Camp Life

This is the first year that Bode stayed at camp more then 15 minutes. He actually stayed the entire week and claimed he only "lay awake cold and missing my Mom" one night. I consider this a huge success. 

Last year, after 15 minutes of him latched onto my leg, I called my parents and begged them to rescue him (and me). It's amazing what one year in school has done for his maturity.

Mia claims she loves camp more than theater. That's a bold claim.

She's a lesson in contradictions. She's a true introvert who loves camp and theater. Go figure.

Andy actually taught a class for 4th and 5th graders this year. He also bolted out of there less than two seconds after his class was over every day. It was almost like he was in shape or something.

This sweet thing. What can you say to that?

It takes all the self control I can muster to keep from fixing my nine-year-olds hair at camp. I have to sit on my hands.

By the time she got home it was an oily, matted, chlorine-ridden, damaged mess. And I didn't say a word, not one single word. I happen to love the fact that she is not yet obsessed with her appearance. We have plenty of time for that. And besides, I have a six-year-old boy who's obsessed enough for the both of them.

 Bode got confused about his freezer bags labeled with clothes for each day. He ended up wearing the same short every day and sleeping in the clean ones. But I give him a solid A for effort.

Camp. Just one of the millions of things I swore I would never do as a parent and, like all childless proclamations, I ate my words.

A field trip back in time

About a month of so ago, Mia's class went to a one-room schoolhouse for a fake day of struggle and hardship.

Actually, I take that back. This was their fake day of curiosity and learning. Every other day of their third-grade life was struggle and hardship. (Dear Law-Makers That Decided My Third Grader Needed To Spend Her Entire Year Stressing About A Stupid Test, Stop ruining our children's lives. Sincerely, A Mom)

Mia would have made an awesome child of the land run. She loves the simple life, so long as it involves dipping a little pen into an inkwell and doesn't include any hard labor.

I tell my kids to go outside and play with sticks ALL THE TIME and they act like it's torture, but put a bonnet on and all of the sudden it's retro-fun.

Reading out of the first official textbook ever published:

We received very explicit instructions about how to dress for the day. I ignored them. I did, however, put my hair in pigtails and wear boots. It turned out more urban cowgirl than schoolmarm (thankfully).

This. Just this.

And really, I only take issue with not being allowed to loiter in ice cream shops. Because no one, and I mean No. One. will keep me away from my ice cream.

And he reads.

For the past year or so, Bode got it in his head that Mia was a reader and he was a baller. If you asked him if he could read he would say, "No, but Mia can!" And for the most part he was perfectly content letting Mia read for him. 

Finally the light bulb clicked on for this kid and he decided he wasn't too cool to read. He also decided he would do it everywhere he went.

 Notice Andy's dress socks worn as bball leggings. Bless it.

We struck a deal this summer that includes him reading and me buying him basketball cards. 

Bribery is a Mother's best friend. Don't ever forget it.

Latest Reads

I've been in a reading funk lately. In fact, I read about five books in a row that were so forgettable that I couldn't even conjure up the titles to tell you not to read them. I gave them all to my mother or I would go look in my "books-I-am-completely-indifferent-about-and-want-to-give-away-to-the-first-person-I-see-because-they-are-junking-up-my-house" pile (Sorry, Mom.)

I've had a bad run with fiction, but have enjoyed some great nonfiction recently.

This is the second time I have read this book. I am speaking about spiritual disciplines at an event this fall so I thought I better get myself disciplined real fast. This book is helping.

This was a really easy read and a great book if you ever plan to work with people on any level. It's written like a novel, but it's really a team building book.

This book was given to me by a friend and is no longer in print so I feel kind of special having it. It has all kinds of great ideas and advice about hiring the right people. But for goodness sake, if you ever plan to go to an interview, read this book (you can still download it)! You will have an edge on the nine billion other people that want the same exact job as you.

I only read this book to satisfy my strange curiosity with eccentric, dysfunctional, insanely wealthy families. Twisted lives fascinate me.

