Day 238 Concentrating

Next year when E is in middle school he will have a locker and will have a combination lock. One of the teachers suggested to me to get the lock now so that he could start practicing with it and be the "expert" when it comes time to use it. So, I bought 2 combination locks today and here is S practicing on his.

Day 237 Pick Up Line

The lines at school to pick up kids are super long...if you're not in line early, you end up at the end of a very long line and have to wait. There are lines in front and back of the school for certain grades to be picked up. This line of cars is the spillover onto the street for the back of school and then the cars go all the way across the length of the parking lot and the school building itself. I pick the boys up inside so I don't have to deal with the crazy lines.

Day 236 Practicing his swing

A little after school golf practice.

Day 235 First Day of School

The boys walking towards the front door of school.
Standing in front of school waiting for the doors to be unlocked.

Day 234 Silly Boys!

I was standing over the boys telling them I was going to tickle them...just to get both of them to smile.

Day 233 Sunday Dinner

I was going to use a picture of me giving the boys haircuts, but dh wanted a picture of our dinner. So, here it is...king ranch casserole, refried beans and spanish rice.

Day 232 Future Composer???

S was cranking out "tunes" on an electric keyboard at Best Buy today. Hmmm...maybe he'll take after his famous composer uncle.

Day 231 Chores

We recently started a ticket incentive for the boys to do more around the house. They each get tickets for making their beds (or stripping them on Sundays), cleaning up after themselves and vacuuming 3 times a week. They can then use the tickets they earn for screen time...tv, computer and video games. It seems to be working really well.

Day 230 Lazy River

The resort we stayed at has a lazy river that we spent quite a bit of time floating around. Around one corner there is a waterfall that I had the boys hang out under for this picture.

Day 229 More S'mores

Back out at the firepit for s'mores tonight.

Day 228 Mmmmmm S'Mores

Lots of butterflies around today.
The hotel provides all the goodies for s'mores everynight. Most nights it's in a firepit, but since the weather was iffy they did it in a fireplace in a covered pavilion.

Day 227 A Rainy Start To Our Staycation

It doesn't rain all summer long and then it decides to when we go away for a few days. It lasted most of the first day, part of the second and our last full day was all sunshine.

Day 226 A Win for the Home Team

We went to a minor league ballgame and sat on the home run porch. The boys were very disappointed that there were no home runs hit that game and no balls came our way.

Day 225 Projects

I have a bunch of projects to get done so I figured I'd get started. I still have a couple of things left to do and I'm hoping to get them done before school starts.

Day 224 Olympic Nest (?)

S's version of the Olympic Nest made from plastic coins. Ummm...okay.

Day 223 One Tired Boy

We went to a local waterpark today with some friends of ours and S was exhausted when we got home.

Day 222 Take Your Kids to Work Day

Today was take your kids to work day so dh took the boys with him this morning. The boys got a kick out of the blow up notebook computer.

Day 221 Go Mom!!!

I took the boys bowling and to play arcade games today and I was rockin at Ice-Ball (aka Skee Ball). I beat the high score twice. Go Mom!!!

Day 220 Waiting

The boys were waiting by the front door for someone to come over and buy something I had listed on Craigslist.

Day 219 Squeaky Clean

E wasn't happy about me taking his photo while he was taking his shower tonight. He was cool with it after I told him it was just a picture of his face.

Day 218 My IT Guy

Here's my IT guy coming down from the attic (the best spot because 802.11 radiates the signals downward) where our wireless access point/router are. He was up there reconfiguring our wireless access point. BTW, my IT guy is my dh.

Day 217 The Spices

I'm trying to re-organize the pantry and I need to do something with all of these spices. I bought a few tiered racks so hopefully those will work.

Day 216 A Room

Nothing exciting today, just a picture of our dining room. I was sitting on the couch in the living room taking a "time out" because the boys were yelling at each other and from where I was sitting this was my view.

Day 215 Before and After

E's closet has been my dumping ground since school let out. I really needed to clean it up so I made that my project this morning. So, here are the before and after shots.

Day 214 An Old Photo

This is an old picture of my brothers and I. My grandmother had this hanging in her apartment and my eldest brother sent it to me when she passed away. I'm not really sure when it was taken, but I'm guessing I was about 4 or so which would make my middle brother 10 and my eldest brother 12.

Day 213 Moving Truck

Waaahhh!!! It's no fun watching your best friends house being packed into boxes and loaded on a truck.

Day 212 Batter Up!

A quick after dinner swim and a game of splash baseball.

Day 211 A Huge Loss

I feel so bad for the people that lived in this apartment building. Apparently a nail in the wall hit a wire and that's what started it. The local paper today said that there was $1.5 million in damage. Worst part is...there was another fire in a different building at the same complex like 5 days before this.

Day 210 Good Bye to Good Friends

This was taken at a going away party for S's best friend. His family is leaving in a few days for Colorado.