Chair stealing and fish healing

After school today, I had to run to Walgreen’s to pick up a steroid pack for my first poison ivy rash of 2011. Not fun! I have it on my eyes, cheeks, neck, lips, ears, arms and tummy. I feel like an itchapotamus! However, our fence row is looking better and I’m so thankful that my eyes didn’t swell shut this time. I’m suppose to do something with Kim from Helping Me Up tomorrow, but I’m not sure she will want to be seen with me.

I’m so thankful that there is medicine that gives me quick relief in the early stages of itchiness. I have no self-control when it comes to itchiness. I barely got out of the Walgreens parking lot before I was popping

When Cole and I got home, we ate dinner quickly and took Audrey outside to play. She wanted to wear her pajama pants and ladybug boots.  She immediately headed straight for the mud puddles.

We took a walk to the pond and found an almost dead grass carp. We just had the pond stocked last summer, so it was nice to see such a long fish, just not in this condition.  John tried throwing it into deeper water, but it kept coming back to this spot. It made Cole sad that it was likely going to die, so he found a stick and tried to get it to swim back to the deeper water, but it wouldn’t.

On the way back to the house, Cole broke out the metal detector. He loves trying to find things around the fields. He’s found several neat, rusty, old farm machinery pieces, but no big treasure yet. 

Cole finally let me take a few pictures of him. When he got tired of it, he got silly.

After bubble blowing, Audrey chased Cole down to tell him a secret.

I love this picture!

It ended in her running off to her chair in fear. I’m not sure I want to know what she told him. However, when she got to her chair, this is what she found.

She wasn’t thrilled because every time she got out of her chair tonight, our dog, Copper, would jump in it and steal it away from her. At one point, Audrey was leaning forward in her chair and the dog jumped up between her back and the chair and sat there while Audrey held the cat. There is barely enough room for Audrey in the chair, so seeing all three of them in the chair was hilarious.

I am so loving this weather! I hope it sticks around for awhile before it starts getting hot. We left the windows open in the bedroom all night last night and it was so comfy to wake up to this morning.

Summer—Off to a ____ start!

busy, crazy, hectic, fun-filled, exciting, you fill in the blank.

I finished school on Tuesday. We had two days of Kindergarten Screening for the incoming kiddos after my class had left on Friday, so Wednesday was my first day of summer vacation. Woo hoo! On Wednesday, I decided that during my summer vacation I was going to do at least two big things a day. In my mind, big can be defined as finally pulling weeds, putting to use a tutorial for a twirly skirt or even organizing paid bills. Yes, I’m that exciting. :) It lasted maybe two days.

My big projects for Wednesday were working in the yard (all day) and putting up the pool(s).  This is how happy my kiddos were to finally be able to get in their swimsuits and start having some water fun. It was only this sweet for the first 5 minutes as they are so relieved to finally be in the water.

It turned into this and then a full fledged water squirting fight.

Until we finally got the big pool up.

Audrey is finally big enough to touch the bottom this year.

However, the first time in the pool, she would barely let go of Cole’s hands.

Cole liked jumping up in the water and then splashing back down. Audrey really enjoyed it, too. Maybe to the point of exhausting Cole.

Thursday, I stayed inside and worked on a huge bow order that has to be completed by June 1. (Mainly because I was so sore and sunburned from working in the yard all day on Wed.) I also got a few things cleaned up in the house for company on Saturday. Cole did LOTS of swimming. Except, he forgot to put on his sunscreen and he ended up being very burnt.

That night, he complained of feeling hot and that his eyes hurt. We chalked it up to him being so sunburned and his eyes because of the pool water.

Friday morning, Audrey and I cleaned some of the outside play toys.

Right before we were suppose to leave to have lunch for my sister-in-law’s 30th birthday, Cole said he didn’t feel well. We checked his temp and it was 100.3. I called my family and told them we would be coming to town to give my brother his power washer back, but wouldn’t be able to go to lunch because of Cole’s fever. They called me back and insisted it was probably because of his sunburn and to go ahead and come and we could sit at the far end of the table. :)

So, we picked up my grandma, Nannie, and headed to HuHot for lunch.  It was really yummy and very affordable for all-you-can eat.

 

Someone REALLY enjoyed the noodles with teriyaki and sweet and sour sauce.

She slurped so many noodles that the pineapple juice from the sweet and sour sauce started to burn her chin. We had to dip a napkin in ice water to cool the burn. Then, she went back for more.

