Cheerleading

Any one that knows me knows I HATE cheerleading. So I wont get on my whole soap box about it. Needless to say when ever I hate stuff I usually end up being forced to deal with it in one way or another. Olivia begged to be in Cheer this year and I let it happen. She loves it waaaay more than soccer and is Happy so I am happy FOR HER- not to be confused with happy ABOUT IT.

Triathalon

I did my first sprint Tri today. My brother did one with his nephew in Tennessee last month. I have always wanted to try one but never known all the in's and out's of the whole thing. Every time you ask people they make it seem like a really big deal. Which is usually their need to feel like they a major and important in some way. Most of the people that I have found that get really into it and buy ALL the stuff turn out to be pretty average when it comes to the actual race. I suck at swimming and I let it freak me out. I am a strong runner so no worries there. The biking part I feel is lame. You can buy a $1500-$2000.00 bike and do decent but I don't ever want to spend near that much!. Ever! So when my bro called I thought I need to just give it a try. I used some coupons and points at dicks (sporting goods) and got a pretty low grade Hybrid bike for $100.00. A helmet and a pair of bike shorts. That's it! If I did what others suggested I would be in the hole a hell of allot more than that. I had so much fun and loved it. I hated the swim part cause we were in a pool and you have to swim down the lane then go under the rope and swim down the lane next to it. People were pushy and tried to climb over you when it came to transitioning lanes. I was more than happy to move back and let them go. So I lost time there. I also am slow when I transitioned from one leg to the next. After the swim I had to run in dirt to my bike so I sat down and cleaned my feet off. Obviously not too efficient. Overall I did pretty good. I finished 5th overall for the women. The chicks at the top had much nicer bikes than me and were able to cut off 2 min there. Plus they were much better swimmers. I sucked at my swim! I am just really bad and its hard to undo what you have been doing wrong for so many years. But I will keep working on it. My time was 1:09:15 One hour and nine min! Not bad. The 400 meter swim I did in 12 min... The bike 32 min and the run in 21 min. I could have run faster too just didn't push myself cause I have to teach tomorrow. Plus these sort of things are only fun if you can walk and don't want to throw up when you are done. I will probably do a couple per year and that's it. Like I said I am not willing to sink the kind of money I would have needed to spend on a bike to be very competitive. But I had a good time. I even got to run with my brother for his leg of the run. And eat brunch with my nephews!

Dallin is 9 now!

Dallin's birthday was the second day of school. He claimed we should have let him stay home from school but I thought that was a bad idea so he went any way. But before we sent him off we loaded him with sugar to show him how much we love him. I woke up extra early and got him his favorite donuts and put candles in one and we sang to him. We added some chocolate milk for good measure and sent all the kids off to let their teachers deal with their sugar high and subsequent sugar low. Not my problem yo! I took cupcakes to his class and then we had pizza and ice cream cake. Pretty low key but fun none the less.

His oreo birthday cake. I made sure to have some before I went to work and was sick as a dog.

His morning birthday donuts. We live large in this house Baby!

I found these cute cupcakes that look like hamburgers to take to his school class. The kids in his class thought it was so cool. Major mom points on this one.

Annettes Present

Annette wasn't able to come out for Dallin's birthday this year. I told the kids I would still take them to chuck-E-cheese but they all didn't want to go without her. She sent Dallin some money and a really cool scrapbook that she made of their trip to Lego Land. She took Dallin over spring break and he loved it. The best part is with his book he was able to tell us all about everything and you could tell how exciting the whole trip was for him. He loved the gift! I posted some video clips for her so she could see.

First Day of School

Final days of summer

Its the home stretch and its going sooo slow. I think this summer was extra hard cause it was soo hot most days we were stuck inside which drives me crazy. I have been trying to do something fun every day to celebrate the end of this all day long with 4 kids thing. I have been lax on most of my parenting. Not putting on sunblock, letting them "fight it out", allowing friends that I HATE over, food in the living room (gasp). And today water in the back yard. Because of the drought we have not been allowed to water and if you do water it costs a ton. But its FRIDAY so I let it all out and went hog wild and hooked up the sprinkler so they could jump on the tramp. No matter what the water bill reads it was so worth it cause I got 2 hours of them being entertained! I know they might get skin cancer having been out there that long but.. According to my mom the end of the world is going to happen any day now so why worry about skin cancer? Live it up a little people!