I am currently doing this bible study at church. The tagline is "Making wise decisions in the midst of raw emotions." That is code for "how not to act like a crazy b." My husband is the one that signed me up for it. (kidding.....maybe).

I just finished reading this to Bode and it's such great fiction that I felt it deserved to be included on my reading list. My children are required to read every book Roald Dahl ever wrote. Period.

And finally, I am sure I am the last person on the planet to read this little gem. This book is worth neglecting your children, taking a sick day, faking a migraine - whatever it takes to get a couple of uninterrupted hours. I read it in one sitting because I just couldn't stop. It's precious in a good way. I'm not even sure I can watch the movie because I don't want to risk messing up my mental pictures of these sweet people and their love story. 

That's all for now, folks.

Not our best week

Bode begged to go to baseball camp this year. The kid couldn't wait to show the world what he was made of.  

Then he went.

It took about two seconds for him to realize that he wasn't top dog. And it took that long for me to realize that the baseball community is a foreign culture of which I am clueless.

Here is Bode before his first day of camp:

Here is Bode on the way to his last day of camp:

Let's just say he doesn't love it.

Sometimes our kids have to do hard things, like spend a week doing something that they aren't that great at and they don't happen to love. And that's ok. 

And sometimes you kind of want to die inside when your kid is the only one without a real baseball uniform. Also ok.

If Bode learns nothing else this entire week, I want him to know that he can survive a hard week.

That's life, kid.

I happen to be learning that dragging a crying kid into a baseball practice makes me sweaty and flustered. Also embarrassed.

And that, too, is just life.

My personal favorite

Last week, my family had an estate sale at Ahmo's place. Basically, I watched my childhood disappear in about 3 hours. It was so weird. 

The fun part about getting things ready for the sale was coming across all kinds of treasures. My grandmother, Ahmo, saved a splinter that she took out of my uncle's foot when he was a kid. She literally taped it to a piece of paper and put the date on it. 

Kind of awesome and kind of weird. Ok, mostly weird.

I found every picture, letter, or card I ever sent the woman. And I also found this little piece of prose I wrote when I was eight years old:

"Halfly" is my new favorite word. My only regret is that I haven't used it since I was eight. That's about to change.

School's out for summer!

This is the picture of new beginnings - freshly washed faces, hair accessories, and well-balanced lunches.

 This is the picture of a mother who is so over it. You don't even want to know what's in that lunch box.

Mia may be dressed for "field day" but she is armed with  her sketch pad and pencil. There will be no participation in outdoor athletic events for this girl. She'll be on the sidelines turning the other kids into cartoon characters.

These 6 women gave life to 18 humans.

There is nothing more powerful than that.

Spring has sprung

Literally.

In our house, The Bodester's breathing treatments and steroid regimen are a sure sign that spring is here.

This picture is the definition of family to me. We take care of each other - and sometimes that means your cousin ties your shoe so that you can continue to shoot people.

There is more than one way to do your homework. And all of those ways are perfectly acceptable to me. For the sake of full disclosure, by the time May rolls around the dog really might eat the kids' homework (accidentlyonpurpose). If my kids are as burned out on their school as I am, I can assume that not much learning is going on anyway.

However, they can write adorable notes like this to me anytime. I kind of want to make this into a t-shirt.

Ladies, when you're so sick of the whole Mom thing and you just want to crawl into your closet with a picked over box of Russell Stover's chocolates that's leftover from Valentines and only has the coconut truffles left in it, and you don't even like coconut but you're so desperate for a some short-term gratification that all of the sudden it looks delicious to you, just remember that they really do love you soooooo much. And the rest of the family? Well, they are kind of just an afterthought.

Lots of stuff

Things are happening at rapid speed lately. Gone are the lazy days of drinking coffee and watching the kids destroy the house. And I thought I was actually busy back then. The joke is on me.

We spent Easter in Dallas at LTC. Mia signed a song. 

She got a gold, duh.

This LTC thing is a whole new world for me. I was secretly dreading it because in my small little mind it was going to be a giant homeschool convention (not that there's anything wrong with that). 

