This thing still on?

Back in October of 2013, I limped away from this blog with a post Summer Blackout Recap. Not a word since then.

You lucky bastards.

Unfortunately for you all I still remember my password and still have access to this blog.

A quick recap. The Talker is almost a teenager (less than 2 weeks to go as a 12 year old). The Princess is about to finish elementary school, and The Boss Lady survived a nasty bout with a viral brain infection last year. I did finish my 3000 mile bike ride challenge last spring, topping it off with a 1 day, 75 miler through the Texas Hill Country.

The last year and a half have included several job changes, one for me, one for The Boss Lady. After a four year detour, she is back in a job that she loves and is having a blast. I gave up a job teaching and working with some of the most physically and developmentally delayed students in our school system. I now teach classes for students who are either Autistic or have other sensory issues.

The Backyard Farm currently consists of one Big White Dog, the black/brown/red/grey short-legged, long-haired, loud-barking Different Dog, The Other Kitty (now 19 years old), 6 chickens and 1 Betta Fish.

There you go. I stayed away of 15 months and you are caught up in 7 minutes. See you in a year or so.

Summer Blackout Recap

We are six weeks into a new school year.  That means we are 1/6 of the way to next summer.  And if most teachers are really honest, THAT is what matters.

I haven't stopped by here in a while.  I thought I had posted a few times over the summer, but I noticed today that my last post was the weekend that school ended in June.  So what did you miss?

An epic trip to Southern and Central California.  We flew into San Diego, by way of San Jose (I fly SWA outta the way sometimes). We lounged in San Clemente for about a week and then went to Sequoia National Park for a few days.  On the way back south we drove along the Pacific Coast Highway.  It was an amazing trip.

This summer I didn't get to ride the new road bike as much as I had hoped.  In the Spring I had to have some skin cancer removed and the doc removed a nice chunk off of one ear.  He repaired it with a skin graft that came off of my chest, right above my clavicle.  The whole thing was much more draining than I had expected and my 6 weeks of recovery really took about twice that long before I felt good again.  At the end of the summer, literally the last day before I had to report back to work in August, I finished my spring/summer goal of pedaling 1000 miles.

The Talker and The Princess are doing great in school this year.  The boy is on campus with me and I see him several times during the day, but we are both lucky that I do not have him in my classes. The Princess is in 4th grade and she seems to have the world by the tail.  I was concerned how she would like school without big brother around, but those worries were for nothing.

The Boss Lady started a new job this school year.  We both still work in the same school district, but she is across town, working in administration at a high school.  It is really the job she was hired to do about three years ago, but the bigwigs had other plans and she worked on a special, super secret, double stupid assignment that she hated for that entire time.  It is great to have her doing the things that she likes and wants to do.

My entire education team fell apart over the summer.  I knew one of the three teachers was leaving, but the other was a complete surprise to me in the early summer.  We also have about 15 assistants that help out in our three classes and only 2 of those staff members returned from last year.  Needless to say, with all new staff, I am a busy little dude this school year.

I am keeping up with one goal for this school year.  I am trying to merge my interests and my obligations.  This school year, even with the craziness of a new staff, I decided that I needed to work fewer hours.  I was routinely working 60 hours a week for a job that pays me for 40, regardless.  This year, to keep myself in check, I decided to bike 1 mile for every hour that I work.  So far I am about 30 miles ahead of my hours.

Hopefully, unlike my blogging that seems to have died a slow, horrible death, I'll be able to keep up with my riding for this entire school year and I'll have ridden almost 3000 miles between March 2013 and June 2014.

I don't wanna...

Just haven't wanted to write for a while.  I used to apologize for extended absences.  Nowadays I say "deal with it.  Or don't"  I am just not inclined to worry about it.

A month ago I renewed my love of road biking.  The Boss Lady helped me make the leap and I bought a Specialized road bike (aka a ten speed - though this one technically has 18 gear combinations).  I have had the bike for 3 and a half weeks and have already topped a hundred miles in the saddle.  I still grin like a school boy when the new blue racer and I hit 30 miles per hour on a nice, flat cruise.

