$28

We swam earlier in the day today than we have the past few days, simply because IT IS SO FREAKIN' HOT here. This is the 3rd consecutive day that the temperature has been over 100 degrees (yesterday's and Wednesday's high temps, both 104 degrees, set records!)

Since Quinn has learned to swim without floaties, Lillian has been trying to copy him. I only let her do it if I'm sitting on the steps with her (our steps span the width of the pool, so she can swim from one side to the other and still touch the step underneath her.) This has given her GREAT confidence. Today I saw her swim back and forth many times with her head underwater.

I decided to encourage her to swim from the steps to me (I was standing in the middle of the shallow end of the pool).

She wasn't sure at first. She hemmed and hawed and backed out several times. After a great deal of coaxing, and promises of ice cream as a reward, she did it. She swam from the step to me without sinking. She swam!

I told the kids to let me finish up the last 19 pages of my book, and then we'd go. No one had eaten lunch yet, so I told them we could have a quick sandwich before we went to get our usual single scoop cones- OR - they could all get banana splits or brownie sundaes in lieu of a normal meal.

Guess what they chose.

It cost me $28 and some change, but it was DEELISHUS. Two brownie sundaes, two banana splits with no nuts, and one banana split with pecans.

Aiden declared it the "BEST DAY EVER!"

Sometimes you just gotta eat ice cream for lunch, you know?

Losses & Gains

This summer we've lost a lot.

Lillian lost her diapers... during the day. (She's now wearing panties...keeping them dry... all day long!)

Quinn lost his floaties. (As of yesterday, he is swimming without them. Sliding without them. Jumping into the water without them. Yea!)

I lost my alarm clock. (I can't seem to open my eyes before 9 am.)

Aiden lost 2 teeth. (The bottom 2... though we had to hold him down to pull them when they became so loose he risked swallowing them in his sleep...)

Camryn lost 1 tooth. (Upper incisor... Tooth Fairy was too generous, giving her $6!)

I'm losing my grandmother a little more every day (though she was truly lost to Alzheimer's over 10 years ago, her health is failing and she is slipping away...)

With all the losses, I've gained so much in the past few months.

I've gained a new appreciation for my husband (I remember every day why I married him almost 12 years ago! He keeps me laughing. He keeps me amazed. He just plain keeps me.)

I've gained a new love for my kids (as frustrating as they can be sometimes, they're each so unique and bring me SO MUCH JOY. My love for them deepens every day!)

I've gained weight (which I desperately need to lose. DESPERATELY.)

I've gained a righteous suntan (yes, I use sunscreen!)

I've gained contentment. (I have learned to be truly happy with what I have, because I have A LOT, and not necessarily monetarily...)

It's been a summer of losses and gains. I can't wait to see what the future holds.

Diving In

My husband took the kids to see a movie this afternoon, so when I finished the last load of laundry, I put on my swimsuit and went outside. I had a book and a glass of iced tea, and I was determined to stay out there and R-E-L-A-X.

Before I could kick back and start reading, I had to rid the pool of its bug population. We find hundreds of tiny dead millipedes on the bottom of the pool every time we go out to swim. I hate stepping on bugs in the pool, so I always have to vacuum up the critters; I have to dip the floating bugs off of the top, too.

Bugs. Blech. I'd make a horrible entomologist.

After about 20 minutes, the pool was sparkling clean. I settled down to read my book (a nice, quick crime drama by James Patterson. Short chapters, just enough plot to hook you... perfect summertime read!) I had about 3 chapters under my belt when I thought I heard thunder in the distance.

Murphy's Law.

I folded my book closed and sat on the steps to concentrate on the noise I'd heard. While I was listening, I had a flashback to a trip my family took to Panama City Beach, Florida when I was in elementary school. I remember getting up early on the morning we were supposed to leave, just so I could jump just one more time off of the pool's diving board. My dad took me down to the pool, and we found that it hadn't yet been cleaned (it was freakin' early.... what was I thinking?) I decided to jump in anyhow, right through the layer of bugs that were floating on the water's surface. I coasted all the way to the shallow end on one breath and got out of the pool. My work was done.

This flashback made me wonder:

(1) What was I thinking, diving into all those bugs? Sheesh! "Hey little me! That is not what we do! Bugs are gross!"

