Maggie's ALMOST 9!

Yes...it's hard to believe. Our little Maggie is almost nine years old. We have a birthday party planned at the club pool on Saturday. I thought I would journal now because the next couple days are going to be kind of crazy. Tomorrow morning Andrew has his last swim lesson and then I need to take all the kids for haircuts. Why you ask?

I left Christine to babysit this morning while I ran to the library and this was what they did to Andrew while I was gone. When your children are putting pony tails on the top of their brother's head it is time for a haircut! He still had it in when I came home, but did not want to wear it that way to the pool.

Then, tomorrow evening I am taking the girls to see "High School Musical" the play. We are going with Girls Scouts. It is up at ASU. The girls are excited and it should be a good play.

Saturday morning we have to rise and shine early for a home (yeah! No driving 30 miles) swim meet. The swim meet is at 7AM. I am hoping we are finished by 11, because Maggie's party starts at 12 at the pool. I would like to be able to go home in between.

Steve is going to get the cake sometime before the party-a flip flop cake from Target. Minor problem about treat bags-I ordered a bunch of stuff online and it hasn't come yet. Dilemma time-do I wait and hope it comes tomorrow? Or buy stuff tonight? I'll have to see what I can find tonight and see how lucky I am feeling about the box coming tomorrow. Maggie also wants me to organize some games-swimming and water slides are not enough-so I need to get some supplies for those. Luckily, my Family Fun magazine came two days ago and there was a neat game you could play in the pool.

First mini-monsoon last night. You probably will not be able to guess what this picture is. I was sitting with Andrew as the wind was picking up and trying to blow down our trees.

I noticed this thing sticking out of our sun face on the back patio. My first thought was that Andrew somehow was lucky enough to throw a toy and get it stuck perfectly in the eye. On further examination I realized it was a bird! It was staying safe from the storm by hiding out on our patio. I even opened the door to take the picture and it did not move. It stayed there for a long time. Once the wind stopped, I tried to keep one eye on the sun face to see what kind of bird it was, but I missed it flying away. I guess we will always have a sign that a monsoon is on it's way! Although, one is coming again and I don't think there is a bird in there right now.

Summer Fun

We have been staying cool swimming in the pool and hanging out in the air conditioning!

Just a few pics of our crazy kids.

Maggie in the pool for back stroke. Christine between events.

We have a meet tomorrow morning-which means leaving the house by 6AM! I'm not sure if I really thought this through long enough when we decided the girls should do swim team again. Last week we just put Andrew in the car with his pjs on and changed him into clothes when we got to the meet. Although, one of the dads at the meet said it's pay back for all the times they woke us up early-good point! (But shouldn't we be taking advantage of those days that they actually do sleep in...)

We have had a very busy week. Maggie had swim team this week, followed by tennis lessons. Then I had to get Andrew up to the club for swim lessons-trying to fix Andrew's funky way of swimming. It gets him where he wants to go, but it's not exactly correct. There was a home swim meet Tuesday night. And one last thing-soccer clinics Wednesday and Thursday evening. I was hoping they would want to bail out of the soccer clinics, but no such luck. It was amazingly hot and they started at 6 PM when the sun was still shining. I had Maggie stand outside before we left to make sure that she REALLY wanted to go. I would have picked staying inside and watching some tivoed episode of "Hannah Montana." No such luck! I was sweating sitting in the shade watching! Andrew participated in the clinic Thursday. He had fun, but I'm still thinking I'm not going to sign him up. I think he's a little young for organized sports and I run around enough already.

Even though it is a little hectic, I'm glad there is something for them to do. We have also had our days where we stay in the house for most of the day and watch TV. Or they watch TV-our DVR has not exactly worked out as we planned. We now get to watch "Jimmy Neutron", "Hannah Montana", "Drake and Josh"...(you get the picture) 24/7. I have got some reading in. I read "The Kite Runner" this week on a recommendation from someone. It was a really good book-it makes you appreciate the fact that we were lucky enough to be born in the US. I also read "Number the Stars". It's a kid's book, but I had never read it before.

