A Week in Review (May 11-17)

A Week in Review (May 11-17)

Watched: My students do a great job performing Hey Diddle Diddle for our end of the year performance. After the pictures were done, I rushed over to Jack's belt ceremony in time to see him earn his green/blue belt.  This means he has achieved 75% mastery of his green belt curriculum. He has had a great time learning karate and I think it promotes great body control and self awareness. It's been awesome to watch his growth over the year. 

Read: I finished up The Wedding. I think that I must have read it before I had Goodreads to keep track of it for me because the book had a vaguely familiar feeling and I knew the ending dead on. I think the idea of a husband who can change his romantic tendencies appeals to a large number of women. I can see why this was popular among my Goodreads friends.Next, I picked up Cinder . It is supposed to be on the fractured fairy tale line, but I am not seeing it so far.   

Listened: To Nick have to tell Jack time after time to look at the camera when we were trying to update a good pic of the three of us. I really love the shots Nick got. Plus, we had a ton of fun goofing off at Hillsdale lake. Nick caught me with a huge splash that soaked my pant leg and gave us all a good laugh.

Made: Lots of yummy treats on Wednesday. I made Banana Bread muffins with icing and gooey peanut butter bars for a Teacher Appreciation lunch. I also made a couple dozen sugar cookies for my students last day treat.  I also took icing and sprinkles so they could decorate how they wanted.  I also took some Neapolitan ice cream for them and some of them added sprinkles to that too.

Felt: So excited that my Mom was coming to town. We are very excited to share in the every day events in our lives that she doesn't often get to see because we live too far apart.  While she is going to be here 5 days, I think we have enough crammed in that it will go by in the blink of an eye. I felt very thankful that I mentioned my plans to a husband of a Garmin employee though. We were planning to go WOF on Sunday, but the park is closed down due to the annual Garmin event out there. It would have been such a bummer to drive all that way for nothing. It would have felt like the end of the movie Vacation. 

Planned: On being hot at Jack's field day on Thursday, but Mother Nature had other plans. When I woke up it was 47 with a high of 57 for the day.  Since we had bought matching field day shirts, we just put on long sleeves underneath and went out.  I worked the slide bouncy house.  I only got to see Jack about 10 minutes, but I know it takes good parent volunteers to pull off a big event and I was glad to do my part.

Loved: Being spoiled on Mother's Day. My boys slept in so I started the morning off with some Parenthood and laundry. When they were up, Jack just couldn't wait to show me my gifts. He made a clay wind chime at school for me. He and Nick also printed a card for me and Jack wrote inside it.  Then they gave me my big gift. An iPad mini with a data package all ensconced in a LifeProof case. I tried it  in the shower while the boys prepared some fondue for me. It was delicious once again.  It had the added bonus of making a great leftover dinner for Jack and I while Nick was out of town!  We ended the day playing a game of Payday.     It was a great day!

Here are the pics for the week:

A little giggle at the domain name the Mission Repair guy used for Nick's email. 

Jack coming off the slide I worked at his Field Day. 

My kiddos

Some of my favorite shots

A Week in Review (May 4-10)

A Week in Review (May 4-10)

Watched: Too much Parenthood. My MIL has been telling me for years to watch this series and I can see why she enjoys it so much. Thanks to Amazon Prime and Nick being out of town, I stay up far too late watching episodes. I've already made it through the first season. There are 5 seasons so I might get through it all by the time Nick is done with this design build. I have a feeling the summer will make most TV watching come to a halt. 

Read: Not as much as normal. It happens when I get involved in a TV show. I did finish up When Will There Be Good News? (Jackson Brodie, #3). This is the second Kate Atkinson book that I read. I started off with Started Early, Took My Dog, which is the fourth book in Jackson Brodie series. My son picked this one off the shelf because he has a crush on a girl named Kate and I asked him to pick a book off my shelf for me. I enjoyed this story line. It jumped between characters without a lot of transition which took some time to get used to. As with the first book I read, she took all the seemingly unconnected story lines and wrapped them up into one nice package. If you would like a fun little mystery, I suggest giving this one a shot.  I found The Wedding last week at a garage sale and decided to start it because I thought it would be nice and fluffy. It starts off pretty sad so far. I am sure it will pick up and I will finish it up next week. 

Listened:  Jack figure out that he has enough energy to go up the escalators while it was going down.  He found it ultra entertaining.  We actually missed Nick getting off his plane because he didn't want to stop.  :)  I don't know what I will do when he isn't entertained by the simple things in life.  It's one of my favorite things about being a mom!