(2) How many times have I denied my kids a memory like the one I have of that singular dive into a frigid pool? I know there have been little things like that that my kids have asked to do, but in my laziness I've said, "Not right now!" My dad most likely had better things to do that morning, but he took the time to make sure I got one last jump before we left.

My dad has always been good like that, making sure my sister and I had unique experiences and memories to draw on. He always encouraged us to put down our books on car trips so we'd actually have to see what we were driving past. It's such a cliche', but my daddy loves life. He lives to learn, to absorb things, to capture moments.

I need to start living more. Absorbing more. Learning more. Creating more capturable moments.

Race you to the pool!

Oooooh itchy itchy!

Last night we swam after supper. When I got out, I felt a slight discomfort around my left boob. When I took off my swimsuit, this fell out (WARNING: IT IS A BUG!)

















I didn't scream. I just looked at it and thought, "Huh. That bug bit my boobie!"

Before I could scoop it up and study it, my husband had grabbed the bug with a Kleenex and sent it on its final voyage down the toilet.

The spot where the bug had fallen from was sore for awhile, and by the time I went to bed, I had a nice, firmish, red welt on my boob. I was convinced I was going to die from the bite of this strange creature.

I got up this morning (obviously not dead) and Googled "green bugs". I found the picture on Google images and followed the links to the original site. Turns out my boobie biting friend is a stink bug. Weird, 'cause I thought his odor was a bit like freshly mowed lawn. Not a bit stinky at all.

Can you smell it?

Summer is slowly winding down. My younger son starts back to school on August 29. That's only 32 days from today (753 hours, 18 minutes, 30 seconds and counting...) The other two go back on September 4. The "baby" starts twice-a-week Mom's Day Out on the 13th (I think).

I'm ready.

I've enjoyed our lazy summer. I've loved making a decent breakfast (almost) every morning, and I've celebrated the fact that most days, there was nowhere to go after we finished. We ate slowly, talking to one another and laughing over pancakes or waffles or eggs and toast. My kids are so entertaining. I love starting my day off in their company.

Our "plans" always varied. Sometimes we'd devise a "caventure" (adventure) for the day. Sometimes we made no formal decisions about what we were doing other than we were definitely staying in our PJs until we decided to put our swimsuits on and take a dip. I've put together lots of Legos in the past 2 months. I've colored until I had to buy new crayons. I've raced the kids in the pool until I had to stop and take a breath (or 2. Or 10,045). I've snuggled the kids in their beds at 9:30 pm and 10 am. I've had a great time.

That's what I love about summer. There is a lack of urgentness about ANYTHING. There is an absence of formal plans. There's the sleeping late. There's the warm skin after swimming and drying out before coming inside. There's the cold skin after swimming and coming inside to an AC set to 72 degrees.

Summer is eating cereal for lunch if we want to. It's driving an hour out of our way to go to a great consignment or scrapbooking store we've never before visited. Free hours in the summer mean having lots and lots of special lunches with Daddy, or "parking lot picnics" at Sonic with all the windows down and the sunroof open.

Summer is all about good times.

I'll miss the "looseness" of summer, but I'll be honest. I'm gettin' ready for fall.

I can only handle so many days with no structure. The kids need structure. I need it. They need to be away from one another for several hours at a time.

I NEED TO BE AWAY FROM THEM FOR SEVERAL HOURS AT A TIME.

(I'm sorry. Did I just scream that? Ahem. Please excuse my outburst.)

Fall. I can smell it.

It smells like pencil shavings, brand new jeans, bologna sandwiches and, best of all, sweet freedom.

Summertime

The Challenge: Summertiiiiiiiiiiiime, and the living is EEEeeezzzzzzy. Tell us how you feel about summer. This summer, a childhood summer, summer traditions, random summer memories, summer sights and smells and sounds. Whatever. Wax poetic about summertime!

Summertime.

When I close my eyes and think of that word, it's like a slideshow (with smells!) in my head.

I smell freshly cut grass. And watermelon. And coconut suntan lotion. And chlorine. And hot asphalt. And sunscreen. And bug spray. And freshly cut peaches.

Ah, the perfume of summer.

There are thoughts of spending days in my dad's classroom with my sister, a bike, some rollerskates, a cassette tape of Alabama's Mountain Music and unlimited Coca Colas from dad's vending machine.

Both of my parents were teachers. After school ended for everyone else, both Dad and Mom had to work an extra two weeks (they were 10-month employees.) It kinda' sucked, because we couldn't sleep late during those two weeks, but we found ways to have fun anyhow.

