San Antonio childrens museum

So we went to the childrens museum after a fun lunch with my cousin Maren and my brother and his boys. This is only like 1/4 of what there was to do there. (my phone ran out of battery)

Leftys

Addie is left handed and I have been a little slow on helping her with this.One time she was sweeping the floor and said mom I am having a hard time. I looked over at her and the way she was doing it looked weird so I said "um cause your doing it all retarded" then I realized she was doing it opposite of how I do it cause she is left handed. (that reminds me I need to put money aside for the therapy she will need for having such a lame mom). But recently I have been trying allot harder to learn more about leftys.
You would be surprised at how much leftys do differently(maybe YOU wouldn't but I was). They even have a pencil sharpener for them cause they turn the pencil counterclockwise to get it sharp. They also have clocks where the numbers go the other way ect.. Some stuff I think she will just adapt to and learn to adjust to the right handed way of things but I got what I thought she needed. The crazy thing is she can write backwards with ease. Any word! she doesn't even have to think about it. If I spelled my name backwards I would have to go through each letter and then I could say what comes next. She doesn't do this. When she writes her name on her school work she writes it backwards. And the other day she wrote a whole book this way. She even made a book that you can only read if you hold it up to a mirror. Meaning she had to switch the sentence around so when you read it in the mirror it makes sense. Crazy! It would take me hours to make a book like that. It only took her a few minutes.
I had to order some left handed school supplies online for her and it sucks how much they cost. They are having a contest where you send in a photo of your child using left handed products and you get a gift card to their store. Not exactly like winning the lottery but I will take what I can get. So I did a little mini Ghetto photo shoot and sent a couple of pics in. If I hired a photographer to take the pics it would cost me more than the gift card is worth but I do agree that they would do a much better job than I did. What do you think? wish me luck

Bikes

This summer I decided I wanted ALL my kids to ride their bikes. I hadn't even tried to teach Addie since she was 4 and we had a fight in Arizona. She stormed off and sat on the neighbors porch saying she wanted a new home. So she was really behind Olivia is at the right age and Derek is probably a little young but I wanted it to be over with. Some parents act like its this major major feat that their child is riding their bike early but I mean please. It means nothing in the bigger scheme of things. Its not like something you can put on their resume when they want to be the CFO of some company.
Its just a matter of timing and the parents willingness to help the child through it. I tend to be on the lazier side of parenting but I was aggressive this year. The girls learned in less than an hour. Olivia doesn't like it but she picked up on it quickly. Derek took some bribery with a toy each time he rode his bike. Now my game plan is to take them all out every other day for a longer ride to help smooth out the kinks. The girls freak out going down hill and are too weak to pump up a hill but that will come with time.

Swimming pics

Summer is almost over. 3 more weeks so we just swim and hope the time passes quickly.

Bored as Bored can be...

Summer time and I don't want to swim every day which means on the off days there is nothing else to do. The kids have made so many forts I could scream and pull my hair out. This day they made puppets and made a puppet show. I thought it was fairly cute how they made them by folding paper. But the actual show was so funny. All they did was bark and hiss along with the music. I watched cause I had nothing better to do.

I got 5 words for you!

Don't play games with kids!

And to be more specific board games or anything made by Hasbro. I hate it its awful and frustrating. I got clued into this one for the first time when Andrews sister would let her son play card games with us one new years eve. I am quick to pick up on things so when my kids ask to play I say NO. Andrew on the other hand seems to think its loads of fun like every other Mormon Settlers of Catan addict that has never been drunk and so therefore uses board games as their high. So every once in a while I get suckered into playing with him and the kids and slowly it breaks down into the most frustrating thing ever. Some one cheats, some one whines cause they are not doing well in the game, I trash talk, no one can handle that, the three year old leaves to go play with some toys, and BAM game over! Here is one example of a simple game of memory gone bad.

Peyton

My little niece came to visit and my kids just love playing with her. Now that I think about it I was pretty damn smart to have all my kids first so when these new little ones come along there is plenty of love to give them. If I were busy breast feeding or potty training my own little ones I doubt I would have enough energy to spare. But that's not the case now I love my little niece and nephew some thing fierce. And so do my kids. Addie decided to teach Peyton how to draw this trip. It cracks me up cause they are so patient with her. I am freakishly impatient and I love moments like this where I can see that my kids are not taking after me and are smart enough to see my short comings as immature and ridiculous. Which means I will win the game of having superior children by default. No shame = All gain.