The new bike may have been a really well timed purchase, too.  A week after I got the new ride home, the bottom fell out of our household.  And since then it has been nice to have something to keep my mind and body occupied.

Not even a month ago we got some awful news about The Big White Dog.  His chest cavity was full of one giant and fast growing tumor and the cancer was already showing up in his kidneys too.  We knew he was not feeling great, but we were certainly not prepared to hear the worst case scenario was coming true.  Less than a week later our 125 pound, 8 year old puddle of puppy was gone.  After realizing that he was unable to eat or drink, The Boss and I knew that we had to let the vet help Kodak go.

And that sucks.  Again.  And Again.

Long suffering readers may realize that this is indeed the third pet we have lost in less than a year.  Our Spring addition to the family was a 2-3 year old Great Pyrenees girl who had been used up by a lousy backyard breeder.  Something went wrong after her spay surgery and we lost her two weeks later.  The kids were crushed.  The Boss was devastated.  I was wrecked.  It sucked.

A few months ago we had to decide to have our 17 year old kitty cat, P.K., aka Pretty Kitty, put to sleep.  She was ancient and it was no surprise. Still, the kids were crushed.  The Boss Lady was devastated.  I was wrecked.  It sucked. Again.

After losing Kodak, none of us are totally back to ourselves yet.  We have mostly quit crying but it is still horrible to realize that our big ol' albino melon head is not sitting and peeking OVER the fence when we arrive home in the evenings.

The 12 pound puppy we adopted last summer is adjusting well to his role as big dog of the house.  Now I can only hope that the rest of us adjust pretty soon, too.

The Last of the Lucky Sevens

Tomorrow The Princess turns eight years old.  She is an awesome, kickball playing, doll toting, chicken chasing, dancing, singing, awesome bundle of girly-girl.   

She still twists her hair into knots when she is tired.  She wakes up grumpy every school day.  The Princess is my gardening pal and she is always good for a laugh at my really bad jokes.    She still can't seem to keep her room straightened for more than 15 minutes at a time.  She pretty much refuses to ride her bike anywhere but I think she knows that it is easier to parade down the street on foot.  Makes it easier to visit with any neighbor who might have something interesting going on... 


I could not care less about my birthdays anymore.  Just another year on the clock from what I can tell.  Don't get me wrong, I am all for the presents but I would accept them ANY day.  The kid's birthdays are another thing entirely.  Lots of times I think I might be more excited about the day than they are.

Happy Birthday Princess.  I sure hope it is a great day.  'Cause I know you will be an awesome eight year old!

It is cold. Lettuce grow some veggies!

Yes!  Two posts in two days, smartass. Get over yourself.

Yesterday we out running some errands and stopped by Home Depot.  We were looking at flooring options for the kid's bedrooms but the kids and I got sidetracked almost immediately inside the store.  There were racks and racks of seed packets displayed just inside the front door.

I admit.  I am the worst kind of gardening junkie.  I don't eat that many veggies and I have never, ever been able to grow a cucumber or tomato that costs less than the grocery store variety.  I'll take The Boss Lady's word for it that they TASTE better.  What I really like is the planning, the prep and playing outside a lot in the Spring.  As my grandma said, after that it is just scratching dirt and petting the plants.

Last fall I kicked the addiction.  I was planning a big fall garden but my real world commitments won out.  There was no time left.  The chaos that is currently my backyard proves that is true. OK, I didn't KICK the addiction, but I didn't make my gardening addiction worserer.  That is a win, right?

Flash to yesterday, just inside the doors at Home Depot.  I tried to be a good, reformed junkie.  I glanced at the displays, but we were here to find floors dammit and not seeds.  Floors are made of made of hard stuff and colors and hardly ever make you sweat or give you skin cancer.

That is what veggie gardens are for.

The store didn't have what we wanted.  And we were headed out.  But I couldn't resist one more glance at the pretty seed packets.  Junkies will tell you, it is the second look that will get you in trouble.  When I first saw the garden displays my animal brain was like "Look, stuff in small envelopes with pictures. Interesting."  But when we went by the next time my inner garden junkie was all like "C'mon. You can pick up just one.  It is the perfect time to plant lettuce and snow peas.  No one will know.  Just be cool, dude.  I dare you!"  Damn.  A dare.