My dad taught auto mechanics at a local high school, and his shop was in a separate building. It had a long sidewalk that connected it to the main building, and that sidewalk made a perfect place to ride my bike back and forth. The classroom inside the shop was cleared of all its chairs so my sister and I could rollerskate; we'd bring cassettes in from Dad's car and play them on the A/V machine. He had eclectic tastes, so we skated to Alabama, Dianne Schurr, The Beatles, Iron Butterfly, Linda Ronstadt (her jazzy phase), and many more. If we got thirsty, Dad would unlock the Coca Cola machine and let us pick a beverage from it. Then he'd throw a dollar bill in the coin cup to make the Coca Cola guy wonder how it got there (this was before dollar bill slots on vending machines.) Occasionally he would order pizza and we'd have a picnic in his classroom. Sometimes he'd even take us for a ride in his school bus (which was great, because there was a ginormous hill on the school property... it was like riding a rollercoaster!) When the blackberries in the bushes around his building were ripe, we'd pick them and take them home for Mom to make cobbler or jam. Good times.

Summertime also meant lazy days in the pool with a book or a magazine. I'd get out of bed, throw on a swimsuit and a pair of sunglasses, grab a radio and a quick cinnamon roll for breakfast and head out back. I'd swim for about an hour, then I'd find a comfy spot near the steps or on a float and I'd read the day away. There was always a break at noon when I'd stop to eat a quick lunch and listen to "Jeopardy" on the radio (our local ABC affiliate could be heard on FM 87.7). Then it would be back to reading until I was engulfed in shade; I'd take another lap or two in the pool and then head back inside. Man, those were good days. There's nothing like warm skin after a long day in the sun. I'm sure I'll pay for it later, though. I hardly ever used a drop of sunscreen. Ah, the stupidity of youth.

When I entered high school, summer started to mean serving on mission trips with my youth group. We took a trip every year. I spent one week of each summer helping put on backyard Bible clubs for neighborhood kids in Youngstown, OH (9th grade), Boardman, OH (10th & 11th grades) and Buffalo, NY (12th grade). Our youth pastor always made sure to include a fun trip either going up or coming back (King's Island in Cincinnati, Niagara Falls or Pigeon Forge, TN), and the drives there were parties themselves. There was some great (juvenile, stupid) fun had on the buses or vans on those long trips. Great fun, indeed. Have you really lived if you've never covered a sleeping person's face in shaving cream or had a CB talk with a nearby trucker?

Now summer means so many different things. We always start the summer with our annual trip to Myrtle Beach. Those trips are more fun each year, as the kids get older and more responsible (and less dependent on me!) and I always look forward to them. I love the beach and wish I lived closer to one. Reading a book on the beach while the kids play in the sand and surf is something I could do every.day.of.my.life. You can't be in a hurry at the beach. Time stands still there. I think I have salt water in my blood.

Summer means fewer responsibilities. It means less running around, less driving. I don't make the kids change out of their PJs if they don't want to (unless we're going somewhere, of course!) I try to make a good breakfast (pancakes, French toast, waffles, eggs, etc.) most mornings. We see movies. We go to the library. We take day trips on Daddy's days off. We swim (daily, now that we have our own pool! Yea!) We read and watch TV (Food TV, HGTV, Discovery Channel, History Channel, etc.) We visit the Farmer's Market and buy fresh veggies and cook 'em up for dinner. We grill out. We do stuff together. We have fun. We enjoy life.

Summertime. I wish it could last longer than 3 months.

Ah, summer...

It's that time again.



Summertime.

The livin' is supposed to be easy, but whoever wrote that song didn't have 4 kids to keep happy on a 5-hour trip in a smallish SUV. The song would not have been so mellow, and I'm pretty sure it would've included a lot more screeching and pulling of hair. Think Marilyn Manson sings "Summertime" and you've got the soundtrack for our vacation. When you have little devils like these 2, vacations are work:



My sweet hubby and I took our kids down to Myrtle Beach last Wednesday. The trip started out like this:







We stopped about halfway to the beach, because frankly, it makes traveling with kids easier when there is a break. Mama didn't raise no fool.

Thursday morning, we went to the state education museum, EdVenture. In the lobby of the museum there's a huge boy named Eddie whose insides you can explore. There are even sound effects. That's cool for most kids, but my Aiden, who's 6, is freaked out by noises, so the gurgling of the stomach and the bolts of electricity in the brain just wasn't his kind of fun.



