Local cavern visit

Well this week we are getting ready for school and doing things that I have wanted to do with the kids the entire summer. One of our trips was to go to a local Cavern where we went into a cave system, mined for gems and was attacked by local donkey's. We had a blast. Nathan was a little weary of entering the caves and kept turning around and going back up the stairs. I had to carry him down the stairs and once he was in it he was fine. You are not suppose to touch the wall since it stalls or kind of destroys the natural formation process of the caves but that is hard to do with a 2 year old. But he managed to not get his greasy, oily hands on too many walls or formations. The kids loved mining for gems. That was their favorite part. The least favorite part but the most talked about part of the trip was having two donkeys and one goat want to aggressively eat our picnic lunch. The kids were so mad and screaming at the animals that we had to move our picnic to the back of our car. We noticed after we were eating that feeding the animals the food that the caverns provided was foreshadowing into the aggressiveness of these animals at the sight and smell of food. The poor kids trying to feed the animals tenderly from their hands turned into the animal grabbing the bag of food out of the child's hand and running off with it. I later heard the lady at the desk tell one person who bought the food to not let the animals get the bags or they would eat the bags. I was thinking in my head, "good luck with that". So anyway, the animals were the talk of the trip but I think that Julianne really enjoyed the caves and she was in the front of the line listening to the lady talk about the history of the caves.








Look at this goat's pupils. They are square. It was really interesting and wired to look at them.


I put the girls in Jail for a time out!! Just kidding.



We received the girls school teacher names in the mail this weekend and they both have the teacher that they wanted. Julianne really wanted her teacher and she is very happy with that except all of her close friends are not in her class. There are a few other acquaintances in her class that we are aware of and her next door neighbor but that is it. So it will be interesting to see how she does the first day of school. Additionally it will be interesting to see what friends she sticks with over the coarse of the year. She has three really good friends of which two of them were in her Kindergarten class so this will be a new start for her. I hope she stays friends with her existing friends since they are great girls, but I know she will meet new people. Mallory got Julianne's old Kindergarten teacher so I am excited about that. She is a pretty laid back teacher with four kids so she understands kids. Mallory's teacher's daughter is actually in Julianne's class this year and it just so happens that they have the same birthday. So that will be interesting also.

Other things we have been enjoying are playing in the pool. The kids are enjoying it and I actually got into it the other day in order to clean the slippery bottom. So it was fun and it has warmed up considerably since the first few weeks we installed it.




Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Nathan saying "I want to bite you" after I told him I wanted to kiss him.
-Nathan sleeping with his sword every night since my friend gave it to him.
-Beginning school soon. We have enjoyed our summer but some structure will be nice.

My new spike mat

Well my spike mat, aka nail mat or acupressure mat, arrived today. Yeah. I have been waiting for it for over a week. I just used it and it hurt for the first 5 minutes and then it did not hurt as much. I rested on it for a little more than 10 minutes and it felt really good to get off of it. I did not feel extra relaxed but I also was not really mediating or in a mediative state. The kids were around and wanting to try it so it was not the correct time to do it but I had to give it a try regardless of the chaotic state of the house. Right now my back is still a little tingly and my head is a little light headed so I don't know if it is from that or just a coincidence. So we will see. Right now Mallory has been lying on it for almost 20 minutes. Granted she has a shirt on with it which makes a big difference so we will see how she feels afterwards. I am excited about it and I hope it becomes a regular part of relaxing. I am really excited for D to try it to see what he thinks.

We got to watch cousin Lexee for the last time on Monday. My brother and SIL are moving to Colorado this week and we were sad to see them leave. Lexee takes after her older cousin of being very sad when her mother or father are not holding her. So she cried for about 5-10 minutes and then got on the floor and played with the kids. She did great. The dogs loved her and tried to keep licking her but the kids shooed them away. She ended up having a good time and she looks just like my brother. She has the same expressions and relaxed look to her so it was fun to see that. We are definatly gong to miss her, uncle B and Aunt C since we saw them on a regular basis. I am sure they will have a good time in their new house and environment.

Tucker really wanted to lick Lexee but she was not too sure of it.

Mallory was trying to fan Lexee

She definitely had a lot of action going on around her.

The entire cousin gang.

Julianne took good care of Lexee and acted like she was her baby.

