Parade

Here are pictures from the parade last week.











Between my family and Sean's, we had family fun every day for like a week straight and now I'm having withdrawls. I went camping, to the parade and fireworks, out to eat, had Heather and Pete over for a BBQ, swimming, saw The Dark Knight with Sean and Steve and Curtis, took care of some family business with my family and then went out to lunch and had a nice visit.... It's a bummer having to go back to regular life. And mine's been just so difficult... playing in the pool, working on the kids' memory books, watching Judge Judy... A real hardship, I tell ya.

I've been going a little crazy without a car for a few days now while mine is in the shop, but I'm trying to keep reminding myself how much gas money I'm saving. The worst thing is that I couldn't get to Salt Lake yesterday for American Idol auditions. I was all set to sing Lady Marmalade for Simon and Paula, and I was going to rock it, man. If you've ever heard me sing (which you haven't, because I never ever sing in public) you know that I totally would have made it onto those audition episodes they do at the beginning, where all those really cool and talented people like me somehow get rejected. Bummer. Anyway, as soon as Sean gets home from work, Courtney takes the car to get to her night class. Every night at like 9:30 pm when she gets home I'm running for the car like an inmate trying to break out of the asylum.

Well, that's about it for here. Sean's mom is driving him to work tomorrow (Hallelujah and thank you Marilyn) so I have the car. I need to go to the library, the grocery store, take the kids school clothes shopping, take myself work clothes shopping, go to the post office, Wal-Mart for pool supplies, run up to do some business with the water utility people, and buy a birthday present. Hmmmmm.... it's about midnight... maybe I should start right now.

Camping

We had a great time camping with Sean's family last weekend. I wish we were going again this weekend.

Late Night Insane Rambling

OK so I really don't have anything exciting to blog about, but I have got to get that goofy picture of me making a dork face off the top of the page. And the caption that says... Look how skinny I was... that was supposed to be Courtney-the-baby talking there... everyone got that, right? I wasn't saying that about myself because... no. Just no. Anyway... Moving on.

Soooo... Let's see. Courtney had a party here last night. I survived, all is well. We went boating Thursday night, had a nice time. Poor Courtney started a night class last week, so she is having to miss out on fun things this summer. Every time we plan something on a weeknight I feel bad, but I can't cancel plans for everyone, so I guess that's just part of the whole older teen stuff.

And in other exciting news, here are 3 things that I read about today that bug me:

*Everything is so bloody expensive. Magazines and newspapers write these inane articles on how to save money, and I know the articles will be stupid, yet I read them anyway in a desperate attempt to find the secret to escaping the grocery store without having to sell my firstborn or a kidney to pay the bill. So. The Parade magazine in the Sunday paper had a thing today telling you how America's thrifty families save money, and of course all of it was stupid stuff that either you already know and already do, or that you already know and don't do because it's lame. Some examples. They only let the kids buy Cocoa Crispies when they're on sale. Wow, I'm glad they wrote that in an article or I never would have figured out to buy stuff on sale. And side note. I don't let the kids buy Cocoa Crispies ever, because they're not healthy and they're nasty. Go me. And the mom, get this, shops for stuff on the clearance racks to save money! Who woulda thought? I read an article sitting in a waiting room the other day about how to save at the grocery store... here were their big tips: Try the store brand. Use coupons. Buy what's on sale. Really? Those are your big tips? Argh.

*Merit pay for teachers. They're bound and determined to do it, so fine. Let's do it. I do good work. If I meet the criteria, great, I'll get some extra cash. If I don't meet the criteria, fine, I'll still keep doing good work. The first problem I have with it is that I'm not confident that they'll find a good way to assess teachers. Test scores alone doesn't cut it. The second problem is that the proposals some districts are submitting involve spreading the money around to the whole school. No. In my opinion it should be a way to reward the teachers that go above and beyond and show marked improvement. Not just a way to give the A.P. and Honors teachers extra money because their kids test higher. Not just a way to give the whole school a few hundred extra dollars if test scores improve. On a related note, can we find a way to do merit pay for legislators? That would really make me happy.

*Gay marriage ammendment in CA. I don't live in CA. Therefore, I am so tired of reading about this in the newspaper. Look. Here's my opinion. Civil marriage is a contract extending legal rights to people, and it shouldn't be discriminatory based on race, gender, or sexual orientation. Aside from that, though, I have to laugh when I read these letters to the editor about how allowing gay people to marry will somehow devalue or degrade the institution of marriage. Um... us straight folks have done that all on our own. Gay people couldn't possibly mess it up any worse. My neighbor, a good upstanding LDS guy, has been married 3 times in the four years we've known him, and he had at least one other wife before we met him. But gay people are going to be the downfall of the institution of marriage? All I'm saying is they couldn't do any worse than the straight folks are.

Sweet Sixteen

Look what a skinny little thing I was! Hurry and feed me mommy!


Looking stylin' with my grandpa...


Always a smile on my face.


Always being silly.


16 years later...


Still smiling....


Still silly....

