Who needs Schlitterbahn?

Who needs Schlitterbahn (and the ticket prices totalling $140) when you have the water hose? This is what I like to call the "white-trash schlitterbahn". Complete with falling down trampoline net and ripped up pad over the springs (notice the duct tape?). The kids still had fun! We also had water fun with balloons. They got some regular balloons and filled them with water. We discovered at Ellie's birthday that big balloons are much easier to fill than regular water balloons which are tiny and big balloons usually bounce a few times before they pop when you throw them. They were even naming their water balloons and put one in a little bed with a towel (I wish I had taken a picture). It slept in Ellie's room last night and they jumped with it on the trampoline this morning until it popped! The yellow balloon is Irma the one that slept inside last night. Logan named it. Ellie decided it was a boy. Where do they get their imaginations?

That's Irma right before he met with his untimely demise. RIP Irma.

The soccer girl

Ellie has been playing soccer this summer at the Y. You have to sign up like 3 months in advance. When we asked her about playing, she said, "yeah, I'll play soccer!" I think maybe she just wanted to buy the pink soccer shoes and the Hannah Montana soccer ball!

Well the experience has been let's say, challenging. It started out great. We went to practice. She was the biggest kid there. She went out and played with a little encouragement while several other kids cowered in their parents arms. I thought to myself, "Wow this will be great!". Skip ahead to the first game. She goes out on the field for the first few minutes. Then comes back for a water break and she won't get out of the chair for the rest of the game. No amount of cajoling, threats, bribery. Nothing. It was frustrating to say the least.

Since then we have improved- a little. She does go to practice and play most of the time. The games have been harder. She gets freaked out by all the parents standing on the sidelines yelling. Or that's her excuse at least.

Today was hard. She missed last week's game and this week's practice while we were on vacation, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it. Plus we were late this morning and last night she wouldn't go to sleep, so she's probably tired. That's what I do... I analyze everything and try to figure out why. Why are they acting so terrible? I make excuses for bad behavior A LOT. I always try to relate bad behavior to sleep or food. There's a saying I heard once, "Feed them before they're hungry and sleep them before they're tired." I would add "too" in front of the hungry and tired. I've definitely found this to be excellent advice. Especially on younger kids. Logan can recover from lack of sleep or hunger much better than Ellie. I've decided though that sometimes they're just little assholes. Sorry if that sounds harsh to some of you, but it's how I feel after 8 years of parenting. I digress from this little rant.

Back to today. We got there and she would not go play. At all. I begged, I pleaded, I spanked her in the car. I finally spotted the sno-cone truck parked by the field. Bribery, what can I tell you, it works (sometimes at least!).

Here are some pictures of her from today. The one above is her in the chair where she would have liked to remain the entire time. For such a little toot, she sure looks cute. And below is the 1 minute she played. Baby steps.

My little photographer

Here's what happens when your 5 year old steals your camera for a few minutes! This happened on vacation.

I don't know, I think she's got talent. Maybe I should look into some kind of classes or something? :-)

Our Galveston Vacation

We had an awesome time in Galveston. Thanks to Erica and Ray for getting the beach houses!

For some reason I didn't take a lot of pics of the house. It was beautiful!

We all ate together at our house since it had a much larger kitchen. The kids ate at the big bar. It was perfect.

We mostly just hung around the awesome beach houses and went to the beach. The houses were located just south of Galveston right across the San Luis pass. The beach there was awesome. Hardly any people, nice sand and big waves. You could walk out in the water quite a ways without it getting deep. It was great for us and the kids to play in.

The first night we went to the beach there was this mysterious stuff on the shore that Ray was calling "sea foam". It was thick and frothy like the top of a cappuccino. For some reason the kids loved putting it all over themselves, especially Logan. Gross!

The girls got in on the act too.

On Saturday we decided to go crabbing which I've never done before. It was a lot of fun though. I got into it a lot more than I thought I would. We caught about a dozen blue crabs that were big enough to eat and lots of hermit crabs (which we threw back because I've already been down that road!)

Grandma Cindy came up on Saturday and spent the day and night with us. We had a great time with her and hope she had fun too!

Below the kids and Grandma are looking into the cooler with the crabs in it!

We caught one stone crab with no pinchers so the kids were able to hold it before we threw it back.

My kids really love seafood like crawfish and shrimp, so they were pretty excited about eating the crabs. The meat was sweet and delicious!

This is the golf cart we drove around on. It was a great way to get to and from the beach!
On Friday we decided to drive into Galveston for lunch. It was quite a ride as you can see!

It was a great vacation and we can't wait to go back!

Hallelujah!

My new computer! It just came today. I wanted to kiss the Fedex guy when he delivered it! It's even better than I could have hoped for (it's like buttah). Right now it's residing on my kitchen counter until I get a more permanent place for it. The office is just too far away from everything.

Hopefully you'll be hearing more from me now! Now I have no more excuses, except that my internet connection still stinks. Hopefully we'll be resolving that soon too!