Thank you Louis Rodier

I've spent most of my afternoon basking in the sun (with sunlotion on of course!) reading Street Lawyer by John Grisham while the kids have played in the sprinker and played cops and robbers with their new water guns. I just finished filling up 32 water balloons so they can each have 8 balloons to use in some manner later. (I was going to say throw at each other, but they have proven in the past that they are too creative to use them in such a basic manner.) I would have done more but now I have a blister on my finger from tying knots in them. Life is hard... which brings me to my gratitude for Louis Rodier. He invented the washing machine--patented in 1857. I'm sure there must be later forms of it patented, but he was the originator. I looked it up. I must admit that before I even looked it up, I knew it must be a man. I'm not trying to be sexist, but a woman would not have had time to invent a washing machine because she would have been too busy doing laundry! So a big huge thank you to Mr. Rodier and his successors for their wonderful inventions. Because of you I could sit in my yard, soak up some rays, play with my kids all while doing 4 loads of laundry. It's not folded yet....hmmmm...maybe I could get creative....

Yeah! I get an A

So Nathan has decided that he enjoys being a backseat driver. I get all the comments..."watch out! that car almost hit you"; "you should have slowed down mom"; "why are we stopping?" "The cars behind us are going to catch us!" Today he decided to be encouraging on the way to Walmart:

"Mom, you're doing the right thing; you're staying on the road."

Whew! I guess I passed driver's ed for the day.

The gorgeous kids

a few more of our favorites

Picture day

Thought I'd give you a taste of what we did today...I'll post more of them later.

How we closed out our weekend...

"That was totally wicked!" One of the greatest movies ever! Definitely a family favorite.

One of the funniest things I've ever read...

I enjoy getting really blonde highlights in my hair in the summer so I put lemon juice on my hair anytime I'm mowing the lawn. I think it is the acid in it that reacts with sunlight and provides the lightening. It helps that I naturally have blond highlights so this just enhances it. Anyway, I'm getting ready to mow and I don't have any lemon juice on hand, but I do have lime juice. So I was wondering if it would have the same reaction. I'm thinking it would, but high school chemistry was a long time ago so for kicks I thought I'd check the internet. Because we all know that the internet is "all-knowing" on all information. I stumbled onto a "Yahoo Answers" page where the following question was posed by somebody. I thought I'd share my laugh for the day:

"Y'know what i was wondering? If you put lemon juice on your hair, it makes it go lighter and blonde right? So why, when you put lime juice on your hair, doesn't it make your hair go green?"

Seriously, you need to get out more!

I love our school. One of the things I love about it is the parental involvement. The administration and teachers encourage it and the parents love participating. Ashley had a field trip today--all four 1st grade classes. Joe & I both got to go on this one which is rare, but just happened to work out. None of the parents rode the bus because there wasn't room. So we all drove separate and created quite the line into the park we were visiting. There were enough parents that several "groups" were only made up of two kids. There were also a lot of dads and Joe & I weren't the only parents with both of us there. Anyway, the park we went to is awesome. They have attempted to have one of every kind of wild animal that is native to our state. Before we went and looked at all of them (kind of like a zoo) we went to an animal presentation by the conservationist. She was going through the different classifications of animals--fish, reptiles, mammals, etc. For the fish segment she pulled out a blue gill that she caught yesterday--one of the smallest ones I've ever seen. I kid you not--at least 25 moms pulled out their cameras to take a picture of that blue gill! It was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen until the teacher pulled out the skunk (the stinker had been removed of course). There was a chorus of "awww, look how cute" and then the cameras started flashing. We don't live in a big city. We passed at least two of them on the side of the road on our way home. Why are we taking a picture of a skunk? Seriously, you need to get out more!

Welcome Hippies!

Okay, so I didn't post yesterday. I could give you a whole list of excuses, but I think they would bore you and really none of them are acceptable. Just like I don't really have a good excuse for not cleaning the bathrooms this week or doing the dishes since yesterday morning or ironing my husband's clothes. It seems my brain has decided that it is time for summer vacation. I've been so unmotivated. Today I tried to change that, but the dishes still aren't done. Here's what I've been up to:

• Planted more pickle plants (the rabbits ate the other ones) and more pepper plants. I also planted zucchini plants and watermelon. Wasn't really planning on watermelon but that is what the hubster brought back from the store.

• Cleaned out the van from the inside out. It took me over 2 hours. Wow! did we collect dirt in there over the winter. I feel so refreshed now when I settle in my taxi. I'm almost tempted to sit in there tonight so I don't have to sit in my dirty house.

• Welcome Hippies! Our town hosts a music festival every year over Memorial Day weekend. Think small town Woodstock. I'm not sure how big Woodstock was but they are predicting 30,000 people for the weekend. So maybe it's not small town. I just got back from the grocery and realized that some of them arrived early. It's almost tempting to sit on the bench in front of the store and people watch. The police people watch--only they do it inside the store near the beer aisle.

• We are redoing our kids' Sunday school classrooms at church. They are going to look so very awesome. I'll post some pictures. For a hint check out http://www.creativeforkids.com/.

• We are going on a field trip with Ashley tomorrow. Woohoo! That means school is almost done. I am so ready for school to be out.

• We got a picnic table and it is awesome. We haven't eaten inside all week. You know what that means...I don't have to mop near as much. Yeah! I LOVE it!

• Oh, I forgot to mention--Willie Nelson is coming to this year's music festival. It was so very tempting to spend some of our vacation money to go hang out with the druggies and hear Willie. However, we're less than a mile from the music stages, so we thought we'd sit out on our picnic table and see if we could hear the twang from here.

• I actually voted last night for American Idol. I'll let you know if my choice won.

my boys

I am so pumped about this summer with my boys. (I'm going to love having my girls home from school as well. Can't wait 'til next week!) I think 3 and 5 must be the perfect age for little boys. I was relishing in Nathan the other day when he ran in the house filthy dirty and rambling on and on about all that he had done outside--not a care in the world--any of his worlds. Their imaginations run so wild at those ages. Thought I'd share glimpses of my days with these boys.