How did I get here?

The last couple of weeks, J and I have been out car shopping. My little '88 Honda Accord lost it's air conditioning last year, power steering at the beginning of the year, and a couple weeks ago started overheating (a really hard thing to combat when it's 115). I had done my research and knew what kind of car I wanted to buy, but it's been such an experience to find one that a) doesn't smell like an ashtray, b) isn't scratched horribly inside and out, or c) has a million miles on it. I finally found one I liked last week, but before I could act on it, the dealer sold it. So when I called the dealer back about that one, he said that he had just got one in that was exactly the same as the one I had liked but had even less miles on it. So yesterday, J and I made our way to the dealer to check it out and hopefully make a deal. So since I was trying to trade in my Honda (one dealer we had visited was going to make it worth my while to trade it in, so I was pretty much insistent that they all give me the same amount), I had to get the car down there. The dealer is located 12 miles from our house. So yesterday, I left the house at 1--and got to the dealer around 3:30. I would be able to drive a couple miles and then have to pull in somewhere for about 20 minutes until the car cooled enough to try to move it again. And I think the outside temp was about 113 yesterday, so I'm sure you can imagine that was a lot of fun for me. There were truly times that I wanted to break down and cry (and we won't mention that when I made the first stop, I realized that I forgot some important papers at home and had to track down a friend who could get into my house and bring me my papers--and she knows that I absolutely love her for it!). So J met me at the lot, we checked out the car--it wasn't quite as clean as the first one was, but it only has 17,000 miles on it, and for a 2006, that's pretty much unheard of). We spent hours there last night just buying the car--between haggling on price and their paperwork, we were on their lot for 5 hours. The bad thing is that since they just got the car on Saturday, it hadn't been through the shop or detailed yet, so I couldn't leave with the car yesterday. I was promised it would be ready by 10 this morning, so J dropped me at the dealer on his way to work this morning. I finally drove off the lot at 2:30 this afternoon with my car. As much as I would love to be a cool mom and drive an SUV, everything about them just screams more $$--from the price to the gas mileage to the insurance. So I may not be that cool, but hey, my car has air conditioning and power steering and doesn't overheat, so I'm pretty happy.
(Oh, a note about color: I have to say I really hate the gold cars, but it seems like that's all I can get anymore. The Honda was gold, the Camry is gold, and now my Sedona is gold. *sigh* Maybe one day I'll have another color car)

July club meeting

My July Stampin' Up! club meeting is two days away, and I'm behind, as always. I did finish the final two cards today, though, so I'm uploading the three cards for my club meeting here. It's always a lot of fun getting together with the girls, and local girls, anyone is welcome to attend-- 7 pm at my house on Saturday.

A rite of passage

Once a year I take each child to get their pictures taken at Picture People. I've done this since they were little babies, and I may not always be prompt about getting their pics taken for each birthday, I haven't missed a year yet. While Lindsay and Cole were here, I needed to take Lindsay for her seven year old pics (before she turns 8 in September--see, not very prompt, but I made it before her birthday). While we were at the mall, I decided to surprise her with something she's been asking for: earrings.

My girls are funny because they have now each had their ears pierced twice. And for each one, the first time was exactly the same. They were both around six the first time, both cried (or in Lindsay's case, screamed) like crazy when they got it done. Then they let me care for their earrings for the six weeks you have to leave them in. As soon as the six weeks was up, I like to take their earrings out and give them a real thorough cleaning and then put them back in. For each girl, it was a hassle getting them to let me pull them out and then they refused to let me put them back in. And although they were both on the younger end of the spectrum of piercings, they were both begging for it (each had friends that had recently gotten their ears pierced). For Bailey, though, the second time she got hers pierced, it took and she's not had any problems with them. It remains to be seen if that's going to be the case with Lindsay, but so far I've not had any problems with her letting me clean them and she remembers more often than I do that they need to be cleaned, so I'm taking that as a good sign.

The other funny thing about my girls with their piercings is that, for as much of a camera bug as I am, I only had the camera on hand for one of their piercings each. So I have pics of Bailey's first time and Lindsay's second time. Kind of funny, I know, and Bailey's second time was Lindsay's first time, so I would have been able to capture both, but of course it didn't work out that way.

