Melted Cheese

My wonderful sons thought it would be a blast to melt cheese in the Easy Bake oven...gross mess. They also tried melting jelly beans and, tofu. The cheese, according to them, had the best result.

The last day of school before a three-week track off, woo hoo. And we leave for Spain in a WEEK. I'm so NOT prepared. But I did start a list, thank goodness.

Laundry

How does this happen? I have a load in the washer, a load in the dryer, every basket is full of dirty laundry, and I have three loads of clean laundry piled on the bed. Here's the clincher....I JUST FINISHED TWO WEEKS OF LAUNDRY, PUT IT ALL AWAY TWO DAYS AGO.

Oh and....

We kept telling Zac that he was four and he insisted that he was not officially four until he blew out the candles. How cute is that and where does he come up with these things! Yeah yeah, I'm insane about my kids!

Oh what the heck more pictures

Jumpin' Jake
Cousin Xavier, shooting some hoops
Aggie
Cousin Bridget

We had his birthday party at a place called PUMP IT UP...what a fantastic move. I didn't have to clean before or after. They set up the tables, ordered the pizza and ordered the cake. They cut the cake, they cleaned up all the wrapping paper. Easiest birthday party I've ever thrown. And, most importantly, the kids had a GREAT time. Zac was THRILLED. It was almost impossible to get any really good pictures, the kids were moving so fast and having so much fun.

Things you don't want to hear

"Mom, I'm cutting Abi's hair" I ran down the stairs screaming like a MANIAC, "STOP STOP!" only to find two very scared and perplexed little kids; Zac holding a comb and brush and Abi with her hair in a sort of floppy 'updo' held together, I think and hope, with soap. I guess styling and cutting are the same thing for four year olds.

No football scholarship here

It's official, Autumn, crisp evenings, changing leaves, football and crockpots full of the aroma of home. I love this season. I'm ready to buy a bunch of pumpkins and gourdes and decorate my front porch.


Jake had his first football game yesterday, what can I say, at least he wasn't the one that ran with the ball to the other team's goal. He did zig and zag and made some yardage, but mostly he pranced...yes, pranced. I found myself, huddled in a blanket, thinking 'who is that kid?' It's a little nerve-racking that the sponsor this year is Centennial Urgent Care.

Note to self, capris and crocks, not good to wear in the autumn at a football game, in the wet cold grass, it's taken me a day to warm up.

T-R-A-C-E-Y

Sooo, this week's challenge was to do an acrostic of your name and abilities....I could have done Maria-Teresa but that would really have been a challenge, thank goodness for short nick-names!

Trainable (I'll do anything for cookies)
Reliable (well when it works for me)
Altruistic
Creative
Energetically challenged
Yo-yo dieter (see trainable)

I'm soooo procastinating my statistics homework. And she even gave us a couple extra days to do our test. Bad Bad student.

Gasp, he's average

I had parent teacher conferences last night with Jake's teacher. I HATE those things. I even put on my pre-conference tell-me-about-your-kid sheet that my son is perfect and it's unfair to have me fill out this sheet. Mr. Kampling laughed, but went ahead and told me his concerns anyway. Basically Jake's a funny guy who needs to listen more and talk less. OK, he's my son, what am I to do, every year my own parents got the same report, it's genetic. I'm actually ok with the whole average thing...I mean I'd hate for him to 'shine' now only to fizzle out later, I'm just waiting for that brilliance to come forth, when it really matters, like for the speech he's going to write when he accepts the Nobel Peace Prize.
(picture taken at age 5)

blog challenge

Ok, this weeks blogger challenge, via martha
"In honor of Shuttle Atlantis, which finally blasted off yesterday, and because my friend Cara likes it when I make lists like this, this week's blog challenge is a Countdown List. 10...9... 8... 7....

10 Things I Wanna Do Before I Die
9 Places I Last Spent Money
8 Sounds I Routinely Hear Around My House
7 Real Restaurants Where I Last Ate Out
6 Things I've Recently Scratched Off My To-Do List
5 People I Don't Know by would Like to Hang Out With
4 Songs That Make Me Happy
3 Things I Hate To Do
2 Things I'm Really Good At
1 Bad Habit

Have Fun counting down!"
TEN THINGS I WANNA DO BEFORE I DIE
1. Finish remodeling my house, wow is that shallow
2. See my boys watch their brides walk down the aisle
3. See my grandchildren being born (if allowed) and be one of the first people (outside my daughter-in-laws and sons) to hold him/her and smell that beautiful new born scent and hear that wonderful new born cry.
3. Finish School and get a masters
4. Do a 'fix and flip'
5. Travel the world, particularly, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Canary Islands
6. Take a family cruise with extended family
7. Really impact one other person's life in a meaningful way
8. Do some type of peace corps thing when I retire.
9. Finish my scrapbooks for the boys
10 Win the lotto (see points 1-6)

NINE PLACES WHERE I LAST SPENT MY MONEY
1. Joannes fabric, I cancelled a class so I bought a magazine (Southern Living) to sooth myself
2. Office max, needed a new pencil sharpener
3. Eddie Baur, jeans for jason
4. The Christmas shoppe...yup, it's September, I'm a little nuts, but I found a cute ornament for jason's stocking.
5. starbucks...they get a lot of my money actually
6. Dairy queen, the kids always get it if they behave at the mall
7. Home Depot (they get a lot of my money too)
8. Cherry Creek Schools early education, zac's preschool
9. Creekside Church

