Don't Turn Your Back On This Kid

The last photo in this series was canceled due to the water balloon splattering right at my feet and endangering my camera. It seems every time they aimed for one another, they ended up getting me.

And Now I Have Become a Cliche

Well, it finally happened. Yesterday I went down to the Y, plunked down a significant chunk of money, and signed myself up to become a soccer mom. That's it for me, it's all downhill from here. From now on I will spend my afternoons in the minivan, shuttling two different soccer players to two different practices and two different games for the fall season. Sigh. I'm just a helmet-haircut and an ill-advised blue jean purchase away from this:

What I am Doing Right Now, But I Would Never Tell Facebook

Chrissy is...

Wondering who some of these people are who remember her so well from high school and/or college.

Getting too much imaginary crap from people she may or may not remember from high school and/or college.

Trying to think up ways to get a decent photo of herself.

Trying to make her daily activities not sound like they are duller than dirt.

Doing daily activities that are duller than dirt.

Getting tired of all the people who are bragging about going to the beach.

Not feeling sorry for people who return from the beach and exclaim about all of the laundry they have to do.

Trying to check Facebook quickly and then log off because it freaks her out that people can see when she is online.


What are you doing right now?

The Boys of Summer

There is a 'Summer Fun' photo contest going on now at 5 minutes for mom, and I've been looking through the eleventy jillion photos I took this summer, and I can't decide which is best. So I'll leave it up to you, dear reader(s), to vote for your favorite. A lot is riding on this, the prize for the contest is $500. So leave me a comment voting for your favorite one, and I will promise to share the prize with you think of you fondly if I win. Also, look through your own photos and enter for yourself over there as long as your photo isn't better than mine.

P.S. The sizes of the photos are all goofy, and I think it's flickr's fault. Also, they are all boys. Apparently the girls didn't have that much summer fun.

I wish this one wasn't as blurry as it is.

Taking the Kids Into the City, or, Someone Call Security

Earlier this week, I decided to take the kids (plus a neighbor kid) on an outing into the city. First, we got on the trolley.
By the way, you should never never never do this on the trolley. Because this guy is watching very closely. And peeking out the windows is not allowed. (Understandably.)

We got off at Museum of Art, and were stalked by docents everywhere we went. The kids were well behaved, but I got in trouble for trying to take a photograph of the wrong painting. Sooo not allowed. (Good to know.)

Finally, we ended our outing with a stop at this lovely fountain plaza. This is the same one we visited a few weeks ago with my sister, and since we had seen some other kids playing in it, my kids have been begging to go back with their bathing suits to try it out. You'll never guess what the security guard told me about thirty seconds after the children started running through the water.

Nope. Not allowed. (Come to think of it, those other kids didn't play in it very long either.)

The Many Moods of Kate

Last week, Grace was in fine arts camp at our church, and so of course on Friday night they had their little performance of the musical they had been working on. It went really well, and I have to say that my baby carried the whole show. She was the best one. Here's a photo of her in action:She really was indispensable, let me tell you. And how do you like that crackerjack photography of mine? It was tough to pull off such an awesome photo considering I had to sit half a mile away and try to squeeze off shots with a whiny four-year-old climbing all over me. The blurriness was totally intentional, you know, to keep from posting the identities of minors on the internet and what-not.

In all seriousness, she really did have a good time and did a wonderful job. After the performance, we went to an after-party in the parking lot that consisted of about seven bounce house water slides. That was a lot of fun for the kids. Not too much fun for me trying to keep track of their whereabouts by myself in a crowd. I left with as many children as I came with, so I suppose it was a success.

The rest of the weekend was spent trying to recover from our late-night partying on Friday. Yes, I have reached the age where eating chicken nuggets from a drive-thru on the way home from a bounce house party at 10:30 can be considered late-night partying that requires a recovery period.

This week we're going to be hiding out in the air-conditioning because the temperature is supposed to be 107 or something equally as obscene for a while. I've rented an old Muppet movie for the kids, and I'm going to just sit in my nice cool home with the shades drawn for the next few days in an effort try to keep my skin from melting off my body.

A couple of years ago, Greg was interviewing for a job in Orange County, California right around this time of year. We flew out there for the weekend to check it out, and it was a lovely 72 degrees the entire time. We could not believe how nice it was there compared to the heat that we had left back home. Talking with a couple of the pastors at the church there, one of them quipped that Texas was such a great place to live because the property values were so much lower than in California, and that the same price for a normal house there would buy you a mansion in Dallas. To which the other fella next to him responded, "Yeah, but in the summertime, you'd be living in a mansion two doors down from hell."

Truer words were never spoken.