Surfin' Santa

Look at this Santa. Kind of makes me want to sit on his lap and tell him what I want for Christmas.

It's a bit sad when I don't have pictures of my kid's costumes but I post one of my husband. I completely dropped the ball on costumes this year. They both wore their soccer uniforms. How soooo unoriginal. I think they did that last year too.

Lenny, however, just pulled all of this stuff out of his closet and went with it.

Me, I just sat in the corner and ate all of the Almond Joys.

OH MY GOSSSSHHHHHHH

I just saw something and after my shock of it, my first thought was to race home and share it with you!

I just left the grocery store right by my house probably 15 minutes ago. I still can not believe this. Ok, I was leaving the checkout line and just turned the little corner right there to make it to the door of the store. I looked up and saw the bagger at another line REACH DOWN INTO THE BACK OF HER PANTS AND SCRATCH HER .... BUTT. No joke, she pulled the back of her pants out so she could reach with her other hand, dug right in and scratched her itch. I saw her whole rear end. I saw her cr**k. I saw IT ALL right there in the front of the store of Pavilions.

She apparently didn't quite relieve herself. She then lifted her right leg up a bit to better to maybe get a better angle. OH MY GOSH. She was completely unfased by me watching. Even my dog will stop sniffin', scratchin', lickin' himself if he thinks he has our attention.

THEN SHE TOOK HER HAND OUT OF HER PANTS AND CONTINUED BAGGING GROCERIES!

EEEeehhhhhhwwwwwww grosssssss.

I didn't know if I should barf or just CRACK UP (get it? CRACK up?????? Nevermind). I called the store manager from my cell phone on my way home. I could not stop laughing as I am hearing myself tell this story, so he started laughing but he is soooo trying to be cool and professional.

Is that nuts????

Cool Pumpkins

Need any ideas for pumpkin carving???? Check these out! MY favorite is the last one. Too Cool!

Still Here

I know how irked I get when I check in with people through their blog and to my disappointment I find nothing new. No new post, no new stories, not even a simple pic of the kids. I have turned into that person. I am getting irritated at looking at my own blog and seeing the same old thing. I think I might scream if I see "English is Rough Enough" again.

Funk. That is what I call it. I am in a blog bog. I can not seem to get out of it. I feel like sometimes I have so many things to say, some fun and comical, and some insighful and thoughtful. Yet, getting the words from my brain to my computer is a feat so enormous that I have chosen to look the other way.

I have noticed that when I get like this it is usually during a time of great growth or stretching in my heart and mind with God. I sense that He is doing something in me right now. Maybe it feels just a bit irreverant to blog about it yet.

But I do know some of the things that are flowing through my thougths these days:

• I am profoundly aware of my age. Not that 38 is either young or old, but that it has happened all of a sudden. I know that it didn't just happen but that I maybe thought it wouldn't come so soon. My 20 year reunion was in August. I have been preoccupied with that 20 year marker in my life. What have I done, what have I accomplished, avoided, taken on, embraced and released? How have I used my time in life? Wisely or foolishly? That is only for me to answer.
• My relationship with God is not what and where I want it to be. This one is a bit personal so I will keep the details to myself here.
• We have only a short amount of time with our kids in our house and under our influence. I want to make the most of it. Just like my 20 year reunion snuck up on me, that day is coming when they are outta here! I know that we will never stop being their parents. But, having them close by is for just a smidgen of time of their whole lives. I don't want to miss anything.
• I realize that Sarah is profoundly different than Jacob. Other than the obvious, they learn diffently and at different levels. Sarah takes an enormous amount of time to teach a concept to. Jacob, not so long. She struggles in ways that I never thought would happen. I am her mother and it kills me to watch her stress over learning to read. There might be something there in her that will take more specialized intervention. My prayer to God is that he keeps my eyes open to strategies and resources available to her. This is bigger than me and much more than I can do on my own.
• I want to move. I am daydreaming of land and more space, slower pace of life and out of the fire/drought/brown areas of So Cal. I never in my life thought that I would ever think such things. I now find that that is all I think about.
• The committment of homeschooling is much bigger than I could have imagined. Kind of like when I was pregnant with Jacob. I knew in my head that it would be different with a baby. But until he was born, I could not possibly know what life would be like with a baby. How could I or anyone know? Same thing here. I read lots of books and talked to lots of people. BUT.... I am in it and it is a full time job.
• I am sooooo glad that we homeschool. I am fantastically grateful that God has put this desire in our hearts and that I have a husband that is incredibly supportive. Just for the conversations alone that we have with the kids are worth it all. I just wish that God would send someone to clean the house for us :)
• I don't sleep enough and I certainly need more rest. I can not believe that I am about to say this but .... I think I need to cut out the coffee and diet coke. This is gonna be hard.
• I need more alone time with my husband. Enough said!
• I want to spend more time with friends. Anyone want to go get coffee with me?? Wait, maybe an iced-tea?

Ok, peeps, how's that for a slice of my life? Too Much Information????/

English is rough enough

The combination "ough" can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentences contains them all:

"A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strodes through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully."

Working Jacob's grammar book yesterday, I came across this quote. It is one of my favorite examples of how complex and perplexing it can be to learn English. I am sure that Mrs. Velarde can attest to this. This particular grammar strain is even cannonized in a classic I Love Lucy episode.

Technical note: I can not get this youtube clip onto the post as this one. So see the post below to watch this hilarious scene between Lucy and Ricky.

