GOODBYE SUMMER!

It was a hot summer this year. Hot is not good in Washington because we have no air conditioning, so we have to sit in the sweltering heat of our homes and sleep with no covers and a fan blowing on you. I love the sun but I don't love oppressive heat. The weather has cooled off over the last week and has returned to it's overcast gloominess. It's making me anxious for Fall! I absolutely LOVE the Fall. One thing I'm excited for is school to start, we have less than a week now and I'm really more excited than the kids are. The only thing I'll miss about Summer break is sleeping in. I would normally be loving the freedom and fun that Summer brings but this Summer is different. First of all I have 4 kids now and since one of them is a newborn little leach that clings to me every minute of every day It's not easy to just pick up and go places. The ages and personalities of my kids make it so hard to do an activity that they will all enjoy. It was really frustrating to take them on an adventure and have to hear complaining the whole time. So half way through the summer I stopped trying and we just stayed home. I had to potty train the beast (Tate) anyway. So we've spent the better part of the last month obsessed with Pee and Poop. Add to that the fact that we are renting a TINY little house that only fits half our stuff and half of us (3 bedrooms for 6 people) and I'm starting to go a little loco. So I can happily say GOODBYE Summer and HELLO Fall!

Tater Tot Turned 4!

My little man is 4, I'm not quite sure how that happened! I'm not sure how time flies so fast and I'm not sure how he's survived this long. I've been saying his whole life..."if he makes it to (2,3,4...) I'll be amazed"! He's such a crazy little dare devil/maniac/BEAST I've expected more major accidents but he's been spared, thank goodness.
Little man Tate has changed our lives. I was SOOO done having kids after Tanner was born. Yet 4.5 years later we welcomed this amazingly beautiful boy into our family. It was so easy to love him, he just had us all wrapped around his finger right away. He proved to be my most challenging child but that's never been a bad thing. He has shown me a new way to love, a new found patience and has enlarged my heart. He can make me so angry one minute and the very next minute he melts my heart with his smile. Of all the people in this world he is the one that makes my heart skip a beat. Every smile he gives you is a gift because he only gives them when he means them.
He spent an entire year of his life screaming. From age 1 to age 2 he seriously screamed all the time. We were really starting to loose our sanity a bit. It wasn't until we moved back to Washington that we learned that he had a sensory disorder. I'm not going to go into a long drawn out description of what that is but it changed our world. Now, two years later, with lot's of therapy and lot's of patience he's doing fabulously. He still struggles, but life is so much better for him and for the rest of us. I'm so proud of him and I'm excited to see what the future holds for him. I know he's a special little spirit, he was supposed to be on the earth at this time. That was made very clear to me when I was pregnant with him. As terrified as I was to have another baby I'm so grateful I listened to the promptings I was given to have another child. I can't imagine my world without him in it. I'm sure it would be a little more peaceful but not nearly as much fun!

GOOD TIMES!

So the reptile man was...AWESOME! While reading the word AWESOME you need to imagine the way Chris Farley says it in Tommy Boy and you'll get the jist of what I mean by...AWESOME. If you haven't seen Tommy Boy then shame on you. Ok, back to Reptile Man. I loved it, my kids loved it, Alan endured it (he's terrified of any type of reptile), it was all around good fun.

Let me just explain that I really like reptiles, it stems back to my childhood. We had tons of snakes on our property and my mother is TERRIFIED of snakes (I wish I could see her face while she's reading this). We pretty much ran free all summer playing in the woods and swimming in the pond but when we heard the blood curdling scream we knew we had to come home. Why you ask? We had to catch a snake from the garden and get rid of it. For some reason I grew a fondness for them, I'm sure I subconciously enjoyed the fact that they made mom go all nuts. I always wanted one for a pet but that wasn't going to happen. Now I married a man who is pretty much as afraid of snakes as my mom is. Let me recap a little honeymoon story for you...

Ahhh, warm tropical Mexico. Relaxing, watching some T.V. in the hotel when out of the corner of my eye I see something scurry up the wall. Here's where I find out a little secret about my big manly husband. He's not so manly when it comes to reptiles. Some little lizard friends decided to join us in our room. What's to be done? First he stands in the middle of the bed, kinda hunched up (imagine a woman on a stool in her kitchen screaming about a mouse and you'll have the right image) then he points to where he thinks they went. I guess this means I'm supposed to go find them. I try scurring them out the door but that's not working. I try batting a towel at them, no luck. They've decided to hide out behind our curtain and spend the night. Well Alan's not having that, he want's me try bug spray. Uhhh, no! So he makes me call down to the front desk and ask for a new room. No, I'm not kidding, he really made me do this. The front desk guy proceeds to laugh at me and tell me that all the rooms are likely to have lizards in them. Now what? Well since the lizards seem to like cool dark places as the front desk so helpfully explained, we now have to spend the rest of our honeymoon sleeping with the lamp on. Picture Alan snuggled up as close to the lamp as possible to ensure that no lizards crawl over his face at night.

GOOD TIMES!!!

I don't think I'm going to get that pet snake anytime soon!

This little girl smiled all the way through this, she didn't look scared for a second. Awesome!