And I know absolutely nothing about homeschool conventions except that it's where the Duggars go to meet their future spouses. 

 We actually had a blast and I am already looking forward to next year.

If homeschool conventions are anything like this then count me in! 

 This sums up Mia's and Bode's experiences at LTC. Can you guess which one is the introvert and which one is the extrovert?

Bode wore Vans on cowboy day at school. This, and the fact that my kids have their own Starbucks drink, confirms my worst fears - I'm raising Edmondites. There's no turning back now...

I ran a half marathon the other day. 

I have been known to be a bit of an intense running partner at times. 

Thankfully, I found someone that gets it (translation: He doesn't think creating training spreadsheets is annoying.) 

 My freakishly long arm and I had a blast.

I don't know how I will do life without this woman.

And just like that, the awkward years began.

Mia received part if her inheritance in the form of braces over spring break. And I tell ya, you could feel the tween angst just bubbling up out of this child the moment she walked out of the orthodontist's office.

She now communicates with her brother in eye rolls and exaggerated sighs. It's so wonderful.

She instantly looked older.  But not too old for me to drag her into my lap and squeeze the life out of her. I promise she will never be too old for that.

Less than a year ago she was a baby! A sweet, innocent, crooked toothed baby.

And now? She is staring at herself in the mirror from multiple angles.

I'm kind of dying inside.

This post will not be going in the kids' scrapbook.

Or maybe it will. Who knows?

If you're a dude, this post is not for you. Go check your fantasy baseball scores or something.

I want to talk about boobs for a moment.

And, guys, if you're still reading this I know how much you love them but this isn't going to interest you, I promise. You know millions of ways to waste time, go do one of those. Now.

I came across this article the other day and lemmetellya, I was blown away. Blown away because in all my boob years I never knew that I was wearing the wrong sized bra. I'm built like a 12-year-old boy so I wear a bra mostly for social reasons. In fact, the brand I used to buy was called "Sweet Nothings." I kid you not.

So, after reading the article, I went here to learn how to properly measure myself, and then used this handy, dandy bra fit calculator to find my actual size.

Now, I have used all kinds of calculators from the internet. I've calculated how tall my kids are going to be, which New Girl character I am most like (Jess, duh), how much a certain house will cost, and which royal I would most likely marry if I, too, were royal. But in all my life I have never come across one to tell me what size of bra to wear. Where have I been? (Confession: I've been calculating which Wizard of Oz character I am, that's where I've been).

When I found out that I was an actual, respectable size I went all kinds of crazy. I was dancing around the house, turning cartwheels, high-fiving the mailman, and eating cookie dough like it was going to go straight to my boobs. (I secretly believe that it might.)

I was googling my new fancy bra size and was planning to buy all kinds of cute undergarments until my husband kindly reminded me that my google searches were flagging his p0rn-accountability tracker thingy which meant that every time I looked at a new bra, it sent the image directly to his best friend's inbox. Ooops.

Sorrynotsorry.

Best day ever!

All you need to know about Great Wolf Lodge

Just got back from our annual Great Wolf Lodge trip. All three of my children love it. I tolerate it, for the sake of my children (all three of them).

Thankfully there is a Starbucks in the lobby and if you get super lucky your kid will win you a 3 foot long twizzler in the arcade. It's big enough to eat for breakfast or hang yourself with, whichever you prefer. 

There is no reason you need to enlarge this picture and analyze my make-up less face, chlorine hair, and horrid posture. So stop it. Now.

I also found out that there is a Torchy's Tacos exactly four miles down the road. If you don't care for expletives on your cups and painted on the walls, you might want to skip Torchy's. But then you wouldn't get to eat the best #@&* tacos on the planet and that would be a shame. If your kid reads the cups and sounds out the expletives, just act like its another language and you don't have a clue what it means. Or blindfold them. Either way, just go there.

Highlight of the trip, I stepped on a wet, used bandaid in the pool area. Then I cried and used the expletives that I learned at Torchy's.

Overall, great trip. Crowds were pretty low and the kids slept like babies.