Curse you Discovery channel!!!

So you would think that I would have learned my lesson last year. Or maybe the year before that.

No.

I just stumble over the same mistake every year. You forget simple truths when you have kids.

You shouldn't eat Dorritos for dinner.

You can't just run to 7-11 when the need for nasty nachos strikes without taking them with you.

You can't make dinner in the nude

You can't leave the bong on the coffee table anymore

And under no circumstances can you let them watch discovery channel in the last week of July.

Not that i need to remind you, but we are a pretty nerdy family, so the discovery channel, TLC and the history channel flow freely through this house. For the most part it is always a safe bet as far as programming.

Except for .....SHARK WEEK!!......DUN...DUN...DUNNNNNNNN!!!!

Yeah bedtime took on a whole new meaning tonight.

Sunshine was terrified that this was going to come out of the toilet.



Awesome.

Thank you shark week.

Oh HECK YES!!!!!

There is really nothing quite like homemade jelly that only yesterday was still on the the bush.

I am pretty sure most kids would agree that homemade is way better than some crummy high fructose version of what people try to pass as jelly at the store. Maybe I'm just partial to homemade.

Although I have a sinking suspicion that I may not be the only one :)

It's berry pickin time!!

I love this time of year because all the berries come into season. We went out and picked a flat of raspberries this afternoon. I almost made the fatal error of just buying a flat (mostly because it's just easier) but to buy a flat is $27. To pick your own is $14. Gee I wonder what I ended up doing. I am just that cheap.

Luckily I found a great reason for having a ton of kids. You can get your picking done pretty fast. Between the 5 of us (well, really only 4) we got a whole flat picked in less than an hour. Not too bad. I was a little surprised how eager the kids were to make it a contest to see who could pick the most the fastest. Although I think more eating was going on than picking.

But all in all we had a fun afternoon.

Tomorrow it will all be made up into jam and in jars.

Confession Monday...yes I know it is Wednesday!

Ok yes I know it is Wednesday, but let me remind you just how crazy busy I have been with my Ebay conquests.

Ok that said, I am a little late with this, but I didn't want the week to pas me by and not participate in this. I have been reading this Mommy confession blog .

She is giving out topics and putting it out for us to reply. This Monday's confession topic...

"What is the craziest thing you have ever done for love?"

I don't know if this is so much as crazy, or just a little irresponsible. But I got engaged less than 2 months after I met my husband. Not only did I barely know him, I accepted his marriage proposal over the phone. What can I say, I was 21 and dumb.
Quick synopsis of our courtship. It would have to be quick, because the courtship was quick. We met 2 weeks before he was going off to college in Phoenix. We decided to keep dating even though it was long distance. He was gone for about a month before we realized that that we were miserable without each other. So we were on the phone one night and he says, "why don't you just move down here and we'll get married".

Me- (young....dumb) hey! that sounds like a great idea!! What could go wrong?!!

Well to make a long story short, he ended up moving back, but we were married that following June.

It seems like it should have been a disaster waiting to happen , but 10 years and 3 kids later here we are. Almost all of our married friends have since gotten divorced, but not us. Who knows...maybe ignorance really is bliss :)

It turns out it was the best decision that I have ever made. And Lord knows I have made some dumb ones.

Welcome to Mrs. B's pet palace!!

Ok as I may have mentioned a time or two, we have a weakness for animals. If an animal seems lost, we take them in until we find their family. If puppies need babysitting, we're here to help!

Rockstar's boss was going on vacation and needed someone to watch her 4 month old Lhasa apso / poodle mix puppies. She barely had to put out the SOS before my husband jumped at the chance.

We got them last night. They are girls, Molly and Dolly. Oh c'mon how cute is that?

Needless to say we are going to have a hard time giving them back.

The kids were up at first light this morning playing with them.

Don't call me hip hop, I prefer gimp dog

So in a way that only I can do, I am all gimped up. Don't believe me? Check it out...



Heres the deal. Last Thursday Rockstar and I took a break from the mountains of Ebay stuff that is collected in our living room. We went out and saw a movie. (The new Batman movie. It is awesome and I do recommend it) As we were walking to the theater from the parking garage, I stepped off of a step all "catty wompus" ( I know that is not a real word and my spell check is giving me a dirty look, but there is no other way to describe it). My ankle took a header and twisted in a way that my ankle bone touched the concrete. Yeah oooww. It (my ankle) let out a big pop and I went down hard. I tried to man up and walk it off. But no go.

I sort of hip hopped my way to the theater because I don't get movie night very often and there is no way I am spending my date night out in the emergency room. I made it through the movie but when it was over and I actually had to get up and walk out, I realized that I had just given it 2 hours to swell to the size of my calf.

Yea!! At long last I have always wanted Cankles!!! Oh wait, no, I have never wanted those.

