Box Of Mystery!

Some of you parents out there may be familiar with a little group called The Wiggles. They are a four-man singing/dancing/acting extravanganza for the preschool set. Each of them has special talents. Greg, the Yellow Wiggle (ex-yellow, yes, I know) is a magician. He would do these silly routines with hankerchiefs and flowers and the Box Of Mystery. Anyway, a Box Of Mystery showed up on our doorstep the other day from Aunt Brigid and much to our delight, it was filled with all kinds of goodies for the sandbox and for making snowcones and popsicles! What a fun summer surprise!

Here's Sarah making her snowcone.

Some of the goodies - a manual snowcone maker AND an electric one! (Did she know we have impatient children?) The sand toys were outside in the sandbox before I even got the camera out.


Ethan, on his third blue snowcone.



Oh yes! Did you know that Jose Cuervo margarita mix goes great with shaved ice? Honey thinks so!

Best buddies - Lucas and Dryden. Doesn't it look like Dryden is asking "Do these shorts make my butt look big?"



Thanks Aunt Brigie for the awesome treats! We miss you!

Birthday Party Saturday

On Saturday we started with Lakyn's 5-1/2 at her neighborhood pool. It was a gorgeous and hot sunny day that melted the frosting on the cupcakes! Here's some of the girls, including Lexie, Bella, Grace, Lakyn, and Sophia and two polka-dotted standing girls I don't know.


Lucas riding on Dad's back while he's underwater. Lucas is becoming quite a little fish. He loves to jump off the side of the pool into our arms and has no problem going underwater!


After Lakyn's party, we were off to Lizzie's party. She has a pool at her house and we went right back into the water! Here's Ethan with some of his school buddies: Rylee, Robert and Kelly.


Birthday girl, Lizzie.

New Neighbors

A new family moved in up the street. They have four kids too. Two girls and two boys. Kiara will be in 2nd grade, Angelina in kinder, Alexander (Bubba) is 3 and Giovanni is 9mos. We all laughed when we found out...seems they were on the two-year plan just like us. I'm sure you'll see pics of them on here as we get to know them better.

And RIP Ed, Farrah and Michael. What a week for the entertainment industry.

Happy Birthdays!

To my friends Honey, Stacey and Tammy all celebrating this week! And the kids have two birthday parties Saturday for Lakyn and Lizzie! Good thing we love cake!

It's Too Hot

to be outside. Over 100 degrees every day with heat index for the last week and no relief in sight. So we went to Dynamoze, an indoor play center. Lucas went for a birthday party a few months back but this time all the kids got to enjoy it.

Remote control trucks.


Tricycle race track.

Roller coaster. I love Lucas' face in this pic.

Fun for Fudge

At least I hope it was fun for Fudge. The boy across the street and Jacob built this maze for Fudge to go through - complete with lettuce bribes and dead ends - in his garage. Every time Fudge went forward, they would take the blocks away from behind him and add them to the front to make the maze longer.






Afterwards, Fudge crashed long and hard. Doubt he exerted that much physical energy but it was probably pretty mentally challenging as he wondered "what is going on here" and went into survival mode.

Happy Father's Day!

Sorry, Dad. I had to do it! haha!! The best part is the caption on the back: "Shannon gets new shoes and a Coors on the same day!" 8 mos. 9/72



And to my crazy baby daddy, Mark: You have such a way with the children. I love that about you.

Don't call CPS

Lucas is apparently extremely sensitive to insect bites. His face, especially, welts up like he's been in a knock-down, drag-out bar fight. This was from a mosquito earlier in the week. Doctor says he'll probably grow out of it.


Fudge gets to run around now without his pen. He races around the living/dining room area as if he's being chased, even though he isn't. He stays on the carpet. Maybe the tile is too cold? Or slippery? I read that guineas like to find things so I hid some carrots inside a bunch of timothy hay inside a toilet paper tube. I think he had some fun trying to get it out.

Hindsight is 20/20

Imagine you are standing here, playing the Wii. Mario Super Sluggers baseball to be exact. Imagine what would happen if you swung the WiiMote so hard it flew out of your hand.


Oh wait! You don't have to imagine! This is what happens! Luckily it wasn't the TV. There is paint and texture missing from the curved edge of the wall on the left and a divot chunked out on the right. If you look again at the upper picture, you can see the missing paint above the left edge of the book table. Courtesy of a 10-year-old neighbor. Accidently, of course. While his mortified mother was here.

Jacob reported that Mark took the security wristbands off the WiiMotes so they would sit on the charger better. I'm thinking it's more important they stay in the hands of the players. What do you think?

Fashion Forward

Big boys with their updated summer cuts. Got slushies afterwards in case you are wondering why Jacob's lips are blue.


The older three started a vacation bible school today. Goes all week.


"Hey Reagan! These were for me, right?" says Lucas, the one with the shoe fetish.

I think the socks really make this look.

Fun Friday

First order of business: take Fudge to the vet. I brought him in for a nail trim since I don't think it's ever been done in his life. They were twisted and gnarly. I read online they are supposed to be trimmed every two weeks! And then the staff talked me into getting a full examination by the (cute) vet. $67 later and Fudge is fine...imagine that! The extra girl in the forefront of the pic is a middle-school 4H student who volunteers there. She was pretty cute too.



