Lucas' 4th Birthday

Lucas turned four on the first day of school for the older kids. There's always a lively discussion on each of their birthdays around why their party is not always on their actual birthday. Hence, BIRTH day and PARTY day. Lucas' party day was Saturday at The Little Gym, a tumbling school for kids ages 1-12. He wanted a Ka-Chow cake...and I carried it with two hands very carefully.


Cole


Ava & Helena


Spinning in the middle of the parachute.


A hilarious game called "Slam the Cheese" where the kids run full blast at this upright mat and make it fall over as they land on it. The kids absolutely had a blast with this one!



Party people.


Love his laugh.


A ride on the deflating bouncy.


I'm four! With buddy Dryden.

Monkey See, Peacock (Hair) Do!

The hottest hair trend in San Antonio right now is weaving tiny feather strands into your hair. The feathers can be natural colors or bright and funky colors. Sometimes there's even a piece of tinsel tied in to the mix to give it a little sparkle. Exhibit A: Disney Channel star, Selena Gomez.



Sarah and I were invited to a home party about two weeks ago where a stylist was inserting feathers into women's and girls' hair fast and cheap, which is the best way to handle any flash-in-the-pan fashion trend I might add. Most people stuck to the skinny, more subtle feathers a la Selena's style.

But then, one girl picked out a peacock feather. Then another girl. Then three more girls right before Sarah. So Sarah's turn comes around and she turns down multiple peacock feathers until the stylist pulls out the biggest feather from the plus-size peacock department.



Granted, this was not my first choice. I imagined all the color washing out of it in the swimming pool and her waking up with a mousy-Edward-Scissorhands-sticking-out-the-side-of-her-head peacock feather. But hey, it was her choice. And only $10. And how long could it last?

TWO MONTHS??!! WHAT??!! Oh crap. That might make it to Picture Day.

Update: About 10 days after the feather was crimped into her hair, it fell out. Maybe the smaller ones last two months, but this lovely accessory now has a new home on her dresser mirror. Much improved location if you ask me.

First Day of School!

After going to school with me for the last three weeks for PTA, I think the kids were excited to finally go to school officially and actually get to go in their classrooms and see all their friends.


Jacob is in fifth grade; Sarah's in second and Ethan's in first. They all have amazing teachers and I'm looking forward to a great year!


The first day of school was also Lucas' 4th birthday. He spent most of it running around on errands with me but we went out for a family dinner at BJ's and enjoyed a PiZookie. His party will be on Saturday.

Busiest Week of the Year!

Monday: Hire babysitter so I can head to school and finish the last of the 40,000 photocopies for the Welcome Packets. Forget to tell babysitter about cleaning ladies who are, of course, running 90 minutes early on the day I'm not there, and freak out the babysitter because they want to come in. Run home and wait for cleaning ladies to finish then drag four kids to various stores looking for shiny silver wrapping paper (why is this not available in every wedding section?) and finger condoms for collating. Drop kids at home with Dad and head back to school to spend 3.5 hours painstakingly removing head shots of last year's fifth graders from the showcase window so we can create a new display for the first day of school. Set up collating project in cafeteria, as we have done for the past 11 years, until the Assistant Principal informs us that all the first grade teachers in the whole district are coming to Hardy Oak in the morning and using the cafeteria for training in how to teach math. So with the help of the AMAZING custodial staff, we move seven tables and 40,000 pages into one of the gyms.

Tuesday: Hire different babysitter so I can collate aforementioned 40,000 sheets of paper into folders for 1,100 students. Curse Reagan high school spirit, dance and cheer teams for adding five sheets of sales pitches to my elementary school Welcome Packets. Praise my boatload of volunteers - THANK YOU AGAIN - and curse the local Papa Johns who are 35 minutes late in delivering 12 pizzas, most of which are cheese or pepperoni. Why is it so hard for pizza restaurants to make more than two pizzas at a time? Mind-boggling. Maybe figuring this out is how I will become independently wealthy.

Wednesday: Take Jacob to tutoring, finally track down silver wrapping paper and spend three more hours at school creating the showcase display. Feed kids lunch and head off to Emerald Rainbow Family Fun Center for the afternoon. Inflatables, rock-climbing, mini bowling and mini golf...what's not to love? (I think I took some breaths while I was here.)







Wednesday night: Back at school by 5 pm to set up spirit tables for Meet The Teacher night. Sell $1600 worth of stuff in 90 minutes.

Thursday: Meet up with the old playgroup at the Forest neighborhood pool. Order seven pizzas from Little Caesars. Somehow, they make it happen even after the soldiers from Camp Bullis were just in picking up 34 pizzas. Hmmm. Guess who gets my next big order? Drop kids at home with Mark and set up for second night of Meet The Teacher. Sell another $1300 in 90 minutes. Head to Tori's house for some fine French cham-pan-ya and Extreme Accounting where we enter all the transactions from the previous nights into spreadsheets and match up the money to the line items. Inevitably, there is a random, unaccounted-for dollar amount that we cannot figure out. This year, it was in our favor so at 1 AM we gave up recalculations and took...