Boa constrictor, contricting the Reptile man.

My little lizard boy!

Sweetness!

The only part of the show that freaked me out! I hate Alligators!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks Reptile Man!

REPTILE MAN

For anyone who was wondering the Reptile Man will be at Pioneer park tomarrow at Noon. I'm a big dork and got a little ahead of myself with the calender last week. YAAAA, I didn't miss him! Does it make me more of a dork that I can't read a calender or that I'm really excited to see a bunch of snakes?

Concert in the Park

This year we've gone to a few of the Concerts in the Park that the City of Puyallup put on. They have one every Tuesday during the summer. Sounds like fun right? You would think so, but my kids seem hard to please lately. They complain about all the summer activities I've tried to do. So I haven't taken them to do anything for the last few weeks, of course then they complain that we don't do anything and they're bored. I seriously need school to start soon! Anywho, I thought today was the "reptile man" at the park so I was all pumped to go see him. My kids didn't want to of course, but I'm the boss so I get to do whatever I want, as I tell my kids all the time. Alan had the day off so we ventured downtown with the 4 beasts we call our children. It turned out that the show was a juggler and not the reptile man. I was totally disappointed, but my kids on the other hand loved it. Um...seriously, JUGGLER vs REPTILE MAN...I'll take Reptile man please! What is wrong with my kids? After the show the City fills up the big wadding pool. This is another cause for complaining usually. The big kids hate it but Tate loves it. Yet, again the kids had a good time. I think the Lord must be handing out miracles today!

Spider Pig, Spider Pig...

Have you seen the Simpsons movie? It was dumb, but there is a part where Homer is holding his pet pig up on the ceiling, letting it walk around upside down and singing Spider Pig, Spider Pig...It's hilareous. At least we think it is, we sing it all the time. Tate loves Spiderman and he likes Alan to hold him upside down on the ceiling so he can walk around like "Spiderman". I cannot watch this without singing the Spiderpig song. Tate of course does not want to be called a pig so unfortunatley I can only get a few rounds of Spiderpig in before I have to change it to SpiderTate, SpiderTate...



MY SPIDERPIGS

Hiking

My amazing husband took 3 out of our 4 kids hiking and camping. They left on Wednesday afternoon and hiked to their campground. They stayed up at the lake and took some smaller hikes on Friday. Then Friday afternoon they hiked back down. They had a great time aside from the complaining! Can you guess who did the most complaining or all of it really? I'm the Mom so I could have told you this in a heartbeat, but I'll bet you wouldn't guess...TANNER! I love him to death but he is my lazy child. He would rather be playing video games than anything else in this world. He goes along with Alan on all of his adventures at least once, he wants to be just like his Dad and love 4 wheelin and hiking, biking, snowboarding, etc...but it dosn't always work out. He hates 4 wheelin and say's he'll never do it again. He does like snowboarding and biking though. He say's he liked hiking despite all the complaining, so we'll see. I can't really blame Tanner for complaing, I would have been even worse. Hence the reason I didn't go, I stayed home and lounged around on Thursday, bored out of my mind. I rented a movie that was to scary so I got my self all freaked out, home alone. I couldn't sleep so I stay up until 2:00 am, but since I had no kids waking me up I got to sleep till 10:00, YA!!! They're all back now and the madness is back in full swing. If school doesn't start soon I'm seriously gonna loose my mind!!!! My house is to small for the number of people living in it, I feel like their all on top of me all the time. Ahhhhhhgggggg!

Finished...

Ok, I'm human again. I finished my book last night and I can now stop trying to ignore my kids, husband, house, etc...back to life! I won't say whether it ended good or bad for my friends out there who have yet to finish. I will say that I loved this book, it was such a quick easy read for being 754 pages. I'm sad to say goodbye to the twilight saga though. I guess now I have the movies to look forward to.

Breaking Dawn is...HOT!

Ok, so this is entirely my opinion but I don't think anyone under the age of 16, maybe even older should be reading Breaking Dawn. They get married...you know what married people do! I'm no prude either when it comes to what I read. I just know that there is no way I'm letting my daughter read these books anytime soon. She's 10 and has been begging me to read them, AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN! She's pretty much gotten a play by play along with Alan through the whole series. I had thought I would let her read them when she was 13 or 14 but not anymore. This one is way to grown up for kids. Again, this is my opinion! But a little forewarning for any moms out there letting their young girls read these...Breaking Dawn is HOT! Of course I'm thoroughly enjoying it!

BREAKING DAWN!!!!!!

IT'S HERE!!!! I went and bought it at Walmart last night at exactly midnight. I was the 4th one to put my hands on it and actually the 1st person to buy it because I rushed to the checkout. I didn't think I'd have the energy to stay up and read though. I had planned to go to bed and read all day today but the book was seriously calling to me last night. I finally opened it and started to read. Of course It sucked me right in (he,he,he get it..."sucked" me in). I was finally able to sleep at 3:00 a.m. and I've been reading most of the day today. I'm a third of the way through and I'm loving it! I won't give anything away but I wouldn't have seen this story line coming from a mile away. I can't wait to see how it ends. Now back to my book!!!