Just in case you were wondering…

we still have Rusty, our very anti-social dog.  Here he is tonight.  He wandered up about three arms lengths away from me.  At least we are providing him with a home to live out the rest of his highly stressed life.  Perhaps one day he will decide he loves us.  Poor puppy.

Splish, Splash

The temperature didn’t make it up to triple digits today, so the kids and I ventured out into the backyard for the first time in what seems like forever.  We play in the front yard often because it gets most of the shade, but the backyard can turn into a furnace after about 11am.  We cleaned out the kiddie pool that the birds had been using for their own personal bird bath and had a splashing good time.

Playing with some toys while the pool fills up.

Cars + a pool with a slide = hours of fun

Enjoying the cold water.

Weeeeee!

Cooling off in the shade with some ice cold water.  Notice how close the swing set is to the house.  Yep, that’s about the only piece of shade to be found!

Karate Kid

Dalton started Karate classes for the first time this week.  He really seems to be enjoying it so far.  He gets to go two times a week but the coolest part about it was that he earned a two month Karate Scholarship through the library reading program.  I wish the library did a reading program all year round.  So far this summer Dalton and Addie have earned free circus tickets, about eight hamburgers from Whataburger, an ABC puzzle, free drink/dessert coupons to several restaurants in town, a ticket to select a prize from the treasure chest (which we have yet to do), Karate lessons and they are entered to win several more drawings to come.  Addie doesn’t quite enjoy reading as much as Dalton does yet, but she is able to sit through an entire book now.  She will even bring me books on occasion and stand there until I start reading it to her.

Here are a few pictures of our Karate Kid…

Dalton proudly wearing his Little Dragons uniform before his first class.  The uniform was included in the scholarship!

Dalton playing the “concentration” game.  He is the one sitting on the floor in front of the teacher holding the little girl upside down. During this game, the kids have to sit with their legs crossed, hands on their knees, without moving, laughing or smiling.  The teachers, of course, go around poking and prodding at them trying to get them to move.  This was the second time they played the game.  The first time Dalton got out quickly, as did all but one of the other kids who is a bit older than the rest.  The second time they played, all the kids again were out quickly except Dalton and the older girl.  The teacher picked the little girl up, swung her back and forth in front of Dalton and sat her down so they were eye to eye, neither of which laughed or smiled.  The teacher then picked Dalton up, tipped him on his back and left him there for a few seconds.  Gravity finally got the best of him and his legs fell down and were no long crossed so he was out but not without first impressing me and the teachers since this was his first time at Karate.  Now he just keeps asking when he will be learning to break the boards like the bigger kids. 

A night out on the river…

This is something it seems like we only do when we have company in town.  A few nights ago, the kids and I picked Blake up after work and headed downtown.  We took a ride on the riverboats (and just pretended to be tourists as I snapped pictures all along the ride), ate at one of the great Mexican restaurants, enjoyed some chocolate covered strawberries and other treats from the candy store and just enjoyed one of the many great features of San Antonio.  It was a lot of fun and the kids were well behaved.  It makes me wish we would make time to do that more often.

Riding on the boat!

Enjoying GREAT food! Yum!

Boys, Bowling and having a ball!

I took the boys bowling not long ago and boy did they love it!  This was Dalton’s second time to go and he asks often when we are going back.

Summertime Fun!!!

With the temperature often being above 100 degrees here in San Antonio this summer, we find every chance we can to get wet.  The kids and I headed down to our favorite pool for the Tot Swim.  I only have one thing to say…..Addie is FEARLESS.  You cannot turn your back on that little girl for one minute.  She seems to love the water and the six foot slide didn’t slow her down a bit.

Poor Dalton didn’t make it in to many of the pictures because I was too busy chasing Addie around.  I also wasn’t able to capture any of her on the slide because by the time I would put her at the top, have Dalton sit behind her and hold her until I could get to the bottom, she was inching her way down by herself.  The first few times I had Dalton go down with her, but by the end she was climbing the stairs and heading down all by herself. 

Let’s get cooking!

As soon as I found out our second child was going to be a girl, I started dreaming about all the girly stuff we would get to buy over the next few years….baby dolls, dress-up clothes, doll houses, and of course just what every little girl needs…..her very own kitchen.  A few months ago (back in April), Toys R Us had this great little kitchen on sale for around $50.  I’ve pretty much had my eye open for a nice little wooden kitchen since I was pregnant with Addie and most run closer to the $100 mark.  So this was a find I couldn’t pass up.  Of course I bought it with the intentions of it being a Christmas present.  It sat in the box in our garage for about three months when I began to worry that we may open it in December to find a broken piece, missing piece or something that would prohibit us from putting it together.  So needless to say, we opened it, put it together and it now sits in our living room.  Hope Addie enjoys the nice big bow I plan on putting on it for Christmas morning.

I’m not quite sure who enjoys it more….Dalton or Addie?

Bugs!!!

The library has had lots of fun events going on for the kids this year.  Recently, Jungle Jim came to visit with all of his creepy crawlies.  I didn’t manage to snap too many pictures, mostly because we were sitting near the front and he had a huge snake hanging down in my face which I had to keep an eye on at all times.  Here are the two I did manage to take of Dalton enjoying all the insects and animals after his presentation was over.