Thirty seed packets and $25 later, I was out the door with a Spring's worth of work ahead of me and just enough starter soil to get a few transplants ready to go in the kitchen windowsill.  After all, I was there already, right?  No need to waste time making another trip to a garden center to buy seeds.  I was saving time and money by getting my fix.  But right in front of the kids too?

Well, they sort of started it.  The girl was looking for packets of Blue bell flower seeds.  And The Talker?  He didn't help either.  He was checking out all of the cool colored veggies that neither of us will ever eat.  He started it by talking about those cool, purple carrots.

So blame them when I don't answer the phone on the weekends.  I'll be busy, out in the garden getting my fix.

It is all adding up to a busy year.

The new school year is off to a bang! I haven't felt this busy (or productive) in a long time. Hopefully the productive part will continue for a while.

I am teaching math to students in three different grades this year. But the reality of a Special Education teacher is that I have students who are able to perform simple 2 digit addition and then I have students who are almost ready for the challenges of a general education classroom with their grade-level peers. So I am actually prepping 5 or 6 different activities and lessons to teach concepts in various levels of detail to all my students.

I spend a pretty good chunk of time each day on paperwork. Like all good public employees, I generate a lot of paper every day. Then we have the usual planning meetings and departmental get-togethers a couple of times a week. Always productive times, especially the Wednesday morning 7:30 am meetings... Yeah, right!

If that wasn't enough, I also go into several grade-level math classes to support other students who may struggle with the math content, but do not need the close structure of a smaller Resource math class.

All of this from a guy who has really never loved math. Or even liked it, really.

My newest role? I will soon be in charge of D-Hall, after school detention. I ill be the teacher who sits in the back of the room who tells the regular scofflaws to "find something to keep yourself busy, or I WILL find something to keep you busy."

Now this is a class that I feel at home with. This feels like a throwback to many, many of my high school after school hours spent in the cafeteria trying to look busy so Mrs. Baumgardener would just leave me alone so serve out my sentence in solitude. With the other few dozen regulars in the room.

Even though it is going to be a busy school year, I am already settling into my new roles. More than anything, I am sure that all of this work is certainly worthwhile, just like the kids.



On the home front, The Princess has a "boy" teacher for her second grade class this year. She has already gotten used to the idea and she is back in the school groove. The Talker has always loved school. His teacher is a science specialist, so he is super-excited to learn everything about science this year.

The Boss Lady is working hard, as always, to keep high school kids IN school. Her team was decimated by budget cuts, but the few that remain have picked up the leftover parts and are getting back into the business of helping students graduate.

Around here we know a new school year is here when everybody is in bed and sacked out before 9:45pm. It is now 10:25 and this is the latest I have been awake in two weeks.

See? I managed to get through all of that and NOT complain about the 112 degree temperatures this week. But I do know that 112 degrees minus 9 degrees equals still-too-dang-hot-out-there!

Might want to take your pills

'cause the insanity that is about to spew forth from this post might make your head spin.

There you have it. Fair warning.

I am a junkie. I don't know if I have admitted it on this blog, but lots of people know. Not the Dr Pepper thing, that is old news. Truth is, I cannot walk past a red tag/clearance sticker at Target without stopping. And frequently buying. Slam a clearance sticker on a 3 day old salami sammich and sell it to me for 80% of it's M.S.R.P. I would probably buy it.

Today is a great example. I had to run to Target for Spray and Wash because I cannot seem to eat dinner out without wearing a little of it home. Pick up $4 of laundry spray and get in and out of the store. 15 minutes. Tops.

Of course, the kids were with me so we detoured through the toy section. "No buying today, just looking" I reminded the herd. Can't blame a guy though, it will probably hit 102 this afternoon, so we might as well soak up some air conditioning at the store. The kids did good and nobody whined when we walked on. Good times!

Since we were close, we walked past the school supply section. Found some lunch boxes that The Boss Lady will hate. But they were "red-stickered" for $4 each AND made in the USA. So they came home with us. One Hello Kitty, one Star Wars Clone Wars. Everybody happy? Yep!

