The routine of school

The past few weeks have gone by so fast. We took a vacation with my family to Greenbrier, WV to celebrate my fathers 60th birthday. We had a great time with our family. We went swimming, participated in a scavenger hunt, gambled a meager 35 dollars at the casino, and went bowling. It was a great place with a lot of activities to participate in. Our kids had a great time with their cousins and extended family and I had a wonderful time spending more lazy time with them.


Here is the main hotel. It was so beautiful, old and large. It reminded me of the Shinning hotel. I was waiting for the little boy to come out and say, "red rum."



The kids loved take care of cousin Ryan.


Nathan playing swords with Dad.

Nathan actually fainted because he either was really mad that my dad would not give him the second sword or because he lost his breath. Nathan originally had two of these swards and so Dad got one of them and teasly would not give one of them back so Nathan started crying. He did one of those cries where you are waiting for him to breath. Well he did not and then fell backwards and hit his head and was stillness for about 10 seconds. So I went over to him and his lips were blue and his eyes were blank. He was looking at me but it was really wired because it was like he was not really there. I started to lightly tap his cheeks and then he blinked and looked at me and then he was back. I held him and he was all sweaty. It was a wired experience since I have never had any of my children faint. I think that he lost is breath and then knocked himself out either because he lost his breath or because he hit his head. I watched the entire thing and I thought that I remember his lips turning blue while he was falling. So how knows. I thought he was initially having a seizer since he was kind of thrashing around until he fell. So he is fine and he was just mad because grandpa took his other sword.


Birthday cake!!


These are pictures of us Geo caching. It was really fun and the kids had a blast. It is was too bad that some of the boxes were missing but the kids still enjoyed it.


Love Nathan's face.

This is the treasure that the kids found.

An "after" picture of the hunters.


Right after we got back, Nana and Gigi come to town. It was great having them in Ohio. Nana stayed for a week and Gigi stayed for half a week. They got to see the girls go back to school and they spend a day weeding my over weeded landscaping. They cleared out 8 bags of debris and I think they had fun. They suggested it so I said, "sure." they helped us pick out a desk for Julianne and Gigi helped Julianne organize her room. I made them both a quilt and gave it to them while they were at our house. The loved them and I hope that they match some of their colors in their homes. Those are my first officially completed quilts. I still have a quilt in my linen closet that I have not finished because I tried to do the quilting on my sewing machine and totally messed it up. So it was great to complete these and give them away.



Julianne and Mallory started school last week. They were suppose to start on Tuesday but Monday night Mallory started to throw up and then she had a fever on Tuesday. So she did not go to her first day of school which was kind of sad but I guess it happens. Julianne was excited but nervous. This is the first year that she has her own desk, where she gets to keep all her own school supplies in it. There are also 28 kids in her class which is actually a lot. But she will adjust and is enjoying being in the new hall and playing at the big kids playground. They also only have two recesses in 3rd grade. So she was a little bummed about that. The morning recess is spent reading and doing other tasks so she only goes out at lunch and in the afternoon.



Mallory felt better by Tuesday evening so we knew that she would be ready to go on Wednesday. We both walked her to her room and surprisingly did not cry. She did tell us later and she cried after we left but the teacher got her back on track. The rest of the week Julianne walked her in and she cried both days. Julianne just said that she told her she had to go into her room and the teacher took over from there. Julianne did a great job of supporting her sister, which she does not always do, and helping her get into her classroom. Starting today, we told Julianne that she did not need to walk her to her classroom so we will see how Mallory did today. Julianne actually rode her bike today to school all by herself. So that is exciting for her. She really wanted to do it so we let her. She is really responsible and I trust that she will make good decisions when crossing our 4 lane road and watching for cars. It is still hard to feel like it is going to be alright but we did it when I was younger so it really is not that big of deal.

I don't know why she kept tilting her head like that but she looks super cute.



It will take Mallory awhile to adjust to the additional time she has to spend at school. She is such a homebody that I think she just does not know any else besides being at home most of the day. So it will take some time. She sure was grumpy on Friday so this week be the test since they go all 5 five days this week.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Celebrating my Dad's 60th birthday with our family
-Having Gigi and Nana come up to visit
-Seeing our girls grow up
-Julianne buying white bread with her own money. (I refuse to buy white bread but Julianne is obsessed with it so she offered to buy some with her own money so I told her she could. She said she also wanted to buy "fake" peanut butter with her money as well. We were cracking up when she told us this).

Last days of summer

Well the last few weeks have been pretty busy with our recent trips Kings Island and a trip to the local Fair. D has wanted to go to Kings Island for the past few years but it never was scheduled or worked out. So this year he planned it and we went a few weeks ago. We took Mallory and Julianne and I think that Julianne and D had the best time. D took Julianne on the Racer for her first roller coaster and she screamed the entire way but loved it. After that she was hooked and wanted to go on all the rest of the roller coasters. She road all the coasters that she was tall enough to ride and is looking forward to the day that she can ride the rest. I would not even ride some of the rides that she did. They both did the drop on that takes you to the top and just drops you like a free fall drop. So I was impressed that she enjoyed them that much but I kind of figured that she would since she is a lot like D. Mallory and I spent most of the day in the kiddy land riding the smaller rides, which she also loved, and I enjoyed the small thrill without the full affect. I did ride four roller coasters with Julianne but they were the older ones that were not as high, not as twisty or dangerous as the newer ones. However, they were very rickety and jarring and I had a slight headache and stomachache at the end of the rides. It was fun to see her enjoy herself and scream the entire way but she still want to go on it. We were all tired at the end of the day but it was a great memory.