When we headed out to the mall, I didn't tell Lindsay that I was planning on letting her get them pierced again, but I figured her being home for the summer was a good time because she wouldn't have other distractions to keep us from forgetting to clean her ears. Of course I blew that now since she went back to Grandma's house, but I'm hoping she and Grandma remember to take care of them. So she and I went and shopped for a picture outfit before pictures and then got her pictures done. While we were waiting for the pictures to be ready for them to show us, I suggested we waste some time in Claire's (which, if you have a little girl, I know you know how hard that is to do :D). So we were wandering around Claire's for a bit, I kept waiting for her to bring up the subject again. And of course because I was waiting for it, she didn't ask. So finally I kind of drag her to the front area where they do the piercings and she lamented about not having pierced ears a little, so I took that and ran with it. She was so cute because she was so happy and excited. (On a side note, I always ask the kids if they have something they want to bring with their pics, and Lindsay chose her Bobby Jack which turned out to be a very good thing to have with her for this).
I wanted to make sure she was sufficiently warned, so I talked to her a little about how it was going to hurt but it would be ok. Well, this was definitely one time I should have kept my mouth shut. As she's watching the girl get ready, I lift up the camera to take a picture of her all excited and suddenly she's crying.

I guess I made her really nervous about it and the process of waiting was just too much. Luckily there was another employee around, so they did both her ears at the same time, but my poor little girl is not very tough.

She kept telling me how happy she was to have them pierced, though, so I didn't feel too bad. And now all she talks about is the earrings she wants to get when the six weeks is up (some bribery for her letting me do the thorough cleaning at six weeks--we don't go back to the store for earrings until she lets me put them back in). And now she can't wait for school to start so she can show off her new ears. You have to look close (maybe click the picture to get a bigger image), but check out her new sparkly ears.

Back and forth

As much as we weren't fully prepared for the kids to come home, we jumped right back into Cole's routine of karate all week. That proved to be really difficult when you're relying on just one vehicle--our second car is out of commission probably permanently for us as we don't want to sink any money into getting it running again. So it was really crazy for all of us trying to get Cole to karate and J to his tennis matches. I started talking to the kids about the possibility of going back to grandma's house for a couple more weeks. When I brought it up to my mom, she mentioned that my aunt was going to be bringing her grandkids to my mom's house today. And since my aunt lives only a couple hours away from me, I thought that might be a great opportunity to get them to my mom without having to make the trek all the way out there again. So yesterday afternoon, we packed the kids up again and drove to Blythe. J, the kids and I all swam for a couple hours, and my kids had a great time with my cousin's kids as usual. So much fun, in fact, that I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was for the kids to say goodbye to us again--no tears at all. This morning, my aunt was getting my kids and my cousin's kids up early to drive out to my mom's house and rejoin the fun there. So J and I are going to try to make the most of our next two weeks together and get in some go-kart racing and hopefully some other fun.

My best friend's birthday

I'm sure J thought I forgot to post this, or maybe he was just hoping I wouldn't, but I wanted to make sure I took the time to publicly embarrass my husband. Yesterday was J's 30th birthday. I had some ideas for how we could make it a big deal, but they kind of got put on hold since the kids are here. And his idea of what we could do to celebrate was to go go-kart racing, an activity that wouldn't be as fun with them. So I guess that will be our next date night. Instead, the kids and I just tried to make it a special day for him. Some of my plans for that were thwarted as well since I hid the balloons from him so well that I still haven't found them, and I discovered that we used up the helium tank at Bailey's last birthday so I wouldn't have been able to blow them up anyway. We did decorate a little on the outside of his office (and I do mean a very little), but the best decorating we did was to the sliding glass door in our kitchen. I had purchased a white marker that is meant to write on car windows, but it really didn't work (got it from Walmart, so go figure). Instead, I went and grabbed my dry erase markers and me and the kids wrote messages to him on the glass. They were really cute and pretty funny, and even Charlie got in on the action with my help. Charlie's message said, "Dear Dad, today for your birthday, I will bit you. Love, Charlie" which is pretty much what that dog would say if he could talk. J had a lot of fun reading the kids messages, and I'm kind of bummed Bailey wasn't here to get in on the action, although she did remember to call her Dad and wish him a happy birthday. Then last night we took him to a hibachi place for dinner that he's been wanting to go to. This was my first trip to a hibachi as well as the kids, and it was a lot of fun. The food was really delicious too, and J got some sushi as well as his hibachi, so I know he really enjoyed it. On the way home, I asked him if he wanted me to make him a cake I had planned on making or if he wanted to pick up some dessert on the way home. He chose to stop at Cold Stone and got a cookie dough cake, so the kids and I got to sing to him and made him blow out some candles. All in all, I know it wasn't as big of a deal as I think he was hoping, but hopefully it was still enjoyable.