This is my sister-in-law, Maegan. She is married to my brother, Ryan. This was the last day we will see them for awhile. They moved out of town the following day. This was a bittersweet celebration.

Nannie, Cole and Dad

 

Mom and Ryan

My grandma, Gigi (Loved this face, Ryan!)

Audrey and me

  

My nephew, Myric, finishing off his bowl of noodles

My niece, Rhiannon, and her grandma, Liz

 

Audrey and Nannie

  

Audrey and Rhiannon were both sitting on my lap and I was trying to get a good picture and I obviously looked awkward, so the waiter took this picture for me.

   

After lunch, we took my grandma home and headed back to our house. I’m pretty sure we all ended up taking a nap. That night, we cleaned house to get ready to have John’s cousin’s kiddos over for the afternoon on Saturday.

To be continued…

Let the countdown begin…

We only have 24 more days of school this year. That includes only 4 more Mondays. If you take off a field trip day, graduation practice and the last day being a half day, it’s like we only have 21 1/2.

Needless to say, I have a lot to do right now. The end of the year is always insanely busy. This year is no exception. Well, maybe a little exception. I have an ebay customer wanting to buy 6800 bows to donate to the Canadian NICU that her babies were in. So, this adds a little extra pressure. She is suppose to pay tomorrow. I said I wouldn’t begin the order until I actually had her payment, but I’m starting to feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day anyway, so I better get started. If she doesn’t order, I’ll have them ready for my ebay and Etsy customers and maybe I’ll feel like I’m ahead.

On top of this, Sissy has been sick. She is having some horrible coughing rounds at night time. Her days are okay, but nights are awful. Last night, she coughed so hard that she threw up all over both of us. I felt awful for her! I’m hoping that she gets over whatever this is very quickly. She doesn’t think it’s even remotely acceptable for us to deny her playing outside right now. She’s definitely an outdoor girl. Tonight, she was fine with just walking the track around the pond a couple of times and then coming in.

While we were at the pond tonight, a neighbor dog decided to swim in the pond. It was so funny to watch. He would run into the pond and doggy paddle (or is it just called paddling when a dog is doing it?) and then walk right out and play with our dog. Copper, our dog, didn’t initially like the stranger one bit. However, she warmed up to him and they chased two huge bunnies through the field like they were best of friends.

Cole is taking the MAP test the next three days and I offered to make and send brain food on the testing days. Tomorrow, it will be banana bread. The next few days will be pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and to celebrate on Wednesday, some kind of popsicles or ice cream sandwiches.

Tomorrow is our first Families and French Toast breakfast. I think there are 16 people coming in our class. I’m excited about seeing the kids with their parents. We are also starting Kindergarten Graduation practice. This is always a  bit stressful, but I’m hopeful anyway.

Sorry for the random, all over the place post. :) I hope to get some pictures added later this week.

Once upon a pond..

….there were finally duck footprints. For the first time today, I saw ducks at the pond!!! I was so excited!

I admit, I was starting to have a little pond envy. It seemed that all the ponds around us had ducks or geese, except ours. I even asked Cole on the way to school one day, “What is our pond missing that everyone else’s pond has.” He replied, “Geese.” He’s so funny!

After John came home from work tonight, we took a walk down to the pond to check everything out. Tomorrow, the pond is going to be stocked with catfish and grass carp. Currently, it only holds crawdad and deafening frogs. Oh, and maybe a few hundred rocks that everyone has thrown in. :)

I love watching the ripples from the splashes the rocks make.

This is my favorite picture below.

Audrey demanded to wear her boots and church dress to the pond. This reminds me of climbing trees in a velvet jumper when I was a little kid. Partly girly, partly tomboy.

John did not want his picture taken. He had just gotten off work and hadn’t showered yet. Regardless,  I think they all look pretty cute, myself.

 

Last year, when we got the estimate for the pond, I am pretty sure I freaked out. It was twice as much as what we were expecting. Low and behold, a portion of the pond was unable to be dug out because it rained immediately after the first few days of digging and it was already filling up. This meant that the tractors could not get in without getting stuck. So, the cost ended up being right around what we were initially thinking it would be. I felt bad, really bad! I spent time being angry thinking the pond wasn’t something that was ‘necessary’. Now, I look at it and all the times we’ve visited and I know that there are years of memories to be made here. I am pretty sure that memories are necessary and you can’t put a price on that.