The wine aisle was only a few feet away, but no good deals to be found. So we walked on.

The last time I walked through Target I found some silk ties on clearance for less than $9 each. See, I told you I can't resist... So we cruised over to the Men's Clothes section. No dice.

Walking to the registers The Talker spotted some tennis shoes that he likes. I saw a sticker that I like. The shoes were on clearance for $8 from $35 and they had his size. Sold! The Princess got some new shoes the last time we were shopping, but I couldn't resist searching for clearance stickers in the girly shoes.

When I was a kid, we loved to come to my grandmother's house here in Austin. She had a half dozen huge pecan trees and each fall it was big fun to make huge messes with the leaves and to pick up a few pecans. I have never forgotten that I learned while picking up pecans. Where there is one on the ground, there are several nearby. Bend over to pick up one nut and you might as well take a second to glance around for more. It saves time and you don't have to bend over as many times. Hey, I told you this post was going to be crazy. Nutty, if you will...

That pretty much sums up the way I seek out Target clearance stickers. If there is one nearby, there are always more. You just have to keep looking.

No good deals jumped out at us in the girls shoes. But then we hit the end of the aisle and turned the corner.

There they were, a pair of cool looking Converse All Stars, in my size AND with a beautiful red sticker. $9 instead of $34! I didn't even mind the fact that they only had one lace. For $2, which is full price :( , I could get a new pair of black laces and still be way ahead and looking good in my geek-chic shoes.

But it turns out that I am not cool enough for my new shoes.


The Talker has a pair of shoes like this. Still I didn't notice until we got home and tore into our deals that the one lace was only done up half-way. That is because these shoes are not made to be laced at all. They are slip-ons. The bottom three eyelets don't even have holes though the canvas.

I took out the half lace and tried on the shoes. They are comfy enough, but without laces they are just too cool for me. At almost 41 years old I guess I am proud that I can actually bend over to tie my shoes, so I don't want to give it up yet. Besides, I am pretty sure that the 6th-8th grade set would laugh me out of the classroom if I strolled in without laces.

Like I said, The Talker is cool enough to make the look work. I am not.

Never one to give up on a good deal, I decided to "fix" my new shoes. After all, I own power tools for occasions just like this, right?

I cut out the canvas covering the three lowest eyelets and laced these bad boys up. And NOW I am ready to show off my new kicks to the middle school crowd.

I have a college friend who collects thousands of dollars of basketball and sports shoes each year. The dude is waaaaaaay into Jordans and Nikes. He rolls around Dallas in several pairs that he had custom made. The guy has no kids.

And that probably explains why he has probably never taken a power drill to any of his kicks.

Create-A-Day

The Princess woke up early (or at least earlier than I planned) this morning. I wasn't totally ready to face the morning pet-feeding chores, so I went and crawled into her bed to chat for a few minutes.

She started telling me all about her awesome bear stuffed animal. Yeah, I had no clue either. Turns out, she was trying to remember all the details of a toy that she had dreamed about. The Princess was ready for me to fire up the sewing machine and get working on her newest masterpiece. Now I am not totally clueless around a sewing machine. My mother would have never, ever allowed that. But creating a 3D toy from scratch? Yeah, this sounds like a project best passed onto mom.

Less than 2 hours later The Boss Lady and The Princess have a pattern created and the fabric parts cut out and pinned together. They have a plan for finishing the bear in short order. Planning and working quick, not my strong suits...

The Talker set out this morning to design a brand new board game. He worked solo for an hour or more and in the end the wife and kids sat down to play the new game. It involves a lot of math, so I wasn't invited.

With all of the creativity flowing around here, I went out in the backyard and worked on my newest masterpiece, the wine bottle tree/garden trellis. All I need now is to empty another few dozen cool looking bottles. Or maybe I'll gather some from the neighbor's recycling bins and save my liver all that hassle.

The Boss Lady has her own plan for creativity today. She and the boy are leaving in a few minutes to take the dog to Dirty Dog Wash for a bath. That is always a three hour adventure in wet, smelly mess. Lucky for me, I get to skip out and watch movies with the girl!