Pet addendum

Time to update you all on the whole pet situation as I am so sure you are wanting to know how its going. So last time I posted Addie had replaced a dead fish with a bird and we got a new fish to add to the family pot. Well allot of sh** has gone down since then. One day Dallin confesses he has "misplaced" his lizard. He took him out and forgot to put him back he was distraught and we were pissed. So for a couple of days while I was cleaning I would look in closets and drawers(don't ask me why I thought he would be in drawers some times I do dramatic things for more of an effect)only to come up empty handed. Andrew and I went to bed and agreed he was dead and Dallin had to earn back the cost for the lizard. The next day he found him under his bed. But Addies bird was dead. I was like "PSHHH" thats Petco's problem and I pulled out my 15 day return policy and told the chick at the counter I wanted a new bird. To which she replied um I need to see the dead bird. WHA? For reals? So I went home, Andrew dug it out of the trash and I sat in a stupor not sure how to package it and bring it in. I put it in the zip lock bag and went on my merry way. As I was walking through the parking lot with the bird people were giving me these horrible faces like I was Hannibal Lecter and was suffocating a bird in the bag. But I will never see any of them again so who cares right? Once I got there I was ready to quickly make the exchange but NOOOOOO. I was interrogated for like 20 min on what I might have done to kill the bird. Do you use allot of candles... How often do you vacuum...Was it near a vent? It felt like they might as well have an interrogation room like they do down at the police station equipped with a lie detector and the window where they see you but you can't see them. After all that she takes the bird back to the "bird expert" and wants him to have a look. What the HELL? its a 30 dollar bird you act like I killed Ghandi. Long story short I came home with Isabella. Our new bird. I had to go back the next day and get all the feed and toys and vitamins I claimed we had for the first bird and couldn't be the reason for its death. Then about a week later Dereks Hamster died. He literally squeezed it so hard when he would hold it he smashed its skull. Sheesh kido ease up on the death grip. We waited about a week and then I told the kids in the car that whatever they did do not tell Petco people the other hamster died. I wasn't worried about the return policy I just wanted to get in and out of there no questions asked. A couple of times it almost came out. Like they asked if we had a cage and everything already and the kids were like yeah we already had....a.. (then they look at me and see a vain popping in my forehead and eye twitching) and change it to "our friends gave us their old cage" Yes!! Snow Cones for every one! And as I type this the new Hamster that is lost under the couch I sit on. Roll Call-Reggie the dog still cute. El Ferno-Found and happy to be back in his cage. Analise-Fat as ever over loved and over fed. Isabella- Sweet and nicer than the last bird. Shelby-New Hamster under thee couch. Fish-still has no name.

Transformers

Annette was visiting and we decided to go see a movie. Derek had seen the previews for the new Transformers movie and was dying to go see it. So was Dallin and I won't lie I was really excited about it too. Derek is pretty young for PG-13 but we figured we could just cover his eyes on the bad parts (we never ended up covering his eyes) It really wasn't that bad. We all loved the movie. There is something about thinking the world is going to end and then fighting to get it back that gives me a new sense of excitement for the day. Needless to say when we got home this is the kind of behavior Derek was engaging in. So... I guess these movies do kinda have an effect on the little ones.

this clip was after they beat down my front door and threw water bottles I had stored in the garage at the window.

The 5th.. Tennis Camp

So the best part about the 4th is it was the day before the 5th and thats the day Addie starts Tennis Camp. She loved it. I loved that she loved it and I do hope it will be something she stays with in the long run. So far there isn't much out there for kids besides these camps. We have looked and looked and private lessons are an option but way expensive. I guess we will just have to work with her until we find something more cheap and resonable.

The 4th ...

This year the only thing I liked about the 4th was the cute outfits my little sis bought the girls. They had canceled all the fireworks in Texas and you wouldn't even know it was a holiday at all without those. My older sis came to town and we went to my borhters house in San Antonio and played hard (love his baby) but yeah I missed the fireworks. O well it is what it is ....heres to hoping for some really killer fireworks next year. And maybe I will add a parade and all kind of fun stuff to make up this year.
Ohhh I could dress up like the statue of Liberty. See thats positive thinking!