July

Where did it go? If anyone finds it, please return it to me.

Conversations with my 11 year old

Sometimes he is just too smart for his own good. This was from a phone conversation the two of us had on Friday.

Me: Kevin, don't forget to do some math today.

Kevin: I won't

Me: Really?

Kevin: yeah

Me: did you do any math yesterday?

Kevin: Yes

Me: When?

Kevin: yesterday

Me: Where is it?

Kevin: Well, I did it all in my head.





Me: Kevin, you should go up & down the stairs 10 times every day

Kevin: Why?

Me: Because I said so

Kevin: No

Me: What?

Kevin: No

Me: Why?

Kevin: Welll....

Me: Give me one good reason you can't do that.

Kevin: Cuz I don't want to.

Me: That's not a reason

Kevin: Well, you said "cuz I said so" and that's not a reason either.





Me: Well, you need to get some kind of excercise every day

Kevin: I do

Me : When?

Kevin: When I walk to the computer.

Me: That doesn't count, it's like 10 steps

Kevin: When I go to the kitchen

Me: That doesn't count. Walking from one room to another isn't exercise

Kevin: Well, sometimes I run from the kitchen to the bathroom.

Me: That doesn't count

Kevin: What? I'm running!

And They're Off!

Monkeyseemonkeydo wins the race!! And we all stand up and cheer.

Yesterday, I had a girls lunch date. We went to Canterbury Downs for the horse races. That is so much fun. We reserved a table and were spoiled. We had someone wait on us for lunch and we also had a betting runner. She came right to the table, took our wagers, and paid us out on our wins. We had seats right on the finish line.

I had total beginners luck. I only bet $2 per race. Some races I put down 1 wager and some I put down 2 wagers. I won on every race except the 7th, but 7 races out of 8 is pretty dang good. I also took a shot at putting a wager on a Triple Play. You have to name the winners of 3 races in a row. The first one I did, I lost my $2. The second one, I won $100. I won a total of $140 for the day. Pretty good Beginner's Luck, I must say.

When we walked in we bought Jack or Joe or whoever he is tips on betting the winner. He predicts who is going to win and give tips on the horses in each race. I'm glad I only followed his advice on 2 of the races, as he only picked 2 winners out of 8. Good thing I listened to my grandmother's advice and picked the ones with the names I liked. Turns out she has the best advice. Maybe they should sell her picks instead.

We ventured outside for the final race, so we could be closer to the action.

I've seen jockeys on TV and they are little there, but up close and personal, they are tiny with big heads. One of them had a Superman jockey outfit on. I don't think he won any races though.

We had a really good time. We decided we'd definitely have to make that another girls day out venture. Hopefully, my Beginner's Luck will continue. I'll continue to follow Grandma's advice as it worked for me yesterday. Next time I'll wager $5 on some of the races now that I know how it all works.

Photos, Photos, Photos

This last week has been a busy week of taking photographs. It has been a lot of fun though.

Tuesday, I photographed a couple of teenagers. They were pretty mellow and cooperative, so that was good. I got some really good portraits of them.

Thursday, I photographed a 4 month old baby. She wasn't as cooperative as the teenagers, and she liked to really wiggle around. We had to take a couple of breaks with her so she could eat and get used to all the props. She didn't like laying on her tummy much, mostly her back. She was pretty interested in her hands, so they kept getting in the way. I did end up with quite a lot of good photos of her. She is a little cutie and she gave me some nice expressions.

After the photo shoot on Thursday, we grilled out steaks and had a nice dinner with the baby's parents. It was pretty yummy. I love a good steak any day of the week.

Friday night, I did a photo shoot for a charity event. It was the Eagan Relay For Life Walk Benefit for Cancer. It was a pretty moving event. I was amazed by all the people there. They had luminaries around the track that represented a person who had either survived or passed away from cancer. That was pretty incredible. They had names on them and were decorated really nice by the families and friends. I was at the event from 5 pm to a little after 10 pm. I was beat when I got home.

Today, I went to the Kickball Tournament in St. Paul and took some photographs of that event as well.

Tomorrow I am headed off to the Canterbury Downs for the horse races with my girlfriends that I went to Mexico with. That should be a pretty good time. I'm of course taking my camera with me, but not sure what kind of seats I'll have to get close up photos. I'm not going to worry too much about it, as this is just for fun and hanging out with the girls.

I have 2 possibly 3 photo shoots next week and them I'm done with photos for my portfolio. I'll have a pretty nice portfolio built to get started out. I really do enjoy photography, so it'll be fun to have it as a second job now. It'll help fund my girls trips.