Catching up after a busy start to the summer

The Princess had a fairly big surgery last week. I won’t go into a lot of detail here since The Boss Lady has blogged the surgery elsewhere. Email me if you need the address to that blog. Due to the personal info posted over there, I won’t link to it here. Now, 4 days later, she is doing great. She is currently singing Taylor Swift songs and splashing in a nearly empty bathtub.

Elsewhere in the AtHomeFamily kingdom, it is HOT! 100 plus for something like 12 days in a row. So I have thrown in the towel on the garden. This morning I took down the gate and let the chickens have the parched and burned up leftovers.

This is not the first pampering the birds have gotten this week. It has been so hot out in the back 40, that I bought a misting system to help keep everybody cool in the backyard. If you are sitting right near the mister, you can notice a big difference in the temperature. Not that I want to hang out there anyways. I hung the misters in the trees near the chicken coop and I saw that 6 of the 7 birds (and 1 cat) were hanging out under there during the hottest part of the day yesterday.

The kids bought me a 12 bottle wine cooler for Father’s Day. I am always looking for something new to learn about (previously it was trucks- which I am still working on, boats- that I lost interest in and set sail on craigslist, cigars- which I enjoyed but annoyed everyone else with, guitars-which I still can’t play but somehow now own two and… The Boss Lady can give you the entire list). This year I have been soaking in as much info about wine as I can handle. I still have no vocabulary to describe wines that I like or don’t like, but I am having fun shopping for bargains and reading up on different varietals and vintages.

Cruising the ‘net for wine info, I ran across several sites about bottle trees. Our neighbor used to add all of her empty wine and beer bottles to the limbs of a dead tree in the middle of her yard. You could see it from our kitchen window and it actually was pretty cool when the morning sun hit the bottles. And it was only half as tacky as you might think. Anyways, I started my own bottle tree this morning. I don’t have a dead tree to decorate, but I do have a bunch of wooden trellis surrounding our garden/chicken fun park. So with the addition of some 1/2” dowel rods, we have the start of a spectacular piece of yard art. I’ll post some pictures of the bottle trees soon.

Best of all, it isn’t in your yard. You are welcome.

What would summer be without surgery

The Princess will be having surgery in a few hours. Hopefully this will finally correct a lifetime bladder problem. The Boss Lady set up a blog a few weeks ago to mark the progress towards this surgery. I am not posting a link to the blog, since we have used real names and locations over there, Email me if you want the address. But please don't be too mad if I don't get around to responding to the email quickly.

It has been a long road to get to this point and I thought I was all good with this surgery, which may last upwards of 5 hours. I headed to bed last night at 11 and finally fell asleep at 5:15. Good times!

The Princess got some good sleep and she has gotten to front load on Popsicles and Sprite. the breakfast of pre-surgical champs. She will be staying in the hospital for a couple of days minimum, maybe up to 5 days so a snack is certainly welcome.

Spring Garden and Fam News Update

It is hard to believe, but summer is almost here. Oh, sure, the calendar rings in the new season some time in mid-June, but anyone who has spent May in Texas knows that REAL summer begins quickly after the last frost.

The academic year is winding down. The kids have 9 daze left and it is showing at the middle skool. There will be no new learning until the fall semester.

Dunring the week of Spring The Princess helped me plant the veggie and flower garden. We haven't had much time to tend to the plants this season but everything is growing nicely. Actually, several crops were utter failures this year. A combination of poor timing at planting time, not enough rain and some "helpful" chickens is going to keep us out of beans, peas and broccoli this season. Also, some of The Princess' flowers did not germinate. But she planted enough other varieties to make up for the weaklings.

This season we planted our garden a little differently. No structured rows of plants all lined up this year. We decided to mix things up a little bit and did more of a "square-foot-garden" thing. Of course we have a few hundred square feet to work with, so we kind of went crazy. I really like the way the garden looks this year. I am sure that we will do more of this type of garden in the future.

A few pictures from our plot:

Our first time growing kohlrabi. Still haven't eaten any of it. You first, OK?

