First Day of 3rd Grade and PreK

Look at my two sweet little monkeys on the first day of school. What you don't see is me giddy with my three hours and forty-five minutes of freedom. FREEDOM!!!!!!! (Zachary gets out at 11:00) Too bad Jack has to try and ruin it with his "live it up while you can". You can't drag me down man! I'm FREE! FREE I tell you!

Gimme a Y!

Holly has been cheering at the YMCA since January and she really loves it. She absolutely hates to miss cheerleading practice. The Y cheerleaders cheer for both basketball and flag football games at the Y. During the summer, Holly participated in a one day cheerleading camp held by our NFL team's cheerleaders. She had a ball with that and wants to participate in their program where the girls get to dance at half-time with the NFL cheerleaders at one of the games. I just can't get over the fact that my shy little monkey is actually getting out there in front of people.

For It's Root, Root, Root For The Cubbies!

I redecorated Zachary's room in a Cubs/baseball theme. It took me forever, mainly because I would get tired of doing it, but it looks good. The biggest project was painting the Wrigley Field sign on the wall. That turned out to be a pain but I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I also really like the color I used for the sponge painting on the wall, Buzz Lightyear Beta Sector, one of the Disney colors at Home Depot. When it was sponged on over the cream colored walls, it looked just like the clay on a baseball diamond. I hung up baseball border and stenciled the words to "Take Me Out To The Ballgame". Some cool baseball posters I found online and a really neat baseball shadow box frame completed the look. Oh, I forgot the baseball bats that my dad mounted to the closet doors for door pulls and he also cut a bat in half so that I could hang both halves on the wall. We're going to put them on either side of the sign. I eventually want to get a ceiling fan that has baseball bat shape blades and a catcher's mitt and baseball for the light fixture part.

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* The picture above has been Paint Shopped to protect the innocent. :-)

That poor little broken arm boy

Zachary started PreK last Wednesday and when I picked him up that day, I asked him if he had made any friends. "Well, I talked to that poor little broken arm boy" he replied. "That's nice" I said, "Do you know his name?". "No", he replies. The next day when I pick Zachary up I asked him what kind of fun things he did today. "Broken Arm Boy and I played monsters on the playground" he said. I told him that sounded like a lot of fun and that he really should ask him what his name is. After yet another day of "Broken Arm Boy this" and "Broken Arm Boy that" I finally asked his teacher what Broken Arm Boy's name was. It's Jacob, but I will always think of him as Broken Arm Boy.

I met Jacob's mom today at pick up and we laughed about the whole "Broken Arm Boy" thing. I think we'll plan to get the boys together sometime to play since it seems like they are becoming friends.

A boy and his bike

Zachary and his first bicycle.

There's a new evil power in town

Behold! I am Thunder Man! Creator of havoc and mayhem! Bow down before my terrible Mitt of Evil and my Clawed Hand of Doom! Although it may look like I'm wearing a Bob The Builder costume and toy work goggles, my evil power is all consuming!

Where the wild things are...........

Should not be our kitchen!! We came home from picking up Holly from school yesterday to find that our house was not occupied by just the dog. A long black snake was slithering around on the floor under the bay window. Nice....real nice! After Holly and I screamed like the girls we are, I called good ol' Poppie to come save his grandchildren (and precious daughter) from the evil serpant. Poppie managed to chase the snake out the kitchen door into the garage where hopefully it skidaddled to a more natural habitat. To add to the reptily experience, a skink also decided to scamper in while I was standing guard awaiting Poppie's salvation behind the baracade of toys I had errected to keep the snake from heading into the rest of the house. Do we have some sign outside advertising us as a reptile hostel or something? I waved the fluffy orange duster I had grabbed as a weapon (praying the whole time that the snake wouldn't notice the skink since I didn't want my own personal Wild Kingdom episode) and it ran under the metal threshold at the bottom of the door. Ah hah! Maybe that's how the snake got in. Rather than cursing the stupid skink's existence, I now had to thank it for showing me the possible entry point. Needless to say, Jack will be fixing the gaps under all the outside doors this weekend. The House of Reptiles is now closed!