Where has the Summer gone already?

How the summer has flown. July is officially going on my calendar every year as a crazy month.
It is now just days until school starts again. There are school supply displays in every store. My dear boy is going into the first year of real school. Where did the time go? And where is his classroom? Who is his teacher? What time does school get out? So many questions...I feel like a kid lost on the first day of school myself, so many unknowns. But silly, because all too soon all these questions will have answers and we be in the thick of it before I blink again. I had better cut open a watermelon and enjoy what is left of this summer while it is still here. I hope you do too.

Happy Summer!

Son got a Hulk Slip-n-Slide for Christmas last year. He saw it in the store and was excited, it was on super-duper clearance(being 6 months out of season) so we slipped it under the tree for him. And the waiting commenced.

He has been ever so patient for a hot enough(and not too busy) day to finally set it up.

Today...was the day.

Hello, my name is Daughter. My mother has not yet combed my hair today, but I am still rockin' it for the camera!

A. Picnic

We have a family tradition we had neglected for a few years of attending my Dad's company picnic en masse, where our competitive spirit has always reared its ugly head. Last Saturday, though, let me tell you, I almost felt bad for doing so well. Almost...

The kids had everyone-wins games, which were lots of fun for them.

They had a big blow up jumping castle, giant slide, and Son's favorite: Slip 'n Slide! I didn't know they had inflatable Slip 'n Slides nowadays...sure beats sliding over the rough ground back in the olden days!
They had one game each for the men and women, then an egg toss for a team. L won the guys' game, I won the women's, and we won the egg toss! Feel bad for the other guys yet?
The prizes for winning the games used to be cash. Lots of cash. In recent years, they started giving away prizes instead. But hey, it's all about the fun, RIGHT?!? So we, being the gracious winners that we are, offered to share the spoils with our less cutthroat family members. Feel better? It really is about satisfying the competitive spirit for us, the win is the best part. The prizes are just secondary. Did I just admit that???
Well, regardless of the motivation, we had tons of fun and so did the kids. I hope everyone else had fun, too, even though we CRUSHED THEM!!! (Oops, it slipped out again!!)

Summertime...

There are so many beautiful things about summertime. Here is one of ours. We had a picnic in the park with some friends from the club and flew kites after. Here are some of the highlights:

A beautiful night in that state where we live, just enough wind to fly kites!

Son finally got over his fear of kites(no kidding.) He wasn't afraid of the actual kite itself, but he was afraid of his kite blowing away.

Daughter had tons of fun, as usual! She would hold on to the kite string and walk and walk! We could not get her to stand still to fly the kite, so L picked her up to help.
But then she let go! Just as I was snapping the picture, hence the nooooo coming from Daddy's mouth!

I was lookin' cute, as always, and forgot to get a picture of myself, as usual! I just want to say: cherish these little moments with your loved ones. It is millions of these little moments that make up our lives.

Goodbye August, Hello September!

August was such a busy month for our family, I must say I am glad to see it go. September promises to slow down a bit before October madness sets in!!

My sweet Son started preschool this year, which makes my life a bit more hectic, if that is possible, but at the same time gives me a bit of free time in the mornings 3 days a week. Son was on a waiting list for a YEAR to get into this school, and now I see why: small classes+challenging curriculum=my Son loves school! Within the first week, he learned a song of days of the week, his months, counting in Spanish, WOW! He is only going to end up with one year of preschool before starting the big K, he'll have full-day Kindergarten, so this should be a good transition for him. We'll see...

August was also Son's Birthday... YAY!! He could not decide which superhero he liked best for his party, so we just celebrated all of them! I made superhero capes for everyone and we played superhero games.

I had crafts and designed superhero masks to color, my

Dad got the biggest kick out of those(as he always does!)

Daughter took off last month...

This is what most of my pics

now look like:

She's always on the go!

Don't you love the curly pigtails?

Here is the front view:

Last, but not least, we spent WAY too much time in here in August:

'nough said?

So here's to September, only 3 family birthdays this month and ONE Doctor appointment scheduled(so far.)

(knock on wood, of course...) Happy September!!

Camping

We took a trip to Mount G. with some family this summer, and I just wanted to share.
We had such a relaxing and fun, dirty time, here are pictures of some of the highlights:

It was so gorgeous there!

Me, Son and Daughter(L is behind the camera)

my nephew, B

My Baby Brother, Oldest(but still younger) Brother and his lovely wife Y.
B, Son, and C
S, he was the happiest camper. My grandma always says the one who
got the dirtiest had the most fun. S definitely had the most fun!
I am grateful for my family and being able to spend quality time with them. Time spent in nature really focuses you on each other and away from all of the distractions of our daily lives.

Our Garden

We managed to grow a garden this year for the first time ever! I have tried several times to even keep a house plant alive, I never seemed to water it right. Always too much or not enough=dead plants. So L handled the initial planting and watering, and once it was established a bit then I dared to come near it. Here is our first sprout(zucchini) we grew.

The day we took this picture we went to my Grandpa O's house. We told he and Grandma about our first sprout of our garden, we were so excited that we finally got something to grow...until Grandpa showed us his plants. He had planted them roughly at the same time and his garden was jungle-like! I wasn't too jealous, though, because I was just happy that we didn't waste all that time and water for nothing at all to come up. But before we knew it, we had things like this growing:

Now we have all the zucchini and yellow squash we can eat, and tons of butternut and watermelon coming soon!

We had also planted cucumbers, which apparently make very tasty plants for squirrels... so we were left with a bare row of dirt in the middle of the garden. So I took a few seeds from a butternut squash I was cooking and literally stuck them into the ground right out of the squash. My green thumb must have finally developed, because they grew and filled in every spare inch of the garden! We have just picked the first of them. I highly recommend attempting a garden, it has been such fun for our whole family, Son is learning so much and will eat anything that comes out of a garden, ours or someone else's. Not to mention the sprinklers are great fun!

One more funny anecdote: L worked very hard prepping the soil to plant our garden. He has a tendency never to buy the right amounts of things for projects... he either runs out and has to go back to the store 5 times, or he buys way too much of things. Case in point: manure. We were running errands as a family with both cars on one warm afternoon. One of the errands was buying manure for our garden prep, another was getting the tires rotated. L bought 12 huge bags of manure and loaded them into the back of our newish Rodeo. We walked around the shopping center for a while after that because the tire rotation took quite a bit longer than we anticipated. After a while we decided to go ahead and take the kids home in the rodeo and leave Luis behind to bring the car when it was finished, they were getting cranky and it was getting pretty hot out. As we approached the parking spot where we left the Rodeo, we discovered what 12 bags of manure smell like after heating up in an enclosed car for a hour. The poor kids had to ride home 15 minutes in that stench...UGH! I swear it took a couple months before the Rodeo was back to its nice coconut tree smell again. After all of that, we now have EIGHT fifty pound bags of @#%! left over still smelling up the backyard when the wind blows just right. The good news is, it is not going to go bad and smell any worse. And, of course, in case we have a worldwide manure shortage, we are COVERED!