Happy Birthday Shelley!!

Shelley turned 41 the other day.

She and her husband Tom treated us to a dinner out for sushi and fun. We got to sit in one of those super special rooms that are private. You had to remove your shoes before you went in. These rooms have tables that are lower than the lowest coffee table. After removing our shoes we entered and attempted to sit. It was easy for the kids to sit as they are small...not so easy for those of us over 5'0". And God help all of us if you had stinky feet as the air flow was seriously lacking until we turned on the little fan that was in the room. Shelley was glowing in her beautiful red Asian inspired dress. When I say glowing I'm not kidding...she and the rest of us were wiping the sweat off of our foreheads!!

This is Shell and her husband Tom

The table was so low she had to bend down to sip her beer.

After a lovely sushi dinner, we headed over to the local high school football field to watch a bit of the game and to watch Tom and Shelley's daughter Quinlan perform with her dance team at half time.

At the game Shelley handed out these fabulous cupcakes that had a mile high pile of unsweetened extra light butter cream frosting. They were decadent and super yummy.

Tom is really not a smoker. I think he just likes to "air smoke" somewhat like "air guitar" when he watches football

Shelley ate her cupcake and Toms as he must be watching his waistline.

This is what I'm sure is the first of MANY pictures of Indy at a high school football game.

Quinlan is somewhere in this group of girls in black.

And the best part of the whole evening??????????

watching Shelley and Ari try to get UP from the dinner table. Priceless.

A Walk After Dinner

Ted and I took a walk on the beach after dinner the other night. Alex came with us. Indy stayed home because she hurt her neck after an unsupervised attempt at a back flip on the neighbors trampoline. Yep that's me getting the "mother of the year award". In my own defense, I didn't know she was jumping on the trampoline and she is now on trampoline restriction. Ari also stayed home to do homework.

Anyway, we took Alex and the dogs and went down to take a sunset walk after dinner. The dogs ran like crazy and tried to avoid the water because they're afraid of it. Molly ran in by accident when she saw a seagull and didn't realize she was in the water until she was chest deep. She did a couple of gazelle leaps to get out.

If you have to be unemployed and live with your parents for a while...

There is no better place

For the Love of First Graders

Helped out in Shelley's first grade son "Aidan"s class on Monday. She had to leave early from her 1 hour duty so I went with her to finish her shift. Sat at the table and waited for the teacher to give instructions to the class. Aidan and his group came first. He sat next to Shell. The kids had to write a small sentence and then end it in a period. All the kids in the group did it except for Aidan who instead looked around and goofed off while in his own little world. Once Shell finally got him to focus he used his biggest size letters to write the sentence on this little line. Shell asked him to write a little smaller so the words would fit on the paper. Instead he wrote the sentence off the paper and onto the table, finishing with a large period at the end. Turned and looked at Shelley and said "I did it Mom" half of the sentence was written on the table. Shell and I both started to laugh silently to our selves and try not to let any of the kids see us shaking while we laughed.

After his group finished...he decided to turn on the water works and beg Shell to take him home. He carried on for quite awhile telling her that he was sick. She asked what his symptoms were, he said "I don't know what that means but I've had a very bad day so far and I need to go home" I told Shell that he was disrupting my lesson and asked her to leave the room with her boy. She didn't fall for the "I'm sick" routine so he gave up and went back to his work.

Next I look up just in time for another kid in his group to sneeze and blow two HUGE snot rockets out of her nose that just hung there. I said.."please go get a towel".

The next groups went fairly smoothly except that I don't have any patience so when they couldn't understand the concept of writing a sentence and ending it with a period I started to get bored of the whole thing. Just as I was growing bored of this whole experience I looked up to see Aidan across the room pointing at some teacher's XXL butt and making a horrified look, also pointing and making the "coo-coo" gesture. You know the one where you take your pointer finger and make circles around your ear? He kept doing this as I sat horrified that he was making fun of this lady's big butt until I looked down and saw a kid on the floor flopping around like a large tuna out of water with a death grip on Aidan's desk leg. Apparently she was having a melt down and Aidan was telling the whole class "silently" that she was "coo-coo" and "crazy". They managed to remove her from the class without further incident. At least he wasn't making fun of the lady's big butt.

The teacher thanked me for helping out and I said "No problem...It was very entertaining"

You gotta love the first graders.

This

Woke up this morning to this.

Had a bad night...I awoke to a mysterious dog barking at 1 am this morning. I lay there for an hour as this dog barked in a neighborhood that has a noise ordinance law against barking dogs, not to mention cranky neighbors. As I listened to the barking it sounded like it was coming from "Dingo" the dog a few houses down the street. I had a strong desire to get out of bed and put my flip flops on and march myself down the street and have a little "chat" with Dingo as he was really pissing me off. I almost got out of bed a few times but I was cold and was too lazy to get out of bed. Eventually the barking stopped and I fell back asleep by 3:00am. Come to find out the next morning that in fact it wasn't Dingo after all... It was my parents' stupid- sock-eating-attack poodle. If I had known it was our very own dog that was barking I would have gone out there and had a word with him.

Had breakfast at the East Beach Grill this morning. the restaurant is right on the beach with the most amazing pancakes I have ever tasted. After breakfast the kids played in the sand and took pictures of the sand castle exhibit from yesterday.

