First Day of School: 2009 Edition

Unfortunately it's not the best picture, but the boys are off to a whole new year of learning adventure. I'm not sure what the 7yo's face is all about :) It looks like he just sucked on a lemon.

This year is 7th, 5th, and 2nd grade! The 7yo is so happy to go (Our first child that actually likes school).

The 10yo was very concerned about his teacher. Her name is Ms Stein, and he was sure that a teacher with such a strict name would be very strict, but apparently it is possible to have a strict name and still be nice. It helps that his best friend is in his class.

The 12yo is on his second year of middle school, so he has separate teachers and subjects each hour. He seems to like it better than the single teacher from grade school. However, his new band teacher has threatened that they will likely have to stand at the next concert. Also, the prospect of having to attend a study session at lunch 3 times a quarter to prepare for history tests ranks pretty high on the "ruin my life" scale. (somewhere between eating your own pinky toe and stabbing a knife into the fleshy part of your forearm, I believe)

It appears the the year is off to a splendid start. Oh, I forgot to mention that the 10yo got a flat tire on the ride home. Bummer.

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Our pledge

Notice the sign that states never 3 people in line at one time. Then notice the 8 people standing in line. This store clearly needs more federal regulation.
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That's hot!

This was taken on my way home from work today. It shows an unbelievably high temperature. Its time to try frying eggs on the road. 117!
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The fireworks were awesome.

The only bad thing was the street light right above us. The people who allowed us to use their yard gave us brownies and candied popcorn and ice cream sandwiches. They even let is use their bathrooms. It was a good night.
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July 4 in Az

We're near the mesa country club waiting for fireworks to start. The kids who live here are "enjoying" the only fireworks legal to purchase in this dry tinderbox: popits and those plastic things where you pull the strong and shredded paper shoots out. We had a fun day of swimming and BBQs.
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Bulk Pickup day

The city where I live has a monthly bulk trash day. We're taking full advantage of it this month. Those logs were REALLY heavy to get from my side yard to the street by myself. (the 10yo is standing in a box because the sidewalk is as hot as a frying pan)
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Before you know it...

It's just a matter of time before this (staged) picture will be happening "for reals". Scary, isn't it! Just 4 years until the oldest is 16.

This picture is from a fun little drive we took last weekend. It was fun, but the kids didn't like driving on the freeway with the doors off. It's apparently a bit windy in the back seat.

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Disneyland 2009 Trip #2

It was a few weeks ago, but we went on our second Disneyland trip over my birthday weekend. It was a lot of fun. I forgot to take very many pictures. But I did get this one. Pretty good picture, eh (insert sarcasm). We hit all of the favorites and didn't feel at all rushed. It's wonderful having season passes!

Almost as popular as Disneyland was the beach. We went to the Corona del Mar state beach near LA. It cost $10 but we could park right by the beach and they had showers, bathrooms, and lifeguards. The water wasn't TOO cold, and the waves were perfect for boogie-boarding. It was a blast. Some of the waves were actually a bit too big and I was smashed into the ground a few times. But I always got up with a smile on my face!


There were some tide pools near this beach where the boys could catch crabs, so that was fun. The 10yo accidentally let some of the larger crabs escape. While he was looking for them, something really large crawled across my legs as I was drowsing in the sun. Needless to say, I jumped out of my skin, but I found one of the missing crabs. On a side note: Jill didn't come with us this time, so no one got sunburned :)



One of the exciting parts of our beach trip was this giant ray corpse that washed up on the beach. It was neat at first to see it up close. That lasted about 5 minutes. Then it became a rotting stinky corpse on the beach. Blech. After 20 min or so, it washed back out to sea. I was glad to see it go, until I realized that I no longer knew where it was. I only knew that it was lurking somewhere in the surf. We went swimming way down the beach after that. It washed up on the beach and back out several times that day. When it was up on the beach the seagulls would go over to peck off a little snack. The funniest part was all the ladies that were scandalized that the birds would dare deface such a magnificent creature. They would say things like, "You leave him alone, you terrible birds!", and try to shoo the birds away. These people need a lesson about nature. One guy ran over to the lifeguards to see if they would haul it away. They wouldn't.

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REMAIN CALM!

This was posted on the door at my work last week. I laugh when I think of the events that must have happened to inspire this sign.
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sweet ride

I get to see this beauty almost every day at work. I have to really watch out, because jealousy is a sin!
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Bird, the end.

Sadly, I must report a tragic end to our bird hatchery. I went outside and the nest had fallen from the tree. One little birdling was dead and the other hadn't hatched yet. I guess the mother bird didn't do a good enough job making the nest. If you look closely at the nest in the previous post, you'll notice that it seems much too shallow. Sigh.

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Bird

We have a new addition to our family, kind of. The 7yo noticed that we had a bird nest with mamma bird in residence. We're assuming that she's sitting on her eggs, as she will not leave the nest. The daddy bird hangs around too, pretending to be useful, as we daddies do. She picked our 'devil-tree'- the tree of 1000 thorns, so she should be safe from the neighborhood cats. It'll be fun to see the babies hatch!

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Football Playoffs

This spring was the season of flag football around our place. Both the 11yo and the 7yo signed up to play. It was a lot of effort getting them to practices and games, but we really had a lot of fun watching them learn and compete! You might notice from the picture that the 11yo is getting to be almost as tall as him mom. He's really excited to pass her.

A couple of weekends ago was the playoffs. The playoffs were sudden death elimination, and some of those other coaches were pretty intense, especially with the 7 year old teams. Pretty lame. The 7yo lost his first game, partly due to some shenanigans by the other coach:( but he was just glad to get a real trophy! He wouldn't let me put a picture of it on here because he wants to show everyone in person. The 11yo won both of his games and his team ended up champions of his league! It was very exciting.















