Wordless Wednesday: Inchworm, Inchworm, Measuring the Marigolds

Castles in the Sand

Ok, I know some of you (Mom) likely think the whole contest thing is all well and good, but let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming and start talking about the KIDS!

So, let’s do just that.

This weekend, Noah and I went to the U.S. Open Sandcastle Competition in Imperial Beach. We had an early lunch and a half nap before making a day of it (or… rest of the day of it). It was super crowded but still a lot of fun. We got there after they had finished building and during the judging period. I took bunches of pictures but just brought the point and shoot which lacks a little when it comes to wide angle. Luckily, two of my favorites were smaller ones. Here are shots of a sandcastle held in a sand-hand, and the front and BACKside of Mount Rushmore which was very funny.

We had to stop halfway down the beach because Noah just couldn’t help himself but fall to the sand at each display and start digging his own holes and making little tiny castles with a water bottle lid he had found. So we stopped and played in the sand for about 45 minutes.

Normally, he doesn’t like to go near the water when we go to the beach, so I didn’t pack a bathing suit. But I did bring a spare pair of underwear because unfortunately, we are still having the occasional accident, especially when having too much fun or when far from a restroom. Well, this time, he decided to run into the waves repeatedly, so finally, I stripped him of his shirt and his shorts and he played happily in his Tigger Underwear!

No one seemed to care.

On the way back to the car, we passed a house that was having a party in their side yard with a bunch of drums set up and a rockin’ drum circle going on. We stayed and listened for a good long time from the other side of their white picket fence. Noah said, “Mommy, I can feel my heart!”

“Well, THAT’s good!”

“I mean, the drumming makes my heart feel good. Really good.”

Awwwwwww! How sweet!

Afterward, we went to a nearby hole-in-the-wall-pizza-place and had some pepperoni slices.

Near the end of the day, he started repeating every twenty minutes, “I love you, Mom”. This tends to mean a lovely combination of “I am getting sleepy” and “I have missed spending time with you, Mom”. I asked him what his favorite part of the day was, and he wouldn’t be persuaded… the answer was consistently, “ALL of it! I had a BLAST!!”

I did, too.

I'm a Wiener!!

I never win ANYthing.

Okay, that's not quite true. About 10 years ago I won $1800 by saying "Star 98.7" 18 times in ten seconds while Ryan Seacrest counted, back when he was just a drive-time dj. That was awesome.

And I always consider myself a winner when I think of the wonderful husband I ended up with. No, I am not just trying to get points with the hubby, I really feel this way!

But otherwise, I never win anything.

This would be why I neglected my kids for two days straight while I filed through all 506 giveaways in every free moment I had (kids eating peas off their trays? Go look up two more giveaways! Kids playing nicely with blocks? Go look up three more giveaways!). I entered about 225 of them. Seriously.

And I WON!!

First off, I won this cool little pouch to put a couple diapers and a box of wipes in, so I can stick it in my purse! I won the brown one, which was my favorite. The lovely lady who did the giveaway is named Liz, and she has a great blog over there called Monkey Kisses. She has a great post on how to cut your kid's hair, which will help me a lot... I have been cutting Noah's straight hair for years, but am scared to cut Ethan and Luka's curls. She also has a review on her favorite baby gate, which happens to be our favorite one too!

Next, I also won the prize over at Crafty CarolinaGirl. Check this out... it's a little gift set of a packet of African Coffee (mmmm, coffee...), some Choxie chocolate mints (oh, I love me my mints!), and a homemade coffeemug coaster and this adorable little cupcake pincussion that she made herself!! Her blog was fun for me to look at because she actually took pictures of her drawing with all the little papers in a bowl and a photo of MY NAME on the one she drew out! How cool is that? Check out the crafts she makes, (especially this awesome little voodoo scull) and she is building a recipe section and a link to her tutorial on how to make an ipod cozy!! She is crafty!

But wait! There's MORE!!!

Thirdly, and lastly, I also won over at It's Always a Production! Over there, Ann was giving away FOUR prizes and I won her cute litte hexupus massager that looks like a little wooden octopus. Ann is a Christian, home-schooling mom of FIVE kids and is in the process of adopting a little boy and little girl from Ethiopia. She has this cool tradition of handing her blog over to her kids on their birthday so they can write a list of things the world should know about them. As many things as they have years under their belt. Check these out.

Shannon, who hosted this extravaganza bonanza, suggested on her site that if some of us should win more than one prize, that we might consider declining one of your winnings and spread around a little more giveaway love. I thought this was a fine idea, and so I wrote back to Ann, and asked her to draw another name for the cute little guy.

So, its been a really good day! Shannon is planning on doing another one of these give-away carnivals in the fall. I may just have to come up with something to give away myself...

Hmmm.....

And Now Back to My Regularly-Scheduled Mothering

Well, I can go back to being a good mother. Not the negligent mother I have been for the past two days.

See, there was this blog, see, and ya know, they were having a contest. No, see, it was like five HUNDRED contests! And there were no strings attached. Nothing to sign up for. Just free stuff to win! Cool books and crafts and stuff. And you know how cheap I am. I mean FRUGAL. And how I love to win things. Which I almost never do.

