Monday Mayhem - Continued Chaos

Sorry that I haven't updated in a while. Things have been extremely chaotic around here, but not in any way that's noteworthy. Spring break was exhausting and returning to school was a bit of an adjustment too. Work is busy, and with gas prices like they are Summer and I have been playing around at parks and the library a lot so we don't have to drive home every day between dropping Garrett off and picking him up again. She loves both the library and the playground, so its pretty easy to spend 3 hours there.

We took Aspen to the vet for his annuals, which was a whole big to-do of course. We've been to the pool A LOT. The kids are still having a hard time with the time change, they are completely fried by 5pm but having a hard time getting to sleep before 8 or so, and are back up by 6-7.

Brad and I ran the Move It 2011 budget 5K on Saturday, which was a budget race for the miles challenge we're both participating in. We ran separately because of the kids, but he smoked me as always. He finished in 25:51, I finished in 31:41. I also biked the last 8 miles to work on Saturday due to the tennis tournament on the key. It was actually a fun ride, and it was nice to not sit in the car for nearly as long. Brad took the kids out with the neighbors on their boat on Saturday.

I have only taken ONE PICTURE this week, which is just ridiculous. On Tuesday the Shuman boys came home from school with us and we all went to the pool. I think we're going to have a repeat tomorrow. This is a short week for us-we're surprising Garrett with something fun on Thursday, which is going to be fun for ALL of us. AND I get to see my mother in law, who I've really been missing.

Happy St. Patty's Day

Honestly, this isn't a holiday I particularly care about. But for once, I actually put the kids in the themed shirts my mother in law always sends for the holidays AND took a picture. I expect you to clap for me now of course :-)

And here is a sampling of the St. Patty's Day stuff they did at school last week:



We're on spring break this week. We haven't done much of anything. With gas prices as high as they are, our days have pretty much centered around NOT using our car. We did ride our bikes to a nearby park, which meant a 9 mile round trip ride. Garrett rode his own bike. That kids just loves to go!

We went to the zoo today with Leanne. I'd like to say we had a blast, but it was almost more work than it was worth. Summer was crabby as all get out, but the kids still had fun and it was nice catching up with Leanne.



Garrett filled his marble jar this morning and got a Superman book that I found at the dollar store. He keeps telling me how much he loves it, which is fabulous. Especially since he was helping me MOP THE FLOORS this morning in order to finish filling that jar. BEST IDEA EVER! This morning he was not interested in putting the book down during pictures, just as Summer was not interested in putting down "Bear" with his St. Patty's beads.

We've rounded off our week with a lot of time spent in the pool. Its getting warm here, and with the later sunsets, I've even been able to hit the pool twice for some laps, which has been nice and relaxing. Summer is just around the corner! Other than that, I'm re-reading the last few books in one of my favorite series in the anticipation of the newest book coming out on Monday. Rounding off the week with much needed adult time in the form of a dive trip with the neighbors and a drive to Fort Myers on Sunday for work.

The usual craziness

Things have been insane, as usual, around here. What we've been up to, in pictures:

Xander and Logan have had family in town so the kids haven't seen much of each other. They hung out for a while on Sunday and had a great time:

Summer spent plenty of time jumping on the trampoline, crazy girl.
We did some fun little projects while Garrett was at school
(And MAN do I need to refinish my table in a nice DARK color!)
Garrett is doing great at school. Here is a picture of a house he drew.
And he's continuing to help out around the house alot . . . posing happily with his almost-full marble jar. (When its full, he'll get a "special surprise")
Summer happily toting around some goodies from a package. Such a girlie girl. :-)

A full week of fun

This week has been chock full of stuff. I'm working hard on increasing my productivity AND maintaining this whole keeping-the-house-clean thing. And not planting the kids in front of the TV in the process. AND consolidating everything we need to do into the trips to and from taking Garrett to school, because at $3.40ish a gallon, I am NOT going out a second time. I made Brad replace the tire on my bike, which had a slow leak, because I know we'll be biking more with gas prices the way they are.

That said, we've had BEAUTIFUL weather this week. In the 80s. On Tuesday, we decided this warranted a trip to the pool.
How cute are they?

We had lots of fun at home of course.
Garrett, always the inventor, decided that since we don't own any guns for gun play, he would build one from his marble track. No shortness of creativity in that one.





Summer, always the girlie girl, took it upon herself to make sure we were well fed.
She asked me "Mommy, are you ready to eat?" and I looked down from my work to find this.





And later, we apparently all needed dessert (perhaps the 4th plate is for one of the dogs? Or maybe a dolly . . .)

