My life...just not on the road I expected (but it's still dang good).

Swimming on Monday.

We took the kids swimming on Monday too.

I think it was even more fun that swimming on Friday.

And she was even cuter.

Samuel Palmer tried to avoid the camera just like he did on Friday though.

Jill and Courtney and I chased the boys a lot.

 

Unfortunately, she didn't like the water any more on Monday than she did on Friday.

That's Jill.  She would normally kill me for posting a shot of her without her approval but I figured it would be ok since you can't see much of her and what you can see looks pretty dang good.

I told Ben I'd give him 25 donuts if he'd let me take this picture (but I was totally fibbing).

50 donuts.

75 donuts.

That's what most of the shots looked like though.

And to answer a few questions:

1. I didn't use fill flash on any of the pool shots from today or yesterday.  (I can't remember the last time I used flash...probably 5+ years.)

2. Yes, I was IN the swimming pool taking some of these.  (Not the most brilliant idea but it's something I've done before and something I'm sure I'll do again.)

3. I didn't use any sort of cover for my camera/lenses to prevent them from getting wet.  I just told the kids when I got in the pool that they couldn't splash around me at all because it would break my camera and they were all pretty good about it (except for that ornery Annie).

4. I switched between a 24-70mm and a 70-200mm for both days of swimming.

5. And no Josh Downs, there aren't any pictures of me in my suit.  (Sausage legs do not photograph well.)

Swimming on Friday.

Jill, my best friend in the whole-wide-world (we've been best friends for 26 years...just in case you somehow missed the last 144 times I mentioned it) was in town all weekend.

We ate good food and hit a bunch of antique stores and garage sales.

I don't have any pictures of that stuff though because Jill gets cranky when I point the camera at her.  (I have very few photos to prove our 26 years of friendship.)

But we took the kids swimming on Friday and I do have proof of that...

I think kids with missing teeth are the cutest thing ever.

That's Ben (Jill's oldest) looking 8-year-old-GQ.

He's a fish.

She is not a fish.

She's a fish that likes to stay in the shallow end.

That's Sam (Jill's youngest).

She doesn't like to get in above the knees.

But she sure is cute.

Jill and I were pregnant with these two at the same time.  (Ben is 6 weeks older.)  We even had our baby shower together.

I'd like to say that it was fun being pregnant together, but I was going through a divorce at the time so I pretty much cried for 9 months straight (just ask Jill...she was the one who listened to me crying for 9 months straight).

I sure wasted a lot of time crying.

Life turned out pretty good without him.  (Not Coley...my ex-husband.)

But I'll quit with that tangent now.

The colors were wonky on this.  B&W conversion is my solution to wonky colors.

Oh look, she's up to her elbows.

Kind of rare to see all 3 of them in a shot.

She whacked him with that floaty.

Because she's ornery. 

Both Cole & Courtney are (rightfully) a little scared of her.

Look, Coley's afraid she's going to whack him again.

And he was right.

We went swimming yesterday too - will try to post those tomorrow.

Eggs & Weeds.

Josh went to cook us both some eggs for breakfast yesterday and found these...

Apparently my 17 year old son has a little too much time on his hands since it's summer, he doesn't have a J.O.B. and his girlfriend is away at church camp.

He owes me money for his car insurance though so he's outside weeding as we speak.  (It takes a whole lot of weeds to pay for your car insurance...good thing we have plenty.)

Plums.

Turns out that the big fruit tree in the backyard of the new, old house is a plum tree.

And we're all quite happy about it.

God grant me patience.

If I could wave a magic wand and change one thing about my parenting, I would wish for more patience.

Patience is not my thing.  It never has been but I work on it constantly.

And I know that I need to work on my patience because sometimes, when I listen to Annie playing with her babies, I hear her holler at them and tell them that they're all going to have to go in timeout if they don't start behaving.

The other day when I raised my voice and told her that she was going to have to sit in timeout because she was not being a good listener.  She didn't say a word but as she passed by me on her way to the timeout chair, she said "Jesus isn't very happy with your right now.'

And yesterday morning when she was whining because we were out of Honeynut Cheerios and she had to eat a bowl of Kashi GoLean Crunch instead, I told her that she had better quit whining and that if she didn't eat her breakfast she was going to have to go to school with a hungry tummy, she replied "That's not very nice...you should be a good mommy and say PLEASE quit whining."  (That picture was taken the day before we ran out of Honeynut Cheerios...she wasn't smiling over her bowl of Kashi GoLean Crunch yesterday.)

And this morning after listening to her repeated requests for a cup of water (while we were driving) and replying with the same response at least half a dozen times, I said "Annie, I just told you over and over and over again that we'll get some water as soon as we stop, now quit asking."  That's when she decided that she didn't like my tone (Since when did she start picking up on tones?) and said "That's not how you should talk to your baby."

And when I said, "Well, sometimes when my baby whines or cries or pouts or asks the same question over and over again, it's not very nice either.", she replied "Well that's just what babies do Mom."