Well we got home and I slept on it hoping that maybe in the morning it might not be so grim. HAAAA! Not so much the outcome I was hoping for.

So I went in and saw the doctor. Well, 2 hours and 4 X rays later, it turns out that I fractured my ankle bone. I got a splint thing to keep it immobile but that is about all they could do. Fractures just need to heal on their own. Wow....really??? No good drugs or anything?

The really crummy part is that I have to keep off of my feet for the better part of a week or so. Until the swelling stops. Are you kidding me? Yeah, that is not going to happen. May I remind you that I stay at home with 3 small kids just waiting for the right moment to take over and pummel each other Lord of the flies style?

Luckily all of this unfolded on a Friday so Rockstar could work from home and keep the beasts in check while I sat on my tookus listing posts on Ebay. In fact that is about how my whole weekend played out. It was this afternoon that it occurred to me that I haven't even left the house in 3 days. Good times.

So luckily, Ebay work is a non contact sport that can be done on the comfort of our sofa. Although I think I have about had as much of this as I can handle. I really can't imagine this in another week. It could be ugly.

I'll keep you posted.

Eyeball deep in Ebay

So many of you may be wondering why I haven't been on top of posting regularly. This in a nut shell is why. I am literally eyeball deep in Ebay. I am helping out a friend that had the task of selling off all (literally) of some one's possessions. It's a long story. But the quick version of it is like this.

Girl from Columbia.
Girl married an American and moves to the states.
Girl gets divorced.
Girl visits Colombia for vacation.
Girl does not want to come back to the US.
Girl really doesn't want any of her stuff here.

Enter my friend Bobby. He likes to help people out. A lot. So he volunteered to sell off her stuff and just send her a check for what it was all worth. He sells a lot of it in a garage sale and on Craigslist. But there is still a lot of left overs.

Enter me. I sell on Ebay and have quite a little system. So I'll sell what I can and Goodwill the rest.


There is a lot of stuff.

This is my living room. It was empty 4 days ago. This is someone else's closet. Clothes, shoes, handbags. You name it. Unfortunately none of it was in my size :)

So if I seem a little busy, this is probably what I am at home doing. It is very time consuming.

Honeymon state park

So one of the days we were at the beach we thought we would drive down to Florence just for something different. It was about an hour and a half from where we were staying (Newport).

We came across a really cool state park where we had ourselves a nice picnic and did a llittle swimming too.

It was really nice and had a cute little lake with boat rentals. My mom doesn't normally do boats, but she was all about taking Bug out in a paddle boat. So she and Bug had a good time out in the boat while Peanut, Sunshine and I had fun by the shore.

Now let me point out here for those of you have never been around Sunshine. I'll just preface it by saying that she is a bit like a Labrador retriever. If there is water anywhere near her, she has to be waist deep in it. She just can't help herself. Luckily she knows how to swim well.

We were playing in the sand on the shore when she walks casually over to the water. She goes in up to her ankles. Then she steps out a little farther. Now I ask her to not get her clothes wet as I didn't bring swim clothes and they would have to ride home in their wet clothes. Before I could barely get the words out....bam! She was out up to her neck. Dress and all. But having a great time. What can you do?

So needless to say, she rode home in her skivvies. While we hung her dress out the window as we drove. ....Nothing but class here :)

All in all the campground was a lot of fun. It is someplace that I would like to spend a weekend there and camp. If you ever get the chance, go and check it out!

Home from the beach

So my Mom has been sent to the Oregon coast for 6 weeks by her job and one of the perks of this is that we get to go and hang out with her and camp out in her living room. Rock star had to work (as most people do with real jobs) But the kids and I went to the beach for 3 days.


We had a lot of fun and got to just kick back and let the kids play. It was nice having another pair of hands to help wrangle them too.

Here are some pictures from us at Nye beach in Newport.

What a lovely lazy day

It was another scorching hot day. So we literally spent about 7 hours in the pool today. We would get out just long enough to dry off, re apply sunscreen, maybe grab a glass of water and then hop back in.

My house is a disaster and my laundry is stacked up, but sometimes this is really nice to just spend the day lazing about playing Marco polo with an enormous inflatable turtle. Oh and my kids too.

Are you just a little excited?!

So This is what I came downstairs to this morning. These two parked in front of the TV with their goggles on.

The second my feet hit the last step, the first thing out of their mouth is NOT "good morning" or "beautiful day" or "thank you for giving me life". No, none of that.

"Good you are up. Can we go swimming now?"

Ok let me point out here it has just turned 7:30 am. The sun hasn't even had a chance to warm the water up yet.

They didn't like this reasoning.

But I'm glad to see that they waited until I got downstairs and then asked if they could go out. I was sort of nervous putting a pool out there. Little kids and pools can be a deadly combo. But I laid down serious scare tactics to keep them away from it unless a grownup is near.