EIGHT SOUNDS I ROUTINELY HEAR AROUND THE HOUSE
1. The children
2. The dishwasher
3 washer and drier
4. TV
5. Hum of the computer
6. The voices in my head telling myself what I still have to do
7. Doors opening and closing
8. Quiet, then I worry

SEVEN REAL Restaurants I'VE EATEN OUT AT
and fast food doesn't count, is that was REAL means?
1 Rumbi Grill, pretty tasty
2. Chilis
3. That Mexican place next to chilis
4 PF Changs....
ok we've been taking advantage of the new mall going in at southlands!
5. Oh, adventurous of us, a hole in the wall Mexican place on federal when we went to buy some roasted chilis
6. Thai basil---way yummy
7. Oh my gosh, I can't think of any.....Oh, blue koi

SIX THINGS I'VE SCRATCHED OFF MY TO DO LIST

1. Stop writing to do lists!

ok that's pretty much it!

FIVE PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW BUT WOULD LIKE TO HANG WITH
I don't even have time to hang with the people I DO know.
1. Paula Dean, anyone who cooks with butter, wow, and she hits it on the head....'If you make this they will love YOU' not 'it' but YOU.
2. Christy from trading places, the one from Texas.
3. Candace Olsen, from Divine Design
4. The woman who wrote The Red Tent, I bet she's really interesting.
5. Mother Theresa, I know she's dead, but just to be in the presence of all that goodness, I don't even want to talk to her, just 'be' with her.

FOUR SONGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY
1. Don't laugh....anything by ABBA
2. Amazing Grace
3. Right now...Cherry tree shoot, can't think of the artist, but it's POP
4. That stupid song about tore down paradise and put up a parking lot

TWO THINGS I'M GOOD AT
1. Looking for the good in people (ok, there's a couple people out there that that's hard for me to do---but for the most part I can do it for everyone else)
2. Decorating, just wish I had the money to do more of that for myself!

1 BAD HABIT
well I have so many to choose from, eating too much and not exercising.

Alrighty, this gal's going to bed.
Oh except, on this day of reflection of what happened five years ago, a small prayer for those families who lost so much, my heart goes out to them. And I held mine a little closer to me today. And a prayer to my brother, serving in Baghdad. May God keep him safe.

Bad Bad Mom

I was looking through Jake's mountain of school paperwork this morning only to stumble across the Star of the Week list and this week is Jake's week, THIS week, the one that's ALMOST over. Another bad mom moment......I let my other child leave the house looking like this....At least given his fashion sense I'm pretty sure he's straight.



I took my pretest for my statistics class last night. There was a cautionary note from the instructor that if you scored under 70% you will be taking the class at your own risk. I scored 70%, it's pretty apparent that it's been 15 years since I've taken any math courses. OH MY.

Hit my head for the last time!

We have these cabinets above a counter return separating the eating area from the kitchen. They're horrible. Even more horrible then the actual kitchen, they make the space so closed off and block the flow of light and to sound feng shui'y the flow of energy and worse yet if I'm working at that counter and don't watch what I'm doing I bump my head, the kids also have all bumped their heads on it, they are just bad news. Once again, today I bumped my head and THAT WAS IT! They had to go! SO I TOOK THEM DOWN. Well, me and buddy Colleen. It was actually pretty easy, as soon as we were finished, Colleen said, 'oooh, what can we do next!" I was tempted to turn off the electricity and sledge hammer the half wall between the family room and eating area, but that would have been a "Looocey you have some splainin' to do" type of moment. As it was, Jason was not too mad and actually was impressed that the wall wasn't too destroyed.

Surprisingly I have no before pictures, (not even any family gathering pics or parties etc for the past two years, they're that ugly!). Not much foresight on my part, ooops. But here are the 'during' pictures, It'll be a long time before we have any afters....Sigh.

Whew

OK, I'm now on my Spanish class too. That one was MY problem, I had to delete some cookies, and I don't mean finishing the last package of oreos. So I've printed out my syllabuses (syllabi?) and have to cram a weeks worth of learning into this weekend. Oh and one assignment is past due so I have sent an emailing begging and pleading to turn it in late.

I also sent a very nice thank you to the dean and the help desk person to help that whole guilt thing.

Half way there!

I finally emailed the Dean of Students. What they say about the squeaky wheel is so true. I got return emails AND I'm on at least one of my classes (statistics). I just emailed back to let them know I can't get onto my Spanish class.

I feel a bit bad for firing off an email to the Dean, but NOONE was getting back to me! Sheesh, you'd think I was Catholic with the whole guilt stuff.

Last night I googled Zimmerhouse to see if my blog would pop up, it didn't, but this family website did, sheesh what a beautiful family (ok, my boys so much cuter---but then I'm biased)and great house (forget bias, there's NO escaping that truth). This suburban, second class distant unrelated cousin Zimmerhouse needs to do a little work! Chang gang also googled hers but with more tragic outcomes, someone died, but weirdly both hubbies had the same name; later to find out that hubby in tragedy had different last name..Whew, I thought for a moment we'd have a real Lifetime True Life Movie unfold in our quiet little neighborhood.