OK, let me explain.

Sometimes, to draw readers to their blogs, people hold giveaways and advertise them. Then people come to enter the drawing and stay and read the blog. Maybe even come back another day to check in.

Well, Shannon, at this blog I read called Rocks In My Dryer, had this great idea. She told all the mommy bloggers to get a giveaway ready and to post a link to it on her blog this last Monday. And to hold a drawing Friday. And post their giveaways they did. 506 of them, in fact.

I entered about 225 of them.

If you want to enter any of them, you don't have much time left. Most of them will draw winners on Friday morning. But the list of links can be found HERE.


And now, I am getting back to being a good mother...

Please Won't You Be... My Neighbor!

I took the twins to the park this morning. I brought the camera and tried to get some good pictures of them.


Met another Mom there of a boy the same age as Ethan and Luka. With my lack of friends here in San Diego, I practically gushed all over her with my "please be my friend" behavior. She seemed pretty cool (she had an "ohm" tattooed on the back of her neck so she must be at least a little funky!), and it’s so nice to have a grown up to talk to during the day, so I was overly-chatty.

She told me her name and suggested that we both try to come before nap time more often and maybe we would see each other. She lives on my street. Yay.

It has been kind of isolated here in San Diego. Most folks I meet already have friends and don't need new ones. And without a job, its hard to meet other people with the same kind of issues and interests that I have.

It seems you lose friends at three times in your life... when you get married you lose your single friends, when you have a baby, you drift away from your childless friends, and when you move, you lose everyone that is left!

When I was pregnant with Noah and had just moved to Ohio, and I had no friends. I practically forced myself on two of the moms in my birthing class at the hospital when I learned they lived in the same suburb I did. "Hey, we should hang out when we all have our babies!!" Miraculously, it worked, and I ended up with one of my best friends ever (Hi, Pam!!).

We traded babysitting to the betterment of our marriages; we shared breastfeeding problems and hormonal changes, and just gave each other company and encouragement in that time of scary-new-motherhood. I thank God for her.

But, now, I have done it again. I have moved to a new place.

I have always loved moving to new places, but I find it harder to make friends now than usual. I barely have time (or is it the energy, these days) to get myself dressed and out of the house. I have gone to some Mommy Groups and met some really cool women but they, of course, are very active, busy and plugged-in and don't see me in all my glorious loneliness.

Don't get me wrong, I am not all miserable, nor am I depressed. I just miss my old friends and the companionship of someone to just hang out with or gab on the phone about nothing important. I miss being someone's go-to when they have something to vent about. I miss that my son doesn't have a best friend anymore.


So, really, I am okay. I am just venting here because I don't have someone to have a mocha with, or curl up on the couch and call and say all this to right now.

Technical Difficulties

We have been having some computer problems lately.

My beloved Adobe Photoshop crashed for some reason and then I found that my installation discs no longer would work. Probably scratched. Then, our main computer started to crash too, and so we switched to the laptop for a good long time. I was left with Adobe Elements with which to play with and color-balance my photos.

Elements is a pretty good program with a lot of short cuts that work very nicely to do some adjustments you do manually in Photoshop. It took some getting used to, but in the end I liked it.

But we just brought down our OTHER, other computer from Michael’s mom’s house and while we are on our third hard drive in as many months, we are back to our usual monitor screen.

THE PROBLEM is that while looking back on the photos I retouched and color-balanced while we used the laptop, I see that many of them are way off color, and often horribly over-saturated! Now, I often like to bump the saturation a bit, especially for online use, but that photo down there of Vera and me looks like someone spilled Kool-Aid and Jell-O all over it! I am going to have to go back and re-do that.

But also, over at Mama Says Om, they chose my picture of the twins sweeping to be representative of the weekly theme, "responsibility", and eeeeewwwww, now that I see it on my good monitor, it is a nasty fluorescent yellow. Yuk.

Well, I am thrilled to find that this new (old) hard drive HAS a working version of Photoshop on it, and I am back to my good monitor, so I hope you will forgive the overly-Technicolor pictures of old, and find that my work is looking a little nicer, soon.

I leave you with this overly-contrasty but color-balanced self-portrait of a giddy Michael and I on our little vacation at the Sheraton.

NOT an Urban Legend...

I was wandering around the blog world the other day, going from one link to another, when I found someone who mentioned this awful thing that happened to the son of her friend. I clicked over to the link.

It was the story of a family that went to the beach and they noticed that one of their sons (one of a pair of twins), who was there just a second ago, was now missing. Looking around, he was nowhere to be seen within the distance he could have wandered in just a few seconds.

His parents instantly thought a wave must have come up and snatched him (one hadn't). After a couple minutes the nearby lifeguard wanted to just fill out a missing child report. The father splashed around in the waves trying to spot their small boy. Other beach-goers pitched in to help look.

The story ends happily, but with the family very shaken. There is a lesson to be learned here if you ever go to the beach. This kind of thing is very unusual but it does happen. And I just wanted to give you a heads-up.

The writer of the blog has allowed anyone who wanted to link to her story to do so, so please go read it here, especially if you ever take your kids to the beach.