Lefty's Money

I got an e-mail last night from Lefty's Left handed store I will copy and paste it in here.
Hi Camille,
Congratulations! Your picture of Addie was selected in our 2011 Intl. Left Hander's Day photo contest. Our graphic artist was really drawn to Addie's eyes. The photo can currently be seen on Lefty's home page and Facebook page.
The gift certificate amount was applied to your account. An copy of the gift certificate was also sent to your email address.
Thank you for participating,
Carla for Lefty
Yes! Yes! Yes! Now I can buy her the markers and pens that she wants from their left handed store.
Here is the link to the website ---> http://www.leftyslefthanded.com

more....Baaaaack to school

All my kids will be in school this year which will leave me all by myself for hours a day :) I was so not ready to put Derek in preschool. I wanted to keep him as long as I could but he has been around kids his whole life. He will be all by himself and bored and lets face it I suck at playing cars. I refuse to baby sit another persons child to bring in a friend cause that makes me feel so tied down with vacations and dr. appointments. Once you get "fixed" and decide you are done you are done DONE DONE DONE!. Meaning I did my kids play dates and play groups and babysitting swaps ect. But I am done with kids. I get the year off. Preschool was a good option for him to play and do crafts and music time. Which will be way more fun than hanging out with mom. :( I thought about going back to school to fill up my free time but then I decided to literally just take a break. I do teach still so work keeps me occupied and I have tons of friends ect with my job and I will volunteer at the kids school. And I don't know what else. We will see how it goes. But I am so damn excited I can't stop buying back to school stuff for the kids. I have even taken on extra classes to help with the expense. I hung up most of their stuff today. I had been stock piling it in my closet cause I wanted them to not wear it all and keep it brand new for school. Once I saw it all together in their drawers and closets I realized I went waaaay over board. One more week and I free free free. No babies no potty training. NADA Just lunch dates and shopping and all the fun stuff. I had them young and I paid my dues I don't know if I would recommend it to any one to do it the way I did it but it works for me and I am happy.

Cute back to school clothes. Luv my girls

Back to School Preparation

Getting ready to go back to school this year is a real trip. We have Mrs. Olivia starting kindergarten and Derek in preschool so ALL of my Chillins are going to school in some form. It started with a inventory of sorts. We went through all of our clothes and got rid of socks with holes, things that didn't fit ect. Olivia got a bunch of hand me downs but I still bought her new stuff to make it all exciting. Then we went to the doctor and got shots and physical exams ect. Dallin had to do the whole turn your head and cough thing this year. It was awkward between us. I didn't know what to say to comfort him and he didn't want to talk about it so we went out to lunch and I let him have whatever he wanted. Then I took all the paper work to the schools and paid fees ect... Next was shopping for new clothes. Each kid got a ton of stuff and this year I set the bar at 3 pairs of shoes per kid. Last year we always couldn't find a pair or they were wet cause they played in puddles ect. I also got back pack hooks for them to hang their back pack on. I hated how they were always all over the floor or beds. And then we started a chore chart. It helps us get organized and set for what kind of structure we need to get through the school days. Today I am going to buy alarm clocks for each room in hopes that we can take the next two weeks to acclimate to waking up earlier. We didn't do this last year and we were running behind every day in the beginning. 14 more days to freedom. Its been a crazy busy summer

Does the punishment fit the crime??

Well Dallin has reached the age where time outs don't work. Its pretty lame and they don't give a crap about sitting in a corner for 8-9 min so... Gotta do something else. Writting sentences! Yes! They hate hate hate it. Which means magic. And its good for hand writting and reading better. I am tooo damn clever for my own good. Andrew thinks its funny. But its not like he is here all day and gets where I am coming from. This day they all did bad stuff within minutes of each other so it was a family gathering. Derek was not bad but he didn't know what to do with himself with out play mates so he joined thme and scribbled all over his paper.