We are probably going to have to find a few more indoor activities. Last summer we headed to Ohio for most of July. This year we are going to be stuck in the heat. I will take it over the snow any day!

That's my girl!

Just had to journal about Maggie's comments. Steve was recently out back moving our big umbrella by the pool. Maggie went outside when he was doing it....she looked at him and asked him "Does Mommy know you're doing that?" Steve just had to laugh!

Everyday Stuff

Just a regular day here today. We all got up pretty early-the sun comes up so dang early you don't really have a choice! Girls headed off to 6:30 swim practice and then I brought Andrew to tennis at 7:30. The kids made the collective decision that they did not want to go to the club pool today, so we are hanging out at home-initially they wanted to go to the store and buy more webkins. That was quickly vetoed. One of Maggie's friends just called and needs to get out of the house, so we will soon have company. Her dad is doing some construction stuff in their house and I have a feeling she was getting in the way.
I was just playing with my playlist and added some songs-very much a mix of all kinds of music. You can stop the music from playing altogether or switch to another song.
We went to a summer movie yesterday morning. (Kid movies that were out a while ago and they only charge $2 to get in or $7 for the whole summer.) Surf's up. Cute movie. We didn't get the passes for the whole summer this year. Almost all of the movies we already own, so we just paid to get in yesterday. It is a cute rental if you haven't seen it yet.

Blankie

Just how important is Andrew's blankie? We went to see "Kung Fu Panda" today-very cute movie. Jack Black is so funny, even if you can only hear him. About half-way through the movie, Andrew whispers to me "Did we bring my blankie?" Of course I answer no. So he says "I'm ready to go home. Can we leave?" I could not believe it. We stayed and he did fine, but I could not believe that he wanted to leave because we didn't have his blankie.

To his defense, it was a long day for Andrew. I'm sure there will be many more like this though-he is outnumbered forever. We left the house around 10:30 or 11:00 for a 2:30 movie. The girls wanted to do some shopping and we have birthday parties this weekend that we needed gifts for. So, he had to suffer through shoe shopping, lunch and then more shopping before the movie. Poor boy...no wonder he asks for a brother!

$72.49

That was the cost to fill up my van yesterday. Yikes! I wanted to cry. One of my friends who recently moved further out than we are, said when gas gets up to $5 she's not taking her kids to preschool. We are riding our bikes everywhere possible. Our temperatures are back to normal (We were blessed with a cool May.), so we can only ride in the morning and evening.

I had to resort to bribery yesterday to get Andrew in the bike trailer. Since he has been riding a two-wheeler we haven't used the bike trailer at all. We needed to ride to the club-morning swim team has started and Maggie is also taking tennis lessons. I have been letting him ride himself, but with the start of swim team there is too much traffic at the club. There is a section where there is no sidewalk and with all the cars I feel better with Andrew in the trailer.

Another major expense yesterday was the $122 bill from the Roto Rooter man. He removed the Batman toothbrush from the kid's bathroom toilet. Any guesses how it got there? The photo at the top just might be the culprit.

School is out for our summer break-eight short weeks! We definitely like our "modified" school year. Eight weeks is long enough for a summer break and we love our long fall and spring breaks. We are going to be busy with swim team, swim lessons for Andrew, tennis lessons, scrapbooking, basketball camp, soccer camp....phew! I'm tired already! And that's not even everything.

Because we are not getting back to Ohio this summer, Steve planned a 4-night Mexico trip. It's to a beach that all Arizonians tend to head to. Rocky Point, Mexico or Puerto Penasco if you speak Spanish. We do have to bring our own water-you can't drink the water there. We have heard the beach is wonderful. Not rough because you're not on the Pacific Ocean. It's on the Sea of Cortez. I've never been to Mexico, so it will be an adventure. It is a shorter drive than going to San Fran or Disney, so I am happy about that!