Finally Summer

Summer is finally here, and pool party is officially open for business. Come on over.




The weather has finally heated up, and it is so very lovely. We took the boat out on the lake for the first time last week, and it was awesome. Everyone had a blast.




Saturday morning we had a yard sale. It was so-so. I'm not sure that I want to do another one any time soon. But I got that goal taken care of, so check that one off the list.

Saturday night we watched fireworks in the backyard. Marilyn and Mindi came by to watch with us, and we had a good little visit. Hopefully we can hang out a little longer with both of our families over the holiday weekend at some point.

Sunday we went to the Bee's game, another favorite summer thing. Marilyn came with us. She's always such a good sport. Josh was so excited because he got his mitt signed by the Bee and Marilyn bought him a little wooden Bee's bat. Lexi was high on the all-you-can-eat junkfood fest. The rest of us were just happy to get out and enjoy the weather.

So now that summer is officially here, we need to get out camping and get to the drive-in. We have two concerts in July, so I'm excited for that. We were supposed to have three, but John Michael Montgomery was cancelled. That's the second time we've had JMM tickets and had the show cancelled. He sings my favorite love song ever, and I saw him once when he opened for Reba McEntire in the 90s, so I was hoping to see him again. Loser.

Let's see... June goals. What were they? I do believe I accomplished 2 out of 4. I did not lose the weight (big surpise) and we did not do weekly boating etc, but that's a function of the weather and all the car repairs that Sean did. We'll do better. I did clean out the junk closet (I should post a picture; it is beautiful) and have a yard sale.

July goals:
~Get caught up on birthdays. I haven't sent a single card this year. Our families are really good at this, and I most decidedly am not.
~Not yell at Josh and Lexi, things such as, "I didn't spend the last 3 hours cleaning this house just so you could follow me around making messes!!!!" or "If you don't get back in that bed, so help me I'll take away every birthday and Christmas until you're in college!!!!" or "A water fight in the kitchen??? What's wrong with you, boy???"
~Have lots and lots of fun. Camping, boating, drive-in, spending time at the cabin (in the water, not mowing the lawn), pool party, Wendover, hiking, hanging out with family.


Time to fix dinner. I'm thinking Frito's and cookies sound good. May break down and make actual food, but nothing is guaranteed.

June

So. A few quiet moments. Courtney and Curtis took Josh and Brittney to see Toy Story 3 and Lexi is playing Lite Brite. I'm cleaning out the junk closet, but it's such an overwhelming job that I'm hiding out. I stand at the doorway and look in, and then I walk away. Then I say, "That's it!! I'm just dragging everything out of there and getting rid of all of it. All of it, I say!!" Then I look at it some more and say, "Hmmmm.... really, what's the harm of just leaving this all in here. For a while longer. Until some other time. Some other time when I can really take the time to clean it up right." I've done this little procedure a few times. So actually, I got a good start on it yesterday, and now I'm just down to the hardest part. Stuff that's hard to organize and I don't know what to do with. So here I hide out listening to some tunes and messing around.

So June. Josh played t-ball and really loved it. So glad. He refused to play soccer, refuses to take swimming lessons, isn't interested in playing football or doing karate (except his own Josh-kwan-do that he practices on us and the furniture). But he liked t-ball and wants to play basketball in the fall. It's not so much that he has to want to play a sport... it's just that he has so much energy and needs some outlets for it. I told him I'm going to find him a boxing gym so that he can punch a bag instead of everything in my house and he seemed pretty excited about that, so I gotta look into that. I think karate or eventually MMA would be good for him. Give him some discipline and wear him out a little.




Sean's work Lagoon day was last weekend. It was a perfect day for it. Not too hot, but warm enough that the pool felt great.






Of course Miss Lexi feel asleep about 8:30. She was worn out.