We all had a great 3-hour visit to the museum. I solved a puzzle that my brainiac hubby couldn't fix:



Hey, Fergie! Check out these humps and those 4 lovely little lumps on top of the humps!



We go to the same hotel in Myrtle Beach every year, because my husband has to take classes to keep his license current, and the classes are held in the hotel. We get beach time and he gets hours. It's a great situation for him, really. For me it's like my everyday life, except with sand and sunscreen. There are still meals to cook, dishes to wash, fights to referee and clothes to clean, but I'm doing it all in a small condo instead of my nice, large house. Ah, the things we do to experience the beauty of nature. A little sand in the crotch is good for the soul, no?

When we arrived at our condo, my older daughter, the safety freak, flipped the dead bolt on the main door. When we tried to flip it back to get out, we discovered we were locked inside our room. As fate would have it, we had rented the adjoining suite to make a 3-bedroom condo, so we could exit out of that door. However, if the adjoining door was shut from the wrong side, we would die a horrible death from starvation because we wouldn't be able to leave the room.

Maintenance was called. The 2 year-old and I settled in for a nap while sweet hubby dragged the other kids off to Super Wal Mart to fetch vittles. When they returned almost 2 hours later, laden with foodstuffs, the door was still broken. Maintenance was called again, and came within 5 minutes.

The lock was officially pronounced broken (thanks, Zeb!), and we were offered another abode. The kids and I grabbed pillows and small bags and went down to the new condo. We were told that the maintenance man would meet us down there with the keys. Imagine my dismay when there was neither a maintenance man nor a set of keys awaiting us. Not even a propped door. Nada. We were stuck in the overly warm hallway, belongings in hand, looking very much like vagrants. A few minutes later my hubby came down the hall pushing a grocery cart full of our stuff. If ever I've had a Beverly Hillbillies moment, THAT was it.



Hubby turned around to go get the keys. My 6 year-old started to cry, because he thought we were going to run out of oxygen in the hallway. I guess he equates air conditioning with breathable air, because he was sure we were doomed. I just had to laugh, and when I finished laughing I started taking pictures. Notice that look on Camryn's face. She thinks Aiden is N-U-T-S.



Keys were found and we went inside our gorgeous condo. It was absent of any of the normal wicker beach furniture, the decor in shades of teal and peach, seashells, and big, puffy couches that Aunt Bertha didn't want so someone stuck them in their beach apartment. The new condo was NICE. I double checked to make sure the owners didn't mind my children being there, because it was that fancy. We're talking REAL wood furniture. No glass-topped tables. Real bedspreads. New tile floors. Granite countertops in the bathrooms and kitchen. Stainless appliances. N*I*C*E, y'all.



The beach was gorgeous, as always. I miss the white sand of the Gulf of Mexico that I visited every summer as a child, but I'm growing to like Carolina beaches. I just miss the dunes.



I love parking myself in a beach chair and watching the kids frolic.



What I think should be outlawed is exertion on the beach (except for the kind it takes to set up a beach chair or a beach tent). Those freaks that feel it necessary to ruin my "slovencation" by parading their toned, tanned bodies up and down the shoreline. You know the ones that don the sneakers and the jogwear and the iPod tucked in the armband, then proceed to jog up and down the beach. I really have no problem with other people exercising, but I really don't want to be reminded of my laziness when I'm supposed to be relaxing, know what I mean? Isn't that why hotels have rooms full of exercise equipment? Go climb the stairmaster and leave me to my nap, please!

And, as if to say he agrees, God sent this rainbow as a sign that thou shalt never jog on the beach again:



Actually, the rainbow appeared on Saturday, when we (foolishly) went out to the beach in the middle of a tropical storm. While he wasn't directly bearing down on us, we did experience the effects of Barry, who was off churning up the waters in the Atlantic.

There were high waves and rip currents and the occasional person making the most of the storm:



And blustery winds that made for chilly weather:



But it was worth it, because the kids still had fun and I got great pictures like this one:



And this:



And this:



We had to leave the beach on Sunday, and it was too stormy to go to the beach or the pool. I had a great time, but I wish we had seen more sun. On the upside, there was a washer/dryer in the condo, so I got to wash all the vacation laundry before we got home! Word up!

We outta there, y'all!