Speaking of dogs, Aspen always amazes me with both his amazing patience and the level of devotion and responsibility he seems to instill in Garrett. Garrett loves giving Aspen any kind of love, making his tail wag, and giving him breakfast and dinner. I really didn't expect much in the way of responsible dog ownership this early, but Garrett takes caring for Aspen very seriously. But here is photo evidence of that never-ending patience.
Kisses
And the martyr look because I asked him to sit so I could take a picture of his accessory.
If there were a medal for doggy patience, he would surely earn it.

And, speaking of Garrett and responsibility . . . he has been a BIG HELP around the house. He's been willing to do small tasks without whining lately, which has resulted in us using our marble jar again (helping without whining = one marble toward a special surprise.) He has been consistently straitening his room on a daily basis every morning for a few weeks now. Being on blue all week at school + keeping his room clean = $1 for allowance on a weekly basis. But he amazed me this week by making his bed and informing me that he would "organize the kitchen." Here he proudly posing with his handy-work.
He's also getting the hang of reading, which is well, FREAKING AMAZING to watch. And a little sad. But mostly amazing. He also takes great joy in reminding us that he is "almost ready for Kindergarten." Time is flying by way to fast most of the time.

Gardening fun

Several years back we had a very nice garden going in our small back yard. 2010 was NOT a good gardening year for us--chalk it up to poor planning or lack of attention, who knows. I've been planning (in my head, no further than that) what I would like to do this year--it includes installing a rain gutter and a barrell for rain water, and doing raised beds. Obviously, none of that has come to fruition yet. But my friend Shelah over at Our Wicked Ways posted about her herb garden, and I realized there was no reason I couldn't get THAT going at least. Garrett has always gotten a kick out of growing things too, so there was no reason not to.

We had met the owner of Redland Organic Herb Farm at the local farmers market a while back. I decided to give her a call--we probably spent more there than we would of at Lowes, but there is something to be said for supporting local growers. Summer and I dropped Garrett off at school and went to get some goodies! Our haul (and the bag of soil) are shown in the picture above.

When Summer went down for her nap, Garrett and I set to work on getting everything planted. He spent some time painting one of the planters. The planters were all left over from previous gardening attempts.

Painting with sponges Grandma Becky had sent for Christmas.Garrett was pretty thrilled about every aspect of this. Here he is filling the planters with dirt.
And carefully transporting the rosemary to the back yard. He's been asking for a bigger wheelbarrow, clearly its time :-)

The end result:

I rescued the table from a neighbor's bulk trash. I think it used to be a desk--it may not hold up well since the top and bottom are made of particle board, but it was free and would otherwise be headed to the landfill, so we'll call it a WIN :-) We opted to just paint the names of what we planted rather than trying to make little tabs. Also not pictured is the large container I put on the side of the house with some sad looking bibb lettuce she gave me for free. We'll have to see how that goes. Not a bad way to spend the day.

Monday Mayhem - What a weekend!

We had an INTERESTING weekend, to say the least. Nothing really went as planned. We started out with an impromptu date night on Friday - rock climbing again, which was AWESOME. Big thanks to Leanne for watching the kids so we could get away. Saturday morning I had a long run, which was miserable and shorter than I would have liked. Then we went boating/camping with our neighbors. This is where it got interesting of course.

Summer doesn't like boat rides. No idea how this happened, I swear she can't be our kid. We talked about it towards the end of the week (That we were going on a boat, that she liked boats, and that she WOULD NOT CRY). She still cried of course. Something about a little 2.5 year old saying "No thank you! I want out" as we're motoring away from the dock is hilarious. Once we got out of the marina, she was happy enough looking at birds and such. But the minute we started speeding up, she hid her little face and cried. Between this and the whole diva thing, I swear she can't be mine. Except that I was there when she was born!
Garrett, on the other hand, was on cloud nine the whole time. Boating, camping and Xander = Garrett's most favorite things. I find it endlessly awesome that these boys are best friends.


We arrived and everyone set up camp . . .
While they worked, I took the kids to play in the water. Really, really tough job let me tell you.

During the day, it was FABULOUS. Everyone was so happy playing together.

And when we were done playing the water we came to camp for some leisure time.
Summer played in X and Logan's doggie tent.
And did girlie things with Miss Jess.
Meanwhile, the boys alternated between eating and playing (as demonstrated by G and Logan)

When the sun went down, the bugs started coming out and that's when things got a little less fun. We got eaten alive, but I don't think we realized the EXTENT until today.

The boys getting ready for an evening boat ride (Summer and I stayed at camp in hopes of getting her to fall asleep. What a joke on me that turned out to be).


