Shop 'til you drop!

I'll have to admit that although Wal Mart isn't my favorite place in the world, I love being able to get just about everything that I need in one store rather than getting in and out of the car a bunch of times to go to several stores. Getting kids in and out of car seats really adds to the hassle. One bonus on my weekly trip to Wal Mart yesterday was that Ally got a morning nap along the way. Since I didn't have to jostle her in and out of her car seat, she just put her head down on the seat cover (thank goodness for those!) and fell asleep. Everyone couldn't get over how cute she was. Talk about "shop 'til you drop"!

Here she is waking up a little confused as we are about to leave the store. She probably got a 20 min. nap and was very happy the rest of the morning! Lucky me!
I sure wish that I could just crash whenever I got tired. The problem is, my house would be really TRASHED when I woke up! ;D

School daze...

I never had a chance to post the kids' first days of school, so here it is a little late.

Here is Jacob sporting his new Kung-Fu Panda shirt. Lookin' good!

Jacob was soooo excited that his best friend was in his class again this year! They got to choose their seats, so they even get to start out the year sitting by one another.

Here is Maddy in her new "first day" outfit.

Here is Maddy at her new desk. Her teacher had gone to Cambodia over the summer and brought them back a little doll and some money. Maddy's was worth 12 cents.

I drove them to school on the first day, so here they are riding the bus for the first time this year on the 2nd day of school.

Bryson started Preschool on the older kids' 2nd day of school. Here he is in his new Ninja Turtles shirt. He was pretty excited to start school too!
Here Bryson is moving his name card from the OUT side to the IN side. This is for name recognition as well as a form of attendance.
They start school with free time. He jumped right in and had a great first day!

Happy 7th Birthday Jacob!

I stole this picture from my sister-in-law who is much more talented than I am when it comes to editing pictures. In fact, we don't even have photoshop! This came from our family blog. Thanks for the fun picture Brooke!

Jacob is really in to Pokemon these days. He wanted a Pokemon cake. I've found that if you can find things to put on the cakes, it's A LOT easier than making the picture out of frosting. I'm not quite as talented as my mom, but the kids are still happy with their cakes. For those of you who are not Pokemon experts (I wish that I didn't know as much as I do ;-) , the cake is decorated like a poke-ball which is what the Pokemon characters are kept in until they are used in a battle. Then there are 3 Pokemon on top.
This is Jacob opening his present from us. At the last minute I decided to put some Pokemon cards in. This is his reaction to the Pokemon cards. Here is his less excited reaction to the note that says he gets to choose a new bike. Maddy asked Jacob if could only have Pokemon cards or a bike, which would he choose. He couldn't decide! I guess we could have saved ourselves lots of money and just got him the $4 Pokemon cards. ;-)
Here are the kids playing with some of Jacob's new toys.
We do a friends party on the kids' even birthdays. On their odd birthdays we do a special day with the family. This year for Jacob's special day, he chose to go to a bowling alley w/ an arcade. I guess this is the bowling alley's mascot, but I really don't know who he is. They kids were still excited!
Here are couple of fun shots of the kids bowling.
Way to go Jacob!

Here is Maddy celebrating a good frame!
Bryson had a hard time carrying the ball, but he did OK. It was kind of like watching bowling in slow motion, but the ball always made it to the pins.
YAY! Way to hit the pins! Ally was a pretty good sport and stayed in the stroller watching the kids most of the time. At least she got to eat pizza and have some fruit snacks. Travis entertained the kids with a fancy bowling move for his last frame. What form!
Travis used his nick names for us on the score board. As you can see, Ace (Travis) won. Missy Lou (Maddy) came in 2nd. Crazy Jake (Jacob) came in right behind Maddy taking 3rd. B-Rice (Bryson) came in 4th and Hot Mama (Dena) pulled up the rear. It has been a really long time since I bowled, I joked that I should have bumpers too! At least I can make everyone else feel good about their scores!
Here the kids are playing ski-ball. They had a good time at the arcade and choosing prizes with the tickets they earned.
After bowling, Travis took Jacob to pick out a bike
Look'n cool in his new sunglasses!
Happy 7th Birthday Jacob! We hope that you had a great time!

