star in) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Back to girl time...after our interview, which was all the way in Leander, I decided to stop by my mom's grave since I hadn't been there in a long time, and Regan has often asked to see it. I know it's somewhat morbid, but she wanted her picture taken by her Nana.


Then we went to Lakeline Mall, again, we aren't that way very often anymore, and Regan tells me all the time she is tired of going to the "Outlet Mall" which is right by our house, she wants to go to the "Inlet Mall"! So we went to the Inlet Mall. She got to build a new best friend at Build A Bear. Try as I might to get her to pick out a cute, girly pink frilly bear and outfit, we usually end up with a sled dog, or like this time, a blue peace bear (?) but it's what she wanted! She named it Ali, after her cousin.


Then she wanted to ride the carousel, which I thought was a little young for her, but she just couldn't pass up a chance to ride a giraffe! His name was Checkers, and once she was on and it went a blazing .5 MPH, I think she realized it wasn't as fun as it originally looked.


And then she decided she wanted to walk the mall, and look at just about every shop. I was surprised because she didn't want to buy anything. Except a few dresses, but she asked if they were on sale first, and when I said no, she just put them right back! I couldn't believe we walked the entire mall and only bought a bear, and an ice cream!

And then of course, she sees the trampoline. She's always wanted to do it, Riley has done it before, but she's never had a chance, and please mom, oh please can I do it?! What could I say?! It was girl day, and she was having so much fun, so of course I let her! She had so much fun too. She jumped so high, tried to do some flips but couldn't quite get it. She told me afterward that it was her most favorite day ever!


Then on Tuesday I took her to see Ramona and Beezus, which she loved, and then we went to get her hair cut. It's much shorter, mainly since we swim a lot and she hates brushing all the tangles out, I thought this might be a lot easier. She loved it and said she looks like Ramona now! It's very cute, and we had a very fun couple of days together.

Happy Birthday Papa!

We went to Iron Cactus for brunch to celebrate Dave's birthday with the family. Riley was about to head off to camp, so he was happy to spend time with everyone before he had to leave. It was a really good brunch buffet too!

Amorphophallus Titanum

We heard about this on the news, and thought wouldn't this be a great trip, run down to Houston to see and smell this awesome flower! Well, it just so happened to be blooming while we had nothing on our calendar, which in itself is rare these days, so I called my cousin to see if they wanted to see it too, and after a few hundred phone calls, we got it settled, packed our bags and hit the road! Nothing like spontaneity!

We got in Friday and let the kids stay up playing most of the night, and left first thing Saturday morning for the museum. We've been there before, it's one of our favorite places to go in Houston, but it's been a while. On the way there, a car nearly hit me, but wrecked into the guard rail, so Benny and David pulled over to help and wait for the police, so Tina and I went ahead and picked up our tickets.

Then I was surprised because we had no line really to get in. The news showed people waiting in line for hours and we pretty much walked right up. When we left though, there was a HUGE line, with the next available time to see Lois the next morning! So we must have just gotten there at a rare, slow time.

And she was magnificent! She wasn't as smelly as I expected, but when you got close, you could certainly get a whiff, and when you stood on the opposite side of here, the air flow would just blow the stench to you. It was bad. The kids hated it and left pretty quick. Benny said it just smelled like the Houston morgue, but to me it smelled like hamburger meat that had been left out too long. Either way, not a smell you expect from such a big and beautiful flower!

Then we spent some time in the butterfly area, watching all the beautiful butterflies and the kids tried to get them to land on them, but they couldn't stay still long enough for that to happen. Then we went to a cute little diner for lunch that had some really incredible food and milkshakes, and then hit the road for home. It was a quick, whirlwind trip, but it was a lot of fun, and something I'm glad we got to experience.

Christmas in July

We volunteered to help out with Christmas in July, where our church held Christmas parties around town, in a couple of apartment complexes, and the Boys and Girls Club. We donated gifts, and sugar cookies, they had Santa show up, all the kids got to unwrap a bunch of presents and decorate Christmas cookies. It was a lot of fun! Riley made a triple decker cookie concoction that he ate (after all the summer interns started chanting at him 'EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT') and then when we left, he was like, "Mom, my stomach hurts!" No duh! And Regan wrapped herself up in leftover bows and ribbon.

But, they had fun, and I am glad they are learning that it's not all about getting, and that it's fun to serve!

New Mask Smell

Apparently, she doesn't like that new mask smell!

Blue Hole

It was time to revisit the scene of the crime. On July 4th, whatever year I was 11 (1982 or so) I went to the Blue Hole in Georgetown with my cousins and dove in and hit my head on a rock and cracked my head open. I had to have several stitches, and vowed NEVER to return to the Blue Hole. Until today...

We went with some of our home school friends today, and while there are signs posted all over that it is "unlawful" to jump from the cliffs, that didn't stop anyone from doing it. Well, my adventure seeking kids wouldn't be held back, if there was cliff jumping to do, they wanted to do it!

There are a bunch of cliffs, Regan stuck to the smaller one, Riley headed (of course) right off to the biggest one. He got a little nervous once he got up there, and then when he did finally jump, he loved it and jumped several times. I video taped his last jump, where the force of the water nearly took his toenail off. It's hanging by a thread anyway, and it's nasty.

It was fun, I love that my kids aren't scared of anything! They had a blast, and I had fun, but was kind of freaking out over the dirty water. Everything is slippery and slimy and there's mud and silt and fish and it was kind of gross for me. I missed our pool, but was glad we went.

Chuck E Cheese

They DO love each other! Funny though, when we checked out, the kid says, "Thanks and have a magical day!" Riley looks at me and goes, "Really? Who says that? What a dork!"

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