I Love Lucy- English is rough enough

Finally I Got to Go!!!

Can you guess where we went yesterday? And it is true....Disneyland is indeed the Happiest Place on Earth.

We knew that we would renew our passes when we started homeschooling. So after a few shifts of overtime for Lenny, we marched right down to Disneyland and presented our mugs to be put onto our official plastic passes - good for one year! The day was awesome in most respects. The weather was mild, then cool in the evening, the crowds were minimal, and the best part of the whole day was running around and being excited with a 9-year old and a 6-year old. It amazes me at the enthusiam that they have over the littlest things. It is contagious.

The only whhhaaaaa part was that Pirate Island was closed. I was soooo hoping to find Jack behind a tree. :) Ok, kidding on that one. Lenny knew I was bummed about the island so he tried to be a respectable second place Jack. No, I don't think so.

I have been to Disneyland a zillion times in my life. But the one thing that I have never done while I was there was to get one of those mouse ears hat with my name on the back. I was giddy that we got to get these for the kiddies.

I gotta question the parenting on this one. Why is this kid eating cotton candy at 9:15pm? Hmmmmm

We Are Family

I have a very cool extended family. My aunts and uncles are fun and warm, my cousins are hilarious and my sisters and brother are a hoot too, just like me. But, like many people, I don't see them as much as I would like. I was tempted to say "I don't get to see them..." but that would be misleading. I don't see them more because I just don't make the time. I don't know why exactly and it stumps me.
But on Tuesday night, I got to spend time with them. My cousin Ken is visiting from Wisconsin for just a few days. So we all gathered together at my aunt and uncle's house to say hello and share some time together.

Ken is so cool. He and I are fairly close in age and have always had a somewhat kindred spirit. Even though most of our family lives in the south OC, he and I both lived here in LA county in Lakewood. In fact, some trivia here, we bought our house from his wife's cousin. Completely unbeknownst to her and to us, we got the house. How interesting is that?

So I realized that I almost never post pics of my family (extended). So here are some of them. And what is fun about posting them on my blog is that my sister and brother in South Carolina can take a look at what is happening here on the West Coast.

And you can't tell from these pictures, but there were four other little kids over that belong to my two cousins. I am not posting their pictures because I didn't ask their mothers.

This is my cousin Karen. She is 2 years younger than me. She is very sweet and very fun. I wish I could spend more time with her.

This is my sister Karen, her son/my nephew Kyle, me, and my nephew (from another sis) Steve. Steve is my oldest nephew and is only 4 years younger than me.

Cousins! Steve, Jacob and Sarah and Kyle. My mother would have LOVED this picture of four of her ten grandkids.

My aunt Carol and Uncle Don. Very FUN people. And they LOVE to camp! And here is Shelby. She just turned 16 on Sunday. She missed the family time this evening because she was taking her last session of driver's training. She goes for her test on Friday. Keep her in your prayers! Sarah reminds me soooo much of Shelby when she was Sarah's age. Sometimes the way she turns her head or says something silly takes me right back to when Shelby was 5 or 6.

I really love my family. If you met them, you would like each and every one of them. I just know it!

Just a couple of pics

I was looking through my pictures and realized that I had some from Labor Day that I did not blog about. Now, the moment has kind of passed and I don't have really anything witty to say about the day, but I really wanted to post these photos.

A friend of ours from church invited us to an amazing place for Labor Day. She gets access to this house through her work and it is amazing. Lenny was especially excited to go because this place is right in the middle of a park. That park is somewhere that his dad used to take him when he was a child. It brought back some nice memories for him. Me, I had never been there.

The day was absolutely beautiful. What was funny though was back inland it was during the heat wave. Here we are all at the beach with sweaters on in the middle of day. I felt kind of bad because...well, no I didn't feel bad. It was great. I thought it would be such a great photo with the water in the back and our two little kids in the forefront. Too bad they both got lost in the shadow of the fence. There are there if you look hard enough.

And here is Sarah with Sarah. Both of these Sarahs are Sarah G. My Sarah thinks that is the FUNNIEST THING in the world.

Not much to say about it all so I will just close for now!

By the way, my husband has been gone for 5 days. He comes home tomorrow!!! Yeeee haw. Anyone want to watch the kids for an hour or so in the afternoon????? Ok, just kidding!

A Fireman's Life For Me

Last week, my fireman husband Lenny worked with Christy P's husband. Well, Christy went to visit her husband and brought along a little goodie for Lenny to bring home to me. And if you read her blog, you know what her goodies look like. They look GOOD! Here is what she brought for me....

It was spectacular with my perfect cup of coffee last weekend. Too bad my kids got a slice of it leaving me with only 3/4 of it! Thank you Christy!

Speaking of my fireman, here is one of the many reasons why I love being married to one. We always get to do cool things that with any other job just wouldn't be possible. The kids and I went out to Corona to visit Lenny. He is currently on a 120 (working 5 days in a row. 120 hours STRAIGHT). We had also planned on checking out a skate park that is right near his station. But if we went to the park, then we obviously wouldn't be at the station to visit dad. And, it was right at lunch time.

Here is the solution: Lenny told his crew that if they would stop by the skate park, he would buy them lunch. So, I went to Burger Basket and bought lunch for all of us and we ate it in the park under a tree. HOW COOL IS THAT? And to make it better, they got a call while they were there. We all got to see them take off in the fire engine with lights and sirens going. I am 38 and I still love watching that.

And here is Jacob loving the skate park.