One of those mornings....

Well, the story I'm about to tell is probably mostly my fault. I stayed up WAY too late last night watching the Olympics, which is really dumb since we have a DVR and were recording it anyway. I wanted to see if Michael Phelps won 2 more golds and then the women's gymnastics was close and I wanted to see if they would end up with the gold or silver. Anyway, I didn't make it to bed until 12:00. Always a mistake on a school night.

Well, this morning my alarm went off and I hit snooze. This happened a few times. I figured the kids weren't up yet and I'd just shower after they left for school since I was just going to stay home and clean today. Well, I finally got up and was getting dressed when Jacob started knocking on the door talking frantically about something. I hurried out only to find smoke coming up the stairs and to hear Jacob say that Maddy burned something in the microwave and she was outside!! So, here's what happened.

I had bought some of these breakfast cookies to eat in the car when were traveling a few weeks ago. Not our normal breakfast, but we still had several left over and that was what Maddy chose for breakfast this morning. "How could that burn in the microwave?" you might ask ...

...Well, here are the instructions for having a nice warm breakfast cookie that would taste like it had just been baked. Notice that you are supposed to heat it up for 10 seconds, in the "microwavable wrapper" no less.
Well, Maddy first pushed the 1 on the microwave, which automatically started it cooking for 1 min. She realized that she forgot to push the "time cook" button first and cancelled immediately. If only that was the only mistake. This time she pressed "time cook" and then proceeded to type in 10 min. instead of 10 sec. Those extra two "0s" make a HUGE difference! One minute would probably have burned the cookie, but 10 mins burned it AND the PLASTIC "microwavable wrapper" to a crisp. (I think it's the burned plastic that smells the worst!) I'm not sure exactly how long it cooked for because she finally realized it had been more than a mere 10 sec. and turned around to find smoke coming out of the microwave and stopped it. Then she was afraid she'd started a fire so she ran outside to safety w/o thinking to warn anyone else of "FIRE" on her way. At least I know if there was a fire she'd make it out, who knows about the rest of us. ;-) Jacob opened up the microwave when Maddy turned it off releasing much more of the smoke. Anyway, that was when Jacob ran upstairs to inform me.

I didn't think to take a picture of the smoke filled kitchen or the cookie and wrapper melted to the microwave turntable (pictures for the blog were not the highest priority at the moment), but here is a picture of the burned cookie. The gold and red stuff is the wrapper. Not very appetizing is it?!?

Well, after opening EVERY window in the house, turning on EVERY fan (including running the fans on the AC units even though I turned the AC off), and spraying Oust repeatedly around the house, I decided that I'd need more of an arsenal to get the smell out. So, as soon as the kids left for school, off to Wal-Mart I went (mind you I skipped my morning shower to sleep those extra few mins.) to get what I needed. They were out of those baking soda boxes w/ the fabric sides that soak up odor, but they had everything else I needed.

I left the windows open and the fans on the AC units running while I went to Wal-Mart. When I got back, the house was 86 degrees and it's quite humid today, which is making it more uncomfortable in the house. Now I've had to close the windows and turn the AC on. Maybe at least having the AC run so much will really circulate the air and trap the smoke in the filters. Tonight or tomorrow we'll need to replace the filters to prevent the smoke smell from being re-circulated thoughout the house from there. I'm glad I thought to get new ones while I was out.
The bad thing with all these products is that no one makes stuff that takes out smell w/o adding a "delightful" fragrance of their own. I tried to get complimentary scents, but now I just smell smoke and various fragrances trying to mask it. YUCK! To make matters worse, I had a migraine yesterday and it doesn't look like even the Excedrine Migraine that I took this morning is going to prevent another one today with all these smells and having to do extra cleaning today in a hot, humid house. What can you do?

At least I didn't have anything pressing that I needed to do today. This has taught me not to sleep in, because the extra work is not worth the 5 or 10 extra mins. of sleep that I got. We also established a new rule that Maddy only use the microwave when a grown up is in the room. Usually she does fine. She can do Easy Mac and can reheat frozen pancakes, but this was something new and I'd rather be in the room to see if something is wrong. I think I would have noticed the burning smell before smoke was billowing out of the microwave. I have also learned to go to bed at a reasonable hour so I'm not tempted to sleep in.