Father's Day ended better than it started. We'll just skip over the part where the two little kids were rotten and the part where Sean and I took a drive up to the cabin and the lake and I got all snippy because he was bugging me with all his ambitious ways and talk about everything that needs to be done... we'll skip over all that and just focus on the part where we had chicken cordon bleu for dinner and coconut cream pie and presents. Sean is a great guy, and I'm not quite sure why he still puts up with me, but he seems to like me OK, so go figure. He's a good dad and a great sport. I tease him a lot about pulling everything apart all the time and about deer hunting and his fishing and car magazines (OK... so the other day Courtney and I were listening to "Hillbilly Bone" on my playlist, and there's a line about having a bubba in the family tree, and she asked if we have a bubba in our family tree, and I said, "Um, I think it's your dad.") But I wouldn't have it any other way. He's a great guy and a great dad, and we love him.


Sean and I finally got some of the yard work done last night and it looks much better. Now I just have to go out and tame the weeds in the garden. The potatoes are out of control. Awesome.

Summer vacation is going pretty well so far. It's just chill around here, pretty much. I'm adjusting pretty well. It's usually hard for the first few weeks, but I'm into the swing of it. I start out getting all crazy because of the lack of a schedule and the chaos, then I move to acceptance of it all, and then I pretty much just embrace the crazy.

Well, the door to the closet is open and I can hear it calling to me. Guess I better go get to work. Or close the door.

Graduation

Graduation weekend is a big blur. I had to go into work for a few hours Friday morning, so I used the time to finish cleaning up my classroom. And I'm glad I did, because it looks like I'm moving rooms again in the fall. They gave me the choice to move to a room with windows, and even though it's such a pain to move everything, I think it will be worth it. I'm in an inside room right now, and I'd love windows. So at 10:00 I headed on up to Ogden for Northridge's graduation. Came home and got some things done and got ready for Courtney's graduation, and then it was back up to Ogden. I held it together and didn't cry, but I was super proud of her. Graduation didn't get over until 9:30, and then we headed over to Olive Garden for a quick dinner. As soon as we got home I threw on different clothes, stopped at the Maverick for a giant Diet Pepsi, and went over to the high school to chaperone Courtney's all-night party. Was there until 6:30 am. Went home and crashed. Got up at noon. Cleaned and shopped for a family party. Sean's family and my family came over and hung out with us. It was really nice to have them all there. For living so close together, it feels like we don't see everyone enough. It was really a nice weekend.

Memorial Day Weekend

Miss Lexi Lou had her 3rd birthday over the Memorial Day weekend. She is super sweet and cuddly, bossy and demanding, a little shadow to her older brother, loves dolls of all kinds and Legos and reading and puzzles and napping, and is very much loved.






After we visited graves in Bountiful and Ogden we went up to the cabin to do a little work.

Before:



After:



OK, so it still needs a lot of work, but that's not my department. I just mow, that's it.

School's Out For Summer!

Well, another year gone. This year went by faster than any other. It was definitely full of ups and downs. On the whole I think it was good, but I'm ready for a break, for sure. The end of school is hard for me for two reasons, though.

First, I am a very sentimental and nostalgic person, and I have difficulty with endings and good byes. So the end of the school year can be bittersweet for me. I get sad about saying good bye to my seniors. But this year they split our senior English classes into 2 separate semesters, which gave me less time to get to know them, and I only had one class of seniors each semester, and my second semester seniors were not very lovable. So it really wasn't too hard to say good bye to them. Which is good, because I didn't need to be emotional. It was hard enough to have Courtney graduating. She's been my sidekick since I was not quite 20 years old, so the thought of her growing up and moving on is emotional.

Second, I'm really glad to be home. I've got projects to do and books to read and blogs to write and computer games to play. Also, I don't want to spend money. Therefore, I want to spend lots of time hanging out at home. My kids, on the other hand, get bored at home. Then they fight. I have a hard time balancing their need to get out and do something with my need to be at home, throw in my difficulty with creating structure for myself, and it makes me frustrated and depressed. But I'm still happy that it's summer.