Made: It up over a skyscraper of steps, according to my fit bit. It said that I walked a total of 60 flights of stairs on Thursday. We were mostly at the zoo and it didn't feel like a ton of stairs, but it was pretty intense. I didn't take many pictures as I was in a charge of a runner and the zoo was soo crowded that I was positive that I was going to lose him. Luckily the worst thing that happen is that he took the water bottle out of a fellow moms bag and was drinking it after his ran out. In his defense it was like 90 and I would have liked to have unlimited water too!

Felt: Horrible for Nick. He was kicked off his Delta flight for mentioning that the plane was too small. He may have used the f word when getting on the plane in reference to its size.  Apparently the flight attend asked him if he was okay and he said he would be fine.  Later she asked him again if he was okay and he said he was fine.  He was then called up to the cabin and told that he was "too nervous" for the flight.  He says he will get a full refund of his ticket price.  Luckily Southwest had a ticket on their final flight to Salt Lake City.  The customer service is so much better with Southwest. It would be stellar if they had a direct flight between MCI and SLC, but alas, he is stuck with Delta for the remainder of his flights.

Planned: For Jack to have his friend J over for a Minecraft play date. What I didn't plan for is that when we went to get him C would assume he was coming with us, say bye Mom, and be severely disappointed when that didn't work out. Luckily, I think we will be able take him Monday for a couple hours to ease my guilt. I am so glad my boy is bonded with those crazy kiddos.

Loved: Our Saturday. It started with Jack waking up and asking me to read him a great children's book Hey, Little Ant .  After that I took the time to watch two episodes of a show he is currently enjoying, Lab Rats. Then I snuck out and went to a few garage sales.  Found a couple good deals for friends of mine.  Came home and took Jack to his double header football game. He had two sets of visitors  because his Aunt Valerie and Uncle Chewy were in town for the Nascar race they took the time to drive out to his first match. Also his Aunt Debbie and Uncle Kevin drove up for the other too. The boys were doing some fun jumping off the benches that she captured and I posted below.  After the game Jack asked them back over for games. While Debbie and I ran for OK Joe's, the boys played some darts. After lunch, there was a game of monopoly on the Wii, which is just like real monopoly only electronic.  Uncle Kevin went out first, followed by Jack, and Aunt Debbie ended up winning it all. She was pretty excited and also snapped a couple shots of Nick, post defeat.  They headed home and I went and bought a new clock I love off Swap and Shop. :) When I got back the bosh were out shopping for Mother's Day. I watched an episode of Parenthood and then we played 6 months of Payday.  Nick did end up winning that game and I got dead last.  Jack was so exhausted, he fell asleep while we were reading books!

Here are the pics for the week:

Jack takes good care of filling up the bird bath that I found a garage sale. I was so excited to see one using it that I had to snap a picture for him.

Five Kindergarten boys and one 2 year old squished in an egg. 

The Jack Show featuring the amazing escalators trick

Team Jump Pictures

My new clock

A Week in Review (April 27-May 3)

A Week in Review (April 27-May 3)

Watched: My students be so goofy. At the end of the day, I was taking each of their pictures for their Mother's Day present and they started hamming up.  I love hanging out with my group of kiddos and I can hardly believe that we only have two more classes left. 

Read: Last week, I picked up and finished The Enchanted: A Novel. I picked this book up after a couple women in my book club read it and said that it was a book about a man stuck on death row who used books to escape his walls. While I must say that held true for about 5 pages of the book, the rest was just a horribly sad look at prison life. Everyone was being sexually abused in both the present stories and the back stories. There was plenty of death too. Overall, not at all what I pictured. I wouldn't recommend it.  I also made quite a bit of progress on When Will There Be Good News?. Each characters story line is getting more detailed, but this is how we will find them all connected. 

Listened: I got in the audiobook for When Will There Be Good News?. It is weird because when I began reading the book, I "heard" them all in American accents even though the book is set in Great Britian. Once I began listening to the narrator speaking in the correct accent, it's how I hear the characters.  It's amazing what the power of suggestion does!

Made: Homemade Fondue. I found a fondue pot at a garage sale and so we tried making it at home. It was really quite yummy and easy. We didn't have any dipping sauces and I will be trying to make some. I did splurge and buy $29 a pound Filet Mignon and it was soooo good.  I can see this becoming a once a month treat. Much cheaper than the Melting Pot.

Felt: Relief and Sadness all at once. We sold the boat on Saturday. While I am glad we won't have to worry about what to do with it if we happen to move or the floor goes out, it still feels very weird not to have it as an option. I am glad Jack got to drive it one last time.  The picture of him just makes me smile. 