Lexee and Mel stare down.

I think Mel won.

I think this is confused and preplexed look to Lexee. I don't know if it was all the activity or she was thinking about her parents. Too cute.

We went to the local Goodwill store to see if there were any good finds. We bought several outfits and a light for 43 dollars. The light for Julianne's desk was actually 7 dollars and the rest were clothes. I bought two shirts for myself and Nathan got one pair of shorts. The rest were the girls clothes for this fall. We got some really cute outfits from all the brand name stores.


This was the girls favorite outfits. Julianne shorts are very cute and so is Mallory's shirt.

We bought new TV room furniture a couple weeks ago and D bought a new chair for our desk. So we are going to move all the furniture from the TV room down into the basement and then get rid of our nasty smelly 10 year old couch from the basement. So it will be nice to be rid of that couch since it just stinks and it is ripped and it takes up a lot of space in the basement. So the kids had fun with the old computer chair.




Daddy lovin'.

My CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, buddy was out of town this week so I took the entire share. This is what I recieved: 20 ears of corn, 4 zucchini, 4 squash, 2 banana peppers, 2 spicy peppers, 2 red hot peppers, 4 eggplant, a bag of potatoes, 2 pints of blackberries, 10 peaches, 8 tomatoes, 1 pint of cherry tomatoe, 1 large bag of green beans, one head of cabbage, 2 green peppers and I think it was it. Anyway, it was a lot of food. I have been pretty good at using it. We have had several pasta dishes with the zucchini and squash. I made zucchini bread yesterday. Last weekend we had a few family gatherings which I made green bean dishes and used my tomotoes. I think I will freeze the green beans. I gave away the cabbage, some ears of corn, and the eggplant. We love the peaches and we have already eaten all the blackberries. So I think I have done a good job of using all the produce. We really do love getting all these different veggies. Like I said before I tend use the same veggies and dishes over and over again so this has been nice to make different dishes using different ingredients and to use things in season.


Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-my new spike mat
-Nathan saying he looks beautiful when he puts in his "soccerr outfit".
-some loving time with Nathan
-Seeing how the girls made a pretend village from all the toys around the house. The village is located in our playroom and contains cars, Little People, Noah's Ark, two car garages, and some matchbox cars.

Not much going on

Well the last week has been somewhat busy for me and kind of relaxed for the kids. About a month ago my neighbor mentioned that I should run for city council. There are currently four seats up this election and she was ready for some new leadership and thought I would be good with my background and commitment to the community. I briefly thought about it and did not really consider it. Well she mentioned it again and said that she would get the forms for me and kind of sponsor me if I was more interested in doing it. Well she got me thinking again and I kind of thought more about it and thought, "Hey what the heck". Life is short and I would be putting myself out there for a possible defeat but I was up for the new experience and the new challenge. So on Saturday I started getting signatures and started talking to neighbors and they were happy to see someone from the neighborhood going after it. I gave the petitions to some of my friends who also live in the same city and they were getting signatures for me. So getting the 50 signatures I needed to get onto the ballot was pretty easy. My other neighbor who is very political and who was very involved locally in the Obama campaign said she would help me out. My good friend from college who used to work on the Hill in DC said that she would help me also. So from the campaigning perspective I was set. This was also my greatest worry was the campaigning. I am not really into saying "You should vote for me because....". It is not really my style. I would rather be appointed to a board based on my experience and desire to be on it. So I thought that I could handle it for a few months in order to get elected. I know that I could be a good councilwoman. I love getting the community's ideas and wants and forwarding those onto the city officials and making policy or decisions based on those needs and wants. Additionally I have a lot of experience in local governments and I know the processes and procedures in order to get things though the pipeline so I was confident in that aspect. I was just not really comfortable with the campaigning.

On Saturday night my neighbor brought over a book on how to win a local election. I read about 100 pages and started freaking out. The petitions had to be signed a certain way or they would not be counted. The circulator getting petitions signed for me had to do it in a certain way or they would also not be counted. I had to have a treasurer. So there were a lot of things I had not even thought of because I had not really researched this decision very well. So I keep reading more and I kept thinking that I am not ready for this yet. I am a planner and I like to know what I am getting into and this could have been more that I bargained. I know that we could have done a good job and possibly won but I was not really mentally prepared. So I think I am going to wait until maybe another election to see if I am still interested and in the meantime I can read up more on the city's happenings and see how I can get involved in other ways.