The survivors - onions, corn (another first timer in our garden), watermelon, spinach, eggplant, zinnias, kohlrabi, morning glories, loads of different herbs and marigolds.

A sneak attack form one of the helpers.
The caterpillars and chickens have done a real number on the kohlrabi leaves.

A few minutes before the photo shoot, the cats were both helping in the garden, too. They have recently been evicted from the house and I no longer care if they eat grass or leafy greens. If they barf outside, then I don't have to clean it up. Or I can at least use a power washer.

Regular readers here or over on my facebook page will know that my job situation changed quickly a couple of months ago. There is still no promise that I will be returning to the same skool (or any skool) next fall, but things are starting to look a little more promising. Hopefully we will know something definite, shortly.

The Princess will be having a pretty big surgery in a few weeks and that is of course the biggest issue on our horizon. Having to miss a few weeks of swimming is not the best way to start a Texas Summer Break but this works best so that she won't miss out on a ton of skool in the fall. And the flower garden should be looking great by then, so she will be getting fresh cut blooms each day that she is at the hospital.

So there you have it. I haven't updated in a month or so, but you are officially up to speed with the AtHomeFam in less than 7 minutes.

What a month!

I cannot believe that it has been more than a month since I last visited my own blog. Life has been crazy busy around here.

Funding for public education is taking a hit all over the country right now, but it has grown increasingly personal in our house, now that we are both working for the (same) "man". Hopefully the politicians will figure this shit out quickly, because not knowing what the heck is going to happen to our jobs in the next few months sucks royally.

On the other hand, of course I just got back from a three day business trip. It is such a weird set of circumstances. "Here, we think you'll be working for us next school year, so you and 29 other teachers hit the road. And be sure you save your receipts to get reimbursed."

The AtHomeFam is doing OK. Kickball season has started up for The Princess. Her team will be one of the whipping boys younger teams in the league, so I am trying to remind them all that the game should be FUN. Hoping that we have as many laughs as tears this season.

The Talker has discovered a new source of adrenaline. He is now into skateboarding and lacrosse. Turns out his old man likes this stuff too. But it hurts me a lot worse the next day.

Parade recap

We spent the morning at the Chuy's/Children Giving to Children/Blue Santa Parade. True, it may have the worst name ever in parade history, but it is also the greatest of all parades. For several reasons. One, it happens in Austin. Which is always cool. Two, the kids who attend the parade donate toys to the local Blue Santa program that is sponsored by our Police/Fire/EMS Departments. The toys are given to kids all over the area who otherwise might have nothing else to open on Christmas morning. And three, it is the one day a year that the kids can count on dad waking up way early. But really, it is about the balloons. This is the only parade all year that they use the big character balloons.

This year I hit downtown before 7am (several hours later that years past), but it was only 33 degrees out there, so I was confident that the crowd would be slow to form this year. And I was right! We still got our preferred viewing spot.

I loaded up the netbook and the cell phone, so I kept entertained with random Facebook posts and watching Groundhog Day on Netflix streaming, thanks to the wifi from the Starbucks across the street. The wait was a lot shorter this year, but much colder, so I would rate this as the toughest year yet.

Knowing that there are sometimes 100,000 people at this parade, I go downtown early and camp out on OUR spot. But we are always prepared for some fun while we wait. Last year the kids and I geocached downtown. This year it was chalk art in the street.

The Princess was proud of this drawing, her "Peace Sign Kitty"

The kids and I always stroll over to watch the crews blow up the balloons. This year they had Super Grover, King Prawn (?), The Grinch and the Coca-Cola Bear. The Princess was thrilled to see them inflating a My Little Pony balloon, but something must have happened with that one, it never made the trip down the parade route.

The pickup trucks stop at the end of the parade and the kids rush out to load them up with the donated toys.

Joe McDermott and his band. He is a local kids entertainer who the kids and I have stalked followed since they were babies.

The Biscuit Brothers and Buttermilk. From the PBS Show filmed right here in Cap City.

No PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIGE! :(

I'll admit, when I saw the weather report, I was not thrilled about sitting in a camp chair, freezing my fat butt off, just so the kids could see some parade. But at the last minute I decided to head downtown and park my blanket-wrapped carcass. The kids will be too grown up for all of this nonsense too soon so when the kids and The Boss showed up (with doughnuts, sausage kolaches and Dr Pepper) and they were bouncing around with excitement, then I was glad that we had continued this family tradition once more.

Specialization is for insects

This afternoon, I was reminded of a quote that flew around the internet a while back while The Princess was laying out her carefully designed plan of seven careers:

"Daddy, I want to be a famous clothes designer, a famous ballerina, a famous car painter, a mommy, a famous artist, a house painter and a famous story writer."

Yep. looks like this one is on track for a liberal arts degree. We better start saving now, so that we can afford to have her move back home after college.

See, I told you Rule Number 1 was a good one.

It is more than a year after the fact, and Rule Number One has only need a minor revision. The Kids and I took care of finalizing the details today while in the car on the way home from School.

With that, I give you the new, and improved Rule Number One.

Rule Number One - Don't be an idiot.
Rule Number One, subpart a - Don't eat the meatballs at a furniture store.
Rule Number One, subpart b - No tickee, no washy.

And that pretty much covers every eventuality that has come up in the past year.

I will say that I still feel that Rule Number One covers EVERYTHING but the kids are insistent that Rule Number One gets an overhaul.

We may be the last ones around

to give into the dark, soul-sucking, hateful little things.

No, I am not talking about the kids, they have been around for a while and they really aren't THAT bad.

Today The Boss Lady bought the kids their first Silly Bandz, the brightly colored, little, shaped rubber bands that evidently kids all over the country have gone nuts for this past year (maybe longer).

Why are we so late to the fad? Have you seen the cost of those things? $4 a dozen? Yeah, uh, No! And us late adopters of all things cool seem to give in when the fad drops to about 1/4 the original price. $1 a dozen is a little more like it.

Wish us luck. I am just hoping now that we haven't accidentally unleashed a whole new Pok-e-mon/Bakugan/Disney Princess-ish 0bsession to collect 'em all.

But is is so dang funny...

I know I should not be laughing at The Princess while she is happily singing and cleaning her Palace. But the combination of cleaning, dancing and song writing is just too good to ignore so I am sitting outside her closed door, listening to the chaos. I tried to record, but for once she is not being loud enough and if I walk in with the video camera she will stop instantly.

"Break. Break. Break the law.
I don't care what you do but I'll come see you
After I break the law.

Break the law. Break the law. I don't know what I'll do
But I'll break the law."

Then it just sort of goes into a be-bop, hip-hoppy thing with a country twang and it starts to repeat.

But for now I am more than a little worried that the girl saw me when I watered the lawn this morning. On my "illegal" day. If the tooth fairy gives $1 a tooth, how much do I have to fork over to stay out of the jailhouse?

First Day Success

With both kids going to day camps yesterday, for the first time ever, our day was a little chaotic. The Talker was at an all day sports camp. He swam, played soccer and built forts in the woods with his new buddies. The Princess is going to a half day dance camp across town from The Talker’s camp. She hasn’t really said WHAT they did there, but I know she was worn out since she napped in the car on the ride home.

We all drove out to drop off The Talker. After we ran a few errands and watched a little World Cup, the remaining three of us left for a Doctor’s appointment and Dance Camp. After we fed the girl at Burger King and dropped her at the high school gym with about 1000 other grade-school girls, The Boss Lady and I ran away for a nice lunch out on the lake. Excepting the fact that my food tasted awful and the glare off the water was giving me a headache, we had a grand time!

A few hours after lunch we headed different directions. I had to pick up the boy 20 minutes away and The Boss Lady had to drive the other direction to get the girl , 45 minutes away. Oh the things we will do so that a 6 year old can hang out with her 16 year old cousin!

Today promises more of the same fun (except for the lunch out, since The Boss is at work today). The Boss dropped off the boy a few hours ago and The Princess and I are heading to dance camp in another hour. But today should prove a little less chaotic. I am loading up my study materials and I’ll just hang out at the library near Dance Camp while I study.

