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.

Mi Vida Loca

Things are still crazy in my world here since returning from my trip. I'm thinking I almost need another vacation. Yep, four days was not nearly long enough. I'm thinking I should have stayed at least a month or two. Ok, that might be a stretch.

I did not clean my house before I left for vacation, because really, I was leaving the cavemen at home. What would be the point? I'm so glad I didn't waste my time. My house was more of a disaster than when I left. This weekend I spent an entire day cleaning. It feels so good to have a really clean home.

This weekend the oldest cave child was grounded from pretty much everything he knows as a life and was busy listening to me nag at him about homework. He somehow ended up being behind on homework from not turning assignments in, not doing homework while I was gone, and just plain old not doing homework at all. I need to send that kid to homework military. So he got the parental speech of how important homework is, and how next year in Jr. High if he doesn't do his homework, there is no free pass. I piled up any and all homework I could find for him. I even made some up. I'm so mean.

On Monday his teacher foiled my plans to forever keep him busy with homework by telling him he doesn't need to turn in this one and that one. Dang it! I should have called her and told her my evil plan. Turns out the child just likes to procrastinate (gee, I have NO idea where he ever got that from....Grandma Turney perhaps...yeah, I'll blame her...Hee hee...) Of all the good quality traits I could have passed onto my children, procrastination isn't one I was hoping for.

Turns out I had homework too upon returning from vacation. I had lots of forms to fill out for school and lots of checks to write. Lunch money, field trip forms and money, camp money...yadda, yadda, yadda... With in all the forms, not only did I sign the oldest cave child up for summer school, but I signed him up for the summer homework program. Oh, I am evil!

My youngest cave child has been obsessed with time lately. All of our clocks have to match and he is constantly checking the time. He's been able to tell time for a while, but he is obsessed with time, like a little Mayan ruler. Of course we had to "spring forward" this weekend, so he made sure we were on the ball with that. And we have all been instructed not to mess with the clocks. It was pretty upsetting to him that I have my bedroom clock set 25 minutes fast. He really didn't like that. I had to explain my reasoning for that. Not that it helps me any, but the logic is still there. Set your clock fast and you will never be late. Ha!

This weekend we also visited the library. This is now a ritual. We all have library cards and the kids are old enough to understand how the library works with out driving me completely crazy. Our library here isn't like the library of the old days. Sure they still have librarians, but I'm not exactly sure why. They won't help you find a book, every thing is computerized, you have to look it up and find it yourself. They have self check out. You scan your card on the scanner, then you scan your books, print out a receipt, and off you go.

I am still working with my vacation pictures. I do have all of them from all the camera's (we had a total of 6 cameras between us). I still have a few more to fix the brightness and contrast on, then I just have to organize them into photo albums in Picasa, and post them. This weekend...I promise. 1000 pictures is really a lot to go through, although, I have it down to about 600 now. Maybe less, I'm not sure, but it is a ton of pictures.

The last two days at work, I have been sitting in on software training classes. They've been very good classes, although they have kept me from contact with the outside world.

Hopefully this weekend I will have everything caught up and life will return to normal, whatever normal is that is, but I will take normal over crazy.

One kid down

Today we dropped our oldest son off at his grandparent's house, so that he can catch the bus to camp tomorrow morning. He was excited and sad at the same time. Sad that he was going to miss everyone and everything, but the minute he steps on that big coach bus, he'll forget all about us and his pets.

This year he has instructions:

Bring home more dirty clothes than clean ones. Since I packed a small suitcase with limited amount of clothes to change into, that should be an easy thing to do. We shall see. I'm guessing he'll still bring home more clean clothes than dirty. First thing he'll do when he gets home is take a thirty minute shower. I'm setting a timer too.

Take pictures! The first year he went to camp he blasted through 2 disposable camera's in one evening. The second year, I sent three camera's with him. He didn't take one picture. Not one. This year, I'm returning him with the three camera's from last year. I told him to pass one off to a buddy to help out. He said "I'd rather take your digital camera."....Yeah, I'm sure he would, but that's not going to happen unless I get two new digital camera's. He's too young for his very own digital camera yet. I'm sure it would be lost with in days of him getting one.

Don't spend all your camp store money on candy. He's known as the Twizzler kid at camp. I sent him enough money for a weeks worth of Twizzlers and some fun stuff for him.

Lastly...Have FUN! This one he'll have an easy time doing. We told him to be a bit more adventurous. Since he now knows how to swim and he is experienced camper....

While he is away, we are going to paint the kids bedroom, enjoy the peace and quiet, and watch whatever we want on TV.

The little caveman will enjoy not being bothered by his big brother for one whole week.

A Bad Word

Last evening after we got home, my son Sam said "Mom, S-H-I-T, shit! Ha ha, that's funny."

I tried to find out where he learned that from. He told his father he learned it from me, but then he told me he didn't remember. I think he was trying to protect his innocent mother. I probably did say it, but I sure didn't teach him how to SPELL it!

I had to explain to him that, that was not a nice word to say and kids should never use it. Of course he wanted more explanation than that. I think by the time I wasted 10 minutes of explaining he finally got the point. Either that or he got bored and pretended that I made sense.

At least it is much better than the first time my oldest son Kevin said a swear word. I will never, ever in my life forget that moment. The family was headed out of town. We were all packed up and ready to go. We were pulling out of the driveway and my husband discovered he had forgotten something. So out of the van he goes, leaving just me and and my two young sons (aged 4 and 3 at the time) in the van with nothing but silence. So we sat there, until a small little voice came from the back seat saying "Mom, is f#cking son of a b!tch a bad word?"

After I fell over nearly hitting my head on the dash board and put my heart back in my chest from my little 4 year old's words. I asked him where he heard such dastardly words. He replied "daddy said that this morning". I told Kevin to never, ever, ever ever, ever use those words again. They were bad, very very bad indeed.

When my husband returned to the van, he was smiling. "Everyone ready to go?" he asked.

Boy did he have some explaining to do!!