Summer Fun - A catch up post . . .

Oh my goodness! Can you believe that summer is well over half-way over??? The kids go back to school in just over 4 weeks, a concept brought home to me by newspaper circulars advertising school supply deals that I am trying to snatch up each week. Between NOT couponing previously and an occasional dabbling in the 'pre-bought' school supply packs from the PTA, I never realized that the cheapest supplies are available this early before. I am totally loving grabbing name-brand Crayons for a quarter and more than a full year supply of mechanical pencils for Tyler at $.09 per pack of 5. I've spent more than a fair share of my free time the last two weeks (minimal, actually, considering we were barely home) buying items for 2 kid's supply lists at ridiculously low prices as well as enough extras that I can donate some to Scooter's kindergarten teacher and also have replacement supplies on hand throughout the year which will keep me from having to buy spiral notebooks at $1.89 instead of the $.15 I spent last week.

OK, school supply shopping might not thrill you, but let me put this in perspective for you so you get why I am excited. Last year, Tyler had the pre-bought pack which cost me $35 or so for 5th grade (I think because it included a huge binder, this year they wanted almost $50 for incoming 6th graders). However, the binder was open-style and my 5th grader kept losing everything out of the edges. Evidently this was a common phenomenon because I was informed by my 10 year old that he needed a zip-up binder of a particular kind that everyone else had. I spent another $25 on that thing as well as replacing several other items he had received at the beginning of the year (all the higher priced items, of course) which literally fell apart within the first six weeks of school.

Additionally, the pack (and requisite list) had included 48 #2 pencils. 48!!! Each kid provided this and they were placed in the community pile for distribution throughout the year. Tyler doesn't even use them. He prefers mechanical and I am often asked to go get replacement lead for his pencils which costs me probably $15 or so throughout the year. On the rare occasions that Tyler didn't have his mechanical utensil with him or was out of lead, he would ask for a community pencil from his teacher - probably less than 5 throughout the year, and she would get angry with him and give him a disciplinary mark for not having a writing utensil. Explain that to me! It's a community bucket! Urgh.

Then Tyler gets another supply list for his REACH (gifted) program after school starts. Anyway - I probably spent $100 or more on supplies for 1 child last year, not including his back-pack, bike lock, 3 lunch boxes (Brewer kept finding them and chewing them up) and project supplies throughout the year. Not enough to break us or anything, but I will have 2 or more kids in school from now on and I wasn't going to spend money on a pack of supplies that I would have to replace again.

Frugality is key! My goal is to get as much as I can for as little as possible (and preferably higher quality on the pricier items), have extra supplies on hand so I don't have to pay more later when they need the supplies and be able to donate extra supplies for families that I know just getting the basics is difficult. I kind of felt like if I spent less than $10 per kid on all the little supplies, it would be no big deal to spend $30 on the premium binder Tyler wants for this year, etc. The school district got smart too - they made the required binder one that zips up for everyone.

So here I am, racking up deals on pencils, paper, folders, spirals and crayons in the midst of spending a total of 8 days at the family lake house in Texoma. When we finally got home from the second installment of that vacation on Sunday afternoon, I came home to find that my boxer, Brewer, really didn't like getting left a second time. Evidently he had reached his limit. You've heard of dogs chewing shoes up while you are at work because they miss you . . . well Brewer decided to get into my school supply bag! The only reason he isn't dead right now is that the crayon boxes he chewed up only cost me a quarter, the pencil boxes were only $.19 and the filler paper packages were only $.60. Over all it was probably about $2 worth of damage, but the mess! Wow! There were also a lot of random cardboard boxes and papers chewed up. The neighbor that was feeding him had picked up a lot of it and left it in a half-chewed banker box on my kitchen table, but I still had quite a disaster to clean up. There was also a fiasco regarding a combination of kitty litter and foam play matting, but that was so horrific I can't even relive it to explain it to you. Let's just leave it at this - it's all clean now and sanitary again, but it took me well over 2 hours to get it that way. NOT how I wanted to spend my Sunday afternoon. Basically, all of my pets are lucky to be alive today.

