Angel dancing

Rachel's dance recital was last night. She did such a good job! I was about in tears watching her in her pieces....she's so beautiful! I can't believe that such grace came from me. I was always the athletic, tom-boy kinda kid growing up, but Rachel is so much the opposite of that. She's strong, yet graceful. Sorry...I know it can be a pain to listen to a mother gush about their kid, but I can't help it. I'm just so blessed to have such amazing kids!

A clean house!

It's so hard to believe...but my house is actually really clean right now! The reason? My parents are arriving for a visit today, of course! Whenever we do a big clean the kids always ask, "are Grandma and Grandpa Ellis coming?" Gee...are we that transparent?

Rachel's dance recital is tonight. She's in 6 dances this year! I love to watch her dance, so I'll be in a great mood tonight!

I'm so blonde!

Sometimes I wonder how I survive in this world. We switched cars w/ a friend of ours, because one of their cars is in the shop, the husband is out of town all week, and their remaining car is stick shift, which the wife doesn't drive (are you following me?....) So we let her borrow my car and we're driving theirs. I haven't driven stick shift in about 15 years, but I thought I would remember. So, the other night I drove it just to the local gas station in town as a "test drive". Patrick came along w/ me. Well, I stalled the car twice! I also had some trouble shifting from 1st to 2nd. Patrick was laughing his head off at me. Then I drove the car yesterday to pick up Rachel from dance. I stalled the car twice again! Then, I figured out my problem....what I thought was 1st gear was really 3rd gear!! So, I was starting off in 3rd gear and shifting from 3rd to 2nd when I thought I was going from 1st to 2nd. Ugh!! Now that I've got it figured out, I've had no problems at all.

Then, this morning Dora the Explorer was on the TV while I was working on the computer. Dora says, "is this a 3 toed sloth footprint?" and there's a picture of some animal footprint on the screen. I looked at the screen and thought, "how in the world am I supposed to know if that's a 3 toed sloth footprint...I don't even know what a 3 toed sloth looks like". Well...duh...the footprint had 4 toes...

I'm far too blonde some days.

Storm Damage

I know this is my 3rd post today....but I just had to post a picture of the damage to our big tree in the backyard from the storm that blew through here a little bit ago. I loved this tree....Thornton did not. Guess he wins! Thankfully, the tree did not land in our pool or hit the fence at all when it fell. As our neighbor said, we must be living right!

Momma Bear

I wonder if I'll ever get over the feeling of being a Momma Bear wanting to lash out at people who upset my children. Alison just had a friend over and they weren't getting along very well. I came downstairs to do some work on the computer and Ali came down crying. She said that her friend had told her she had ugly teeth and was making fun of them. Alison does have a huge space between her front teeth, but they are her only adult teeth so far, so there's still time for it to close (or braces, of course). I'm telling you...it took all I had in me not to run upstairs and ream this little girl for making my baby cry. But, I contained myself. I did suggest she go home, however...it just wasn't working out today for a play date. And the Momma Bear needed to cuddle her cub.

Cacti everywhere

I'm in charge of VBS at our church this summer. The theme is "Fiesta", so essentially a Mexican type theme. Thornton really gets into the decorating, which is great, since I'm not terribly creative (except w/ scents....) He's been making these awesome cacti out of shredded paper and pantyhose. Seriously. They look so realistic...w/ no pricklies!

I woke up this morning w/ Ozzie, our cat, sleeping in his usual spot right by my head. I'm always so careful to slip out of bed w/out disturbing him. Then it hit me...I treat my cat nicer than I do my husband! Doesn't bother me one bit if I wake him in the morning. So...should I start treating Thornton nicer or should I treat the cat worse? A conundrum, no doubt.

Heat wave

It's been in the mid-90's for the past few days here. Patrick had baseball games on Friday and Saturday in the heat of the day. They were all over the news here saying not to put your pets outside, because it's too hot. Sure...I left my dog inside, but I had my kid playing in the sweltering heat. Something's wrong there! On Saturday, Patrick hit a 3 run homerun! He isn't a homerun hitter, so it surprised everyone. I don't know when I've seen that kid smile so big! They ended up losing their 2nd game on Saturday, so the team is done for the season. Of course, Junior High baseball starts up August 7, so there's no big break in the baseball schedule here. And, Patrick is helping w/ a baseball camp this week, so he's never far from the sport. I have baseballs everywhere. I opened one of my cupboards the other day and out fell a baseball. I give up!