Summer update

We are almost a week into the summer break and life is just as exciting as always around here. the kids are wearing themselves out playing all day and sleeping late in the mornings. So life is great for everyone.

The Princess and I picked up with a forgotten tradition a couple of days ago. When she does not have to be asleep by a certain time, to be ready for school the next morning, we read together. The last story we read was the original Beauty and the Beast by Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont. That is truly a short story and it only took us a few nights to knock out.

A few nights ago we started on Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. This is a much longer book and we will probably spend most of the summer nights working through it. I haven't read this since I was a kid, and I may have to read ahead soon, just to decide how we will read through (or skip through) the "bad stuff" that happens later in the story. The biggest downside of reading this story with a 6 year old girl has already happened at least once though. "Daddy, I REAAAAALY want a horse of my own."

It isn't a pony, but The Princess has recently gotten something else great. A new family has moved onto our block and they brought their very own 5 and 12 year old girls with them. The Princess is beside herself to have a new playmate living 4 houses away. There are more than 40 kids on our 2-block street, but there were no other 5-6 year old girls. Now we are fully stocked!

The Talker is loving the end of the school year. After 6 days of summer break he has yet to announce that he is "bored". And that may be the biggest success of our entire summer.

The AtHomeFarm is growing again. The kids have four new baby chicks. Last week we brought home a week old Black Australorp and a Buff Orpington. And a few days later we brought home two, 2 day old Buff Brahma chicks. I have bought all of our birds so far at the last real Farm and Ranch store in Austin. And I still love that store, but it is about a 2 hour round trip to Callahan's. This time we bought our birds at a little family owned feed store right in the middle of the city.

Going into Buck Moore Feed Store is like stepping back into the feed and seed store that we went to when I was a kid. Maybe that explains why we have been there 4 times in less than a month. They stock chicken breeds that I have never even seen, like the Australorp.

The kids took the new birds out for their first yard visit.

5 day old Buff Brahma chicks

Our 3 grown hens are laying like crazy. They keep us stocked with eggs. Which is good, since The Princess has discovered that she really likes hard boiled eggs. FYI, Fresh eggs do not make the best hard boiled eggs. They are too hard to peel and it is almost impossible to keep from tearing up the egg white.

Since deciding to grow the flock, I have also decided to build a permanent coop. Once my design was finished and I priced the lumber at about $500, I have decided to build a garden shed instead. I can build a shed twice the size, for less than twice the cost AND I can divide it into enclosed coop space for the birds and storage space for my garden tools. Plus I will be able to finally retire my hand-me-down, hail-damaged vinyl shed. Now I just have to find The Boss Lady's checkbook, so she can pay for this thing...

The garden is already showing signs of playing out from the summer heat. We have had several 100 degree days already and I can't keep enough water on the veggies to keep everything nice and green. I took everything we had harvested from the garden yesterday and made a veggie/beef stew. It was nice and yummy. Hopefully it isn't last of the harvest.

So there you have it and now, you may resume your summer fun.

6

The Princess turned 6 today. And guessing by the way she fell asleep in about 39 seconds, I think she had a great birthday.

This weekend we were all over Texas, from Austin to Dallas and back again. But somewhere in the the crazy fun of hanging out with my brother and his family, my sister and her family and Mom and Dad a couple of times, we seemed to forget a couple of important things. Like buying birthday presents. Oooops.

We got home about 6pm on Sunday evening and The Boss and I had come up with a great plan to get the last of the birthday gear bought. It was a good plan and it would have worked. Except that when I came in from the 4 hours of driving, I sat on the couch for a few minutes and forgot about the plan.

About 10pm, when I was ready for bed, I headed to Wal-Mart to buy the presents. True, I could have shopped today, while the kids were in school, but I already felt bad enough about putting it off for that long, so I shopped in the dark.

The Princess loved her gifts and she could not have cared less if they had been purchased a week, or an hour, ago. But the highlight of the day may have been the cupcakes for breakfast. Since I was feeling guilty already, we had birthday cupcakes twice today. Once at breakfast, and again at dinner. I figured I could redeem myself with pink cupcakes.

And you know what? I was right! The Princess said she "had a great birfday." Which is all that really mattered today.