So, coming home from our vacation was not great, but the week in general was awesome. We had gone up on Friday night, the 8th of July, after Scott got home from work. I had literally worked all day on packing everything a family of 5 (plus one) would need for a week at the lake house and I was exhausted before we even hit the road. We had invited Tyler's best friend, Jerry, from next door to come along so he would have a playmate for the week. He does great with his little brothers, but they aren't big enough to go off to the playground or the beach or fishing at the dock without an adult, and Tyler definitely is old enough. We figured it would save our sanity to have Jerry along, and it definitely did. The two had a great time together with only a few moments of irritation at each other, which was to be expected.

Last year, we had to carry Scooter to a beach chair, lay out towels for him to sit on and basically minimize any contact he had with sand or water at the beach. Of course, I just thought he was crazy (being the ultimate beach bunny that I am), but I didn't know that he had Sensory Issues at that time either. When we went up for Memorial Day this year, I was so thrilled that Scooter just walked right out into the sand and started playing. He still didn't want to go near the water or any wet sand, but it was a huge improvement. So, imagine my utter and complete JOY when on this trip, Scooter just walked right into the water and was even pulling wet, icky sand from the lake bottom up in his hands to play with! This is really an accomplishment and a milestone that I can't even really give justice to with mere words.

I would have liked to have even more pictures of how Scooter was playing, but I was pretty busy relaxing in the water myself. Riley kept asking to 'go really really deep' with his floatie on and we took turns complying. Riley has no fear whatsoever and told his grandma at one point that he basically wanted them to cross the lake to the other shore together. Right.

We had quite a few visitors to the lake as well. My parents and our dear friend, Susan, came up the first Saturday and spent the night. I don't have any pictures of them, but rest assured, they got some serious time in the water. On Sunday we took dad's dog, Rebel, and our sweet Bella (she only came for the first leg of the trip, but she loves Texoma) down to the beach and let them play. Bella just waded and swam for the longest time, probably thinking this was the coolest she had been all summer. Rebel kept trying to catch waves in his mouth which was highly entertaining.

On Monday, Scott's mom, Sandy, came up for one night with my nephew Jaxon whom she was watching for a few days while his parents and sisters enjoyed Disney World in Orlando. Jaxon will be 1 this week and this was his first trip to the lake.

Over all, we had a great time and I even remembered to pull out my camera a couple of times inside the house, instead of just at the beach, but admittedly not much.

The kids love it there, but after 5 days they were almost as ready as Scott and I to head home for a couple of days. I was in technology withdrawal and desperately needed to do my deal shopping for the week. We came home early Wednesday afternoon and between then and Friday morning, I got all my deal shopping done, got all the laundry done, packed Tyler up for church camp and then repacked the four of us up for another weekend at the lake.

Scott and I spent Friday afternoon repairing a French Door and a couple of deck chairs when we got there and then we spent a quiet night watching one of the little guys favorite movies, Transformers, together before we crashed. The next morning, Scott & the boys set up our beach gear again while I prepped for more visitors. Mom and Dad returned for the day, this time with Tara and my niece, Jocelyn, in tow (as well as Tara's dog, Winston, and sweet Rebel again - that was a crowded truck). Not long after they unloaded, Susan returned for another round at the lake with her daughter, Emily, and grandson, Riley, as well as our sweet friend Claudia (another surprise). {Side note here, the Riley thing gets confusing - mine is Matthew Riley and Emily's is James Riley, both called Riley and both named for Emily's beloved brother who passed 10 years ago this month. We usually call one big Riley and the other baby Riley, but baby Riley is 18 months now and might soon be bigger than my Riley, so we think we are just going to refer to them by their full names when we have them together. Crazy, but good crazy.}

When Jaxon had visited, we got to witness him taking a few of his first halting steps and spent a fair amount of time walking around with him grasping our fingers as he toddled here and there. Jocelyn, who just turned 9 months on Friday, was walking full steam upon arrival and trying to run after her cousins and 'boyfriend' James Riley. She is so adorable, but I am so glad that none of my kids walked that early (both Tara and I did, at nine months - our poor moms . . .). Jocelyn even tried walking in waves and in the sand. Pretty brave for having not been walking fully a week yet. The two babies were so cute though. James Riley is a water baby like you've never seen. He just plunges head first and expects you to catch him, holding his breath like a pro. You have to keep an eye on him, but it's hysterical.