9th inning, 2 outs, down by 1

Patrick's baseball team is playing in the State tournament right now. Last night his team played in a game that started at 8 p.m., but then was delayed by rain and lightning. At 10:45, Patrick's team was down by 1 run. It was the 9th inning and there were 2 outs. We got a runner on 1st when he barely beat out an infield hit. The next batter, when he was in the on deck box, said, "we're not going to lose this." (believe me...at that point I was thinking something along the lines of "yeah, right".) This kid gets to the plate and w/ a 2-1 count, hits a screamer down the right field line. The kid on first scores easily to tie the game, and then the kid that hit the ball scored on an overthrow home. It was amazing!! So, we (I say "we" as if I was actually playing...LOL!) just had to hold the other team in the bottom of the inning and they did! Good thing, too....because the team that lost had to play again this morning at 8:00. Patrick's team plays at noon.

Rain, Rainbows and Pumpkins

We've gotten quite a bit of rain over the past two days (enough to cancel Patrick's baseball game today, at least!). Why is it that our lawn doesn't seem to be greening up at all, but the weeds have gone nuts? Seriously, we grow weeds like nobody's business. Sad, but true.

On my way home from church tonight, I saw a rainbow in the sky. When I turned into our subdivision, I started noticing lots of people standing outside on their driveways or their front stairs w/ their kids watching the rainbow. It was so heartwarming!

A friend stopped by to pick up her son, who had spent some time over at our house. She asked me if we were growing pumpkins by our front door. I told her we weren't and thought she was crazy. Then I looked....we ARE growing pumpkins by our front door!! Last Halloween's pumpkin had disintigrated into mush and must've run into the dirt by our front door (it's mixed in w/ a low growing evergreen of some sort). Well...it grew! And it's now growing HUGE! We decided, as strange as it is, we're going to continue growing our pumpkin by the front door and see what happens. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen...and it's *so* the kind of thing that would happen to us.

So, it seems, we can grow pumpkins and weeds. We're so proud!

Vacation post

We got back from our vacation to North Carolina and Tennessee on Friday. It was wonderful!! We spent the first part of the week (Saturday - Tuesday) in Montreat, NC at a Presbyterians for Renewal conference. I know...sounds boring...but it was anything but! First of all, we stay here:

I'm sure you can see how beautiful it is! From our room on the 3rd floor, you can lie in bed and look out at the mountains. The kids have camp during the day and we go to hear different speakers. It was a wonderful time of spiritual growth.

Here are some pictures of the girls playing in the creek that runs through the area:
Patrick was so much more independent this year, plus he had a friend w/ him from church w/ him (a girl - friend....not a girlfriend), so we didn't see him much at all!

After leaving Montreat, we drove to Tennessee and stayed in a house my in-laws had rented just outside the entrance to the Smoky Mountain National Park. The house was on a hill overlooking the mountains. The kids picked blackberries right outside our door. We spent 2 days in the park. The kids love playing in the creek/river, so they did that for several hours one day. Rachel is way too big of a daredevil! There was one time that we caught her attempting to cross an area of the river that would've swept her right away. Yikes!! Here are pics from "rock hopping":


We spent the next afternoon tubing on the river. We had a blast!! Alison was pretty nervous at the beginning of it, because she was afraid of flipping out of her tube, but once she went over the first few rapids (w/ Thornton hooked to her tube), she was hooked and loved it. We took a ton of pictures w/ a disposable waterproof camera, but I haven't had them developed yet. After 2 runs down the river, the girls were tired and cold (the water was freezing), so Thornton stayed w/ them while Patrick and I did another run (approximately 1/2 hour per run). Somehow, I slipped off my tube on some rapids and my tube went floating downstream. I was stuck on the slippery rocks w/ no tube. It really was kind of scary. I finally got over to the shore, and Patrick caught my tube. Thankfully the rest of the run went well. At the end of the run there's a rock that overhangs the river, about 10-15 feet up. There's a big drop off, so the water is really deep there. I was amazed, but all 3 of the kids jumped! I was so proud of them. Hopefully the pictures of that turned out.

Friday, we all drove home. My in law's were with us, so there were 7 of us in the van for 10 hours. But, really, it went quite well. Minimal whining (even by me!), so that's great!

Now we're back to summer at home. Patrick's baseball team starts play in the State Tournament tomorrow. If they win, they'll move on to play in Minnesota. Our cat, Ozzie, is so in love w/ Patrick. Here's a picture of them sleeping together when we got home:


Today I had the kids all working on different chores around the house. Alison does not really like to clean ( not that any of them *like* to clean, but she's quite resistant). Finally she said, "Mommy, I'm just not a working girl". HA!....I should hope not! Needless to say, she finally, after much prodding, finished cleaning the bathroom.