Wordless Wednesday: Peanut Butter Thief

Discovered after returning home from our trip without the kids.

A Little Respite

Oh, it was lovely. Nineteen whole hours with my fantastic hubby and no kids.

No desperation, no fighting, no clawing at my pants to be picked up, no peas on the floor, no vomit, no Teletubbies, no diarrhea, no biting.

Not that I don’t just love all those things…

Of course I love my kids, but sometimes a Mama and Daddy just need some Mama and Daddy time. And this was our two-week early anniversary celebration.

Immediately after checking into the hotel, over cheese and crackers and a glass of wine from the gift basket, we marveled how long it had been since we had had a real conversation. Not the hurried, “here are the things you need to know about Noah’s school and what I did with the bank accounts, and oh, this thing over here is broken and needs to be fixed” conversation you have in the hour between getting the last kid into bed and falling asleep yourself, but a real talk. About anything we wanted. Of course, it always ended up veering back towards the kids, but it was more about milestones and wonder than diaper rash and what to bring on snack day.

We were on the tenth floor and the view of the city skyline and the harbor were just beautiful. We could see in the distance the place where we had watched the Fourth of July fireworks over the bay, see the city skyline and the Coronado Bridge, and could watch the airplanes coming in for a landing at the airport (which was shockingly quiet due maybe to the angle, even out on the balcony!). I wished I had brought my “good” camera but my point and shoot got this great shot.

We went for a quiet dinner (Quiet!!) of pasta with smoked chicken and pine nuts, and lots of good veggies. A walk along the marina. Watched a movie in the room, which we almost never get to do anymore. I miss movies. It was a lovely night.

The next day we had a long, luxurious breakfast buffet in the dining room. Omelets and fruit, cinnamon rolls and all you can eat bacon! Bottomless fresh squeezed orange juice and a coffee pot all to ourselves.

Another walk and a morning shower and it was time for check out. Sigh…. But it was a wonderful little respite which left us rested, and closer, and more patient with our children.

It takes a little time away from the children to make a parent the best parent they can be.

Thanks again, Mima.

My Awesome Mother-In-Law

My Mother-In-Law rocks!

For our birthdays, she sent the hubbie and I away to the little town where my he proposed to me, to stay at a bed and breakfast for one lovely night while she stayed with all three kids.

Tonight she is at it again. As an early anniversary gift (August 5th, folks, write it down!) she has booked us into a very nice hotel here in San Diego where we can live it up (dining, jacuzzi, no one vomiting in the night) sans kids for one glorious night!

Michael had to work today (a Saturday!) so I am scurrying around trying to pack and organize everything so that its not a completely monumental task for her.

Last night when she got into town, Luka came down with the nasty bug we have slowly been passing around (Noah, then Erin, then Ethan, then me, and now Luka) and so he was vomiting all over the hotel room (Vera stayed there with Noah last night to get him used to being overnight with her in hopes she can take him on a trip someday soon).

We ordered up room service so as not to subject the diners in the restaurant to two sleepy kids and one vomiter (can I squeeze that word in any more?).

Tonight is our turn in the room. And in the Jacuzzi. And the restaurant. And along the docks. And on the balcony watching the sunset and the city lights...

...sigh...

Did I mention my Mother-in-Law rocks?

And so it begins....

Well, the day has come. A new milestone and the beginning of a new life for, well, all of us.

It's certainly not a stellar day in the world of photography (yes, I can say I have done better) but it IS however...

...the first time my child has brought home some HOMEWORK!

Noah is off to kindergarten in about six weeks. I asked his Montessori Preschool teacher if she thought he was ready to go, socially as well as academically. She felt he is pretty much good to go...

"...except for...well...his penmanship."

"It sucks?" (No, OK, I didn't really say that)

"Yeah, it sucks" (OK, I am maybe paraphrasing here a little.)

"The kids in kindergarten can usually write a bit better than he can."

Three days later he comes home with two pages. One has the letter "a" written a couple times across the top and the other has the letter "b". Each letter is followed by rows of empty lines with that dreaded dotted line down the middle that we all came to know and love in elementary school.

Noah was actually kind of excited for the first time about practicing his letters (he usually peters out after about 2 "a's"). A little quick math had me wondering if I had 13 more nights of letter practice in front of me. But he sat down with me and we talked about how to make each effort a little better than the last and the ones at the end of each page were certainly superior to the ones at the beginning!

He was very proud. I was very proud. But I was also imagining a life of sitting at the dining room table most evenings trying not to do his homework for him.

And that screechy Mom-voice I just know I am gonna have...

"Noah???? Didja do your homework???"

Even Moooore...

I was going to post this in the same post as the last one, but this contest requires its own post to be considered a legit entry. I liked how both contests were cow-related. Ah-well....

SO, here goes...

Over at JohnCow.com, their cool web hosting provider in the offering a chance to win $500 bucks with which to purchase your choice of of lots of different prizes. Here’s your chance to win a Playstation3,or an Xbox360, a Nintendo Wii, an iPhone .. you name it, they’ll pay for up to $500 of it! They have lots of cool contests over there, so pop over and check out their mad cow blog!