What is That Smell?

DOUGH BOYS!!!!!

That's right, it was fair time last week. I love the fair. We always go the last day, Sunday. That is the day of the baby contest and also it is ride bracelet day. This year, I had three riders.

Now, before I tell you all the good stuff, I just want to say that FAIR-GOERS SUCK!!!!!

Yeah, they suck. It's amazing how adults can become children in more ways than one during the fair. First of all, we were cut in line to the ticket booth. I'm not gonna sit here and be all elementary and gripe about being cut. After all, my kids lost a couple minutes of ride time. A couple minutes in several hours is no biggie.

So we go to our first ride and it's the trucks. Don't they look cute sitting there in the back? Any way, they get in and some heathen in front turns around and very bluntly and purposely pokes Streaker in the forehead. EXCUSE ME!? I hear no scolding whatsoever from any parent watching the child. Honestly, I am not surprised by this. But I can see that his parents are not going to handle this, so when the child looks up to see if anyone is looking, I glare. And I glare hard. Needless to say, he did not poke again, although he did cower every second that he wasn't looking to see if he could get away with a second attack
.
So we go to do a second ride and (big surprise) we are cut in front of again. And again, there is an adult with them. I am starting to be annoyed by the rudeness of some people.

Then a whole group of kids come right off the swings, which the Big One had been asking about since we got there, and went right out the exit and back through the entrance, cutting an entire line of people who were waiting. Ride operator says nothing. But I'm not too peeved about it, until the Big One comes back out because they are one swing short and she is without a seat. Now I am fuming. What is wrong with people? If I saw my child pull that stunt of going out the exit and cutting an entire line to go back in the entrance, her bottom would be brought home to spend the rest of the night thinking about how she made the people in line feel. But apparently parents nowadays just don't care.

Some parents who did care? The parents of small children being trampled in the bounce house because the man responsible for the ride was SLEEPING!!!! Fast asleep. A very small girl starts crying because children who should not even be on the ride are trampling the poor girl and the operator says....

"Well, they just keep going in and no one is coming out."

Really dude? That's your JOB! You are getting paid for this. Streaker finally got on and got to slide once before being taken off. GAH!

At this point, we had been at the fair for maybe 20 minutes. And already someone has irritated me an average of once every 4 minutes. And 4 minutes later...?

Yep. You guessed it. We went to the kiddie section to get away from the idiots in the big kid section and apparently we were not the only ones who had been cut. Because as our children were exiting the ride, the people waiting at the entrance were so concerned about losing their spot that they wouldn't let us through the line to get our unattended children who had exited alone.

But.... after all was said an done, after the first half hour of the fair, the rest went smoothly and great. I won 2 second place ribbons for my photography and Baby Bee won "Little Rosebud" in the baby contest. My nephew won a bike in the raffle and my mom won a quilt.

It was a nice day and the kiddlets really enjoyed themselves.

Do you go to the fair every year?
Tell me about your favorite thing to do there.

I Never Was Into Sports

It wasn't because I didn't want to be. I did. But for some reason, it just never happened for me. Kind of like the time I told my pastor that I wanted to be baptized. He baptized lots of other kids, but never did baptize me. I was always unlucky in that way. But thankfully, my daughter will not follow in my footprints.

We signed her up for soccer this year. We actually missed sign-ups, but I begged and she got in. When we got up the morning of our first practice, I realized that shin guards were required. CRAP! So we stopped by Walmart and of course, none her size were available. So we grabbed the adult size which didn't look overly big to me, having never been in sports.

We got to the field and I realized just how big they were. Great. I've managed to embarrass my daughter, so I think. Turns out, because she is such a confident and outgoing girl, she was not embarrassed at all, even when her friend pointed out how big they were. But still, it wouldn't do. I told her we would get new ones with Daddy's next pay check.

Turns out we didn't have to because her grandmother bought her the soccer equipment she needed. Ball, guards, socks, cleats and mouth piece. We were utterly grateful. She has no reason to be embarrassed now.

I can't wait until next year when two of my kids are in sports. Maybe 3, we will see. Do your kids do sports?

Where has the time gone?

Today I dropped the Punk off for her first day of school. It went super well.
We found her classroom and stepped inside. She first had to find her cubby hole and put her bag and coat away. Then she had to wash her hands. Both she did very easily. Then she had to find her name again. It was written on one of many crayons scattered about the table. Each crayon had a piece of Velcro attached to the back. She found hers and stuck it up on the attendance board.
Then she stepped over to an easel with everyone's name on it and wrote her name the best she could. Nearest I can tell, she has 14 classmates.
When that was all done, she grabbed my camera (yes, I let her use my camera), and she snapped a picture of each of her teachers. Then her teacher took one of us.
At that point it was time to leave. She did excellent!!! No tears, no whine, just excitement. I was so proud of her.

I've Realized Something

We had a birthday party a few days ago and as I was looking through the photos, I realized something. My kids have so much more love for each other than my siblings and I had for each other growing up. It's amazing to see them stick up for each other when they get into trouble or to help each other feel better when they hurt themselves.

