oh to be little...

presley has discovered her mohawked baby sister is perfect for dressing up...and a good laugh.




a few moments later...


playing is just so exhausting isn't it?

larry and bob live!

presley & trinity BFF. i so LOVE these two silly girls together. as soon as they heard that veggie tales was coming to town all we heard about for weeks was larry & bob, and bob & larry! they had so much fun at the show it was hard to believe they were singing with a tomato and cucumber rather than rocking out at a real concert!

if you listen carefully you'll hear thalia tell presley to "shake the butt butt!" to which presley turns around and shakes it! (sorry, i know it's very dark.)

what a splash!

as soon as i got home from my girls weekend, we ran out and celebrated riley's birthday by trying out Cannoli Joe's - an all-you-can-eat restaurant that all the kids gave a thumbs up. with the smorgasbord of (surprisingly yummy) italian food available what did they each excitedly select? mac and cheese. of course!

friday after school, riley & friends celebrated her birthday at the pool complete with all of the requested cupcakes, brownies, and fav friends. happy birthday to my baby! i can't believe it's already been 9 years since she made me my most favorite thing - a mother.

nightmare

i woke up this morning to a horrible nightmare. you know, the kind where even after you wake up and know it wasn't real, you still sob because if felt so real. (or is that only me that does that?!) ross kept asking, "are you ok? are you awake??"

i dreamt that through some sort of misunderstanding, they (who knows who "they" are - maybe CPS) were taking my kids away from me. no matter how hard i explained, they wouldn't believe me. then i went home to discover they had already been whisked away. i frantically looked everywhere for them and finally found them together in some sort of plaza. they had run away and were all riding their bikes (even the baby!) looking for me. the comical part of the dream is the elation i felt when i saw them riding, all in a line following riley, all wearing their helmets.

maybe someone could play armchair psychologist and tell me what it all meant. my theory is that my constant worry about whether i am a good enough mother is manifesting itself. maybe i could convince myself i am doing a passable job since they were all practicing "safety first" and connor was willingly following riley (what?!) in the face of tragedy.

one more year...

today was my birthday. i have one more year until i am officially old in my book. i still have a hard time believing i know people in their 40's and 50's and that they are my friends...not my parents'. anyway, i'll be that old friend to someone real soon.

it was a good day. i went to lunch with great friends and i got all my errands done. my kids made me cute cards, we had cupcakes when we all finally made it home (9pm on a school night!) and most of all, no one tried to kill anyone else with their laser death eyes and no one called me "the worst mom in the world" today. success! what's that? you say i should raise my standards? but why? ;)

girlfriends are the best

i had the most amazing girls weekend away in arizona with some of my oldest friends. the 10 of us stayed at a beautiful resort and had SO much fun. we stayed up till 3am both nights laughing, eating, and yakking about everything and everyone. (yes, if we know you, we talked about you.) we reminisced about serving together as missionaries on temple square many years ago and how that changed our lives. and we shared pictures and stories of our cute kids and hoped our husbands would remember to feed them while we were gone. over the years we have tried to be there for one another through thick and thin - marriages, births, deaths, and all the complexities of life i don't know we really knew we were in for at 21. these beautiful girls reminded me how awesome girlfriends are.

tattletale

today i heard in a familiar tattletale voice:

"maaahm...ainsley's stepping on me..."

but then wondered who was really harassing who in this scene:

my sentiments exactly

this summer has been fun & exciting, lazy & relaxing, hot & boring, and now i can't believe it's over! school starts for the kids tomorrow, ross wants to start his own business, i am very likely going back to work soon. lots of changes potentially coming our way but hopefully all good.

this time of year always reminds me of my favorite clip. it made me laugh before i had kids in school, but now it really makes me laugh because i so get it!

fly me to the moon

yesterday my neighbor laurisa and i took our kids and a couple of other little neighbor friends to the new 3-d movie fly me to the moon. it received such mediocre reviews online that we were at first afraid to go, but then we decided it only fair to discount the opinions of those uptight movie critics, since they aren't under 8! the kids thought it was great. we had 8 kids lined up between us wearing big glasses stuffing their faces full of buttered popcorn. what's not to love?!

girl, this is TEXAS!

i think connor will be an athletic kid, but he has yet to find his sport. i have encouraged the typical little boy sports: soccer, t-ball, swimming, taekwondo...but all i've ever gotten is major push back. he has said he hates them all, but that's not surprising since he has strong feelings about everything (he either "hates" or "loves" things, he is rarely lukewarm about anything.) but over the last couple of years, he has talked with great enthusiasm about playing football. since i had never heard of anyone playing football before middle school in oregon, i kept miserably pushing soccer.

well, now that we're in texas, i've found that football starts young here! boys can play at four, which is ridiculous. but a couple of weeks ago, i signed connor up for a much anticipated 3-day football camp for 7 & 8 year olds. as i sat at a picnic table with a neighbor and some other moms watching (and melting in the 100+ degree heat), i asked lisa about the regular football season since her son had played last year. nothing out of the ordinary - when did the season start? did her son enjoy it? did she feel he was old enough and tough enough at 7?...

then, i must have asked the silliest question in all of the south. "so do the 7 year olds play tag or flag football?..." suddenly, from behind us, peels of laughter. i turned around and naively asked, "what?...why are you all laughing?..." the reply? "girl, this is texas!" stupid me. apparently it's tackle in full pads by 7.

i am nervous. my son is a lot of wonderful things, but he is also well...honestly, a crybaby. for instance, today ross and i both wanted to strangle him because he wailed so long and hard about how much his front tooth (that was literally about to drop out of his mouth) hurt when he touched it. on and on and on...crying a river. mercifully, it finally came out mid-afternoon so we could all go on with our day. i have a feeling the tooth fairy may come up short because of how truly annoying he was. anyway, my thought is that if he doesn't have the maturity to realize the sky isn't falling when you lose a tooth, can he really deal with being dog piled on without claiming he's the victim of a hate crime?