Planned: May Day baskets for some friends. We had a great time delivering them and Jack loved seeing how it made people happy!  He was particularly glad that he never got caught while he was delivering them. 

Loved:  Seeing Jack get so into his roll of Teacher for the Day. He was excited when his teacher donated this item to the PTO to help raise money during the silent auction.  He couldn't take a backpack, didn't think he could go to PE, thought he'd get a lunch break, and wanted to know how much he would get paid. His teacher even made him up his own little badge.  The first one you will see I took at home before he left, early of course because teachers arrive before students, and the second one his teacher sent to me.

Here are the pics for the week:

Nick took a super nice picture for me. ;)

Jack driving the boat one last time. 

I remembered I hadn't taken any pics of our May Day baskets, so I snapped this one while we were waiting at a light. :)

Mr Thomas

A Week in Review (April 20-26)

A Week in Review (April 20-26)

Watched: My friend Laurie recommend that I watch the triology Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight.  If you haven't watched them, the premise is that you meet a couple every 9 years from their mid 20s to their early 40s. If you like movies with HEAVY dialogue, then I would recommend picking them up.  Nick watched the last one and he was not a fan. 

Read: I started up When Will There Be Good News?.  I wasn't sure what book to read net off my list and Jack selected this out of my pile for me because the author's first name is Kate. It is fairly good, but I haven't spent much time reading this week because I been watching the movies. 

Listened: Since I don't have an audiobook, I have been just jamming out to Fun. album Some Nights. It is just a feel good CD and I don't mind listening to most of the lyrics with Jack. He even knows the words to some of the songs.  If you are looking for a good spring album to clean too, take a listen. 

Made: It through another long week of Nick being gone. He had to extend his trip again, while he was in SLC. At least this time, he thought to pack an extra pair of clothes. Jack and I get in a good rhythm, but we miss him. I am thankful for his practices to help break up the together time.

Felt: So excited. My girlfriend announced that they are expecting their 4th kiddo. It is a busy time in her life, but she makes a great mom. I love getting to celebrate new life. My Bunco group will have several new babies coming up.  Baby sprinkles have not been successful Bunco nights, but we will keep trying. 

Planned: For Jack to miss the Lego contest that the library was holding because we were tenth on the waiting list, but Thursday afternoon we got a call that a spot had opened up. We were excited to for him to be able to participate. He spent Friday evening creating a piece entitled Party Castle. He made a dance floor and positioned all sorts of mini figures in fun ways. It was very popular with the kids who are huge mini figure fans as well, but the judges didn't see it the same way. He was bummed he didn't win, but I think he got over it. 

Loved: Celebrating Easter.  Jack had around 48 plastic eggs, a giant rainbow egg, a dozen confetti eggs, and a dozen real eggs to hunt. We found almost all of them. He was very excited because the Easter Bunny left him a set that contained the Golden Ninja.  He actually took the time to assemble to the Ultra Dragon and played with it for a lot of the week. After a yummy dinner, we went out to Hillsdale and just explored. We had so much fun. Nick found a cool limestone stairway in the water. We skipped a ton of rocks and Jack "scaled" a few rocks.  We were the only people on the beach. It was a great way to spend a Sunday!

Here are the pics for the week:

What do you think of the hairstyle?  Cute or not?  He took a picture so he could show it to Kate when she came for their play date, but we forgot, so we will take your opinions. 

An egg in the tree

Jack and his rainbow egg

Confetti eggs 

The Limestone Stairway

Love, love this pictur from half time of their game!

Jack and his Party Castle

A Week in Review (April 13-19)

A Week in Review (April 13-19)

Watched: Jack have a great time with Callum.  Laurie had to attend a funeral and so we were able to play Callum for a few hours.  The boys had a great time.  They continue to bond over their mutual love of balls.  I love the pic of them below playing with the ball maze together.

Read: I finished up The Circle.   This book was recommend from my local libraries Facebook page as one of the best reads of 2013. The premise seemed intriguing to me, and I wasn't let down. I think that the book, for me, is best summed up as an updated version of the classic 1984. I am not a huge fan of the science fiction genre, but I did enjoy this story. I wondered if our timelines went along the same way, what side of the story I would be on. If you are looking for an adult dystopian novel, I would recommend giving this a shot.