Unfortunately, business has been booming at Sean's Fix-It Shoppe, a.k.a my garage. He got the transmission out, sent it off to a transmission shop, and got it put back in. Only cost $1600 instead of $2800 thanks to him doing part of the labor. Don't ever use Tanner Transmission, I'm telling you. They didn't put the transmission back together right, and I've got the pictures to prove it. It failed 13 months after they rebuilt it, and they won't stand behind it. Transmission Exchange in Salt Lake did a great job for us. I could write a book called What Not To Do... Also, What Was I Thinking? and fill it with my own personal experiences, and chapter 163 would be entitled "Before You Have Major Work Done On Your Car, Do Some Research." So besides the transmission, Sean's replaced two of the struts on the car and is waiting for transmission mounts to come in before he can replace those. Now he thinks the catalytic converter might be going out on the truck. I didn't want to actually drive any of my vehicles... just park them and pay money for parts. I think of my cars as being relatively new, but when I stop to add it up, the Mazda is the newest and it's 9 years old. Guess that's how it goes.

May goals: I accomplished 1 out of the 4 goals. Go me!

June goals:
Lose 4 lbs
Go boating, camping, or cabin-ing at least once a week
Clean out junk closet
Have a garage sale

Miscellany

I hate car repairs. I love having a husband who can do car repairs. Do other people have as many car problems as we do? Man alive. I guess it's because we always drive older cars. And the universe hates us. We replaced the transmission in our Mazda last April. It seems to be dead again. Thanks Tanner Transmission! Thanks for nothing. They only warranty it for a year. It's been exactly a year and a month. So Sean is now going to drop the transmission on the Mazda himself to save us $800-$1200. I'm grateful he can, but for the uninitiated, transmissions are a pain in the butt. It's heavy, you need a special jack, it's messy, and it's just time consuming. On the bright side, I'm an expert at towing vehicles by now. If you ever need a tow, you just call me up. I'll hook ya up and pull ya home. I'm just glad it didn't decide to die when Sean was on the freeway today or when Courtney was driving it at 12:30 am Saturday night.

Brittney and I have watched Celebity Apprentice off and on this season, so we had to watch the finale on Sunday and root for Bret Michaels. I was worried about him the whole time he was on stage, though. He looks amazingly good for everything he's been through. I have concert tickets to see him in July, but I'll be amazed if he's well enough to tour. I sure hope so, though, because that will be a fun show.

Josh had his first t-ball game last Thursday. He was really scared at first. He was fine at practice, but he had this image in his head that an actual game would be really scary. But he pulled himself together and went out and had a great time. Now he can't wait to play again and keeps asking when his next game is. Thank goodness. He needs more outlets for all that energy.

The daycare had its annual carnival on Friday. They always do a CD of pictures of the kids at the end of the year and play it at the carnival. Several of the high schoolers and one of the teachers said, "Oh I can't watch this. I'm going to start crying." I'm so glad I'm not the only one. I just bawl every year. It's so hard to see them get older. I'm so very sentimental and nostalgic that I get teary about the silliest things, so I'm glad that some of the things that turn me all blubbery are normal.

Josh had another slightly scary allergic reaction last night. He's started having a new kind. Some things he's allergic to will cause an immediate reaction, but others won't. They'll just make him itch later. So those types of things I'll sometimes let him eat and just not really worry too much. But he's started having a delayed reaction brought on by exercise. Twenty minutes after eating he'll go downstairs and run around, and then all of a sudden he can't breathe and he's clawing at his skin. Back to the doctor, I guess.

Only a little bit of school left. I have mixed feelings, but that's a topic for another day. Time to go drown my car sorrows in ice cream.

Senior Pics

If you don't want to read shameless bragging and overly sentimental drivel, skip this one.

Courtney is graduating in two weeks. I'm going to cry like a baby. Love this girl.


I'm pretty dang proud of this kid. Graduating with honors, Sterling Scholar, finished her CNA before her junior year...


I'm so glad I get to be her mom and her friend. She is easy-going, always up for anything, loves her siblings, and keeps me laughing all the time.


I'm really excited to see what's next for her.