Well, I'm off to do another round of Oust and Febreeze. I don't think that it is supposed to rain tonight. I'm keeping my fingers crossed so that I can leave the windows open all night. Wish me luck!

The rest of our vacation

After the family reunion, we went to Travis' parents along w/ his 2 sisters. We missed his brother, but their daughter had to be home to start school. Here are a few of the highlights from our visit.

Maddy and Jenna thought it would be really funny to dress Bryson up. He's a good sport and will do just about anything to be in the spotlight. This will be a good blackmail photo later. ;-)

Maybe it runs in the family. Here's a picture a picture of Travis's brother from a little skit we did at the family reunion. You just couldn't help laughing when you looked at him. One night we toasted marshmallows in the fire pit to make smores. Yummy!

My silly boys don't like smores very much, so they ate ice cream instead. Ally enjoyed the graham crackers. A smore was a little too much for her to handle while walking around.
Here is Ally running around with her two little cousins. I was really surprised how well they all got along. I thought they'd have a harder time sharing, but they all did surprisingly well.
The kids had lots of water fun. You can't go wrong with a slip and slide, kiddie pool and water guns. Poor uncle Jason didn't think he'd get too wet from the water guns. Little did he know that the kids don't mess around. Not only did they get him with water guns, they dumped cups and buckets on him too. He was pretty much soaked when the water fight was over.

Jacob made sure he had the upper hand.

All the kids were too crazy for Ally. She only stayed in the kiddie pool for a minute or two.
The tub all by herself was more her speed. :-D
The kids got to use fabric markers to "design" their own shirts. This picture was taken at home, but it shows off their creations. Ally wasn't cooperating too well, so I think Jacob just tuned out and Bryson started making silly faces. Oh well.

We all had a great time at Grandma's and Grandpa's house! As we were leaving Bryson asked if we could go back in 3 days. If only it were that easy! We wish we lived closer, but alas, we don't. Work and school were calling us, so we had to leave. Sniff, sniff. Great memories though!

Family Reunion

We left my mom's house to go to a family reunion for Travis's side of the family. It was for all of his extended family - his dad's parents family. There were a ton of people there, but our kids were mostly excited to see their cousins since we don't get to see them very often.

The kids LOVED to play in the river and get as dirty as possible. This was as clean as they were the whole trip. Notice the clothing is still clean, just the hands are dirty. Not for long!

I really don't mind that they get dirty. After all, we were kind of camping up in the mountains, but do they have to do it on purpose, I mean come on. I guess maybe those hand prints could be considered art, if you are trying to put a positive spin on it.
Ally was just happy to be out of the car and outside. She really doesn't like to have her hands dirty. At least no yet - I'm sure I'll be showing messy pictures of her in a year or two.Maddy got to go on an hour long horseback ride on Diamond. She absolutely LOVED it! She's really into horses. She got to ride through a small pond, really tall grass and climbed up and down some steep hills. She had to lead the horse to keep it on the trail and had to keep pulling it's head up to get it to stop eating the grass. She still beams when she talks about it.
The kids got to "fish" in the river. Grandma and Grandpa bought them little fishing poles and put little bobber things on the end so they could practice casting. They were getting pretty good. The water was pretty murky because it had been raining off and on, so the real fishing wasn't going very well. No one got to help catch a real fish this year.

Maddy cast this one clear across the river. The little fish landed on the other side right next to Jacob and really startled him. He's lucky that it didn't hit him! The kids loved the zip line tire swing. They could ride it all day if they weren't so drawn to the river. ;-)


We weren't sure how Bryson would do on his own since there's a big kick back at the end when you bounce into the tire to stop. He loved it though and was ready to ride by himself after just one ride with Maddy.
My kids had a blast up in the mountains - getting wet and dirty. What more could a kid ask for? After a few days, Travis and I were happy to be heading to his parents house for a visit along w/ his 2 sisters and their families. I don't think I could stand the thought of having any more laundry to do. ;-) More pictures from the next phase of our vacation to come.