Afterward, it was smores by the fire. My family is so crazy. This picture sums them up perfectly - Brad is humoring me, Summer is being a goof ball, and Garrett is acting like a mini-teenager. Gotta love them!


Up to this point, things were fun. Bed time is where it started to get out of control. Garrett went to sleep, but Summer refused to. At 11pm, after various attempts and efforts to get her to sleep, we finally gave in and just took her back home. I remember going though this with Garrett and knowing he would fall asleep . . . with Summer, I really don't know that she would have. She was totally exhausted and on her way to staying up all night long. In the end, we didn't miss out on that much-Brad went back to stay with Garrett and the Shumans, and as soon as everyone was awake they came home due to the bugs.

Sunday was AWESOME. Brad took a nap after they got back. I put away the gear in less than 20 minutes--I love this new organized thing, it was so easy to clean up and put things away. I took the kids and our new little neighbor to fly kites, and then we headed to the playground in our community for a little while.



Then, as if that wasn't enough fun for one weekend, we had an impromptu movie date with our little neighbors Brady and Gracie. They were all engrossed by The Ant Bully--it was actually pretty cute!

After an evening picnic outside, the kids went to bed and I went next door to squish on my neighbor's new baby girl. She is quite possibly the cutest little baby girl I have seen in ohhh, 2.5 years, I could just eat her up. So that was fun. Unfortunately Summer then had to go and be up half the night again. Lets hope this isn't a habit.

Happy Monday--I'm quite glad its almost over!

Random convo

Trying to get Summer dressed this morning and pulled out a pair of plain underwear for her. She looks at them and then looks at me. "No, no, no, KITTY UNDERWEAR." She loves her Hello Kitty Underwear. "I get it," she declares. Well, okay then. As I'm putting them on, she says "So pretty." Again, WHERE does she get this from?? Certainly not me!

Monday Mayhem - Nana and Pawpaw's Visit

Yes, I realize its Tuesday. Better late than never. We had a really, really fun weekend with Brad's granparents. They arrived Friday and left today. Garrett was off school Friday - Monday, so it was the PERFECT time for a visit! The boys started off the long weekend with a trip to the boat show on Thursday and had a great time. On Friday I went in to the office (Brad was home and we took advantage) before picking up Nana and Pawpaw at the airport.

We played outside a lot . . .
G is his hat (And Allison, he told Nana and Pawpaw all about how you bought him this hat when Neela ate the hat that they sent, lol!)
Summer in G's hat . . .
Summer being, well, Summer.
G and Nana playing soccer
Garrett wrote his name and drew a picture of Nana, Daddy, Mommy and Garrett.

We watched "How To Train Your Dragon" . . . Like me, Nana thought it was cute. The adult males were not impressed. Go figure. Kids loved it of course.We played with playdough.

We went to Classics By the Bay at Homestead Bayfront Park. Old cars make the men in this family go ga-ga. :-)
Summer was crabby and refused the photo op. I think pawpaw made a sour face because Summer was being so fussy (you can't see her but she's laying in front of them crying!)

Garrett had a "Campout with all his animals". He took this picture of his camping buddies all by himself the following morning.Garrett and Pawpaw had a jam session.
We went strawberry picking. The kids had SO MUCH FUN.

"Dis one?? I get it!" Silly Summie. Amazingly, she didn't eat any while we were picking.


And no trip to Knauss Berry is complete without climbing the tree.

Our haul.I gave a first-run try at making freezer jam without pectin. Its more of a fruit spread, as its runnier than jelly, but I prefer that to using pectin. Less is definitely more. We'll see how the kids like it and how well it keeps. We tried two recipes:
4 c strawberries + 1/2 cup sugar. Mash, blend, freeze
4 c strawberries + 1/2 cup honey. Mash, blend, freeze.
So far, the honey recipe has been the bigger hit. This morning they had it on their waffles instead of syrup, so that is a check in the win column for sure! We're making very good use of the chest freezer we bought with our Ch
Afterward we had a mini-picnic of sticky buns and milkshakes. YUM!

And we finished off the day with ice cream at Scoops. The kids were on cloud nine. Summer finally decided to cooperate and pose with Nana, sweetest picture ever!

Other fun stuff . . .
I'm hovering at the 100 mile mark for running so far this year. As of Sunday, I was at 99.92 miles. SO CLOSE! Did 10.25 on Saturday and a 2.6 miler on Sunday, so taking a few days off to recover. And I finally figured out how to sync my Garmin with Facebook using Daily Mile, so looking forward to utelizing that tool.
We have new neighbors that moved in earlier this month, and they are super sweet. On top of that, the neighbors on the other side are having a baby tomorrow. I'm totally going to get to love on a baby without the work :-)