(My personal favorite is James Riley walking around with no pants on after we lost the swim diaper.)

Is there anything cuter than a GIRL baby playing at the beach? I don't think so. Especially when it's one of my nieces! Anyway, I promise I haven't lost all the good feelings associated with our trip despite the messes my pets left me with upon our return. It's taken me two full days to unwind and get the laundry mostly done from our trip. Then Tyler came home from camp yesterday and gave me another full load of wet, musty smelling, gross laundry. Scott is back at work and definitely paying for his full week off, but he said it was worth it. Originally we were going to go away to Florida or South Texas for an ocean beach rental, but this was actually more fun. We got to share something we love with people we love. Here's hoping there will be many more times like this at that very house (there's drama involved, but I won't get into it) and that we aren't limited to just one weekend a summer like we were last year.

As for the rest of the summer, Tyler had been gone for 3 weeks prior to our lake trip and the rest of us were filling up our days with OT visits, swim lessons once a week, occasional trips to Rowlett to get some work done and of course cutting coupons and shopping for deals. Gonna toot my own horn for a second - I have gotten so good at the drug store game that I barely spend anything when I go to CVS and Walgreens each week now and come home with loads of good stuff. It was time to up my grocery game and I am getting better each week.

The last 3 weeks I have spent a total of $100 on groceries for our family. That doesn't include some extra snack purchases for the lake, beer & soda & juice for the lake, bags upon bags of ice for the lake and stops for fresh produce from the guy who sells out of the back of his pick-up near the entrance to our boat club. Those were added vacation expenses though, not normal groceries. And that $100 bought me about $350 (retail) of groceries. Not bad, if I do say so myself. That's well over 50% savings. I have no desire to be as crazy as the extreme couponing people on TLC (although I am totally loving watching them), but I am saving a ton of money which I love.

My husband still has not embraced the idea of the 'stockpile', even though I don't come anywhere near filling up a garage or an extra room in our house and have no desire to do so. He will say 'but do we NEED that?', not realizing that I'm really only spending pennies or nothing on toiletries to stock up. Eventually we will NEED them and he certainly isn't complaining when there is always an extra toothpaste or deodorant on hand and he doesn't have to ask me to go buy one. This week, I got 4 tubes of toothpaste for about a quarter each when they are normally priced between $4-6 for this size and brand and 2 deodorants that are normally $4 each for a quarter each. So even though I wasn't out of toothpaste or deodorant, I see it as saving almost $30 on a future need for $1.50. And because I use the 'same as cash' bucks/rewards at those drug stores, I didn't pay the $1.50 - they were free. Scott will get it eventually. It's not like I am going out and spending $50 to save $10 on something we don't need. I am saving like crazy on stuff that we will most assuredly use and my out of pocket budget for this stuff each week is actually less than I would have spent on the random tube of toothpaste and hair gel I would have bought anyway. Plus, we are going to smell great around here!

Okay done with the self shout out - and because I never got around to sharing all the details of our trip to Austin and San Antonio earlier this summer, some more of my favorite images of that trip.

Just a note - that ride is similar to the splash waterfalls one at Six Flags, but about 3 times bigger. Scooter absolutely insisted on going. Scooter! Riley wanted to go too, but he was too short, so I hung back with Tyler and Riley while Scott took Scooter on basically his biggest ride EVER!

Cute, smiley baby is Scott's cousin's son, CJ. We had lunch with Uncle Dave, Aunt Jan, cousin Jenny and baby CJ at Mi Tierra's on our last day of fun in San Antonio. Shout out to Mi Tierra's for just the best Margarita ever!

Do you just love the pirate eye patch? I do - favorite picture of vacation by far!

And just a couple more random shots from summer fun - a splash park we went to with some of Scott's family one day, a couple shots from the Wet Zone in Rowlett and sorta, kinda proof that Scooter actually went under water fully at his second swim lesson.