Home Renovations

Blake and I have been talking about redoing the downstairs flooring pretty much since the day we bought the house.  We’ve gone window shopping for tile about a dozen times, talked to several contractors, toyed with the idea of doing it ourselves and then about two weeks ago finally took the plunge.  We headed down to the floor store, bought and paid for the tile only to come home two hours later to find that our A/C was on the brink of flooding the upstairs.  Thank goodness for home warranty insurance and the A/C only needing minor repairs so that the tile we just purchased did not have to sit in our garage for a few months before getting installed.  I really wanted to install the tile ourselves to save on the cost, but Blake finally talked me into letting someone else (who knows what they are doing) do it for us.  I have to agree, it was probably money well spent.  The two guys picked up the tile for us on Monday, got to work about 10 am, left around 5 pm to collect the rest of the tile, put in a full day of work on Tuesday, and it was all cleaned up and finished by Wednesday at noon.  If we were installing it, I’m pretty sure we would still be scraping up the glue from the kitchen flooring as I type.  Here are the before and after pictures of our new floor!

View from the front door with the old carpet.

View from the front door with the carpet removed.

 

View from the front door with the new tile.

View from the front door with most of the furniture in place.

Another view of the living room from the dining room half wall.

We forgot to take true before pictures of the kitchen before we started tearing up the old floor, but you can see what a mess it was getting the old floor out.  This is the view from the stove.

The kitchen during demolition viewed from the living room/dining room half wall.

The kitchen complete with new tile viewed from the stove.

New tile in the front entry way.  We decided to have the tile installed at a 45 degree angle in the living room and then straight in the kitchen area to give some separation to the two areas.  Blake came up with the idea of putting a straight border around the entire living room to inset the diagonal tiles.  It turned out great and really adds something to the room.  It also helped to make a smoother transition from the living room to the kitchen area.  Now I’m not sure I want to put my front door rug back to cover up all the pretty details.  We still have quite a bit of paint touch up work to do, but overall we are excited about the result.

Fun with Macca

We had been planning to make a trip to San Angelo to see all the grandparents the last week in June.  Unfortunately, the kids came down with a stomach bug and we didn’t get to leave on Friday after Blake got off work as planned.  It was probably a blessing in disguise though, because that Saturday evening our A/C went out.  Had we not been here to notice that the emergency drain over the back door had a steady drip of water raining down, we would have come home to a flooded house.  Luckily we were here and Blake was able to shut the system down before water started pouring from the ceiling.  The bad news was that it was 9pm on Saturday evening and was in the middle of a stretch of 10 days of over 100 degree temperatures.  We toughed it out that night with lots of fans, but decided the kids were well enough the next morning to head to Angelo anyway.  The kids and I loaded up early the next morning and made the 3 and half hour drive to Angelo to stay with Macca and Poc (Blake’s parents).  Unfortunately, Blake had to stay here to work and schedule the repair guys.  He spent the week at home, in the sweltering heat while we enjoyed the unusually cool temperatures in Angelo.  Here are a few pictures of the fun times we enjoyed in Angelo that week:

We were hoping to teach Dalton how to swim without the floaties this year, but he is a bit attached to them.  He did practice some without them, but I think before the next trip to Angelo, the floaties may need to magically disappear.  :)

A friend of Macca’s was kind enough to take the kids and I on a real buggy ride.  That’s Trix pulling the Buggy.  She is a 13 year old retired Amish work horse.

Mommy and Addie enjoying the ride.

Dalton just as we were getting ready to take off.

Trix working hard or hardly working compared to her days in the Amish community.

 

Stopping to admire some other horses in the neighborhood.

We also enjoyed seeing lots of family that week, as well as going out to the pasture with Poc to check on the cows and the bulls.  Dalton even got to drive Poc’s new truck.  Thanks for the fun times Macca and Poc!

Artworks Fundraiser

A few weeks ago, the owner of Artworks (an art studio for children on up) was kind enough to host a fundraiser for me to help raise funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  She set up about a dozen art stations around the studio for the kids to enjoy.  We had about 14 kids show up, which was just the perfect number.  Dalton always loves this little studio, but it was Clayton’s first time to get to go with us.  I’m pretty sure he had a great time making some of the projects on his own, but I think he enjoyed getting to kinda be the “boss” and helping the smaller ones out too.

Clayton making his dad a Father’s Day card.

This is by far Dalton’s favorite station.  There were lots of things to do, but Dalton spent most of his time here.  It’s just an old salad spinner with a small paper plate in the bottom.  The kids use eye droppers to drop a few drops of each of the primary colors on the plate, put the lid on, give it a few spins and then like magic, you have a plate filled with a rainbow of colors. 

These are the neighbor’s and their kids enjoying the art projects.

I am still fundraising for LLS, so if you would still like to make a donation, here is my website:

http://pages.teamintraining.org/stx/rnrsa09/clacyh

I am just over 75% of my goal.  I am hoping to be to 100% by the first of August.  Thanks to everyone that has helped out so far.