Your day could be worse.

Erica and I saw this driving by blockbuster the other day!! It was hilarious! There were all these cars pulling over taking pictures. We couldn't quite figure out how it happened. We were just glad it wasn't our car!

Woooo freaking hooooo!!

I just finished my taxes.!!!!!!!!! I just transmitted them to the IRS. I cannot tell you how much it's been stressing me out this year. Usually I do my taxes at the beginning of February. This year is a different story. As you can see from my pathetic posts on my blog, I don't have a lot of time this year. I know it had been a long time between my last posts, but I decided that I could not spend time blogging when I needed to do my taxes. My last post about going out was done under duress at Erica's house. She basically did it for me. Anyway, I'm just so happy and relieved to have finished and to be getting back a decent return.

party like a....

Whoever coined the phrase, "Party like a rock star," had obviously never been out with a bunch of preschool teachers. Last Friday, Erica, an entire gaggle of friends from work, and I enjoyed a night out in P-ville. We met at Hanovers and enjoyed a lovely 80's cover band. Let's just say a good time was had by all.

A big night!!

Who knew these things could be so educational?

I just had to post about this since I was so excited by it. Tonight in the bath tub Ellie and I were playing. She likes to put up a bunch of letters on the wall and ask what it spells. Usually it doesn't spell anything, but I sound out the silly word for her. Tonight she put up some letters and I rearranged them into a word. Then I sounded it out for her. Then I changed 1 letter and she said that she wanted to sound it out. So she did. The I kept making different words and she kept sounding them out!! Really doing it by herself. I was amazed. My little girl read some words on her own tonight for the first time!!!!!!!! I'm really proud and amazed by her and Logan. That's one of the greatest things about parenthood.

And just think that earlier today, I wanted to ring her neck. She and Logan were driving me crazy this afternoon. But it turned out to be a great day after all!

Logan also had a fun night tonight. His cub scout den went on a field trip to the operations center for 911, ems, fire and all that for the city of Austin. Stuart went with him, so I don't know that much about it. But it sounds like it was pretty cool. Here are some pictures of that.

Busy weekend?

We've been having super busy weekends now for a while. Logan's been playing basketball for the past 6 or 7 weeks now, so we have a game every Saturday, then any birthday parties, church Sunday morning and sometimes cub scouts on Sunday afternoon. Not to mention the regular stuff I have to get done every weekend like cleaning and grocery shopping. It's been exhausting.

Stu's dad and Marilyn were coming on Saturday to go see Logan's game so I spent Friday afternoon and Sat. morning cleaning the house. It was a pain, but it's good because if people didn't come to visit occasionally, I wouldn't clean as much or as well. So at least the house was nice and clean to start the weekend. Saturday Logan woke up with a fever. It wasn't bad just like 99.5 or so and it stayed there all day, but he was feeling lousy. He didn't play in his game and we spent most of the weekend at home. That part was nice.

Today I was home with him while he was recovering. He had a sore throat and fever. Maybe strep, but since the stupid doctor didn't do a strep culture we'll never know. At least he's doing better today and will most likely go to school tomorrow.

It was so nice being home today and just having a little extra time to do things around the house and go grocery shopping not on super busy Sunday afternoon like I usually do. Next year I'm planning on only working MWF if possible, so that I have some time during the week to get things done. I'm super excited about that!

I also threw in a couple of pictures from last week. Thursday afternoon it was a hot day I and had let Frank in just to be nice since we were going to go out for about 2 hours for some errands. This is what we came home to . I wanted to kill that dog!! Yes, our trash was SUPER full, but still we didn't deserve this!! YUCK! I had to wear rubber gloves to clean it up! Yet another reason why I won't miss having a dog for a while after he "goes". That may sound harsh to some of you, but I'm exhausted from the last 11 1/2 years of this super stinky, messy dog.

Also, while Grandpa Gary was here Saturday I discovered something. Ellie can tie a bow!! And I didn't teach her. She was wearing a little outfit with a string that you tied in a bow in the back, she likes to tie them in front even though I know they look better in the back. I digress... Anyway, she said, "Mom, I can do it." And I was like OK. All the while thinking to myself yeah, right. I sat there and watched her tie it into a bow!! I was like wow, where did you learn to do that. She said that Logan taught her!! Amazing!!! (She tied this bow too, just so I'd have a picture!)

Pics of our life the last few weeks

Today we had the day off from school. So we went to lunch at Logan's Roadhouse with Erica, Grace and Carter. It was a good restaurant experience. Afterward they came over to play and we walked down the street to our park to play.

Here's Logan "hiding" in the tall grass plants. Do you like his new hat? Cute, huh?

He always climbs up way to high for me. I hope he waits until after our new Aflac accident policy kicks in on March 1st to do any major damage to himself!

So what would it mean to be a big brother if you didn't harass and irritate your little sister. Here's Logan putting Ellie's barbies in the tree.

It actually looked pretty funny to see them hanging there like that!
There's a really sweet cat named Snickers that lives across the street from the park. She's very friendly and likes to be petted.
I guess 4 kids is a little too much for even Snickers to take!! Run Snickers, run!!

Here is a picture of Logan's cub scout pine car derby. If you're unfamiliar with what that is, as I was, it's basically where they give you a block of wood and some wheels for it and you have to cut it out into the shape of a car. We are not wood working people, so after a horribly failed attempt to cut it with a hand saw, we went to the cub masters house and used his band saw. It turned out pretty cool. Logan painted it himself. We also put some decals on it. He didn't place, but he didn't come in last either. Not bad for our first time. :-)

Here is Logan on his basketball team. He is really enjoying it so far. He made 1 basket in each of his last 2 games! Way to go Logan!!

He's the tallest on his team of 1st and 2nd graders, so they always have him do the tip off. Watching their games is quite entertaining as they don't follow all of the same rules as in regular basketball. They do pretty well though. Maybe I'll take some film of his next game so you can all see.

Back in January Logan's cub scout pack was invited to stay aboard the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi. They got to have a tour and actually eat and sleep on the air craft carrier. It was pretty cool. We all got to go on board and have lunch, then just Stuart and Logan went back for the evening and spent the night. They had fun. Here are some pictures from that occasion.

Logan eating chow in the mess hall. (Which they informed us while we were eating was also used as a temporary morgue during WWII when they were bombed- lovely)

The water that morning was so calm on the bay. It was almost eerie. It wasn't moving at all. Ellie's all girl, isn't she?

Ellie with the Lex behind her.

You can see how calm the water was.

Logan and some of the cub scouts from pack 685. Logan's right in the middle bent over wearing a yellow cap.

They have this huge propeller blade (I'm sure that's not what it's called and that it's from one of the engines under the water or something) out front that you can climb on. cool.

Hoped you enjoyed some of our pictures from the last few weeks. I will try to do some blogging now and then. Just don't completely give up on me!!

Blog on hold

I've figured out that some things are going to have to give. This whole working 5 days a week thing is getting the better of me. I feel like I'm chronically running behind. I don't know how people do it. So I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm not giving up on my blog for good, but that it's going to be on hold for a while. I'm not sure that anyone tries to look at it anymore anyway!

Thanks for your patience!