Friday: Spent the morning guzzling coffee and Diet Coke while researching tomatoes and practicing my answer to "Tell me about yourself." That's right...I had a job interview!

A few weeks ago, my friend Tonya's husband, Mike, told me about an online marketing position his company, Nature Sweet, was creating. I think I said something like "Thanks, but I have have enough jobs." Then he kept calling me and calling me, and hounding me on Facebook, and driving by my house leaving notes with the job posting...just kidding...but he was persistent. So I dusted off my resume (last used in 1998 to get my job at Campbell Mithun) and added what I've been up to since then. Of course, the interview is scheduled during the Busiest Week of the Year! Yet a third babysitter comes to the house. Luckily it was someone I've used many times before because she was late and I met her in the driveway and yelled "Bye!" as I peeled out of the neighborhood.

The first interview was with Mike which calmed my frayed nerves, and I was in a much better place when I met Kathryn Ault, the other Marketing Director. We had a great conversation about our last names, Campbell Mithun - as she had worked with them in the early 90s - and grammar in foreign countries. There's a BIG difference between "Je suis fini" and "J'ai fini"!

Then I talked with Bobby, the VP of Marketing, who I had already met at Mike's birthday party earlier this year. We also had a great conversation and I feel like I sold myself well. He would say "Mike and Kathryn probably told you this" and the answer was usually yes, but then he mentioned travel, which neither of the others did. If I got this position, which is meant to be 15-20 hours a week from home (or wherever I post/tweet from), I would have to go to Boulder for training and possibly Guadalajara, Mexico, to see the production facilities! Good thing I already have a passport. At the end, he asked me if I liked tomatoes. I said yes, especially the little appetizer Tonya makes with the cherubs and fresh mozzarella, basil and balsamic. Good thing my tastes have changed since Mom put the giant stewed tomatoes (gag) in the goulash! In hindsight, I should have told him I was allergic. He has a great sense of humor and probably would have laughed pretty hard.

So, now I wait. Until Labor Day or so. Maybe I'll start doing drive-bys at Mike's in the mean time...to be continued.

Epic Fail

Charisse asked me to make cupcakes for her daughters' joint birthday party Friday. They requested yellow cake and wanted them to go with the color scheme of turquoise, purple, orange and yellow; and peace signs. I called all over town trying to find a small peace sign cookie cutter that I could use to make fondant peace signs, but all I could find was a candy mold. So the four-hours-worth of handmade turquoise (check) and orange (check) edible peace signs (check) were born.

The cupcake papers alternated yellow and purple and were filled with yellow cake; then were frosted with alternating yellow (check) and purple (check) handmade buttercream frosting. They looked AWESOME! So cute. Four dozen yellow cupcakes before...




... and AFTER.



Three dozen cupcakes after I twisted my ankle where the sidewalk meets the grass and dropped them on the driveway. I had one pan in each hand, waitress style, and when I stumbled all the cupcakes in the larger pan shifted to one side and flipped upside down right out of my hand. In hindsight, I should have chucked the smaller pan in the bushes and grabbed on to the bigger pan with both hands but in the moment I was convinced that this tragedy was not happening and that I would be able to magically save both trays of cupcakes. Sarah and Lucas were with me and fell absolutely silent when it happened. I would have thought I would have burst out with a very long string of curse words, but really, I couldn't speak either. Sarah helped me pick up the cupcakes and we left them on the counter. Then we headed to the grocery store bakery and luckily they had a bunch that were not footballs or Star Wars.

I should have taken a picture of the driveway carnage, with frosting smeared all over and splattered up on the front tire of my van. The peace signs melted instantly on the hot concrete and and left orange and turquoise peace sign tattoos. But I had gone into shock/survival mode and my brain was trying to figure out how to get 36 cupcakes on extremely short notice. Mark had power washed the spot by the time I got home. I guess that ants were having a party of their own.

And luckily, my friends were at the party to assure me that they were just cupcakes after all and there was still one dozen of the handmade ones left. Still, I can't help but wonder how it would feel to be a real baker - responsible for a towering wedding cake on the biggest day of some bridezilla's life - and have an epic fail such as this. Do you grab a sheet cake from Costco and give her a refund? Oy.

Crazy!

Can I just say that it would be A LOT easier to get ready for school if the kids were IN school!?!

In lieu of writing a long, boring post about all the things that are making my life crazy at the moment, I will leave you with this meaningful picture that says at least 1,000 words.

Boys of Summer

No doubt about it. It's hot. Very hot. And we spend a lot of time at the pool. Terra Bella pool. Heights pool. Lifetime pool. My kids each have three swim suits in rotation that get more use than a good pair of shorts these days. We hit the pool last Friday with a motley crew of boisterous boys. (The girls were boisterous too...but they stayed in the pool!)