We've got a sugar situation!

Lemonade
Originally uploaded by Julie Lynn 4

So, I love summer. I would vehemently lobby against year round school, because I believe whole-heartedly in summer vacation.Bare feet, popsicles, sprinklers, sleeping in, s'mores, camping, boating, reading good books outside, dinner at 9 pm, children who never change out of their swimming suits and lemonade. Lemonade, however, is the cause of the one thorn in my side this summer. Trent bought about 107 lemonade flavored kool-aid packets and has one of the kids make it each evening when he gets home so he can have a nice tall glass of lemonade. Sounds refreshing I know. But, before I go, on I must digress for a moment. You may notice that in my list of favorite things about summer, being bare foot was #1. I never wear shoes if I don't have to. This tradition starts in April and will hopefully end around Halloween. I LOVE walking around bare foot! Hence, my problem - the lemonade. My kids make the lemonade and inevitably spill about a cup of sugar on the floor EVERYTIME! And then my bare feet walk through it. UGH! I hate that! I don't know how they do it, but they do it everytime. And I clean it up. Yes, I , clean it up, because if any of you have children, you know the job they will do sweeping. They can sweep to their little hearts content and miss every grain of sugar. So I clean it, so I can walk blissfully around, bare foot.
This is the end of this blog as the the kids just made some lemonade!

My Only Obsession

I don't obsess easily. I learned early on in my life that I am a huge romantic but I don't give MY heart away easily. Twilight really surprised me because it touched me so deeply that I did a lot of inner contemplating about why? I mean I loved Somewhere In Time, Phantom of the Opera, Gone With The Wind, but never have I been so completely memsmerized and preoccupied. I could not think about anything else, eat, function, it was crazy! (Thank you Trent for feeding me and keeping up on the house work, while I checked out for a week and read. P.S. these are just a couple of the reasons why he won my heart, I don't think he would tell me to my face, but I think this kind of craziness he actually finds endearing in me.) I still don't know why. I frankly don't care, I can't explain it, I can't and don't really want to justify it, I just know that I really connected with this story and I'm going on the ride. So hence the widgets and links and thank you Stacey for reserving the movie poster for me. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts as it may never happen again. I am on the one week countdown for book 4 Breaking Dawn, so don't plan on great things from me next weekend. My mind will be in Forks, WA. Anyone wishing to join me at the Midnight Release Party Aug. 2 at Hastings is welcome to join.

Fishing

Some of our farmer friends have an irrigation pond they stock with trout each year and they told us we could go fish there. So Trent thought it would be fun for the kids to do that last night. We only have 2 fishing poles. A grown-up size one and a kid size Pirates of the Carribean one. But we have 3 kids. (However, one of these kids this week is not ours, we swapped London for Isabelle's friend Andrea Ostler. London is in Seattle with Cassi Ostler.)
Trent being the very smart man that he is, engineered another pole out of a stick so everyone could have a pole. Brennan got relegated to the stick pole, being the little brother and the girls took control of the "real fishing poles". Well, believe it or not, Brennan caught the only 2 fish we caught all night and he did it with the stick pole and a salmon egg!! It was hilarious. Andrea was throwing a fit and wanted the stick pole now and Isabelle never having been present when a fish was caught before decided that she liked the casting and reeling of the fishing pole but reeled her line in at lightning speed to avoid actually catching a fish. It was too gross. Imagine how she would have reacted if we would have kept them and gutted them. We threw those lucky 2 fish back.
Of course, I forgot my camera to post pictures but I may be to convince Trent to go back tonight for some photos:)

Success!

I set my first syphon tube today!!!!

Electronics Possessed

Many of you may know the story of the possessed "Woody" doll. But for those of you who do not here it is in a nutshell. A couple of years ago, Brennan took his Woody doll in the tub with him. I had warned him this was a BAD idea but, he didn't grasp what water can do to an electronic toy. Anyway Woody was left in the bathroom to dry out and in the middle of the night, the freakiest, possessed noise came from the bathroom. I sat straight up in bed and shook Trent awake. Being totally freaked out at this noise we warily went down the hall to find out what is was. Of course, as Woody was drying out his "voice box" was involuntarily making the freaky, possessed noise. We laughed, sort of, and shoved Woody to the bottom of the laundry basket. Well, a few months later, Brennans battery operated dump trunk, that is supposed to sound like the real deal, it even has those obnoxious back-up beeping sounds, starts up in the middle of the night again, scaring the crap out of me! Trent and I again are traipsing around in our skivvies looking for this really loud toy and I kid you not could not find it. The next morning we found out that it was at the end of London's bed under a blanket and every time she kicked it with her foot it set off this really obnoxious toy. Who gave him this? I told London and Isabelle to clean their room.
Apparently, Woody did not teach Brennan that electronic toys do not go in the tub so he washed his little purple car that revvs it engine and then plays the song "You know you make me want to shout, kick my heels up blah, blah, blah Whoooooooo!" So, I think you can see where I'm going with this. Yes, middle of the night, jerked wide awake, shoved it under some towels in the bathroom which did not work and I believe ended up locking it in the drier. You would think that would be it but oh no. NO, NO! The timer London uses to time soccer games when she reffs soccer has a timer that goes off at 12:30 am. Right about the time we have just reached REM sleep. At this point we just ignored it, it only beeps for a minute and then shuts itself off. I would just turn the timer off all together, but I'm convinced I need a PhD in engineering to be able to do this so we ignore it. And actually, we hadn't heard it for a while (I think we left it in the car.)
So now, no I'm not done, we got the kids a cell-phone that they share. Somehow it has a timer that goes off at 3:30 am. Scaring the crap out of me every morning at 3:30 am. I do not know how to cancel it either I can not find it anywhere in the phone. I can see the alarm icon in the upper right hand corner, but when I go to alarms, no alarm. Ironically, the phone asks me if I want to create a new timer.
Well miraculously that problem remedied itself. But last night, the flippin' soccer timer went off at 12:30 am!