Misc

I cleaned out my phone :)

Here's a cutie sleeping.

Here's a cutie trying to eat with chopsticks for the first time.

Bag packed full with stuff for the drive in (shout out to Mom and Aunt Debbie for teaching us how to roll).

Easter cupcakes I made for the crew that had to work Easter :)

Here's a cutie eating a giant chocolate bunny.

 Here's a cutie doing homework.

 Here's a cute who dug out his football pads and a jersey handed down from his 2nd cousins and put it all on one day because he is just flat out obsessed with football.

Here are some rocks put in my purse by a cutie.

Cutie feet in the car on a warm summer day.

Cutie cousin booties at a track meet.

Here are several pics of a cutie playing in trains.

A cutie and his dad eating yogurt. 

Here's a cutie in the car on the way to school to turn in his awesome ramp that he and his daddy built. It was for a school project.  Parents were allowed to help with the project, so I handed it over to Jon. He let Jacob use the saw to cut the pipes-gasp I know, but he supervised of course-and showed Jacob how to glue them together.  I am sure that no teacher has ever seen a ramp quite like this one.  It was awesome though.  I think Jacob felt a little weird about carrying it in that morning, but was extremely pumped up when he won every race and beat the whole 2nd grade.

Here are our 2013 Sonic Grads with their Gigi's cupcakes and gift cards :)  It's funny, there are always some who don't show up for it, which demonstrates the character of the ones who do show up.  And it works out because they are the ones who we really want to honor anyway. 

Jon's Mom doesn't throw anything away.  I mean, she isn't a hoarder in the sense that her house is filled with trash from last year's Thanksgiving dinner, don't get the wrong idea.  But she has a lot of STUFF.  We were over there one day, sitting outside talking, and Jon noticed a hole in one of her windows.  Jon's dad has a million golfballs because apparently he was constantly taking the grandkids out to play when they were little.  The grandkids still play with these balls in one form or another in the back yard.  Anyway, it appeared that one of these golfballs was left in the yard, and when the grass was cut, the ball got caught in the blade and hit up into the window.  So we needed something to cover it temporarily until we could get it fixed.  Jon's mom told him to look in the shed, there should be something in there.  Of course there was.  An old piece of paneling that Jon used as a child to draw a racetrack on for his Matchbox cars-at least 40 years old. 

Oh, and I think he's a cutie too ;)

Abby's Junior Prom

Abby's prom was back in April.  She went with a good friend, Austin.

Sweet :)

Grizzlies games & Nazi Ice Cream OR Someone Organize My Organization

Our bosses always get season tickets for Grizzlies' games (not sure if they buy them or are given them since Sonic is a sponser??).  They use them for themselves sometimes, but sometimes they offer them out to managers.  This season it seemed like they offered them out more often than in the past (not sure why??), and that really worked out for us since it just so happened to be an awesome season, and Jacob is old enough to want to go to a game.  Jon scored 4 tickets a couple times, so Abby & a date came to one with them, and Abby and another date (not really-it was really one of Jacob's friends who thinks she's "hot") came to another one. 

 How close the seats are.

 

 Jacob's friend Julian just happened to sit between Jacob and Abby...

 He might be a little happy about the seating arrangement...

Jon and Jacob got to go to the last playoff game of the season.  We only got 2 tickets this time, so it was a father/son bonding time :)

Why yes that is a $3 Michael's t-shirt that I ironed on a printed-out-from-my-computer-iron-on-image.  He had no idea. 

So, I may have a problem. It's true.  I like to organize.  And I have a bad memory.  Put these 2 things together and you have the need to write EVERYTHING down.  IN DIFFERENT LOCATIONS because writing them all down on one spot causes you to only see one reminder and gloss over the others.  

First we have this little baby:  it only has room for a week's worth of reminders.  I use it to write down places I have to be on each day.  Notice it is on the fridge, a place I visit often, so I will be more likely to see it.

Here we have what used to be the "school bulletin board."  That stopped working out because it is in an area where I never look during the period of time when thinking about school.  Rather, when I am near  this one, I am at the computer.  So this has become the bulletin board to hold business related things, like important receipts, coupons, gift cards, and fantasy football information. 

This one is now the school/summer bulletin board.  It is on the pantry door, near the kitchen table-which is where Jacob does homework.  During the school year, I keep the academic calendar and other important announcements here.  And of course his homework/extra practice star sheet.  During the summer, I have June and July calendars with Jacob's, Jon's, and my summer events in different colors.  Also, I have flyers for fun things to do.  And still the homework/extra practice star sheet because I am making the boy read for 30 minutes each day, AND do a worksheet printed off from websites to keep his brain active.  They really do lose it all during the summer.  Also, it serves as a condition for XBox playtime: he can't turn on the XBox unless he does the work first.  

Finally, this is the birthday/doctor appointment calendar.  As you can see, I tried putting every event on here, but like I said, I would see one thing, but not see the others.  So now I have trained my brain to look only for the blue spots, which are bdays and appointments.   This one is on the fridge, facing the stove, so that when I cook, I will see it. Then I can go and address a bday card or add an appointment time to the weekly calendar while something is burning cooking. 

Yes, I need help. 

Here we have our annual trip to Joe's Crab Shack.  Why only once a year you ask? Well, the food isn't all that outstanding and it isn't close to me at all.  But about 3 years ago I took Jacob, Morgan, Abby & friend here on the first day of summer break, and somehow we have repeated it 2 more times.  It's nice because the kids have something to do.  I actually have our own beach shovel/bucket set that I keep in the garage especially for this event.

Joe's actually offers vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup on top for $1.  Which used to be good enough.  Now they want Baskin Robbins.  The funny thing about Morgan is that being a girl, she is usually the clean and neat one.  Apparently that goes out the window while eating ice cream.  Jacob, on the other hand was completely clean.  