I'm finding that I need a bit more patience with this little one than all the rest.

The old, new house.

I spent quite a few years after getting divorced living up north of Portland, Oregon in a little town named Columbia City trying to prove to myself and everyone else that I was a successful, single-mom.

Once I had proven that to myself (and realized that I didn't need to prove it to anyone else), I decided to move home to Southern Oregon where most of our family lived.

I rented a house for awhile in Grants Pass which was hard for me after owning my own place up in Columbia City (a little, old house that I bought after the divorce).  Once I had saved up some money though, I ended up buying a little, yet-to-be-built house in a sub-division right by Ross's school.

It was kind of cool because I got to pick the lot I wanted and got to pick some of the details for the house (so long as those details were within the budget).

And that's me standing in the lot I picked.  (Too bad they cut all those trees down a few years later.)

I used to stop by there on my way to work every morning (Remember?...I was a dental hygienist for 12 years) to see how much progress they had made.

That's what it looked like when it was just about done.  (And that's Ross walking in front of it.)  It was kind of small (about 1350 sq. ft.) but it was what I could afford and it was perfect for me and Ross and Coley. 

And that's a picture Ross took of me on the front porch.

And that's a picture I took of Ross & Coley just a few weeks before we moved in.  (It was 2004 so they were 3 & 12).

We're living in the new, old house already and just have one more load of stuff to haul over from the old, new house before it's empty.  And then, we just have a few things to work on over there before it's ready to rent.  (We decided not to sell it because the market is so bad right now.)

I thought I was going to be sad about leaving that house because I always have a tendency to mourn change a little bit (even when it's good change).

But I'm not.

It was a good time in our little lives.  I was proud and excited and hopeful and even though I had a tough time envisioning what the future might look like for the 3 of us, we were happy where we were.

I met Josh Downs on an airplane about 4 months later and we moved our little family of 6 into the new, old house another 4 years after that.

Life has lots of little, wonderful, crazy, unexpected plans.

Strawberries.

I know, I said I wasn't blogging the rest of the week and I'm not.

I just had to post a picture of Grandma Jo bringing strawberries over for Annie (she's the only kid at home right now) for the third night in a row.

Nope.

Nope, they're not prescription glasses, they're Courtney Lee's Halloween glasses but Annie's been wearing them for weeks now.

I just like how the little cat-eye shape make her look kind of sassy & dorky at the same time. 

Then again, it might be the faces she puts on that make her look kind of sassy & dorky at the same time.

(She was sitting on the bathroom counter while I did my hair.)

Going to take the rest of the week off from blogging just to get caught up with stuff.

Hope your week is great.

Pizza.

Took the girls to pizza at our new, favorite pizza place in town; Jackson Creek Pizza Co. the other night (it's on E. Main in Downtown Medford).

That's the girls and their babies getting ready to leave.  (Annie was holding the door open for her Dad.)

That's us in the alley where we parked.

That's Josh's hot calves walking to the pizza parlor.

That's apple juice.

That's the girls waiting for their pizza.

And that's the shot that made me laugh.

Annie had a crazy-good day at her new school.

The boys are in Idaho with my mom (hence all the pictures of the girls).

And I've got boxes to unpack (hence the shortage of words).

Becited.

Annie started a new school today.

Finding her new school was really stressful because we loved her old school so much. 

She stayed home with me until she was 1 1/2 because I had guilt issues with putting her in school for the first time.  I guess I just felt like because I worked from home that I should keep her with me.

She's really social though so school was a good thing for her.  And it ended up being a good thing for me too because getting work done during the day (instead of having to stay up half the night to get it done) made me a better mom.

That was the only school she had ever been to.  That's where she made her first best friend (Arianna).  Where she did finger painting and nose painting and learned how to draw the letter 'A'.  Where she learned new songs like my favorite; "Annie's here today, Annie's here today, we're all so happy cause' Annie's here today!" and Knick-Knack-Patty-Whack.   It was where they knew her and loved her and cried when she left.

She was really excited about her new school though and asked us to drive by it every time we were at the new, old house.

But when I took her there to see her classroom for the first time last week, she didn't want anything to do with it.

I woke her up this morning saying "Annie, it's your first day at your new school!" to which she replied, half-asleep, "I'm becited."  (I'm exited.)

Josh came home from work so we could take her together.

She acted shy but whenever Josh or I asked, she said she was still 'becited'.

And when Josh asked her if she thought maybe Mommy & Daddy should leave so she could play with her new friends, she shook her head yes.

So we walked out the door, peering through the window to see if she was going to change her mind, but she didn't.

Now I'm just sitting here having a tough time focusing on work because I can't quit thinking about what she's doing, who she's playing with, if she'll remember to hold hands when they walk to the library for storytime, if she'll feel lonely at naptime and if she's making new friends.

I'm becited to see her at 3:30 to hear how it all went.

And yes, the weeds in my front yard really are that tall...