Took this picture of Mom this morning on the beach. I think it is beautiful. She was trying to NOT show her double chin. I managed to capture a very soft beautiful picture of her.

what would you do???

My Mom's very dumb dog ate 3 sweat socks. Yes I mean three!!! We didn't know it but when he stopped eating and started acting weird, my mom knew something was up so she took him to the vet and after an x-ray, ultra sound, blood work and a bunch more tests they could see that there was something in his gut that wasn't going anywhere.

After a major surgery and an incision from stem to stern they were able to remove three whole non-shredded sweat socks. I won't tell you what the final bill was because...A. My mother will kill me and B. I don't think my step Dad REALLY knows what the total amount was, even though he pays all the bills I don't think he wants to re-live the dollar amount.

Here is the question of the day...

The dumb dog started to feel better after a week and then had his stitches out the other day. He was feeling so much better that he ate 2 more socks. Luckily for him, he barfed one up and pooped out the other one. My step Dad says that this dumb dog has used up his allotted $$$ amount for a foreign body extraction in his life time. One per dog.

What do you think?? If he eats another sock what would you do??

kids, kids, kids

This weekend Ari had her first volleyball tournament. It was down south in Rancho Santa Margarita. I took this picture of her warming up. She would like me to say this was a game winning spike but perhaps that will come one day soon. For now we will stay humble and just say that she is working really hard and is very grateful to be on the team.

This is Alex on his first day of third grade. If you know Alex you'll not be surprised to see the bottle of hand sanitizer on his book bag and the "political" button as well.

This is Indy's first day of first grade. She lost two front teeth within one week so her smile is full of holes but still very cute.

Me? well I'm exhausted from a weekend away and two days of volleyball and driving. I have managed to get to know some of the volleyball mom's. This is not something I was looking forward to since you all know how much I "LOVE" to chat and meet new people but I sucked it up and made myself sit with them and they were actually very down to earth and friendly. I feel a bit out of place because of being the "new girl" in town but have received a very warm welcome from all the parents I've met.

It's back to the gym in the morning. My knee has been bothering me and Shelley has managed to sustain quite the nice little tear in her calf muscle so it will be a morning of elliptical machines for us instead of our usual Monday morning run along the beach.

Last Day of Summer

Yesterday was the last day of Summer. We spent most of the day recovering from our weekend down at Stacy's, doing laundry, napping and working out. Shell and i went for a run in the morning, suffering the whole time because of all the crap we ate over the weekend. It was totally worth it though. Holland makes the best guacamole. And Stacy makes the best spaghetti. So worth it!

At 5:15 pm I took the little kids down to Butterfly beach for the end of Summer play time. the sun was low and beautiful. the kids swam in the warm water and dug for sand crabs. Indy stood at water's edge for a long time with boogie board in hand waiting for the perfect wave to ride.

This is what happens when you try to be a runner at 42 years old. You must invest in a large amount of "Icee Hot" patches to get you through the day so you don't feel like you will never walk again.

As I sat on the beach on the last day of Summer, I try to reflect on how the last three months have gone and where we are headed. I will try to savor every day and be grateful that we have a place to stay while Ted is still out of work. My parents have been amazing and so generous.

I am so grateful that we are here to enjoy Santa Barbara and it's beautiful beaches. My kids and husband are healthy and happy and all of our needs are met for now. that's all I can ask for today. I noticed that Alex wrote home in the sand and put an arrow pointing to his own feet. So fitting for our life right now... Home is where your feet are planted. So true Alex, so true.

Hailey and the mer- boy

Sorry It's been 5 days since my last blog but I've been busy living!! Friday I took the kids to Golita beach to join their cousin Kieran for a "beach Day" field trip. My kids had a ball because it was high tide. Alex dug in the sand the whole time and Indy joined up with the 4th graders and paddled out on her boogie board to surf with the big kids. that's her in the pink with the pink board holding her own and loving every minute of it.

Next, Shell and I and the kids drove down to Stacy's house for labor day weekend. Stacy couldn't drive up to Santa Barbara because it would have taken her 4-5 hours each way with holiday traffic. it was a 2 hour breeze of a drive for us going in the opposite direction of all the holiday traffic. One of the twins is at Norther Colorado University and she had a VB game that had a live telecast feed on the web so we all gathered around the computers and watched them play for a while. It was super exciting to see our girl!!

The kids played all weekend with some of the fabulous costumes that Stacy has made and or put together over the years. the kids played for hours and then swam the rest of the time.

Night time swimming was the best. It is the best thing in the world to take a swim after dinner.

This is Aidan, Shelley's youngest.

During one of their night swims Indy came up with the name "Hailey". she told me that she really like that name better than her own and could she please change her name to "Hailey" I said "sure". So she went around to all the kids and told them they had to call her Hailey from now on. She got a bit of backlash from most of the kids. All except from Morgan, Stacy's boy. He said that he wanted to change his name too. he told Stacy that why couldn't we all call him "Organ". I leaned over to Stacy and whispered..."they'll be calling him that in high school.

Instead he decided he wanted to be called"Mer-Boy" Like mermaid. So he and Indy were "Hailey and Mer-Boy"

Holland (15) and Ari (14) had the best time ever. they are just like sisters. they fight and hang out and joke around. They might just be the most comic duo in the kids part of the family. By the way Holland said that she was wearing Brittany's bikini and not to tell Britt. I'm not telling...I'm just showing my pictures :)