Look how mean these 7 year olds are! These kids started the season never having played at all and they had a great season. Flag football at this age is hilarious to watch.


















Here's the championship team for the 11 year olds. They also didn't have a lot of experience when the season started, but they had an amazing coach who taught them a lot. Honestly, I learned a lot about football from watching their practices and games. The first game in the playoffs was against a team that had already beaten them twice. It was a hard fought game, but they pulled ahead toward the end of the game and won! The second game was also very exciting with a lot of long passes being caught, and it stayed close through most of the 2nd half. But the Bulldogs won again! Congratulations, guys!

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Oral Surgery

Some of you may have noticed a mention on my facebook page about the 11yo's oral surgery this week. It's funny because when he was a little boy, he had the most amazing perfect teeth. I remember wondering how he got such good teeth from two people who had braces and REALLY needed them :)

Anyway, when the perfect baby teeth fell out, the adult teeth came in poorly. Or, in the case of the teeth relevant to this post, didn't come in at all. He's had braces for 9 months or so, which has really helped his teeth a lot. However, he has a small mouth and there isn't room for all the adult teeth en route. Also the upper adult canines decided that they didn't need to come down and were planning on just staying up in the gums forever. So his orthodontist recommended (that's the nice way to say "insisted") that we take him to the oral surgeon. The final decision was that he needed 6 teeth pulled. The 2 upper baby canines, two adult teeth (for which there was no room), and two other baby teeth that hadn't fallen out yet and were interfering with the braces.

The big mess was the adult canines. To get them to come down, they cut slits in the upper gums (on the outer side of the gums, not inside the mouth) so that they can get to the teeth. Then they attached a little knob to each tooth, and a chain to each knob. The orthodontist can now attach these chains to the braces and pull the teeth down into place. Apparently one of them will take up to 6 months get pulled down :(

He was very scared and very brave, even when they put in the IV. The doc let us keep the teeth. (click below if you want to see them. I purposely overexposed the teeth, 'cause they're really gross)


The patient is doing well, but his face is swollen up by his nose, which makes him look like a gefling. The swelling has gone down a bit, but you can still see the "gefling' in there!

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Happy Easter from AZ

It was so fun to have two of my beautiful sisters here to share Easter with us. It was truly a wonderful weekend.

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Fred

Let me apologize in advance for posting this.


My kids and their friends think this "Fred" kid is hilarious. I can barely stand it.

He has a bunch of videos where he's supposed to be a kindergartner. I think he has brain damage from inhaling helium.

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Buick

Weird fact. Buick sold almost twice as many vehicles in China as it sold in the US in 2008. In fact, the article states that a Chinese automaker may buy Buick from GM. Can anyone explain this to me?

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Who said it?

The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

It was written 2000 years ago by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

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Must have been a sight to see

Onse a pone a time there was a dragon who got eatan by sombis. It almost wan but the sombies killed it. the end.

(a story written by Tank)

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His poor arm!

First some background: the kids were getting their bikes out to go to school when I was called out to the garage. The brakes on Tank's bike weren't working right.

It looked like the cable for the rear brake had slipped and the rear brake wouldn't tighten enough to, you know, actually stop his bike. The front brake was fine, so he could mostly stop. I was late for work, so I told him to just go slow and be careful. The school is about 2 minutes away by bike, so I thought it would be OK. (queue the orchestra for the ominous music)

I got a text from Allie that afternoon informing me that Tank had crashed on his bike on the way home from school and that his arm looked bad and might be broken!! I knew instantly what had happened. There is one hill on the way home from school that is pretty steep. Tank HAS to always be first going down that hill and he goes really fast. I was sure that he'd lost control on that hill without brakes and had crashed.

I quickly called Allie and she confirmed my suspicions. I asked her how bad his arm was. She said that it looked pretty bad, but that she thought we should wait until I got home to go to the hospital. He had ice on it and leaving work early is tough right now, so I agreed.

I felt horrible! It was totally my fault because I let him ride his bike without good brakes. I couldn't believe how stupid I was. What a mess. First of all, it hurts to have a broken arm. Plus he's become somewhat of a star on his football team and he'd have to miss the games. Plus getting him dressed and bathed is hard enough without a cast. Plus getting him to/from school is going to be so much harder. I couldn't believe what a pain this was going to be. I'm such an idiot.

I had the idea that Allie could take Tank to her brother's office and get an X-ray to at least see if it was really broken. She sounded stressed, but she agreed to call him. It was about 4:00, and it's hard to get in touch with a doctor at the end of a day in the clinic because docs are always behind.

I felt guilty and crummy for the rest of the day. I called on the way home and she hadn't been able to get her brother on the phone, but she'd left a message for him to call back. Bummer.

I finally pulled into the garage and came inside. The boys were watching TV on the couch and Tank was under a blanket. His poor arm! I went over to Allison to get the scoop. She said that his arm really hurt, and we should probably take him to the hospital :( So I went over to see him and evaluate the situation. I felt so bad!

I pulled the blanket back and he was smiling! That was unexpected. Then he started laughing and the other boys were laughing. I couldn't figure out was was going on. Then they all yelled April Fools! It took me a few seconds to get it. It was all a joke, I couldn't believe it! Wow, they really got me. I really had no idea that it was a joke and it took a few minutes to unload all of the guilt and worry. Then I was so relieved that it never happened. I was laughing harder than they were.

Then I got out my tools and fixed Tank's bike.

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