So that's it - our summer so far in a nut shell, or a slightly skewed picture show for whenever I happened to remember that I owned a camera. I believe we are pretty caught up. Tyler took a full roll of film with a disposable camera that I will attempt to get developed and if there is anything decent I'll scan and post. However, I went through the camp's pictures and found a couple of Tyler. Can I just say - they get to do a whole lot more at camp than I did going to good old Jan K Ranch back in the day! Zip Line, BMX track, Paint Ball, Archery - Wow! I kind of can't wait to be a counselor when the little guys get older.

Hope you all are having a great summer too. Ours is winding down already, slowing just a bit and giving me a little time to actually contemplate and write just a tiny bit now, I hope! Only 4 more weeks until Scooter goes to school and I have all kinds of issues wrapped up in that which I am sure are good for a blog or two alone. Today though, I am going to figure out how I can work out getting back to the lake house to retrieve my forgotten drill and also how I am going to function with my parents gone to Wisconsin for 3 weeks come Friday!

Thanks and God Bless!

An Addendum . . .

Thanks for all the supportive comments about my rant yesterday. After two phone conversations I had about this little adventure, I would like to address a couple things.

First, my mom gave me an incredibly hard time about the 'old' comments since she and dad aren't too far behind the age range I gave as an estimate. Let me just say: Mom, you are not 'OLD'! Not, like this. At some point it is not about age, but about attitude. Those people had very OLD attitudes and postures and obviously lifestyles. That is NOT you and dad, and hopefully never will be. This is also true of many, many people in my life and hopefully gives me a great example of how I want to mature. My uncle Bob, for example, at 70 he would have easily been mistaken for someone in his late 40's or early 50's. His attitude is young, his outlook is young and how he conducts himself is young. So, let me just say - when I was talking about how old this couple was, it was more about how they conducted themselves than a commentary about their actual age.

Second, I related the story to one of my best friends last night who was born and bred very southern. She laughed about it, but didn't think the woman was out of line, just because she was elderly. Her attitude was more about how we should teach our children to respect their elders and so this woman had a right to feel however she wanted and she could say what she wanted and therefore I really should teach my kids that. It wasn't a big thing, just a small difference in our motivation when the resulting conclusion for both of us was 'teach the children how to react'. We both got to the same place, but our attitudes about it were just slightly different. Funny, because many of you who commented were born and bred pretty Texan as well and no one else seemed to think I was being intolerant of the elderly.

No matter how naturalized of a Texan I have become in the last 30 years, there is still a difference in how I think about some things (have grown to love sweet tea, still hate grits!) and this was a startling reminder. Yes, I believe in respecting my elders and teaching my children to do so as well. But, some of my longtime friends take this to a level that doesn't make sense to me. I guess I see it differently, especially in a case like yesterday. Let me put it this way: I respect that you are 80 and have a right to believe and say what you want. I respect you as someone who has lived and learned and acquired wisdom and I will listen to what you say and take it to heart. However, just because you are 80 doesn't mean you have earned the right to be nasty and vicious and rude and no matter how old you are, I don't have to tolerate that. Because of your age, I will just walk away and not throw down with you, but I won't stand here and take it either. That's what I will teach my children, in a very subtle way of course. Wouldn't want to start giving them attitudes at an early age or anything.

So, regardless, I apologize if I offended you in any way, shape or form regarding my recounting of our episode yesterday or in my defense of my yankee attitudes.

Ahhhh - the roads we travel as parents - crazy, huh? Anyway - next post will be back to fun stuff about the kids, I promise. By the way - I just did some update thingy that is supposed to make my blog more readable on a mobile device so if you are checking me out on your smartphone, please let me know how that looks!

Thanks!

Are you kidding me????

"Do you always make a habit . . .", that's how she opened the conversation. That's how this little comment started that has me ridiculously angry today.

Okay - I know I am way behind on writing about our summer so far. I suck. In my defense, I have spent the last two weeks dealing with one sick kid and then another. This last week has been brutal and last night was the first time in over a week that I got a solid 8 hours of shut eye. And I still want to tell you about all of the fun stuff too, but right now I am FUMING and I could not wait even one more minute to vent about my frustration today!!!