I guess it's safe to say, they like the pool :)

Ok we really must do something about this heat.

It was 90 degrees again today. We are all tired of being stuck in the house huddled around the AC. So I took matters into my own hands and bought a pool.

I have been wanting to get one, but our yard isn't very level, so I had to go first go and get 600 lbs of river rock to lay down to make it level and not puncture though the liner.

By the time we got the rocks laid out, and then got the pool assembled, it was almost 3:00. Totally smack dab in the heat of the day. So we began to fill it up, but it is a rather large pool, so it took longer than hoped to fill. After about an hour of filling, we couldn't wait any longer. I don't care if there is only 6 inches of water in there, I'm going in!!! And so we did. We enjoyed that 6 inches of water like you wouldn't believe :)


In the end, it took almost 5 hours to fill it. Just in case you were wondering. Can't wait to get our next water bill :)

Happy 4th of July!!

What is the best part of summertime?

Well 4th of July of course!!

We are still sort of recovering from our vacation hangover, but luckily my friend Erin was having a giant 4th of July BBQ, so all we had to do was show up and enjoy the festivities. We didn't have to spend a fortune on fireworks, everyone else brought theirs, so we just sat around and enjoyed the pyrotechnic display. There were (what seemed like) thousands of kids running around playing so my kids had a blast getting sticky and dirty with all the others.

We brought our own tofu dogs to grill and loaded up on all of the classic picnic junk food that is required of the holiday.

Rockstar husband came home early and stayed home with Peanut who was having a hard time pushing his bedtime back. But Bug, Sunshine and I stayed for the fireworks. For being up until a little past 11, they did surprisingly well.

We really had a great time.

** As a side note, I would like to point out Bug's super patriotic picture with the flag. Being the perfectionist that he is, he was bummed that I wouldn't photo shop an bald eagle flying over him to get the perfect effect. He cracks me up :)

The turtle pictures as promised

As promised we got these developed. So now we can really say that we were swimming nose to nose with this guy. He was so docile that he barely even noticed that we were there.

This was seriously one of the most amazing experiences that we've ever had. Most surreal too.

Back to life...back to reality.

We got home yesterday morning. We took an overnight flight (which meant we missed a night sleeping) and then went straight back to the madness of our life.

We picked up the kids and had our big joyous reunion. As nice as it was to be child free for a week, I missed them like crazy. Every time we would see kids playing on the beach with us I would think about how much my own kids would have had if we brought them. It was sort of bitter sweet.

But we spent the better part of the day yesterday in a sleep deprived fog.

But one of the things I did do was take the underwater cameras in to be developed. The pictures turned out really cool. Of course the pictures don't quite do justice to just how cool snorkeling really is, but it captures the moment sufficiently.

So because there were just so dang many of these, I did a slide show of the greatest hits of Hawaii snorkeling.

Enjoy!

Home again , home again jiggety jig.

One last thing before I go....

We had a lot of time to kill before our flight left and I had this plan to do something extreme to commerate our 10th wedding anniversary. I know it seems silly to some, but a lot of my friends that got married around the same time as we did didn't make it see this milestone. It is just a fact that many marriages don't make it this far. Not that we are any better than anyone else, but I wanted to really mark the moment.

What better way than to do it by permanatly scarring yourself with synthetic ink?

I have had the itch to get another tatoo for quite some time, but I just couldn't settle on what exactly I wanted to do. I knew I wanted it around my ankle though. Then a couple months ago I got this idea to do a band of 10 plumeria flowers around my ankle. I wanted to do it while I was in Hawaii, but only on the last day because I didn't want to limit myself from going in the water.

I found a parlor that looked legit and we were off and running.

What I didn't take into consideration is how much it would hurt. I mean, I have a tatoo on my back that I got when I was 18. (another story for another time) I remember it hurting, but maybe the arrogance of youth clouded my memory. Well let me tell you now....it hurts .....Really....really ...bad. Needles poking into shin and ankle bones are unpleasant just thinking about.

But the whole thing took about an hour and a half and it was over. I found lamaze breathing comes in handy in the funniest places :)

Last day in Paradise

Sigh ....all great things must come to an end. This is our last day in Hawaii. We checked out of our hotel at 11 in the morning , but didn't fly out until 11 at night. So in short we had a lot of time to kill. We spent a couple hours body surfing here at Sunset beach on North shore. It was really hard to get out of the water knowing it was the last time for a long time that we would be able to do this. But we had been in the water for a couple hours and were beginning to feel a little over exposed to the sun. So we had to get out.

But before we said our good byes to North shore we had to snap just a few more pictures for prosperity. Please excuse my brillo-esq hair. It turns out my hair didn't do well with a combination of salt water and high humidity. I grew a little too comfortable to the rubber band method of hair care. I am not really ready to go home and face the cruel nature of blow dryers and flat irons again.