Labor Day Weekend

Inside the ice caves


Coconut caught a 20" 4 lb. fish on his dinky Cars fishing pole. He started yelling that he caught something and was reeling it in. JP ran over and took it from him while Bubba pulled it in by the line and Peanut held the top of the pole. Dad was yelling for them to run it up on the bank so they didn't lose it. Bubba caught the other big fish.




At the top of the volcano. It goes off about every 2,000 years and it's been that long now!



Big Daddy took the boys hotel camping for Labor Day weekend. It really was too cold to go outside camping and B wanted to watch a football game the first night so they stayed in a hotel and went and did tons of fun stuff. Lava Cave, Craters, lots of fishing, swimming. It was a nice weekend for Mama to watch a million movies, write, and eat ice cream for breakfast. :)

Conversations With a 3 1/2 Year Old

So yesterday I was driving to the middle of nowhere for JP's scrimmage and Coconut was having a long conversation with me. He starts each sentence with, "MOM!" then says whatever it is and as soon as he's done he yells, "MOM!" again. All of his thoughts are completely random and I'd love to know what goes on in that little brain of his. So here's a sample of what he told me.
C-MOM!
M-What?
C-That'd be sick if motorcylces went off ramps and you didn't fall off.
M-Yeah.
C-MOM!
M-What?
C-That'd be scary if we were hunting Big Foot at night.
M-Yeah.
C-MOM!
M-What?
C-That'd be cool if we didn't have a house and we lived at coach's house and we could ride on the dummies. (The football dummies that he and Peanut are obsessed with playing on everyday).
M-Yeah.

Then he became obsessed with Big Foot. How he even knows who Big Foot is beyond me. And even more baffling is that he used the word "sick" and used it correctly. Then on the way home he talked about Big Foot some more. He told me that he lived far away over the mountains and past the jungle. I kept assuring him that there's no such thing as Big Foot-although I'm not so convinced myself that there isn't. But he doesn't need to have nightmares about it. Also, he must watch a movie every time we're in the car. So he talks through the whole thing.
C-MOM, remember that one part where...
Bubba gets really annoyed and tells him to stop talking and just watch it. It is kind of annoying. Sometimes I would just like to listen to my CDs in peace. But it's such a fun part of his personality that I wouldn't change it. I feel a little bad that he's growing up so fast. He doesn't even talk like a little boy anymore. Gotta love those big brothers for what they teach him.

Back to School--Finally

Don't look too excited guys.


Definitely not the best day of his life. And he's too cool to wear a helmet so he walks to school.

Tues. the boys went back to school. Now that Bubba is in 6th grade, he's on an earlier schedule-7:45-2:15. They changed the elementary from 9-3:30 so the younger boys were excited to sleep in. Well actually, Peanut can't wake up in the morning. He used to go to afternoon kindergarten so he's not used to getting up as early. Poor guy. And so much for trying to get them to bed earlier. We tried to put the younger boys to bed earlier last night because of Peanut needing more sleep. That didn't go well. As far as the older boys, JP's football practice goes until 8pm and then we have a late dinner. I hate that. But they get sick if they eat before practice, so normally they have a snack before and dinner afterwards. We haven't found a routine yet. I'm a little overwhelmed since we only had a two week break between baseball and football, instead of a whole summer. Lame. JP was annoyed because he already had homework the first night and so did Peanut. I don't know how the 6th grader got off with nothing until tonight. And he has until Wed. to complete it. He was really annoyed that we kept him at the charter school this year instead of letting him go to the middle school with all of his football friends. I just really felt like he needed another year there before such a big change. Those are such hard years. So I have a 1st grader, 4th grader, and 6th grader.

We decided to keep Coconut home this year because he pretty much knows everything he would learn in 3 yr. old preschool-colors, alphabet, counting to 10, shapes, etc. He has such a big vocabulary. Sometimes the stuff he says cracks me up. This morning he was playing with a sticky guy and said, "Dude, dude, come here. I'm a 'inja' (ninja)." He uses all the same words that his brothers do. Another favorite of ours that we don't necessarily like him saying but can't help but laugh when he does, "Ha ha, sucka." I love when he says something is "sweet" or "awesome." We also have a gorilla magnet from San Diego Zoo on our fridge and yesterday he pointed it out, "It's a daddy ungrilla." Oh yeah, we finally conquered pooping on the potty. We just had to run out of diapers! Bubba is the one who talked him into it one night and sat and played with him for awhile and then let him have some alone time-and it worked! Yay no more diapers.

Book update-My cousin is editing for me and my brother is supposed to be working on a cover. The editing is slow going since my cousin has a real job and 7 kids, but what he's done so far has been helpful because it made me think about certain things I needed to fix. So I went back through the whole book and worked on it somemore-deleting phrases I used to much, re-wording sentences, and moving stuff around. I realized too that I had forgotten to include a couple of things, so I ended up writing another 2 pages this week towards the end of the book. I got excited again about it and keep hounding my cousin to work on it more. I still need an outside opinion on whether some of it sounds lame or whatever. I gave him a deadline of Dec. 1st because my hope is to self-publish before Christmas so I can give it to my mom, and hopefully people will buy it for Christmas. Of course I don't expect to be a big sensation or anything, but I would like to sell them to my friends and family at least. I plan on using any money I make to use for my Ireland vacation. I've already got a couple hundred saved from my job, but it's so expensive that it will take me awhile if I don't figure something else out. I'd like to go next summer. Anyway, I'll keep updating everyone on a possible release date. Thanks for all of the encouragement.