Next stop: POOL! This is at our friends' neighborhood pool. It's got a zero-depth entry and a splash area for the little ones. Much better suited for our young family than the giganto pool in our neighborhood.



Ethan got in trouble for squirting people's clothes hung on the backs of their pool chairs.



The local moms club was also there and had enough popsicles to share. Lucas preferred the Doritos.

Need A Laugh?

Just go to this blog site: www.cakewrecks.com
It's a website about cake decorating. "When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong!" I have been scrolling around, reading "reader favorites" posts and LMAO! It's full of spelling errors, questionable designs and great commentary! Enjoy!

Sarah's Dance Recital

Today was Sarah's dance recital. She's in the middle back. My friend took a video of part of their dress rehearsal Thursday night. It's only the second half of the dance but if you cut and paste this huge address into your browser and you can see it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItEusR9GHVQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmysassypants%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded



Middle back again.



Camryn, Lexie, Sarah and Grace. Silly girls!




Sarah's single flower from Grace. Apparently, you're supposed to bring flowers to your dancer...wish someone would have told me that before! Luckily Grace came to the rescue and Sarah got over it.



Brianna, Camryn, Lexie, Sarah, Grace and Aliyah.

Summer, Summer, Summer!

Jacob's last day of second grade was Thursday. Here he is with his incredibly awesome teacher, Mrs. Tiller.



And this little guy may look familiar. We brought home Fudge, the class guinea pig, for a week earlier in the school year. We were the only family to volunteer to take him for the summer. I told Mrs. Tiller I was nervous about it since the last time we had him, Lucas tried to feed him a crayon. And I'm terrified he'll die on my watch. Mrs. Tiller said he was a gift to her and if that were to happen, NOT to replace him! OMG! Anyway, I pretty much regretted taking him home after he had been here only six hours! Between Lucas banging on the cage, Jacob taking him out, swinging him around, letting him "doot" all over the second floor, the fighting over who gets to feed him celery, the constant poking at him...he may regret being brought here as well! However, today was a much better day. The ground rules have been laid down. Multiple times. Pity the fool who breaks 'em.



This is one of the decorative walls we put up at Hardy Oak for Staff Appreciation Week. It was in the teacher's lounge and we had to take it down on the last day of school. Our theme was "We're WILD About You" and the tree and animals was supposed to represent a jungle. All the teachers and staff had their names on the wall, and we served our lunches buffet-style on the tables below. It was a really nice backdrop if I say so myself!



Friday afternoon we had Sarah's end-of-season t-ball party at our house. With the new playset, sandbox and borrowed waterslide, there was no shortage of backyard fun for the kiddos. One of the dads is an amateur magician and had all of us (especially the grown-ups) squealing with delight! Mostly card tricks, mind games and a lot of talk about hypnosis (but nobody got hypnotized unfortunately!). Another dad was a distributor for Shiner beer and there was no shortage of that either! I wish I would have taken more pictures, but all I got was this one of Lucas after his red frosting cupcake. It was such a great night. People were here until 10 p.m. sitting in the backyard. All of the kids ended up watching a movie and eating popcorn. The recipe for the perfect party? Friends, fajitas and fun! Oooh! And frosting!

Poor Babies!

Here's a "just taken" picture of Lucas and his swollen face. The red spot appears to be where he was stung (duh) but the doctor said that stings to the face and extremities swell the most. You can tell his eyes are sunken and the bridge of his nose is way too wide! Hopefully he will be back to normal in a day or so.



These other babies (just eggs so far) were found in the back pocket of our double jog stroller we keep parked on the porch. Somebirdie filled this pocket with a bunch of twigs and feathers and made a nice home for their little ones. I found out about it a week ago when I tried to move the stroller and Mama flew out of the pocket and scared me to death! I didn't tell the kids for fear they would take the eggs out or mess with it so much that Mama wouldn't come back. And unfortunately, I forgot to tell Mark and while I was in Dallas, he loaded up the stroller in the van and took the kids down to a new section of the Riverwalk!



So now, everybody knows about the eggs and I haven't seen the Mama lately. I hope we didn't screw this up for her. Poor babies!

Almost to the End

Jacob gets out of school tomorrow. I think the majority of moms I know are sad to see the school year end, but happy that the madness will stop. Why does everything need to be crammed into the last week? I'm guilty of it too. I just held a thank you reception for the room reps at the school on a day when the fith grade was at their pool party, the third grade had their Roman Feast and half the fourth grade was in Austin for a capitol field trip. Was it surprising my turnout was crappy? No. Did I have much choice? No. It's the last week of school and there just aren't enough days anymore.

The No Doubt concert was great. Really fun. Love that the band is back together. It was very obvious they tried to play down Gwen's solo stardom. She only had two costume changes and they played pretty much straight for 90 minutes. Great video montages of their early days. Played all the favorites. Trip to Dallas was quick and uneventful. We got back to SA as fast as we could for tball, pictures, birthday parties, etc.

Taking Lucas to the doctor today. Looks like he got stung by something. His face is swollen between his eyes and on his forehead. It will probably go away on it's own but this is day two and I'm too nervous to let it go any longer.