Because Riley was seriously contagious this week, we had to put off our weekly visit to see Tyler in Denton until today. However, now that we have successfully kept down (I am soooo tired of bodily fluids, I can't even tell you!) antibiotics for 48 hours, we could make the trip. Tyler's been gone 2 weeks and it feels like 2 months. The kids are antsy, they miss him. Well, we all do, but this is the 9th summer Tyler has gone off with his dad and I am pretty used to it now. I just push through and look forward to my weekly visit with him, counting down the days with the boys until he comes back home.

We left early this morning and made a trip out to Irving for cousin Liz to give Scooter and Riley much needed haircuts and then we drove to Denton and picked Tyler up from his Mimi's house. It was a light visit. I was bringing him his brand new upgraded phone and we planned to have lunch and then visit Sprint to have his contacts moved over to the new device. We decided to eat at Applebee's. I probably only eat at Applebee's once or twice a year and it's always when I visit Tyler in Denton. We've been going there on these visits since he was 3, it's kind of a tradition.

We arrived at 11 a.m., early lunch, and the place was dead. We got a booth and the kids spent the first ten minutes amusing themselves. Riley was playing Angry Birds on my phone, Scooter was doing a maze on his activity sheet and Tyler was busy exploring his new phone. We decided on food, made our order and settled in for an hour with each other.

I am not saying that my kids were perfect - they are kids. However, they were very well behaved for the most part. There were a few moments at the start where Riley kept saying he wanted an apple for lunch since there was an apple logo on everything and he hammed it up for a bit when he liked our reactions and all of us telling him they didn't actually have apples. The two little boys spent some of our food waiting time playing under the table in our booth, but then hopped up to enjoy their lunch when it arrived. Surely, they were rambunctious and we weren't the quietest table in the joint, but we weren't the loudest either. There was a table full of businessmen in the bar area that were laughing hysterically and loudly.

My kids stayed in the booth and acted in an age appropriate manner at the table. They didn't scream or throw fits or bother anyone that I could tell. I did offer a heartfelt apology to the one fellow customer we interacted with when we got there as Riley had dropped his menu over the back of the booth and next to this gentleman while he climbed into our seat. The man said it wasn't a problem, made a comment about his own grandchildren and then asked how old my boys are before turning back to his lunch. Anyway - it was normal and fun. The boys jumped together for a photo and Aunt Asheley called me during lunch and both Tyler and Riley spoke quietly to her for a few minutes. Actually, their voices for that call were probably lower than my own.

Just after I asked for the check and we boxed up our leftovers, the kids started getting antsy and tried to leave the booth. I quietly asked Scooter to sit back down and Riley tried to fight me, but I picked him up and whispered in his ear that if he didn't behave himself I would take him to the bathroom for a spanking. He immediately got quiet and sat next to me while I fished for my debit card. And that's when it happened.

This little older couple, probably in their late 60's or early 70's, toddled by. (Yeah, sorry, not gonna filter on this because my opinion of them is extremely low right now - they were toddling.) The woman made a point of stopping next to the table and turning to speak to me.

"Do you always make a habit of ruining other people's dining experiences?"

And then she kept on walking. I sat there for about 20 seconds with my mouth hanging open before I replied 'Are you serious?' Then, her husband who was walking behind her turned around and said 'Yes, she's very serious' with this nasty little expression on his face and then they walked off.

Ooooooh, I was steaming. There was a huge part of me that wanted to jump up and follow this couple and give them a serious piece of my mind. I would have 10 years ago, maybe even 5 years ago. But not today. Today I took a big breath and tried to shake it off and turned back to my kids. That's when I saw Tyler's face and he was ticked off big time. So instead of blowing up at misguided strangers, I worked on calming my son down. Scooter asked to go to the bathroom and I sent Tyler off with him to the restroom while I stayed with Riley and waited for my card receipt. As I was signing and chatting with the waitress, she told me that she hoped we both enjoyed our new phones (it was kind of obvious we were excited about them) and I just asked her straight out if we had bothered other people during our lunch. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, 'No, I've had a lot of tables with kids that are not good, your kids were fine, they were really good.'

