My baby girl graduated from preschool this week.
Her graduation was on Monday, and had to be held inside because it was SNOWING outside! Seriously! The last week of May and it’s snowing. Unbelievable. But I digress, it was a cute program where they sang songs and recited nursery rhymes.
Here she was little miss Muffet while she sat on her tuffet.
Next up… kindergarten. Wow, how did she grow up so fast?!
Yesterday was my G-man’s birthday.
I can’t believe that he’s 9 years old. Sometimes it seems like yesterday that he was my little grumpy baby…
Or my mischievous toddler…
Through it all, he has always been my handsome boy.
G-man has always had his own distinct personality. There have been many times when I haven’t been able to quite figure him out. Life with the G-man can sometimes be an adventure, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Love you G-man!!
Last night was G-man’s rain gutter regatta for scouts.
He won all three heats to get to the final round. Then in the last heat, it was neck and neck the whole way, we had to get the results of the photo finish to find…
he won second place!!
He was pretty happy with his results. He told me as we were leaving that he was glad he got second because he liked the candy that the second place finisher got better than the first. Hey, whatever makes him happy!
I finally got my garden planted today. Actually, I shouldn’t use the word finally. I’m right on time. As my great great grandma used to say, don’t ever plant before Mother’s Day. Since Mother’s Day was only two weeks ago, you could say that I am right on time.
I decided that I have a love/hate relationship with my garden. That may surprise some of you that know me. I love to garden, right? Well, mostly. I have decided that to love my garden, conditions need to be prime. And unfortunately, conditions are not always perfect.
For instance, the temperature needs to be about 75 degrees for me to be happily outside pulling weeds. During the heat of the summer, I need to be outside first thing in the morning to achieve that goal. The problem is that I try to get out and walk or run during the cool part of the morning, and by the time I am done with that and have taken kids to school (part of the beauty of year round school!) I have usually missed that window of opportunity.
I also like to hand water the garden instead of stick a sprinkler on it. I like to think that if I only water the plants, and not all the bare dirt, I keep weeds downs just a bit. We have secondary water that we use on the garden, which is great because it’s not metered, but it’s also just great because I think sometimes there are weed seeds in the water. (I have heard that from others, not just solely my opinion!) Since I don’t like to be outside watering during the heat of the day, and have usually missed the above mentioned cooler window, I just put the watering off till the evening.
The problem with putting off so many things till the evening is that our evenings are usually pretty busy. So, half the time the garden doesn’t get weeded or watered. Well, I should say it gets watered, but sometimes not till 9:30 at night, and it’s dark, so I can’t really see what I’m doing. It’s loads of fun watering in the dark and hoping that you got the plants well enough!
I guess with this love/hate relationship, the love part wins out. Even though it takes up time, I still plant one every year! I guess I just have too much Iowa girl in me to give up and not plant anything!
This waiting business is killing me!!
Let me back up and tell you what I’m waiting for.
About a week and a half ago, TRMinator brought home an application for a scholarship to a science summer camp. They only picked two students from each class to apply. If they get it, they get tuition paid to a week long camp hosted at the University of Utah. They will get to learn about some pretty cool things like computer graphics and robotics. Needless to say, TRMinator really wants to go and is pretty excited and anxious to see if he got it or not.
We are supposed to find out today whether or not he got it. We will be notified by email, so I have been checking my email about every 10 minutes. I think I might be a bit more nervous than him! I’m not sure I can handle the suspense!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
My sister in law, Carla is having a dinner/spa night for all the girls tonight. I am bringing a salad, and I am going to try to recreate my favorite salad from Boston’s. For some reason I am excited about making it! Maybe because I am hopeful that it will turn out like the real thing, then I can have my favorite salad at home too! Yum-O!
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Princess is going through a stage right now, where every time we turn around she wants to show us something she can do. Usually, it’s something that she has been doing for quite some time, like standing on one foot, but now she has added an extra flair, like holding one arm out. So apparently that deserves extra attention and a ,”Did you know I can do this!”. At first it was kind of cute, now it is just getting old.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Aahh!! It’s been a whole 20 minutes since I checked my email! I swear, if I’m this nervous about a summer camp, what am I going to be like when it’s time for college applications and mission calls! I think I might have to be committed at that point!
I have been banished.
By me.
Hubby is in the kitchen helping G-man make a birdhouse for scouts. I really wanted to just do it for him, so instead of taking over like I so desperately wanted to do, I banished myself to the other room. Then decided to blog about it.
I have this thing about letting my children do projects. I don’t want them to. It’s just so much easier, quicker, and generally looks better if I make whatever craft or art project they need to make. I realize that if I always do the project they will never learn and never get better at making things, so I decided years ago that Hubby needed to be in charge of that department. He usually has an infinite amount of patience, and is good at teaching them how to do things instead of just saying, “Here, let me do it,” as I am chomping at the bit to do.
I think I’ll wait till it’s done before I go back and check on them. Then I won’t be tempted to hurry and put some of it together while they aren’t looking!
How do you celebrate Mother’s Day? If you are a mother, does your husband get you presents? How much do your kids do for you?
When I was growing up, my Dad’s patent response to my mother about what he was going to get her was, “You’re not my mother!” Of course he was always kidding (mostly) when he said that.
I must say, my husband usually treats me pretty good for Mother’s Day. This year we invited my parents and mother in law over for dinner. We had steaks, but I’m not a huge steak fan. Hubby knew that, so he went and got my favorite salad from Boston’s yesterday and took it to my parent’s house for them to bring it so I would be surprised. Needless to say, I was surprised and very happy!
Some time ago Hubby started the tradition of taking the kids to the dollar store for birthdays and other holidays like Mother’s Day, and letting the kids pick out presents. Sometimes it’s pretty interesting to see what they pick. Hubby will usually get me something too. He’ll get me flowers and something useful as a gift. I don’t like it when he spends money on useless and superfluous stuff, so I am okay with practical and useful gifts. One year I got a new trimmer for the lawn, which was totally fine because I’m usually the one who trims when we mow the lawn. This year I got new carpet. Actually, we had decided that we needed to replace all the carpeting in our house to try and help it sell, but since we got it 3 days before Mother’s Day, I said that could be my present because I didn’t want to spend any more money. I guess you could maybe say I tend to sit on the cheap side of the fence.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers. It is one of the hardest jobs, but one that none of us would trade for anything.
I’ll try and wrap the vacation posts and pictures up today.
On the last day we went to Legoland. This was mostly because the G-man is a Lego fanatic. It was a smaller park, and it’s geared towards kids ages 3-12. I didn’t like it as well as Disneyland, but that could also have something to do with the fact that I had been walking for days around Disneyland and California Adventure, and I was just tired by that point. At any rate, the kids enjoyed it, and that’s what matters.
I think one of G-man’s favorite parts was Mini Land. It’s where they built cities out of Legos. He thought that was pretty cool.
They also thought the Bionicles were pretty awesome.
On Friday, we checked out of our hotel and drove back to Las Vegas and hung out with Hubby’s brother and family. We always have a good time when we go see them.
On Saturday, they took us out on their boat to Lake Mead.
After a day of fun in the sun in Las Vegas (pretty much the only sun we saw most of the trip) we drove home. The trip was lots of fun, but I was very ready to be home by the time we got there. Now that I’ve been home for a week, I’m ready to go back!