Listened: To Jack have a great time on Saturday. As you will see in the pictures below, on Saturday we started out with a football game against a pretty intense team, but they managed to stop them a time or two (which we heard one little guy from the other team complaining about on the way out!).  After that, we got the boat out to storage.  When we did that Jack realized that he wanted to spend some time messing around near the water, so we went to the rock beach and had a blast skipping rocks and exploring.  Following that we stopped by the store and got some marshmallows and graham crackers for the fire Jack was building.  It was a good thing we had them because didn't turn out to well, so while we scraped together some other things, toasted marshmallows sandwiches were nice and filling!  We also managed to color a dozen Easter Eggs that day too.  It was a busy and fun Saturday!

Made: A rainbow egg for Jack. He remembers this egg from a Team Umi Zoomi episode that he loved. I hope he is excited when he finds it.  Nick and I decided to give him the Golden Ninja inside it and then put the rest of the set in closet to find.

Felt: Excited that Jack finally lost his tooth. He has had a loose tooth for a couple weeks. At football practice on Thursday, he missed a catch and took it in the face. It was apparently the last straw for the tooth,.but there was still a lot of blood and if he sees blood, it's just freaks him out. I took a picture so he could see that he was fine.

Planned: For Jack to attend an Easter Egg hunt at his gymnastics place.  He had a lot of fun.  We had fun goofing around before hand.  He loves wearing his basket for a hat.  It totally cracks me up.  After a fun egg hunt, they got to do an obstacle course spoon race, break confetti eggs, and just have some open gym time.  He had a good time and I think it was worth rushing home from Wichita for.

Loved: Taking a Friday lunch with Nick.  We just threw some PB&Js and Ruffles and headed over to his work. We went just about a mile down the road and there was this cool trail with a train bridge, and a creek, and some hills. Jack was just so excited to be with Nick and exploring and it was a great treat after Nick's unexpected road trip. 

Here are the pics for the week:

Easter Egg Hunt Picks

We went to Academy Sports after the egg hunt and stumbled upon the clearance section.  We found this on the wrong rack and Jack just had to try it on.  We decided it looked like something Tio would wear.  For some reason he decided to strike this pose in homage to him.  Haha

Jack and Callum

The lost tooth

Jack climbing the walls during a fun urban oasis picnic lunch

The crazy team we played on Saturday.  While this is a horrible picture, you can tell that this team was ultra serious. They all had expensive matching shorts, their names printed on the back of their shirts, and they were actually making game film.

And here is our team with my boy as the QB. They are a bunch of rag tag ragamuffins, but they care about each other and I think that they are having a lot of fun. 

Jack and his big catch. Haha

Have fun skipping rocks 

This water is 38 degrees!  And still he just couldn't stay out of it :)

Some serious shimmery egg painting. I definitely will not be buying this kit next year. 

His joker face after his crazy egg dye experiment made a giant mess!

Jack has been wanting a fire, so we had two this weekend. On Saturday, we purchased some jumbo jumbo marshmallows. Jack had a good time catching them on a fire. It was more fun than eating them. 

Week in Review (April 6-12)

Week in Review (April 6-12)

Watched: I requested that we watch Frozen for my birthday. While I enjoyed the movie, it was pretty typically Disney.  I loved the character of Olaf.  Nick tolerated it. Jack liked it despite himself. He feels like it is a "girl" movie so he can't enjoy it.  However, he liked it so much he requested renting it so he could watch it on the way to Wichita. 

Read:  It was a good week for reading. I finished up Panic. What a fast enjoyable read. I think coming from a small town like Carp made it more realistic for me as I could see a bunch of kids being this stupid. Nothing too plot twisty, but I did enjoy the ride. After that, I was also able to complete Lost Lake. This was another good story by Sarah Addison Allen. It lacked the strong magical realism that her other books seem to have in spades. If you enjoy her works, but don't want something over the top sweet then I would recommend this book to you. Now, I will focus on The Circle. 

Listened:  I recently found out that our library has an app that you can borrow audiobooks through.  I have enjoyed being able to listen to parts of The Circle. However, it appears to be killing my battery.  My car charger cord died (my lifeproof case seems to eat them!), so I don't see myself being able to listen to many that way. 

Made: Time to go meet baby V on Monday. Jack has been so excited to meet her and was just amazed that he got to see her when she was 0 days old. We also had Culver's night and a dance party at my work that evening. We also had to make sure that we had Nick ready for Utah. While we were waiting for Nick to meet us, Jack informed me that he was going to work in a hospital when he grew up. I asked him what he was going to do. He said he was going to help get babies out of the vaginas (As you can see we've had plenty of conversations on how a baby generally comes into the world. Thank goodness he hasn't yet asked how a baby is made!). Then he proceeded to tell me that he knew it was bloody so he had better start playing some Caller Duty (I laugh that this is what he calls Call of Duty) to get him used to seeing blood.  Nick arrived a few minutes later so we didn't have time to discuss that in more detail. 