For J, even though we didn't get to celebrate the way you wanted to, I hope you know how special you are to me. I can't even begin to imagine my life without you, and I'm so very lucky to have celebrated more than ten birthdays with you. You are a wonderful father and husband, and my very best friend. Happy birthday.

Celebrating Independence

*FYI: I wasn't happy with how much room the pictures were taking up, so I pulled a bunch of pics and put them together on one page in photoshop. I'm not very good at it, so it's not pretty, but it gets the job done. The only problem is that when you view it in the browser all together, the pics are too small to see. If you click on each pic, it will take you to a bigger image of each one so you can actually view the pics. Sorry about that, but it's better than it taking forever for the blog to load because of pictures that are too large.

The summer is going by so quickly already, we're almost halfway to back to school for the kids. As customary for us, my mom came out the weekend that she got out of school (and got to see the girls in their first dance recital) and took the kids back home with her. We always enjoy our time away from the kids because I do some major cleaning while they're not here and get their rooms ready for the upcoming year. This year is no exception, I have tons of bags ready to take to goodwill, not to mention the trash I removed from each room. It's nice to purge their rooms though and make them so clean (which of course they are determined to keep clean...for the first few weeks they get back anyway). And of course we miss them like crazy, but it's nice for J and I to get some time to be alone for awhile and I truly think it helps them to develop some independence from mom and dad--not to mention all the spoiling that goes on at Grandma's house.

This year we traveled to So Cal for July 4th as we always do. My parents usually have a block party (Lakewood still allows fireworks, so it's fun to do our own), but last year, some idiot got caught doing illegal fireworks so they got shut down for two years on the block party. So instead we went over to my brother and sister-in-law's house and had a big party there. All the regular faces were there: my two brothers with their families, my mom, and my cousin with his family. In addition, all of my grandparents were there and some friends that I haven't seen in about nine years. The father in this family was my little league coach back when I was around Cole's age, and our families became really close friends. They have a son my age and another son that is a little younger, and we used to go camping with them and get together often. They've always been a big part of our lives until we grew up and had families of our own. Well, the father found me on facebook and we've been able to reconnect, I invited them out for our party and we had a great time catching up. For me it was fun to watch their faces as they got to know my kids and my brother's kids. You can always see when some part of your child reminds them of you when you were a child, and that's really fun for me. The only sad part about our party this year is that my dad wasn't able to be there. The worst part about being a long haul truck driver is that you never know when you're going to be home and you can't plan on being anywhere. So we definitely missed him, but the kids got to see him the week before as well.

We also wanted to do something fun with our kids while we were there. I had thought about taking them to a water park nearby until I realized that it was the Saturday of a holiday weekend and they were probably going to be packed (not to mention, I think it barely hit 80 while we were there so we would have been freezing coming from 115). We decided to take the kids to Golf n Stuff instead, which was doubly fun for Cole because he loves the original Karate Kid movie, and they filmed there, so he has a new claim to fame for now.

The day after Independence Day, we went to a Mauss family party, so we got to see grandparents and aunts and uncles for that side of the family this time too. I forgot my camera, so I didn't get any pictures there, but it was really fun this year to see my kids interact with my husband's cousins. Some of his cousins are not that much older than my kids, so they have a lot of fun. The older cousins took off to a park nearby and my kids tagged along while J and I had a lot of fun talking to two of his uncles.

When it was time to come home, two of our kids insisted that they wanted to come home with us. I wasn't quite ready for my break to be over yet. And while I had finished their rooms, I didn't get the rest of the house cleaned yet, so we tried very hard to talk them out of it. I even offered to come back in 9 days to pick them up, but when Lindsay cried after thinking about nine more days away from me, I decided it was time for them to come home. And for Cole, as much as he loves his cousins, that poor kid is the only boy. And the two cousins that live close to my mom were constantly at the house, which is usually a good thing, but I don't think he had much patience for the three year old because she liked playing with his toys--and they don't hold up well to three year olds. So I guess he figured it was better to come home and have just Lindsay around than be surrounded by girls all the time too. And since we pay for karate whether he's there or not, we're back into the swing of going to karate all week. So much for our break. :D Oh well, that's what we'll have in another ten years when they've all grown up.