I have a few other baby pics I had wanted to post, but I can't find them in my mess, and I'm not allowed to lift the boxes to look, so these will have to do. :)

Courtney's birthday was Sunday. The big 16. It's hard to believe she could be that grown up. She started out as a scrawny little thing... 5 lbs 11 oz and 19 inches long... We measured her height today and she is 5'10". She was such a cute and happy baby, always with a huge smile on her face, and now she's a cute and happy teenager, almost always with a smile on her face. She does have to stop smiling once in a while to roll her eyes at her nerdy mom, but not too often. She is very hard working, helpful, has a good head on her shoulders, and we love her tons.

We went today to get her driver's license, and she's already taken Brittney and Lexi to the library and for ice cream and taken Brittney to the movies. Both places are within a few blocks of home, so not too far away at all, but still a little weird feeling to give her that freedom. It feels like it's going by so fast... I wish time could just slow down, but it doesn't.

Boating and Swimming

We took the boat out the other day and ran it around to make sure everything was working. It was just a short trip, not the most fun kind, but it was nice just to go up there. Now we're ready for some serious playtime. I'm not allowed to do any waterskiing or anything too exciting this year, but just getting my toes in the sand sounds like heaven.







Sean and the kids have been swimming every day. I'm not quite up for that yet, but soon I'll be out there too.

Weekend

Friday was Brittney's 6th grade graduation. It was pretty cute... they did a fun Hawaiian theme with lei's and sunglasses. She received some really neat awards, and I was really proud of her. I can't believe she's in 7th grade next year, but I think she's going to really like it.




Look what we planted in our garden...



Hopefully it will be fun this summer. And we can have POOL PARTY on the 4th of July. It's supposed to be 100 degrees.



Saturday night we watched fireworks with Marilyn and the Sessions from the backyard patio. It's always fun when they come over. The boys had a great time wrestling and jumping on the trampoline.

Sunday we hung out with my family at my mom's house and had a yummy dinner and a nice visit. Sean got the boat partially de-winterized and ready to tow home. Josh is so excited to go boating that he can't even stand it. He talks about it all the time, has his backpack all packed (with what, I don't know), and about every half hour says, "I want to go to Pineviewwwwwwwww". He's going to be so upset if we don't go out on it soon, but there is still more work to be done.

Lagoon and other junk

I just got a set of photos from last summer in the mail from Heather. This is one of my favorites. Priceless. Thanks Heather!




Sean brought me in a bunch of beautiful flowers tonight. I thought he was just being sweet. Turns out, he dug up all these flowers that I loved to plant something else in there! Gah!



I guess he and Josh were out planting seeds of all kinds around the yard... we'll see if any of it grows. It's a little late in the year, but they just did it for fun.

So the doctor thinks Josh may also be allergic to wheat and wants me to cut that out of his diet now. He also wants me to cut out peanuts, but I'm not doing that one yet. I'm pretty sure peanuts aren't the problem, because he doesn't eat peanut products very regularly. I went out to Whole Foods today to see what I could find. We don't have any good stores like that within a 20 mile radius, I've discovered. It's so frustrating. It's quite a long drive there and back with traffic, and the stuff is just so expensive. $6 for a tiny bag of rice flour, then you have to buy a $10 bag of xanthum gum that you use with the flour, $5 for a cake mix or cookie or muffin mix, then you have to pay another $5.50 for egg replacer to use with the mix. $5.50 for chicken nuggets or fish sticks that he can eat, and it's a teeny little box... 2 servings. $5 for a small box of cookies. The bread he can eat is $4 a loaf, and it's nasty stuff. So I've gotta keep researching some more doable-from-home recipes and just try to get him to eat stuff that's less specialty (fruits & vegetables would be a great start). Anyway.... that was today's adventure. They have a fabulous looking salad bar in there, though. I need to go back sometime and try it.

Yesterday we took a drive up to the cabin and went past the lake. It looked so nice to be out on the water. I hope I can do some of that before the end of the summer!

Heather is coming to visit tomorrow for 2 months while Peter does a residency at the U of U hospital. Yay and double yay! Can't wait to see them. Scott is hopefully coming in a few weeks, and it'll just be a regular party! So excited.

Saturday we went to Lagoon for Sean's work summer party. I wasn't up for doing any walking, so I sat in a chair honestly the whole day. It was really nice to get out in the fresh air and read a book though. The kids had a good time. We were in a pavilion next to this Samoan group, and since I stayed back at the pavilion the whole day resting, I got to kinda watch them. Let me tell you, these guys knew how to do it up right. They pulled out the charcoal bbq grill at about noon-ish or 1:00 and they did not stop cooking until almost 10:00 at night. I'm not talking about throwing something on the grill now and again; they had that thing full of meat *all *day. I should have gone over and tried to make friends. Looked like they were having fun over there. I'm always envious of the big families having a good time when we go places like that. I love it when we get to do that with our family. Those are some of my funnest memories. Anyway, Lagoon is such a great place to people watch, too. Man, you certainly do see some ill-advised clothing choices.

Not much else going on around here. Just taking it easy. This is Brittney's last week of school. She'll be in junior high next year, and Josh's birthday is too late to start kindergarten yet, so I'll have a year break from elementary school before we start all over again. It will be so nice to have us all on the same schedule for once!