For some reason I thought she looked like Hitler.  But Hitler didn't have a goatee....so I'm not sure what I was thinking...

Catch Up

Playing catch up with this one, so it is a big mix up of pics.

I can't remember if I ever included this in a post, and I am too lazy to look back...

Jacob always has a hard time his first week or so of school.  When he started Kindergarten, I gave him a pick of us to keep with him so he could look at it when he was sad.  Thus a tradition was started.  He specifically asks for it now.  This year I taped it to the inside of his agenda book :)

 As we all know, Jacob is obsessed with Legos & Star Wars.  Correction:  he WAS obsessed with Legos and Star Wars.  Sniff sniff, he has passed through yet another phase in his childhood.  Deep sadness for me.  

This was his Lego Bible.  Seriously.  He referred to this book whenever he was building free hand, when he was making a birthday/Christmas list, or just wanted to stare at it.  He would memorize facts (it has pertinent trivia such as when the first Millennium Falcon Lego set was released), and he would sit next to us and point out things he liked.  It was loved (notice my attempts at keeping it together with black electrical tape and packing tape)  and I will cherish it forever. Sigh.  

 

The newest obsession of this almost 9 year old?  Football trading cards.  It all started because Grammy likes to take them to the dollar store and let them pick a couple things out.  In the past Michael and I have begged both of our children to just take the dollars because the cheap junk they come home with always ends up in the trash.  But they never do.  Well, it finally paid off for Jacob because it gave birth to this latest craze.  Apparently another boy in his class already had a few cards, which prompted Jacob to buy a couple packs that first day.  Well, almost 600 cards later, here we are...

Anytime he goes Anywhere with Anyone, he will look for cards and ask for a pack.  And because the individual packs only cost a dollar or so, Everyone does.  And then a certain Daddy and a Certain Grammy will buy the occasional 32 card pack, or 80 card pack...you get the idea. And, well, maybe Momma has once (or twice) as well.  

As with the Lego Star Wars book, he will spend time just looking at them, reading the stats (most of which he has memorized), and thrust this knowledge upon us.  Looking for a way to bond with the boy?  Just ask him to bring his card books over and look at them with you.

 He has so many we had to divide them into divisions (AFC & NFC) because the binder was too heavy.

 I bought the little stick on tabs to label and alphabetized them for easier viewing.  One day he went to a friend's house after school and of course had to bring these.  When I picked him up, there were other boys/moms there also, and all the boys ran up to me asking, "Can you do my cards like you did Jacob's?"  One mom said, "Yea, thanks. Conner is driving me crazy wanting me to organize his cards for him."  Um, excuse me?  How do you function knowing there is something to be organized and not doing it?????  I told them I didn't do this for Jacob, I did it for me.  Sheesh.  You non-OCD woman/alien.

Basically this is his American Express card:  He never leaves home without it.

This was the "Dragon Dash" that his school did this year to raise money.  The classes all have color themed t-shirts, and yes, Jacob's class was pink this year.  He hated it.  But he came in 2nd place for the 2nd grade!! He was pretty pumped, even if he was wearing pink...

Took Bob and my Morgie Porgie to the drive in.  I have been wanting to for the last couple of years but it has never worked out because they are not always showing kid-friendly movies, and when they do it is usually in the dead of the summer/100 degree weather.  And of course the glory of the Drive In is to sit outside, not in your car! You might as well go to the theater in my opinion.  We managed to do it Mother's Day weekend, so it was actually kind of perfect.  

 Do you see her hair? I randomly did that one day to her as a joke, and now she does it all the time.  Goob.

Field day for Jake.  And the dreaded pink shirt again.  It rained that day so they had to do it inside.

Playing twister with a friend.  Classic.

Jacob's track banquet.  

 Friends JP and Miles.  We recruited 3 friends this year. You are welcome SYS.

First, the coach is holding a giant poster of the boys and a gift card that ANOTHER MOM COLLECTED MONEY FOR/ORGANIZED.  It was wonderful, I have to say.  She is a friend of mine and I think used to me doing it.  But for some reason the last month of school/work (which is also the end of track season) I was crazy overwhelmed. Anyway, she sent me an email one day letting me know that she was going to take over this.  Bless her. 

 Second, notice how none of the boys are holding trophies.  Would you like to know why? Because the director (who I can not stand because he plays favorites and is the most unorganized, self centered person I have met to date) has a teenage daughter whose last year to run with this organization was this season.  He also is stepping down as the director (thank goodness).  But before he did, he made one last self-centered decision to listen to his daughter when she said that kids don't like trophies.  What?  I guess teenagers might not, but little kids???  The ones we are trying to encourage to keep doing this, stay active, do something other than stare at the tv all day? Yea, they love them.  So they all got t-shirts in a brown paper bag (see how they are all holding them up proudly? No, you don't).  That didn't necessarily fit.  Yea-that's right.  Jacob's was a size smaller than his uniform size.  Dude didn't even coordinate with the uniform order. Oh yea, and our group has to pay $12 per person to attend this banquet held in the auditorium of a church even though Morgan's group is going to Incredible Pizza for free because our director is the most unorganized/self centered person I have met to date and her's isn't.  So basically I paid $24 for a too-small tshirt.  Why yes, that shirt did get sent to the SYS office with a lovely little letter that my mom wrote (brought in the big guns).  Most of the coaches have young kids, and he didn't even take a vote amongst them. Oh, I could go on and on...

Well, to end on a happy note, here is a pic of two spoiled little dogs.  They are funny because they don't get on my lap hardly ever.  Always his.  My theory is because when he sits, he SITS.  You know, he's a man, he doesn't have to keep getting up to put the clothes in the dryer, or put a band aid on a cut, etc... Anyway, they are just cute.