So I feel better knowing that I have made a decision and now I can concentrate on other things. I am starting some consultant work for a local company. I am working on a sustainability plan for the main office. This will entail looking at their current recycling policies, waste management, packaging and paper usage, electrical usage and other environmental issues that may come up. I will make recommendations as to what they can improve on and outline cost considerations and implementation timeline and strategies for these recommendations. So I am suppose to start September first so I am also trying to line up a babysitter for one day since D will be taking one day off to watch the kids the other day that I am gone. So we will see how it goes. I have already been in contact with one potential babysitter so I just have to interview her and see how it goes.

So that is what has been going on since I last posted. The kids are doing well. They are finishing up their bridge books and hopefully they will finish with their summer reading program before the 8th so that they can claim their last big prize. Nathan had another asthma attack last week. After his nap on Wednesday he woke up with a barking cough. He kept doing it so I ended up giving him a treatment because I knew that it had helped the last time he had it. I could also tell that it was in his esophagus and not his lungs. Earlier in the day he had a runny nose so I knew that something was coming. He was better on Thursday morning but after his nap woke up and was still barking and so I gave him another treatment. So this time I was trying to be more proactive with his breathing treatments than I have in the past. Then a couple hours later he started breathing a lot harder and actually spent one to two hours laying on the floor of our playroom. He was not crying or upset I think he was just relaxing. He also had a fever of 101.5. Before bed I gave him another treatment and then he went to bed still breathing hard. I tried to sleep with him when it was my time to sleep since he was still breathing hard but that did not work too well since he was really hot and kept moving and getting made at me. In the morning he was not hot and he was not breathing rapidly he was just coughing a lot and a more mucus cough versus his dry cough he had a few days earlier. He has gotten all the junk out of his lungs and is back to being his crazy self. This episode started a little differently than the others with the barky cough so I have resigned to the fact and they are not similar and there will not be a predictable pattern to his asthma. What is consistent is when the labored breathing occurs it comes on kind of sudden, like within an hour he goes from being fine to breathing rapidly, however, I know that it is probably coming since he usually has a mild fever and has had some kind of cough and/or runny nose before this. Additionally, the labored breathing usually occurs for 8-12 hours. Then after that he is very mucus and coughs a lot. This is still the pattern even if I give him regular treatments or just treat him when he is breathing hard. Giving the treatments more often before he gets into his labored breathing pattern may help with the after mucus part, like the amount of days after he is coughing for, but I am not confident on that either.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Great neighbors
-Getting my toenails polished with a friend
-Celebrating by friends son's birthday with him and our family

Our waterpark adventure

Last weekend we went to a local water park, Great Wolf Lodge, for two fun filled days. The room was perfect for the kids with a separate bunk bed/day bed for the kids and our bed on the other side of the wall. The park was perfect for Julianne. She was pretty independent and went on most of the rides by herself. The water was not any deeper than 4 feet so it was perfect for her. Mallory was able to enjoy most of the rides with D or myself. Nathan had fun in the wave pool and the outdoor area. They all went to story time and the local show before bedtime. Nathan did not take a nap and did not sleep very well with the girls but he did alright for not sleeping like he usually does. I was glad to get back and to have the kids back in their beds and their regular routines.

This is Nathan at the outdoor part. He loved getting into the water and quickly coming out to look at his footprints.



Nathan at the indoor wave pool. He loved the water squirting up.

He also loved the waves.

So did Mallory.


Julianne loved the water. She was a little water logged kid after our full day there. She is the only one in the family that can curl her tongue.

Nathan loved turning all the water spouts on and off.

Last week I was tired of the kids asking me when we were going to the pool so I bought a pool. I did not buy a baby pool I bought a real pool. It is 12 feet wide and at least 2 feet deep. So it took hours to fill up and it is staying until the end of summer. Our grass will die underneath it but the kids are loving it. It is nice because the girls can play in it while I am in the kitchen. Nathan is not too thrilled with it but that is not too unusual.

My good friend got a new puppy last weekend and he is adorable. He is only about a month old and is so cute. The boys like him and kept wanting to give him a "piggyback ride".


Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Having a great safe vacation.
-Seeing Julianne becoming more comfortable with the water.
-Mallory trying new advertious things
-Nathan getting back to his sleep schedule
-coming home

Belated one year anniversary

Well I was thinking about this today since someone asked me how long I have been practicing yoga and I told him that it was a about a year. I said that because I thought that it was probably about this time last year that I started this blog. I just looked back and it was July 12 that I started writing in a blog. I moved my blog over from my old blog server but that was when I started blogging in general. So that is crazy. I guess I have officially made it a habit to write my memories down since it takes a few months for one to repetitively do something for it to become a habit. So I am proud that I have continued with this tradition since it is a great way to capture my families memories and how I felt and reacted to certain situations that 10 and 20 years from now I will have forgotten. So happy belated anniversary to my blog.

I guess I have been practicing yoga for more than a year. From looking back at my blog entries, I was doing yoga once a week when we moved here and I would say that for the past year I have been doing it at least twice a week. So it has been two years since I have been doing yoga at least once a year. I remember my old yoga days when I could not even get into the poses and I was so stiff and uncomfortable in most of them. Now it is nice to be able to move freely into all of them and even push my flexibility to go beyond the pose. I had a great practice on Tuesday with a class that I do not go to very often. She teaches in the morning and extends her class to 70 minutes. So she had a long savasana (about 5-10 minutes) and I really got into the stillness and meditative state that savasana, when practiced correctly, allows you to. Sometimes it is hard to really meditate when I am thinking about picking up the kids or what we are going to do today but I guess I was really in the concentrating mode and my head and mind felt really tingly. My arms and legs felt really heavy and I really did not want it to end. I did not have a hard time concentrating on my breath and it was very easy to push thoughts out of my mind. I wish this meditative state came more easily to me but I will appreciate the times that it does come and remember those good times. Mediation/complete relaxation is also a learned and practiced state where it takes years to really master these skills. So I guess it will come.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-being able to capture my memories in a form that I enjoy
-keeping up with my blog
-being able to catch up with friends by reading their blogs and knowing what is going on in their life.
-cool comfortable weather. We have not used our air conditioning for the past week.

One step closer

D recived his test results back for his lisencure exam and he passed. We are so pleased and I knew that he would pass. When has he ever failed a test? So I was confident and he was unsure. I am so happy and proud of him for getting one step closer to his goal. He did an awsome job of studying for his test and not stressing himself out while still being a great father and husband. I guess when you are getting your Ph.D with a family you learn how to balance all those responsiblities. The last phase is for him to do his oral exam which according to him is not too hard. So that is all on that front

We had a great weekend. The weather was cool and perfect. We ended with week with Mallory graduating from Safety Town and Julianne finishing art camp with an art show. Mallory loved safety town and she still recits safety phrases that she learned from her two week camp. Julianne's art camp exceeded my expectations. She did an art camp last year and they made foam sticky pictures, colored and did other elementary art activities. This camp was different. It was put on by the local art college and they made masks, watercolor art, sketches and other art forms I have never even heard of. So we will definatly be doing that camp again next year.


Mallory hugging the policewoman in charge of the program.


This is a morphed animal. Can you guess which two. It is a bee and a turtle.


This is one of my favorite pictures of Nathan. I love his eyebrow. He was in a mood at Julianne's art show and was not very happy.

He became happier when he got his cookie.

Since Mallory was at safety town a lot the past few weeks Julianne and Nathan have had extra time to play togethoer. They are snuggling on the couch watching TV in this picture.
Friday evening was also exciting becasue the ice cream truck came to visit us. The kids got snow cones and were thrilled to have gotten a special treat. I was a little shocked to see that these frozen snow cones were $2.50 each. Whatever happened to the cheap ice cream truck suprises of 50 cents or a dollar. I hope he does not come around too offen this summer.

Saturday night D and I went out and went to the local baseball game and went out to eat. It was a great night. It sprinkled a little bit but turned out to be a very cool night. We had a lot of fun and the stadium was great. Here are some pictures of the night.

We saw a rainbow after it sprinkled.




We were right by first base in the first row so I knew that I could get some good pictures. We we right in front of the relief pitchers while they warmed up. I never really got any good pictures of the players coming into first base and almost getting out but I did get some good butt ones of the relief pitchers warming up.