As we were leaving, I was trying to explain to Tyler that their comment had little to do with us and more to do with them. They were obviously bitter, unhappy people. And then I remembered that I had seen where they were sitting. I had left the little ones with Tyler while I ran to the bathroom when we first arrived. (Can I just say how awesome it is to have a big kid? He can't be responsible for everything yet, but he can definitely handle the boys for 2 minutes while I go pee!!! And the place was pretty quiet, only 2 or 3 other booths filled at that time.) Anyway, on my way back to the table, I saw this couple being sat at their table. It wasn't anywhere near our table. In fact, to come by our booth on their way out, they actually had to take a very indirect, out of the way, route to get to the door. They should have just walked across the bar area instead of up and down steps to come the long way around by us.

Granted - we could have been louder than I thought if we bothered them way over there, but I don't think so. After all, it's not like you hear everyone's conversation at tables that are even right next to you usually. These people were probably 6 tables and 2 rows away from us. Even though it was quiet when we arrived, the lunch rush had hit and the entire restaurant had filled up and gotten much louder. My kids weren't yelling or anything - they had to just be annoyed that I had kids there in general. And the people around us didn't seem to notice us at all. Maybe I'm delusional, but I think these people were just what my mom would call 'crotchety'. Icky, cranky, bitter, miserable people who must have had some terrible kind of life that they can't just let kids be kids at lunch.

I stayed calm for Tyler who told me he was 'really offended', but I admit I was just as mad - if not more. I wanted to tell those people that if they didn't want to dine around kids they should pick a place to eat that wasn't family & kid friendly. It's not like I took my munchkins to a 5-star steak place at 8:00 at night where I would expect perfect behavior if I even dared take a minor. And trust me, I wouldn't take a 3 year old there anyway! It's Applebee's for goodness sake! Kids aren't always going to be perfect in a restaurant, but you have to keep taking them so that you can teach them how to behave and what is and is not appropriate behavior in public. And really, what was the point? Why did they NEED to say something so badly? They went out of their way to tell me that my kids-being-kids was rude and disruptive when it wasn't to anyone but them.

Looking back, I know that I wouldn't normally let my kids play under the table if Scott was there to help, but those were probably their quietest moments of the day. Riley was definitely not very quiet when he was going on about the apple, but that was before the cranky duo arrived. Other than those two things, I can't figure out what they were so riled up about. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I am going to go heat up a cup of coffee and hang out with Scooter for a while since Riley is napping. I am going to thank God with every breath in my body for my three amazing, wonderful, beautiful children and their fabulous, miraculous, stupendous NORMALNESS. I am also going to pray that whatever else happens to me in this life, that I remember until I am cold in the grave how wonderful it is when kids are kids. I pray that I am the kind of old people that my grandparents were, grinning at every kid and baby they saw, and not like these people were - bitter and miserable and itching for peace and quiet in a public place.

Alrighty then - that's my vent! Done!

God Bless and Have a Great Day!

First Images of Summer 2011

So far, our summer vacation has been speeding by in a blur! Things are supposed to slow down around here after this weekend, but I'm not holding my breath. I have much to tell you about our vacation to Austin and San Antonio, the beginning of swim lessons, fun family outings and parties with friends and family and just some fun times with my kids so far, but we're so busy I don't have time to write it yet! However - in preparation, I have uploaded some of our pictures for the summer so far and I thought I could at least give you a glimpse of some of our fun:

Riley, patiently waiting for pizza to come to our table at dinner with Uncle Matthew and family.

Sweet Girl - Jocelyn

Scott II & Scott III enjoying the hotel pool

Tara, ever patient, with Riley

Tyler & Jocelyn - she's not sure what to think of all these boys playing with her stuff!

Scooter reading the Riverwalk map while we ate at Hard Rock

Tyler acting like it was no big deal at Hard Rock when really he was loving every minute of it.

All my boys - waiting for the boat ride on the river

Are they ever going to open the doors to this place? Scooter kept telling us he was ready to do something fun . . .

Scooter having fun

Tyler at Old Market Square - the kind of kid that makes every shop owner happy.

Riley in a party shirt. This one is a hand-me-down from Tyler that was always one of my favorites and I always thought was an 'Uncle Matthew' kind of a shirt. If you know him, you know what I mean.

Anyway - much more to come, of course, and the stories that go along with the pictures as well. Just wanted to provide a little proof that we weren't just sitting around the house watching movies and playing video games in this ridiculous heat!

Thanks and God Bless!