Felt: Sad to learn that Nick's great Uncle Joe passed away from colon cancer on Thursday. We had known for sometime that it had reached a terminal phase.  Nick and Jack went down to Wichita on Saturday while I had to keep a meeting to purchase all the negatives from our wedding photographer who is moving overseas and was clearing out his stalk. 

Planned: On Spring Flag football being similar to Fall. But it's not and I am trying to become okay with that. Yesterday, the coach gave me Team Mom responsibility, so hopefully I will be able to organize everyone. There are only 8 boys on the team and Jack is the only one that has played before.  He was able to play the entire game on Saturday. He was tired, but he enjoyed it. 

Loved: Celebrating my birthday!  With the help of my co-workers, Facebook well wishes, calls and texts from family, visits from neighbors, and time with my boys, I had a fabulous 35th birthday!  Jack picked me out an extremely thoughtful gift and I was touched that he did. They also each bought me a frame from wedding pictures that they knew I was getting. Jack was very proud of their wrapping so I took a picture and included it below. 

Here are the pics for the week:

Jack and V

Just being a goof

Jack and his Lego Club creation 

My birthday presents

A sideline view of Jack's game. 

A Week in Review (Mar 30-Apr 5)

A Week in Review (Mar 30-Apr 5)

Watched: Gravity with Nick on Saturday night. It's not very often that we have Jack down to bed and enough energy left to watch an entire movie. Since Jack was gone for the weekend, I decided to rent us a movie. Not one either Nick or I would recommend. Some cool special effects, but that's about it.

Read: I finished up Sarah's Key.  Maybe it was because such an eclectic group of my Goodreads friends had rated this so highly that I was expecting too much from this. I was really let down by the whole story. While it is a tragic story, I felt it was very bland. Nothing to exciting or shocking. Not a book I would recommend unless someone was asking for a book that met some very specific requirements.  I had both Panic and The Circle come off my library hold list. I began with Panic. It doesn't seem like it will take me long as long as I get quickly hooked on the story. 

Listened: The best thing about  to parts of  Sarah's Key  on audiobook was having all the French pronounced correctly. While reading them I butchered them with my English take on the word.  It's clear that I don't know much about the French language. 

Made: Jack some dessert of strawberries and sugar. They were some of the biggest strawberries I had ever seen. He thought it was just hilarious to be munching into something so huge. It reminded him of one of his favorite books, The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear .

Felt: Excited for the weekend.  Nick had purchased us tickets to War Horse as a Christmas present to me.  Denise agreed to keep Jack for the whole weekend so we could just enjoy more time together. Thursday, Rachel called saying that she and Q were going to be in KC for a short trip and would take Jack home with them on Friday. Jack was very excited for one-on-one time with his cousin.  So Friday afternoon, we headed out for an early dinner and drinks. Neither of us had any idea of what the play would be about. Nick thought it would be something like The Horse Whisperer and I thought it would be about the Trojan horse.  Turns out we were both wrong. It is about a boy and his love for his horse. I had a hard time getting past the people moving the animals.  My minds eye just couldn't make them disappear. However, I must say that did a superb job of three people working together to accurately imitate the movement of a horse. The pony phase of the horse was super freaky to me and of course that happened at the beginning of the play. I have included one of the theaters images below. Remember that none of the people you see are in the show.  Their only function is move the horse around the stage.  I did enjoy the overall story line and have added the movie to my watch list. On Saturday, we spent the day having a lazy afternoon, followed by Nick working on the finishing touches for the floor and me researching some different methods to achieve a good look. The trim piece was just about 4 inches short and so we had to pause until Sunday to see if we could get another piece in at the store. 

Planned: A great April Fool's trick. While cooking, I dropped some red food coloring on my hand and ran outside hooting and hollering for Jack to help me. Jack hates the sight of blood so it was pretty funny. When I revealed the April fool, he said "Ahh Mom, you got me good."  I also fooled several people via Facebook and text. It was a simple bit of fun that left me stained pink the next day. 

Loved: Being at home with my hubby this week. Since he has started traveling, we had plenty of places that took us away from each other.  It was good to just spend every night with my leg draped over him. Sometimes it's the little things.

Here are the pics for the week:

My April Fool's prank

Jack's Red Ripe Strawberry

The pony for War Horse. Again. None of those people are playing a part except to move the horse.