First day of school

Who knew going into 2nd grade would be so hard... on ME! I tried to look strong in front of all the parents at the bus stop, but I did get a bit weepy as the bus pulled away and I could see Elle waving at me through the window! I'm such a baby!! She's never been on a bus before. Even when she was in Kindergarten, I drove her everyday. There's something about you kid getting on the BUS for the first time...

I'm as excited for her to come home and tell me all about it and she was to GO to school. We went to her open house on Friday and she has the teacher I was HOPING she'd get!! There were 3 teachers she could have gotten, but I REALLY wanted her to have this one, and she ended up getting her YAY!! She's also in the same class as her BFF Afton... there desks are even right next to eachother! Afton only lives 5 houses down from me... I didn't think it was possible for those two to be any more inseparable... but I guess it IS possible!

Walking to the bustop

The dynamic duo again...

Boarding the bus... when I started crying:

First broken arm!

Well, I've never broken a bone, neither has Elle. SO this was my first experience with a cast! Pinky was playing around on our VERY heavy bar stools... swinging around on them. I kept telling her she was going to get hurt if she didn't stop...
Well, she finally did get hurt, it toppled over on her the other day and it landed right on her wrist! She really screamed! She continued to use it, even though she held it tightly to guard it. And after a few days she was still not putting pressure on it and would hold it tight, plus it looked wierd, not like the other wrist. I took her to the pediatrician, then to to the radiologist for an X ray, then back to the Pediatrician, then since it was broken, I was then had to go to the orthopedist. I had a busy day1

Pinky liked the cast though. They let her pick out a color, of course she picked pink. In two weeks we'll go back to have it X rayed again.

Elle is in the process of getting braces right now, she got 4 spacers put in last week and had an appt. this morning to get her brackets put on, but we had to reschedule due to broken bones!

Other crazy stuff has been happening, but I don't want to turn this into a whiny post! So, I'll stop here and update later!

SCHOOL

School starts in less then two weeks, I'll admit, it will be strange for me! Elle will be in second grade and Pinky will be in a preschool. People keep asking what I'm going to do with all my spare, non-kid time. I have no idea! This year isn't so bad because, while Elle will be gone all day, Pinky will only be gone three hours a day. SO at least for this coming year I wont be changing much of my routine... except now I will have three hours a day by myself. But it will be NEXT year that they will both be in school full day, that will be really different...

I've thought about possibly going back to school part time, or taking some classes just for fun. Nah, never mind, if I take classes I want it to be towards a degree, not just for the heck of it. I'll also have time to volunteer in the girls' classrooms, go on field trips with them, stuff like that.

Loki and I are getting along swimmingly now that he's home all day with me. In July we decided it was time to have him home all day like a normal dog rather then continue to go to the dog sitter. Man, it is alot harder then I thought owning a dog! Before, I could just drop him off at the dog sitters... which we did 6 days a week! Now though, it's all on me! And because he's such a big dog, he needs ALOT of exercise, it's kept me busy. I have to run him every morning and then again later in the day, then some sort of exercise again in the evening. I think he enjoys being home, he follows us everywhere and just plops down on the floor watching our every move, LOL!

Have a good Wednesday!

A girl and her guns.

Here I am at the range tonight. I took my mom shooting for the first time in her life! I brought three of our shotguns. She tried them all out! We shot the Saiga, the Mossberg and the AK... I think she liked it...

Birthday time!

Pinky recently turned FOUR!! I can't believe how wierd it is to not have a baby anymore! She is fast to tell me that she is a big girl! We held an Ice Cream Party for her. All her little 4 year old friends came over and built their own ice cream sundaes. I had an ice cream toppings bar. I also baked cupcakes in cake cones, and topped it with swirly icing and sprinkles, it totally looked like an ice cream cone1 Elle told me I was the coolest mom ever for making those!


Here are all who attended!


Present time!


The best gift of all was from daddy and I, she was upgraded from a baby bike to a little girl bike with training wheels:


As you can see from the look on her face... Pinky is thrilled to be wearing this dress up outfit!

Home defense...

I thought this was a funny picture! Here's all the safety and security we need right here!

Entrepreneur

Elle the other day decided to open a lemonade stand with a friend of hers. She thought it was high time she earned her own money! They took stools outside and to make the surface bigger, they layed boogie boards on top of them. Which is why I wasn't surprised when they tipped over the instant she put the lemonade on it.

They used plastic cups from my kitchen and a giant pitcher of Crystal Light. After they made a second batch (because the first one spilled all over the sidewalk!), they figured out how to precariously balance it so it wouldn't fall, and they sat down to wait for the money to roll in...

If you've been to our house you know it's pretty secluded. Which I love, but it's not so good if you are trying to sell something! I felt really bad for them because they REALLY wanted costumers, but of course there were NO people outside! After a while, they got bored and ran off to play...

Dancing and Cleaning

Pinky loves to dance! Here's a video of her at a party we went to the other day. She was trying to line dance with everybody...



So all last week I purged my house! I went from room to room and threw away almost everything we owned that wasn't a piece of furniture. How liberating! It all started because Elle will be in public school this year, so I cleaned out the homeschool room. I ended up with something close to 20 bags of giveaway stuff! And more stuff that couldn't fit in bags! On Saturday, hubby and I loaded up both our SUV's FULL of crap and hauled it to Goodwill. And besides the giveaway, we had about the same amount of bags for the trash man! Our yard looked like a landfill before the garbage truck came last week! Our house is pretty much cleared out at this point, we still have a few big things that wouldn't fit in the car and the trash guy couldn't take.

So I cleared out the homeschool room, moved Pinky into it, cleaned out Elle's room, cleaned out my room, cleaned out the basement... I hate STUFF!
It's funny because I threw out ALL the toys we have! The kids cried and cried! The amount of toys I kept are so few, I can literally fit them all into ONE small box! The kids' rooms have nothing but a bed and a dresser. And guess what? They stay so CLEAN!!!!

Also the basement was FULL of toys... all gone now! The whole toy area has nothing in it but carpet and wall! Man, the way the kids carried on, you'd have thought I'd killed their best friend. But they haven't suffered one bit. They haven't been bored a single time! They've had just as much fun playing with the minuscule amount of toys I DID keep that you would never know they didn't have anything else.
I'll tell you one thing though, my house has never stayed cleaner!