Counsin Andrew's birthday was on Sunday so my sister had the family over. I can't believe that his three years old. He had a great birthday with lots of good food and delicious cake.



Nathan loved Andrew's dress up clothes. I think there is a sword in his future. He played with the sward for the longest time and had a hard time leaving it with Andrew.

Our productive weekend ended with the completion of my quilt. I really like the quilt. It has some flaws but all handmade quilts have some flaws. It was fun to make and I did not feel overwhelmed by the task. So that was nice. It is pretty big. It fit Julianne's bed with some lots of room on the sides. I think it would fit on our bed, which is a queen. So it is large.





Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-finishing my quilt
-going to the baseball game with D
-the fantastic weather we had last weekend
-Nathan and his sweet new haircut

Farewell flies...

After our 4th of July block party our house was inhabited by lots and lots of flies. It was not bothering me too much but my mom was a little annoyed when she would go downstairs to our guest bedroom to find numerous flies. She was not amused and did not want to co-sleep with the flies. My grandmother asked us where we kept our bug spray and much to her shock we did not own bug spray. D told her that we do not kill insects. This is proof that when Nathan sees a fly in the screened in porch he comes inside grabs some Tupperware and takes it outside in the hopes of catching the fast flies. Then once he catches it, or I catch it, we take it outside to let it go. So we were in a dilemma about how to dispose of the flies in the basement so that my mother could sleep soundly. Well tried the old sticky tape theory of which D was pretty successful at but my smashing them with a shoe box was a faster way to get them. We probably ended up getting about 20 flies from our basement. The next night we had the same number of flies return. After my mom left I was not too worried about them but on Friday the flies started to annoy me. So what did I do? I took out my vacuum and attacked them with the nozzle. I think I sucked up at least 20 new flies. I did the first floor and then tackled the basement. So now I am sitting here at my computer, in the dining room, and I am no longer annoyed with flying flies. I feel very satisfied and I do not feel guilty that I sucked up lots of flies. My thinking is that this is my house. If you are in my house then I can suck you up in my vacuum. I will not kill bugs outside since it is their domain. This was my same theory in Knoxville with the overly biting mesquites. Those black bugs just irritated me so much that I hated going outside because I did to want to put bug spray on my body and I hated the sound they made by my face. So I always got extra irritated when they came into my house and started biting me in my territory. I had zero sympathy and killed them as fast as I could. Die mosquitoes and flies.

Anyway, enough of that. Nathan has been doing an excellent job with being potty trained. He had one Hersey squirt of a poop in his underwear one afternoon and that was it. I think it probably slipped out. He is still getting used to what a poop and what a fart feels like so maybe this was one of those times. Our house has gotten back to normal since our crazy past two weeks with family in town. Mallory started safety town and she loves it. She is with her cousin and other friends from her preschool so that made it a little easier. Julianne starts an art camp next week. This will be the first activity that Julianne has done all summer. We have actually had a nice summer with little activities here and there but not too much. Julianne is so much nicer to her siblings and likes to play with Mallory more since not being in school. It just proves my whole theory that school is very stressful and busy for Julianne. And when she gets home she breaks down emotionally and physically. I can tell that now that she is not in school is better able to control her emotions and able to enjoy herself more without feeling anxious.

This was D's first weekend without having to study for his license test. He was much more relaxed and was able to enjoy his weekend. He took the kids down to see his mom and I got to mow the grass and enjoy a little free time.

I have not had too much time to blog lately because my "free" time has been spent filling out crazy health insurance forms. Since D is going to be an independent worker we have to get our own insurance. Those forms are crazy and ask us our health questions from about 10 years ago. The one was so specific to ask us our medication and how much dosage we had. I don't remember all that stuff nor do I have the information for all that. Well I did find most of the stuff and they seem to be satisfied with what I gave them. So we will see. It looks like we will be paying $500 dollars in premiums for not a lot of coverage until we meet our $3,000 deductible. So that sucks. Oh well. I guess that is what we have to do.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Have mom and grandma stay with us for a couple of days.
-A good vacuum
-A fun Saturday night with hubby drinking "Bitch" wine
-Seeing Billy Joel and Elton John in concert with a good friend.
-Not having to fill out anymore Health Insurance forms