Guy's weekend

This past weekend was one for the guys. Well, two of the guys anyway. Ken & Kevin went to a friend's cabin in Wisconsin that is on a lake. Sam & I stayed home. I had WAY too many things I wanted to do that I couldn't get done by camping in Wisconsin.

Kevin asked me before he left what he'd do with out me there. "Well, you'll have to adopt a mom for the weekend, there will be plenty of other moms there to adopt for a day or two." He was so sweet and told me he didn't need to adopt another mom to replace me. DANG IT ANYWAY!! Just kidding...I wouldn't trade him in either...well most times I wouldn't trade him in.

He had a great time hanging out with the guys at the cabin and doing some good male bonding with his dad. It was good for them to have a weekend alone together with out mom hanging around constantly. It's also good for the brothers to separate from each other every now & then too.

One the way home from the camping trip he told his dad, "You know, I didn't even really miss Mom & Sam. Is that bad?"

I'm glad to hear that he didn't miss us. It's great that he was able to have such a good time and not think of us and what he's missing out at home.

What did he miss out at home? Cleaning! And lots of it! Shopping! And lots of it! Sam & I shopped like champions. We did some grocery shopping and some new camera equipment shopping for mom. Sam was a bit disappointed that he did not get a new camera. It's not fair that he's the only one who doesn't have one. I told him he could share my purse size one with me, but he has to share it. He was fine with that.

We also did a bit of grocery shopping. The store we went to had a local radio station celebrity there and she was quite funny. She was much different looking than I thought too. Radio personality always is that way though.

Sam & I cleaned house. Wow, did I get lots done with out the other two in my way. In fact they wondered if they came home to the right house or not when they walked in. Thanks guys...

Ken & Kevin had a good time and didn't get nagged at one single time, Sam & I got lots done with out those two in our hair. And it was REALLY quiet too. Hmmmm.... We might have to send those two on camping trips more often.

He's a Healthy Boy!

Thursday evening, Kevin had his annual physical. He's a healthy boy.

He is in the 60th percentile for both height and weight, so he's a square.

The doctor talked to him about healthy eating and not eating his parents out of our life savings. He also talked to him about hygiene. Good thing too. That kind of advice is so much better coming from a doctor than parents. What do we know? We are the stupid ones according kids his age. He seemed to be listening, so we'll see if it sunk in or went in one ear and out the other.

We also talked to the doctor about his growing pains in his heel and his calf muscles. The doctor poked around his feet, his ankles, his calf muscles, and his knees. Did the old "does this hurt? does this hurt?" routine. Some yes' and some no's, the doctor determined that he has Sever's Disease. Which really isn't a disease at all. It is an inflammation of the tendons that connect to the heel bones and is associated with growing. It can happen in the knees too, and that is called osgood schlatters disease, which is also not a disease. The doctor told us what kind of shoe supports to buy, and what kinds of things to do to help relieve the pain.

Kevin also received two shots. I made sure they were Thimerosal free and they were, so we went ahead with it. He got a tetanus shot in his right arm and a meningitis shot in the left arm. Double whammy. They are both long lasting shots and they both make your arms sore for a while. I've been having him do arm circles to keep them active, so they don't stiffen up and be sore and stiff.

Kevin was happy to hear that his little brother would get a physical too.

Where Are You Ice Cream Man?

It's official. I scared away the ice cream man. He has not shown up since I gave him his orders to show up every Tuesday and Friday at 7 pm. He has no idea on the money he's missing out in our neighborhood. Not to mention the disappointed kids that keep wanting and wishing him to come.

I saw in the local newspaper that a mom and daughter started their own ice-cream truck business. They own a pink truck. Sam would love that truck. I suppose I should call them and put our neighborhood on their schedule.

Sam wants to own his own ice-cream truck when he grows up. I think he'd eat all his profits.

Week in Review

Another blogger slacking week. I hate it when I get behind on these.

Monday- have no idea at this point what happened on Monday. Oh, yes, I do...I took Kevin to Kumon. He took two tests and passed the level that he started on, so he got to move up a level. Yay! Way to go! Good job Kevin. Math is getting easier for him, but he still needs lots of practice. Kumon has him doing a math packet every day. Repetition is key they say. Whatever works!

Tuesday - I did a practice photo shoot in my new in home studio. My friend from work brought his niece and his 3 kids over. They were a fun group of kids. I did individual photographs and group photographs. I started with the youngest and worked my way up to the oldest. That strategy worked pretty well. While I was photographing one kid, I had the parents getting the next one ready. It went really smooth. The started to get pretty silly and bored with it at the end, but all in all, they did great.

