Monday

Not much today but errands. I was looking forward to a quite evening at home with the family, but about 3:00p.m Toby's boss called and said there was a tattoo waiting for him at work if he wanted to come in and take it. In Toby's line of business you gotta take it while the takin is good, so off he went to the shop. In a couple of hours he was back and we proceeded with our quite evening. He had been home no longer than 15 min. when another call came in......his boss again. There was another tattoo for the takin and "did he want it?" Now this time he was a little more hesitant because he had just got home. We talked it over, and since this next tattoo would be a good bit more money than the last one, we decided it was worth his time and effort. His last couple of weeks had been slow so we were grateful for the customers.....even though I was beginning to feel like a doctor's wife.

Family Fun Day

It's been the usual the past couple of days.....school work, errands, etc. Toby was off today and I guess Summer and Brandi really missed him or they just think he is very comfortable.

Charlie called last night and wanted to get together and grill out today. Both Toby and Lucas were off so it was a perfect day for a small family get together. We ate and the "kids" swam while I caught up on some much needed leisure time. Here they are relaxing in the pool.

Later on Charlie decided he needed a hair trim so we called in the residence hairstylist for the job. My brother-in-law is the bravest soul I know!:-)

Happy Birthday to Lucas!

We got up and out of the house at an earlier than usual time this morning. We were headed to Waterville, a place that I have taken Lucas for his birthday since he was about the age of 3. I think we have only missed a couple of years of going in all of his 19 years. He has always looked forward to it but I can tell with age it's not near the excitement that it was when he was younger. I think Summer had a alot more fun with his birthday present than he did. We still had a good time. When we got home we sang Happy Birtday while he blowed out the candle on his strawberry cheescake...his request. He does'nt look like he enjoys being sang to does he?

Later he and Toby went to see the movie Transformers. Summer and I opted to stay home......we can barely sit still through a movie of our choice, much less a boy flick. When they got back both of them seemed very satisfied with the movie. It's been a long couple of days and I'm ready for some R&R!

Happy Birthday to me!

Yes, today is my Birthday and it's been a great one....even though I am another year older. Toby, Summer, Lucas and I got up early this morning and ate a birthday breakfast at I-Hop. I now know why I have never ventured that restaurant. Since it was one of the rare times that we are all together at once I had a family picture taken.

After breakfast we took Lucas back to the house because he had to go to work, then we took off across the bay. We toured some places that I have always wanted to check out but never got a chance because we were always enroute to somewhere else...usually Gulf Shores. On the way home we ate at the Original Oyster House. We have another long day ahead of us tommorrow. It is Lucas's Birthday tommorrow and we are doing our traditional Waterville trip. I can't believe my son will be 19 years old. It's funny how the older my kids get the younger I feel. I guess they might call that maternal freedom!

The last few days.....

have been filled with mostly swim time. We have had the pool for 3 years now and even though Summer and Toby have gotten use out of it, I have never been really that interested in swimming in it. To me, the whole purpose of a pool is to bask in the sun on a air mattress. Well, our yard is mostly shaded and laying on an air mattress in a 14" pool with a cannon ball jumping six year old is not my idea of relaxation. Just recently though, I have discovered that our pool can be a really good source of excercise. My favorite excercise is walking, but due to 100 mph traffic and 100 degree temps walking has not been at the top of my list of things to do. Even so, I like to throw in at least a little exercise each day...just because it makes me feel better, not because it makes me lose any weight in this over 40 gut I have going on. So Toby gave me the idea of pool excercise. Without going into detail there are a few excercises that can be done in a small pool that can really work your muscles and your heart to pumping...not to mention playing Summer's "shark game" which makes you chase her around the pool. You keep cool, work in playtime with Summer and reap the benefits of excercise. What else could you ask for in an excercise program?? I can save walking for the spring and fall months. I hibernate in the winter so there need not be any excercise progam there. :-)

Homeschool field trip

Before I post anything to this blog I'm letting everyone know that I have already posted my homeschool field trip blog but somehow lost it when I was messing around with how to position my pics. It's really strange because I can see the post but can't seem to find it when I go to edit it...and when Toby goes into my blog he can't see the post at all. So anyway, here goes again......

Today was our homeschool field trip to the Estuarium. We had gone with full intention of having a picnic and the beach afterwards but the weather did not cooperate. Even so, Toby and I decided to take our picnic to the east end of the beach and have our picnic in the car overlooking the water. It was really a beautiful sight to see the lighting and the storm clouds over the horizon. Sometimes it's nice to see the beach in another light. Having lived on the water all my life, I know that when we move away our beaches and waterways are going to be one of the things that I will miss the most.

Reptiles!

The new exhibit at the Exploreum is live reptiles so that's where we decided our destination would be for the day. I'm not naturally a reptile fan but the display was excellent. There was alot of information about reptiles that I didn't know. Being a homeschool mom made it all the more interesting.