We also went to the local fair and had a great time. We saw lots of animals, carnival rides, street vendors and some crafts. The kids enjoyed themselves and I enjoyed going back to the fair after probably 30 years.


This baby was born just 5 hours before this picture. The mother still had not passed the placenta so it was pretty cool. I was amazed by how big the calf was. It did not seem possible that the calf fit into the cow's belly. I don't think that human babies are that big compared to the mother. This calf had long legs. It was pretty neat to see this.


We did not all fit onto this ride so I tried to get Mallory to ride with Julianne but she refused. So I asked if Julianne would ride by herself and she did. So I was thankful that that did not become an issue. She liked riding by herself.




Homemade ice cream. Nathan did not get a cone but refused to use a spoon. So this is what resulted.





I think I mentioned that I finally found out that you can have your blog published into a book. What a great idea and I was so thrilled when I saw the ad. It is Blog2Print, I think. I ordered the past two years of blog entries, pictures and comments and the book is great. Granted I did not re-edit the pages because I was too lazy and not interested so I am sure it will be interesting to reread. I will have my red pen out fixing mistakes but that is not the point of printing it out. The point is that if someday something will happen to blogger or to where I store my pictures I will not really be able to recreate it. So it is nice to have those memories in a book format. I will try to do it every year. However at the rate I have been posting lately, almost every two weeks, I will not have that many pages. But who cares. it is not for anyone else besides myself and the kids. It is not even for mister grammatically correct D who would have a hay day correcting all the mistakes in the blog. So to all those folks, too bad!!

This summer has been a little frustrating at times because I scheduled one camp per month per child. So my goal was to schedule some things this summer for the kids but not to over schedule them. Most of the time the kids were at home pretend playing, running around with the neighborhood kids, hanging out at the pool, etc. So I did not plan too many activities. However, the camps that I did plan seemed to be more work than fun. I planned one half day week long horse back riding camp and two week long half day art camps for the girls. Nathan had one week one hour golf and soccer camp. So not too much time away from mom or being too scheduled. However, Mallory cried at every camp that I dropped her off in. It was like I was torturing her, or making her do something that was just painful. She would act like it was the end of the world that I was dropping her off. This was usually just the first day and some the other days but it was mostly the first day of camp that she cried. It was also a real sadness crying not a fake, getting attention cry. So it was hard to tell her that it was only a few hours and she would have fun. So it was very frustrating because to my perspective it was camps that I knew she would enjoy, her sister was attending with her, and it was giving her some education and other activities besides being at home. Who would not enjoy that? Well anyway, she ended up liking all the camps and was happy that she attended but sometime I would just like to have the kid that just jumps out of the car and says, "Bye Mom, I will see you after camp." That is all I am asking. It wears me out when all my kids, including Julianne sometimes, refuse to do an activity. I don't give in also so I have to stand strong and basically tell then that if they do not participate then they have a consequence and I will still leave. So I know it will eventually happen when they just fly out of the car and not look back and I will be sad that they don't want to hang out with me but a little moderation now would be great.

I also have to comment on Julianne's need to push things. There have been three instances this week where she has been playing and just got into the playing way to much, or according to my adult perception. Which i know is natural for kids but I do think that some kids do push and play a little harder than others. My friend and I took the kids to a park with a creek and she wanted to get into it. She wanted to walk in it and she wanted to follow it way too long and into a dark tunnel. Granted we went to the park to play at the park not to pay in the creek. So she did not have the right shoes or clothes on and all the other kids wanted to do what she wanted to do. So we would say, "OK you can get in but don't go in too far." Then the next minute she would say, "can we go down there," meaning way down there. They they were skipping rocks and of course she eventually went to the large boulder like rocks that we were afraid she would drop on someone or fall. So I had to pull her back in.

Another instance is I took her to a sand park this weekend and she got into the sand and compared to all the kids she had sand everywhere, it was ingrained into her shorts, her panties, her hair, etc. No one else had that much sand scattered around them. The last instance was just today. I let the kids run the sprinkler and of course she found a mud puddle and had to sit in it and get completely muddy. Whatever happened to just running in the sprinkler? Anyway, my point is that she really gets into playing and she does like to see how far she can go with the playing and the fun. I like to let her explorer this and not have her fit into the way, we adults, feel like they should play. However, there is a fine line at some points and I am probably a little lenient at sometimes but then I think that at some point it is not acceptable to play in mud as an adult. So why worry about it when they are kids. It is just because I don't want to have to clean her up. So I have to try to remember that.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Sharing experiences with my children and D
-running with Julianne this summer

Soccer camp and new playground

Nathan participated in a soccer camp a few weeks ago. He loved it and it was even better that his cousin, Andrew, participated in it with him. He is hilarious. He did not want to participate in the warm ups. They would play games like dribble the ball then freeze and touch their elbow to the ball. They did this for several minutes while touching other body parts to the ball. Nathan just stood there the entire time. I asked him why he did not participate in the warm up and he said, "cause I didn't want to." Which is a typical Nathan answer. He is always so honest and is not afraid to tell the truth. Lately he has been telling me and Julianne that, "Julianne is mean." Despite him participating in warm up he still had fun. He was very proud when he could dribble the ball down the field and kick it into the goal.





This is Nathan's proud moment after he kicked the ball into the net against another little friend.

Some fun pictures of the girls.






Our city has a new center city playground/natural area. It is really more for adults but it is pretty cool. It is a enormous rock wall. If I had carabiners and rope I would suit up and go climb the wall. The kids had fun on the related kids climbing playground.


Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-my large tomato plants
-great cooler weather
-Graeter's Buckeye Blitz Ice Cream
-The quilt finishing lady and her amazing long arm machine