dog days

Summer should be hot and sunny but not disgusting, and last week was just that.  Not the greatest timing for Michael's tennis camp, but what can you do.  At least it was in the morning.

 

It was also the week of our county fair.  We stumbled around there for a few hours on Wednesday night until a cranky sweaty Zach decided we should go.  I went back on Saturday to do a shift at the MCCL booth.  Up this week:  middle school orientation/picture day for Michael.  We're hoping to cram in a family vacation before school starts, too.

So long, Mr. Rogers

The kids and I had a movie night last night.  I made them watch one I enjoyed as a kid, Disney's Swiss Family Robinson.  They mostly liked it.  It has just enough action and adventure to entertain even modern instant-gratification kids.  But during a few sequences when the characters would dare to have conversations, the kids' attention would immediately start to drift.  I had to tell them to hang on, there's a good part coming up - some animal fun, or explosions, or some pirate will fall off a cliff.

Back in my day we didn't have instant everything.  No cell phones or internet.  Microwaves were the new thing, but they took longer to cook stuff then.  These days we take offense if a web page takes more than 4 seconds to load.  TV commercials flash images in strobe-light fashion while blaring fast paced music or voice-overs.  I worry sometimes whether my kids will be stuck with the attention span of a gnat.  You can try to limit TV, computer, video game time etc., but the cultural influences are all around us.  They aren't entertained by things like good old Mr. Rogers re-runs.  He sits too still and talks too calmly and peacefully, I guess.

mi hija bonita

Adrienne now has the palatal expander in her mouth.  Her speech is affected by it, but not as much as I was afraid it would be (after reading horror stories on the net).  I have to crank it wider once a day, which causes her some discomfort.

Yesterday was Nate's birthday.  Due to limited options, he got a pre-decorated butterfly & flowers cookie cake that we had to neutralize with a little masculinity.  Who else can boast of having a hermaphrodite cake on their b-day?

Lily the cute

We are puppy-sitting Lily the Yorkie-Poo for a few days. 

On our way to the park, she hitched a ride with Zach when she didn't want to walk more than a block.

Our 12 lb. cat Bruiser is intimidated by 3.5 lbs of puppy power.  Sorry for the unfortunate reference to the most annoying dog in t.v. history:

My own future little dog is tentatively named Sophie the Ridiculous.  I have 'threatened' Nate that with the kids growing older, I might lose my marbles and get a small dog to primp and coddle.  I used to be a fan of big dogs, but after having 4 babies I find absurdly small things to be darn cute.

unwilling economy stimulators

We've been doing our part to stimulate the economy of the south-of-the-river suburbs.  Nate came home from work early on Friday so I could go to an orthodontist appointment to discuss financial arrangements for Adrienne's soon to be installed spacer.  He was also going to wait for our contractor to come pick up his final payment on the rebuilding/repair of the retaining wall that creates our side parking pad.

Nate had some news for me when the ortho appointment was over.  Our car's radiator sort of exploded just after he'd gotten home, pouring smelly steamy smokey stuff into the garage.  He ushered the boys inside and told them to go the basement, then hunted down the fire extinguisher.  He ended up just hosing it off, and called a tow truck.

Three expensive things to deal with in one weekend.  Oh the folly of having kids with teeth, and buying a house with a sub-par parking pad, and driving a car.  But, as my dad says, things are rough all over.

Altar Server Michael

Michael went through altar server training at church several months ago and finally served for the first time at Mass yesterday.  Luckily, none of the doomsday scenarios I had imagined occurred.  He didn't trip and drop the candle and light the pulpit on fire or anything.

Here he is afterwords - I thought I might get a picture of him in his alb, but it never seemed quite appropriate.

Mmm, sundae cones.

a skateboarder & a cheerleader

Michael finished skateboard camp yesterday.  He had fun while learning some new things, and even managed to avoid injury.

Adrienne is in a weekly cheerleading class through mid-August.  She was already a loud drama-queen, just needed some choreography to go with it.

Speaking of A, here are a few more of her 3rd grade journal entries.

1/7/10
If I were in charge of school lunches, I would do ice cream, just ice cream.  I have a poem called Ice cream.
Ice cream.
Ice cream.
Ice cream.
THE END
If you like the song, leave a message after the beep.
Beep.

(Date unknown)
A person part of body I admire is my finger.  I admire my finger because boys are scared of it.  And that's all I can think of.

2/11/10 - (All entries are now in cursive, oo la la....)
If I could change one thing about myself I would change nothing.  I would change nothing because mother told me to never wish I was somebody else.  Father told me that...well, he did not tell me anything.

3/15/10
Over the weekend I went on a walk, sort of.  Sort of because I rode my scooter.  Guess what?  I have bad news.  What is the bad news?  I fell down twice.  One more thing, I got my BEST pants all muddy.

'some' stuff

Since last I blogged:

Some kids played in a box.

Some minor late night 'where is Zach?' commotion ended here.

Some rain somehow leaked through the main floor patio door onto the new basement door during this weekend's deluge.

Some mowing was accomplished by Michael for the 1st time ever and he did a good job, considering.

Some adventuring to Target Field for the first time happened yesterday.  It was too crowded and 'standing room only' tickets aren't too great and we lost and some pitcher dude on the other team messed up his arm but we had left by then anyway. 

June 18

Happy 44th Anniversary to my parents!

And on a lousier note, Adrienne goes to the orthodontist today for x-rays and molds or something so she can have this expensive do-dad put in her mouth in about a month:

It's to fix her crossbite - it will widen her upper jaw so the upper teeth lay properly over the lower ones.  She has to wear it for 6-8 months, then a retainer for a year or so, then braces when she's around 12.  Which all equals a bajillion visits to the ortho.  Yippee...

no more teachers no more books

Another school year is in the books.  And those books have been recycled, along with other miscellaneous items.  It was a bit of a chore to go through all the stuff these 3 monkeys brought home over the last couple days.  Gotta save the scissors and big erasers and clipboards and such, and sort through and throw out the dried up markers and broken crayons.
Yay for a 3 month break from homework!  No more signing planners every night and checking math worksheets and keeping track of all the minutes the kids read for their reading logs and remembering when library day is, etc.
Adrienne finished 3rd grade, and Nicky is a Kindergarten grad.  Michael is officially done with elementary school.  Lots of changes for him next year, notably that he'll get on the middle-school bound bus at 7 a.m. (yuck), and have 3 different locker combinations to remember.

Among the 'keep' items I sorted through is Adrienne's rather amusing journal.  She has a definite stream of consciousness style of writing.  Here are a couple entries:

11/2/09
Over the weekend was...halloween.  Oh boy!  All that candy in my tummy!  Well...I guess I should calm myself down a little...or a lot.  My nanna and pappa came over on halloween and sunday.  Last night I watched a halloween movie.  The movie was called...uh, I can't remember.

And probably my fav:

11/3/09
One time my little brother drawed on the carpet with a marker.  When my parents asked "Sombody put that marker away!"  I put it away, and my mom said, "you know not to do such a thing like that!"  My dad said, "I don't know if that is a stain!"  Well...sorry, it was not a stain.  Because it was a red washable marker.

It was laugh-out-loudable to read our chastisements from her point of view (not to mention the mild snark), but it made me a bit nervous to continue reading.  All in all, though, she didn't disclose anything dreadfully alarming about our home life.  Not that there's anything dreadful to...ah, nevermind.