Whew! What a week

It has been a BUSY week! Because I don't have alot a family around at one time I never realized how tiring it can be when everyone is together for a couple of weeks. Even though we were having a great time I am exhausted. Megan ended up staying with us a couple of days so that kept Summer entertained but it still kept me on my toes with fetching and cleaning. I think that is the longest I have ever seen Summer tolerate another human being without turning into a demon. Megan is 11 years old and very compliant and easy to get along with so that helped her case and also Summer is used to relating to older kids because of Lucas. We gathered at my dads house last night for the farewell party and to say our goodbye's. My brother hates public emotional displays so I always save my tears until after his departure.....every year I hate saying goodbye to him. I was really surprised when on the way home Summer began to cry so I asked her what was wrong . She told me she was going to miss Megan......she was even entertaining the idea of moving to Viet Nam to be with Megan (no way baby girl) . I was surprised because it was the first time I have ever witnessed Summer crying over anyone but me or Toby. Megan obviously made a very good impression upon Summer!

Canoeing Attempt

The plan was made yesterday for a canoe trip with my brother and his family for early this morning. (the early part my brothers idea) I got Lucas up extra early too because him and his friend were going to join us. Well, when we got to our destination, Chickasabogue Park, they informed us they did not do canoe trips anymore, even though their website clearly states that they do. We all decided since we really wanted to canoe we would convoy to Escatawpa and canoe there....but when we got there guess what??? "We don't do canoe trips on Monday's ma'm and we only do them by appts." so with an hour of our precious time wasted we just decided to stay there and swim instead of drive another 50 or so miles to look for canoeing. I made the point for our area to be so full of water there sure aren't that many places that offer canoeing....or atleast not any that I know of. We had a decent time anyway. We all stopped at the only Dairy Queen left in Mobile to eat and then Megan rode home with us to spend the night.

Goofy Golf

Today we took Summer to play putt-putt. We played on the cruise when we went last year and ever since she has been wanting to play again. We never got around to going when the weather was a little cooler and I certainly didn't want to go play in the heat of the day, but we passed by the putt-putt place and she spotted it and wanted to "go there". I figured what the heck, we didn't have anything else to do and I had a coupon for the place. It was atleast 100 degrees outside but to Toby and I's pleasure the place had a lot of shady areas. She got free tokens with the coupon so after golf we let her use her tokens. We all had a good time.....much better than I thought we would.

Independence Day!

Even though there was the threat of rain the whole day we did manage to get in our family 4th picnic before the bottom dropped out. It was really cool because it was one of the few times that my very small family is together all at once. Toby brought a few "kid's fireworks" for the kids and we ate hamburgers, hot dogs, and of course watermelon. When it was time to leave the girls had not had enough of each other so Megan and Elenora came home with us. With 3 girls in the backseat on the way home, Toby and I realized why we did not have more than 1 child together. :-) Later on Charlie (Toby's brother) came over and we grilled again and shot off some more fireworks after the rain finally passed over.

Tuesday

Just another errand day for us. Since Summer has been spending so much time in the backyard pool this year I decided that she needed some new pool toys. (I call pool time P.E. so she doesn't think she is just getting something for nothing.) Our first stop was Wal-Mart and we didn't find what we were looking for there so off we went to Toys R Us. Thank goodness we didn't spend as much time as we normally do in Wally World because about an hour after we left some kind of tornado hit down on top of the building. It did some pretty extensive damage, not to mention wounded some people and scared the poop out of some others. Summer has a bad enough fear of storms, this would have sent her over the edge! Since it was storming we didn't get to test out the new pool toy as we intended and did our usual stuck in the house routine and watched movies and played games.

Canoeing

Toby has been wanting to go canoeing for awhile now and since it was such a beautiful day that's where our destination for the day was. I was a little worried about how Summer would react to it considering the last time we went canoeing she didn't seem to be real crazy about it. She doesn't like the unsturdiness of the boat. I guess, that was just a passing phase though because she had a blast. Her favorite part was getting out of the canoe and "pushing" us along. The temperature was high so the cold water felt great too. After canoeing, we stopped by a fireworks stand and purchases some "kid oriented" fireworks. Toby knows exactly what to buy and what Summer likes........fireworks are something I don't like being a part of, but they love them.

Field Trip

We had both boys, Toby and Lucas, off today so I decided that I wanted to show them the new 5 Rivers museum. Summer and I had went there for Earthfest back in April and we found it to be pretty impressive. Lucas has also just recently bought him a kayak and I thought he might find it a good place to launch. When we got there we discovered they were closed on Sundays. I always find that a strange thing for a place like that to be closed on a Sunday, considering the weekends are when the majority of people have off to do family activities. So we decided to trek across the street to Meaher Park. It was hot as fire out there but nature was very active. We saw very large grasshoppers, alligators, crabs, birds, and the fish were jumping and flitting around all over the place.