Wednesday and Thursday- I worked on editing photos

Friday - I had Friday off from work. Sam didn't have daycare, and Kevin didn't have summer school. I picked up an unmotorized Go-Cart that some guy's kids made in boyscouts. They no longer had use for it, so he posted it on Freecycle & I snatched it up. I brought it home (it was a lot larger than I had thought) and Sam had some fun in it for a while. Our driveway doesn't slope enough to get it going real fast, so his interest didn't last long. It needs a couple of new nails in it. It needs sanded and a new paint job. I think I can handle that.

Sam & I went to Goodwill on Friday as well. Sam bought a couple of new shirts. He picked them out all by himself. One is just a plain white t-shirt and the other is a button down, short sleeve blue shirt, with white Hawaiian flower print on it. It's actually quite a nice shirt and looks pretty good on him.

Friday afternoon, I ended up with a stomach ache, so I ended up eating Tums and taking a nap. After the Goodwill trip, I wasn't productive at all.

Friday evening Ken & Kevin went over & convinced the neighbor guy to light off some of the fireworks that he'd bought over in Wisconsin. Ken had some bottle rockets and others that he ran over to light off as well. No sooner had the neighbor guy lit off a firework, a cop showed up. Told us the fireworks we had were illegal in MN, and he confiscated them. Then he told us that if he came back we could be fined $1000 and sent to jail for 90 days. Buzzkiller. Apparently, he doesn't know that we have a fire fighter and a doctor on the block. That should be good right? Ok, illegal is illegal....fine...stupid people who light them off when they're drunk and hurt other people always ruin it for the ones who are safe. Things must have been slow at the police department. We figured they'd gone out to all the neighborhoods as there were about 5 pockets of fireworks being shot in the air and suddenly all activity ceased.

Saturday - We packed up the van and headed to Ken's sister's house about an hour away. She lives on a lake, so she had a family beach party. Ken got to waterski. He only waterskis about once a year, so he stayed up as long as he could. He was pretty sore today too. He was done when he did a face plant in the water. It looked like it hurt and I did not get a photo of his ever so gracious face plant, but I did get some really good ones of him on the water. (I'll post later) He wasn't hurt, thank Goodness, but he was done skiing. His siblings all took their turns waterskiing too. They are all pretty good at it. They've been doing it since they were kids. I have only ever gotten up on waterskis once in my life. That once was good enough. Water is not soft when you hit it at 40mph.

After all the water activity his sister had dinner done for us. She made a BBQ beef brisket. It was so delicious. She made some without BBQ for the kids and Kevin sure ate up a bunch of that.

We got home from Ken's sister's house around 8:30 pm, so we headed over to the neighbors. Kevin & Ken wanted to know if he was going to light off the rest of the fireworks. No go there, the neighbor's wife said absolutely not. The neighbor told us if we wanted to light them off we could, but he wasn't going to. I figured it was a bad idea too. We certainly didn't need anyone getting arrested on the 4th of July over fireworks of all things.

Kevin & I made some popcorn and headed over to a field nearby to watch fireworks so that we wouldn't have to fight the big crowd at the City Park. We got to see about 4 different firework shows from around the area. That was pretty neat. When it was over we were home in 5 minutes. No crowds at all.

We got home and Ken was in the neighbor's driveway with a bunch of other people. They had lit off the legal fireworks. No one wanted to chance the cops coming by again after Friday night.

We finished the night hanging out with the neighbors until it was really late.

Today we laid around. I went outside for a while to get some sunshine and worked on sanding the rust off of an old tricycle I bought at a garage sale for $2 I still have some work to do on it, and then I have to re-paint it. Apparently I think I don't have enough projects. Oh well, it's a fun project and gets me outside with something to do.

This evening I made hamburgers on the grill. Oh they were yummy.

This coming up week, I have a wedding to attend on Wed. We have a wedding on Friday, and then are going to a friend's cabin for Saturday & Sunday. So it will prove to be another busy week. I still have photo editing to do and work on the tricycle now that I've got that project started.

There are Wild Animals in my back yard.

No wait, that's just the children! But they sound like wild animals! One nice thing about summer is that the kids can spend so much time outdoors. Sam, who normally likes to be a homebody, has been outside every day. Yesterday he was outside for 3 hours. We are so glad he's coming out of his shell and going out and playing with some of the neighborhood kids.

Ken is out in the backyard setting up the trampoline. He wasn't sure the kids were going to use it this year, but they have been begging him to get it set up.

Even the cat is outside enjoying a great day. She goes out on her leash and we tie her to a post, just like a dog. She sits in the yard and just watches the birds go by and enjoys the sunshine. The other 2 cats are too scared to go outside, so they just sit by the screen door and act like they want to go out. We did try to train them how to be on the leash like our other cat, but all they did was freak out and try to break away to get back in the house. Stupid cats.