When I was growing up, it was always get the other into trouble or make them trip cause it was funny to watch their face as they went down. Maybe I just remember it that way because I was the youngest. Maybe my siblings were plenty lovey before I was old enough to remember it. But uh... I don't remember it that way.

How did you get along with your siblings growing up? Were you real close or did you fight like cats and dogs?

Say What?

No school on Labor Day? Apparently not. I think I am the only mom ever to not know this. I must be, because the school was obviously so sure that everyone was aware of this fact that they didn't feel the need to put it in the school calendar.

Seriously, I wouldn't have even known that Labor Day was upon us if there wasn't such a stir about it on Cafemom. So here's a bit of humor for you.

I normally wake at about 6:45am. At that time, I grab an outfit and head to The Big One's room. I wake her up, she goes potty and gets ready and one of her grandparents come grab her on their way to work and wait with her at the end of the driveway until the bus gets there and picks her up.

So this morning, I wake up and the clock says 7:12am. Holy Mackerel! This is bad! The bus is due in just a few minutes. I grab The Big One and rush her into the hallway and shove some clothes on her. I grab her backpack. Then I grab a baggie and fill it with baby carrots and shove it in the cooler pouch on her bag.
Then i pick up my phone to see why the alarm did not go off, only to see that it is in fact only 6:18 in the morning.

At this point, I get it. my husband likes to set the clock WAY ahead either to psyche himself out or to show what time he will get to work if he leaves right then. Either way, it explains the lack of alarm.

So I set my phone and her bag down on the couch and put the kids back to bed. At this point, all kids were awake. The Big One cried because she wanted to go to school. The Punk and the Streaker had a hard time going back out. Baby Bee went down fairly easy.

I finally get them to sleep and barely doze off myself to wake and see that it is ACTUALLY 7:17. No alarm again because I left my phone on the couch in the living room, and I guess the man did not remember to set the clock alarm. It sucks, but WHOA!!!! Practically bus time, and uh... grandparents are gone. This stinks! I am not dressed, nor is the baby! This doubley stinks.

So VERY reluctantly, I have the Big One walk two thirds the way to the bus stop. Just close enough so that I can keep an eye on her, but far enough so that the bus can see her and won't drive off. I hated it. And once the time came for the bus and it hadn't showed yet, I grabbed some flops, a long sweater, and the baby and walked down with her.

We waited and waited. She was out there from ten minutes before the bus should have been there until ten minutes after it should have been there. At this point, I worried that the other children would wake and find the house empty, so I told The Big One that we were headed back home. To this she asked why. I told her "Because apparently, there is no school on Labor Day."

And her response...

"That's what my teacher said."

Thanks kid.

Oh How I Love Your Waves!

It's always nice to go to camp. It's even nicer when it's a camp that you can swim at. Recently, the father-in-law and mother-in-law moved to a new camp ground, and it is beautiful! It's right on the China Lake in China, of course. You can swim in the water and there is a long dock where you can hang your feet off of at the end. It's just lovely.

We took the kids there for the first time yesterday. We ate hot dogs, and chips, drank soda a bug juices, and we swam and collected shells. I plan to paint the shells and make necklaces out of them.

The best part was just spending time outdoors and having fun together. The man looked for crayfish while me and the kiddlets combed the beach for shells. I found an unbelievable amount of oysters. Perhaps we will make oyster stew some weekend soon.

The poor baby, she couldn't do much. She pretty much sat on the boat and watched us all from her papasan seat. Maybe next year she can dip her toes in. We shall see.


One thing I absolutely love about China Lake is the lack of bugs. The whole time we were there, not one of us got bitten by a mosquito. Not once! But we did see a few very large and fluffy caterpillars, some snails, some oysters, and a few small swarms of little white flying insects. I will gladly take that over mosquitoes and black flies *shudders*.

As night time fell, we all went down to watch the sunset and when it set, we all went back up to the camper and we all snuggled up and talked about whatever came up.

I have to say, it was the perfect day. And to end a perfect day perfectly??? Impromptu fireworks from on the lake. We don't know exactly where they came from or why they happened, (possibly Labor Day?), but it was nice. They didn't last long enough to go down and get a good look, but we could see them anyway.

We got home and it was kind of sad to end the day, but we had school the next morning, or so I thought.

What do you and your family do for fun? Where do you go? Tell me about it!

Ahhh, school time again.

I never ever thought that I would be excited for the school year to start. I am just one of those moms that hates to be away from my kids. I hate that someone else is watching my kids and is in charge of their well being for the majority of the day. I hate that my kids have to be stuck with unruly deviants all day and that they may be bullied or influenced by said hooligans. I just hate it.

But alas, with 4 young kids in the house, it is becoming too hard to keep up with the house cleaning. It's just something that I was never terribly great at. And so, I have become one of "those moms". The ones who count down the days until school starts. Not for my sake, but for the sake of my poor house.

Today was The Big One's first day of first grade. FIRST GRADE!!! We didn't wait long for her bus, it came right on time. She was very excited. She made a new friend and the trouble maker from last year is not on the bus this year. I am happy for that! I really think that this year will be a great year for her.

What about you? Do you look forward to the new school year? Do you dread it? Tell me about it.