Jack-O-Sammy

Sammy is becoming a very rich kid. His other front tooth came out yesterday. He again scored $1 from the tooth fairy and $5 from his Lola. The big guys who still have a few teeth to come out are starting to check to see if they have any loose teeth. Suddenly the tooth business is very profitable!

Shoe Shopping

I naively decided to make a "quick" trip to Payless Shoes to pick up some sneakers for my kids before the start of school. What I did not realize is it's becoming more and more difficult to find shoes for my kids at one place. Inevitably they don't have all the sizes or the selection is limited. Here we are in store #1.....

Here's store #2.....

And here's store #3.....

You can tell by Tom's face that we stopped for lunch between store #2 and #3. Four hours later, all the kids have sneakers for school (even Allie!). Here's a picture after our success.

Haircuts are next.....

Ewwwww!

My kids made an interesting discovery today near our back porch steps. I really hate snakes. I'm so very glad my kids do not like playing with snakes. He was a little guy but it still gives me the heebie jeebies. I don't know if anyone else does this, but I always pretend I'm not scared (I don't want the kids to use it against me) and try to make scientific observations. But on the inside.... blech! I do feel a little sorry for him though, it looks like something got a hold of his tail, he's all beat up.


Seeing this snake makes me think of the grossest snake story ever posted on my friend Kim's blog. Now that's a creepy story! I think you have to cut and paste it... I guess I don't know how to make it into a link.

http://stunkimbersblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/unsavory-guest.html

Mish Mash

My life feels a bit random lately. I'm running around trying to get the kids ready for school, running around with real estate related work, battling fruit flies (so, so very gross!), and still trying to squeeze out the last drops of summer fun. As a result, there's been a few items building up that I wanted to blog about...

Ok, so here's the first one. I stole this from my friend's blog but found it interesting. It determines your mental age, but the test is in Japanese. It took me one run to figure out the actual test (I scored an age of 58 on the first run), but once I figured it out, my mental age was 27 (and that test took place while I was on the phone with one of my agents). All right! I might look like I'm 45, but I've got the brain of a 27-year-old. Here's the test if you want to try (you might have to cut and paste it) ....

http://flashfabrica.com/f_learning/brain/brain.html

Next up, I have a rant (feel free to skip over this part). I'm not sure if this is the same in every school district, but the school supply lists are getting obnoxious. I was conservative with my spending and decided to reuse many items and still wound up spending $115 and I'm not even done!

I have to expect that some people had it worse since we didn't have any scientific calculators to purchase. We did, however, have items like a flash drive, two boxes of markers for one child (one box having the pink and gray marker!), twenty four pencils for a child in third grade (is the teacher's husband a lumberjack?), many 2" 3-ring binders in specific colors, etc. I feel bad for the single mom on a really tight budget. This has to be impossible. This is not like school clothes where you can buy them at a thrift store or at a garage sale for pennies on the dollar (or better yet, have your sister from Oklahoma send you all her beautiful hand-me-downs...thank you Tam), you have to pay full price or waste your gas running around looking for the sale.

What happened to getting your lovely smelling paste (no, never ate any... just liked the smell), your box of 48 crayons (a luxury, but we never got the 64 box with the sharpener), and your fistful of pencils? I think the teachers are going a little overboard and not taking into consideration people that have more than one child in the school system. For this price, I could buy a curriculum for my kids and homeschool them. All right, I'm done. *stepping off soapbox* Here are some photos of the lists and the current supplies waiting to be sorted...

On a completely unrelated note, Allie woke up with crazy hair and I had to snap a photo of it. Isn't she cute? I love the curly hair. I fear when her hair thickens a bit, it will go away so I need to snap as many pictures of it now while I can.

I'll try to have my life a little more together for the next post.... it might be a while....

Toothless Sam

Crazy last week or so.... work is nonstop. Sam had some big news last week worth noting though. He lost his first top tooth and I think the second is soon to follow. Sammy always had little piranha teeth that were so cute and small but they will soon be replaced by the oversized gopher teeth that will take three years to grow into. I'm going to miss those little chompers! As usual the tooth fairy gave him a $1, and Lola gave him $5!

The kids are excited that tomorrow (today- wow it's late!) we are off to Fantasy Island (local podunk amusement park). If I remember, I'll bring my camera.

Confessions of a Chocoholic

This past weekend we went to the cottage for an evening. My Mother and Father-in-law were spending the week there and cleaning out some old boxes during our visit. My Mother-in-law, being a huge fan of Bill Clinton (really huge, as in "if he said he didn't inhale, I'm sure he didn't" sort of fan), has a bunch of inaugural memorabilia. One item she came across was a sealed box of Bill Clinton M&M's.

My Mother-in-law can never throw anything out.... ever. I don't blame her really. As a child she fled one war torn country for another without many personal effects. So when "Lola" (that's what my kids call her) has to get rid of something, she'll gift it.

Being that I was the most convenient person to gift this item to, I was handed a box of candy "for my collection". I can honestly say that my chocolate "collection" consists of chocolate items in my stomach and chocolate items about to go into my stomach. I don't think I have the willpower to display "decorative" chocolate for any length of time. It's like a lion running a gazelle petting zoo.

So what was I supposed to do with it? I contemplated the potential effects of sixteen year-old chocolate. I also contemplated that fact that there was no chocolate within ten miles of this cottage and reasoned myself into thinking that sixteen year-old M&M's must be like fine wines which improve with age. Besides, they have the chocolaty coating.... that has to provide some protection from the aging process, right?

WRONG. Sixteen year-old chocolate tastes like rabbit turds. Just in case the first one was a fluke, I ate one more. Nope, there was no doubt about it now...rabbit turds. I wound up throwing the box of decrepit candies in the Wal-Mart parking lot garbage can. I then made Bobby, who originally went to Wal-Mart to purchase sandals for Tommy (who forgot to pack any footwear for the trip), buy me some "real" chocolate. Bob just shook his head when I told him what had happened. He had no words for me. I sometimes seriously wonder if he thinks I'm insane.

To add insult to injury, I was researching the candy boxes online and found that a sealed box of Bill Clinton M&M's fetch between $20 and $35 a box! That means each of those turds I ate was worth between $10 and $17.50 each. So a word to the wise, if you come across a sealed box of Bill Clinton Inaugural M&M's, save your palette and dignity, and sell them on eBay!

Live United

There's a local campaign for the United Way that involves some local celebrities and normal boring people showing how people within the community "Live United". My kids had the opportunity to pose with each other and some Buffalo Bills (Donte Whitner and James Hardy). I got my hands on the proofs and received permission from Bobby to post them. If I get in trouble for posting these prior to the campaign release, it's Bobby's fault. Here are the kids....

I don't think their picture will make the final cut but it's fun to have. Here are most of the kids with Donte Whitner and James Hardy (James is the taller one). Both were really nice to all the kids.....


Here's Pete with Donte.....


And then James......