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.

Are You Ready for Some Football?!

Bubba is in the center with the ball tucked under his arm


Bubba is #76 out in front


JP is #62 in the middle trying to shake off his blocker and down below, he got away from him

Well football season is officially upon us. The boys had their first official games yesterday. JP is on defense and his was at 11 am, then Bubba's was right after. He worked really hard and is a starting 4 back this year and gets to run the ball and even has a pass play. They're both doing a great job, and JP has been able to get around his blockers a lot to go in for tackles. We will have 3 conflicting games that only one parent will be able to go to. That's one of the drawbacks of having more than one boy in the same sport.

Bubba has also joined a band. One of the boys he played baseball with this season has a dad who has organized a kid band. His sons play keyboard and guitar, they have a drummer and a singer, and Bubba is learning to play bass. They learned the last half of a Cold Play song and "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves at his first practice this week. They'll start practicing on Fridays after school and they even have a gig lined up at a local cafe.

School starts after Labor Day weekend. Hooray for mom! They have been fighting daily and it gets hard after listening to it for 3 months! Coconut was going to go to preschool, but I have opted to keep him home until next year. He is finally peeing on the toilet! However, he's still having some fear issues with going poop on the potty. I even bought him his own potty seat. He sits on it with a diaper to go. Baby steps. He doesn't like how it feels in his diaper either so I'm hoping at some point soon he'll get sick of it.



JP had his first rain gutter regata for cub scouts. He was very excited and made a Boston Red Sox boat. He won the Best Sports Theme award.

Happy 9th Birthday JP!

None of that icing was wasted!


Birthday dance! Shake what your mama gave ya!


Hogwarts castle!


Expelliarmus!


Only took us two days to do. And yes, he did most of it. I handed him the pieces and he put them together unless he had trouble. (Big step for me, since you all know how OCD I get about doing it myself). How awesome is it?!

JP had a Harry Potter birthday party at the end of July to celebrate his birthday. We had a few friends and Grandma Randall over to our neighborhood pool for cake, presents, and swimming.
He wanted an ice cream cake with his new favorite Snickers ice cream, but when we saw that they were $40-50 at Baskin Robbins, he decided that he wanted me to make a chocolate cake and I bought Snickers ice cream to go with it (which was still uber expensive as far as ice cream goes).
He got the Harry Potter Lego Hogwarts castle from us, along with a cool magazine full of Harry Potter photos and articles. Meme got him a wand that lights up when you cast a spell (shake it). He also got the Deathly Hallows for Wii game from a friend, and a Hot Wheels racetrack thing with cars, and also lots of money from friends and family, which he has already spent some of getting Lego Pirates Wii game, and some "Cars" mighty beans. B joked the other day that Mighty Beans are for buying, since he'd never seen the kids actually playing with them, but I told him that they actually do play with them sometimes.

The day after the party, the boys all went to the farm for a week to hang out with Grandma Susan. They had lots of fun and Bubba got to go help do morning chores on a neighbor's farm so that he could work on his farm mechanics merit badge. They also got to ride a one of a kind mechanical bull. It is literally the only one in the world of it's kind. It comes out of a gate with you on it and then when you fall off, it chases after you. Fun stuff.

Football practices started Mon. This is JP's first year of tackle. I was a little nervous about it because of his arthritis, but also because the helmet and pads are heavy. They don't start practicing with pads until tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. Bubba came home crying the first week his first year because of the heat, and headaches from the helmet. JP had a check-up today and looks good, but the doctor has started him on some quad exercises because his bad leg is still a little "wimpy" as he put it. Plus, he'll be taking an anti-inflammatory daily to help with football. But he didn't have to do blood work, so he was stoked about that.

Well here's my traditional birthday ode-sweet boy, tenderhearted, helpful, loving big brother, salmon, lasagna, reading, Harry Potter everything!, Wii, football, baseball, hard worker, smart, Legos, swimming, bowling, corn nuts, Doritos, Mt. Dew, Spree, pastries, fluffy, buttery soft, mama's lovey boy!

Typical summer day around here. Games strewn about on the floor, Wii on in the living room. Oh yeah, and a little boy with no pants on.

Baseball finally ended. We made it all the way to the final game of the District tournament. We were ahead 9-0 for almost the whole game and then had a bad inning and lost 10-9, so we won't be going to the State championships this Sat. We were bummed, but it's nice to have more than a two week break before football starts on Aug. 7th. Next week we'll go to another of our minor league team's games then Grandma Randall will be visiting. The week before football they'll all be off to the farm to visit Grandma Susan. Yes, all 4 of them!! And my mom and I will take our annual mother-daughter trip. Not sure where we're going yet, most likely a spa on the west coast somewhere for a couple of days. I need a beach, even if it's not to go swimming.

Baseball Summer

The past two weeks have been insane with baseball tournaments. This past weekend Bubba had 6 games-1 Thurs. night, 3 Fri. and 2 Sat. We lost Thurs. night because the boys just didn't play. They got a reaming for that and actually showed up to play Friday and won all 3 games (one of which was against the team we lost to the night before and we creamed them!). Sat. they won their first game by one after going into two extra innings. The second game started literally 10 min. later after a short drink, shove food in your mouth, and pee break. So they were a little wiped out because it was so hot and they'd already been playing for a couple of hours, but they did great and only lost by one. Bubba got a triple on his first at bat in that game and he's our leadoff hitter so that was a great way to start.

This week's schedule-
Mon.-actually enjoy a summer day free of anything related to baseball. Shooting in the morning, BBQ at friend's house with fireworks later and then sit across from our Minor League's field to watch the big fireworks.
Tues.-practice for Bubba 5:30-7:30, the rest of us are going to a minor league team game that starts at 7:15 and then dad and Bubba will come over after. We got free ticket vouchers from the summer library reading program and they can only be used certain days so we're picking Tues. as our first one and the 2nd at the end of the month.
Wed.-JP is signed up to do a baseball camp with the minor league team at their stadium 8am-12pm, Peanut swimming lesson 6-6:30pm, first District tournament game for Bubba 6:30pm, so Peanut, Coconut and I will be late to that.
Thurs.-JP camp from 8am-1pm, Bubba game 6:30pm, JP and mom's date to a minor league game at 7:15 (that we'll be late to since we'll watch Bubba's whole game first). So with JP's camp he gets lunch with the team both days, a t-shirt, instruction from the team, 2 tickets to Thursday's game (hence the reason we're going on a date), and an autograph session with the players. Bubba went to a game with dad and his team last Mon. night because it was our little league's night and they got to go on the field for the National Anthem. He caught 2 foul balls and discovered that if you wait until everyone is gone and the players have all showered, when they come back out, they'll sign them. He got every player to sign them and gave one to JP the next morning. Such a sweet boy. But what he also discovered is that they give away their broken/cracked bats from that night's game. He got one, but had to give it to another kid on his team, so I think JP and I will stay and try to get one this week.
Fri.-Bubba 6:30 game and Peanut swimming lesson at 6:30.
Sat.-1 pm game and possibly more if we keep winning. If we win District we'll go to state up north at the end of the month.