Aiden's World Project

Over the weekend Aiden completed his first school project of the year. For his World Cultures class he had to design a map or a globe with various required elements. He decided to make a T-shirt globe. We're hoping that the teacher will appreciate all of his (our) hard work. We think that he did a good job. I think that it looks really nice with his pajama pants.

Aiden's 12th Birthday

Today Aiden turned twelve. First he tried to talk us into letting him stay home from school. We said "No", but he pretty much got his way the rest of the day. He didn't have many ideas for how he wanted to celebrate, so we just made it up as we went along. His only request was that he have a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. We added a little kitty litter to the top.
Aiden didn't seem bothered by the treats that the cats left on top. This is Aiden's kind of cake.
We gave Aiden the option of going out to eat, but he wanted to stay home and eat a rotisserie chicken.
Normally the cats don't get to be on the couch. We made a two minute exception.
Do I ever get any respect around here? Even Sophie tries to give me bunny ears in photos. Aiden is putting together the Lego set that he received. What's a birthday without Legos?

Grandma June has come for a visit. We're always grateful that she's so willing to make the trip to see us. Our children have been blessed with good grandparents.
After dinner, we went to 5 different stores so that Aiden could find something to buy with the birthday money that was burning a hole in his pocket. He finally decided on the Indiana Jones Lego Wii game that he saw in the first store that we went to. It was a long shopping trip, but worth it if it made him happy.

Sophie Starts Ballet

Sophie has been very excited about starting ballet classes. She likes to come home after class and show me all of the new steps that she learned. She informed us yesterday that all of the girls in her class must shop at Walmart because she recognized all of the leotards and skirts from our shopping trip.

Just Being a Mom

Yesterday was one of those crazy days that happen too often with mutiple kids and mutiple activites. I worked until 3:30, ran home to sew a few badges onto Brennan's scout shirt. Fortunately, he had a ride to scouts at 4. I took Sophie to dance, left here there to pick up Brennan, took him through the drive thru at Taco Bell, gave them my money, got my change, and promptly drove away.
Brennan: "Uh, Mom? My food?"
Me: "Oh yeah."
Drive back thru the drive thru to pick up Brennan's food. Race across town to pick up Sophie from dance. Drive back across town to drop Brennan off at soccer practice. Beg a kind hearted soccer mom to please bring him home. Stop at the Taco Bell drive thru again to get food for everyone else. Feel really embarrassed because I'm sure they remember that a half hour before I had driven away without my food. Eat in the car while driving back across town to home. Pick up Aiden, throw his tacos at him, and race to the middle school open house. Race back home in time to be there for Brennan's arrival. Then I went out to walk the dog. Lance's 12 hour shifts sometimes wear me out. It's all good though.

What Was Lost Was Found

Our cat Stipy is quite the scardy cat. He hasn't hardly stepped foot outside since we moved here last year. Last Friday night Lance let Stipy outside knowing that within 5 minutes that the cat would be meowing at the door to come in. He never came back. We had decided that either someone had taken him, or that he had become a coyote snack. Besides being so fearful and cautious, he's a fairly intelligent cat, so we just couldn't imagine that he would have gotten himself into trouble. The kids were sad, and we were sad (Lance won't admit to it), but knew that we would be okay.

At 6 a.m. this morning, more than four days after his disappearance, I found meowing at the door. I thought for sure that I was dreaming. I really had given him up for dead. I was so excited I had to wake Brennan up to show him. It sometimes seems silly how attached we get to our little pets, but we sure are glad to have him home. It feels as if a weight has been lifted from us. The kids were all so happy this morning. Hopefully that feeling will last for a while.

Sophie's bedroom furniture

We've been planning for a long time now that we would get Sophie some bedroom furniture. The day finally came, and she now has a bed, a dresser, and a nightstand. It's very simple, but she likes it. We also redid her lampshade. She's grown out of the princess stage, so it's time to look for something new to hang on the walls as well. We'll get motivated enough to paint one of these days.

Aiden on Youtube.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH6r_5bF2uE

We all have different ideas about what is funny. This is Aiden trying hard to entertain himself this summer. It's long, but if you know Aiden, it's funny.

Continued Summer Updates

One thing that we seemed to keep doing this summer was finding turtles. We really don't live by any water, but we kept finding turtles traveling up our street. So far we've found six. This guy was the biggest and the mossiest by far. Who knows if they appreciated our help or not, but we took each of them, as we found them, to the lake, or one of the ponds. I don't think that there was even one among them who enjoyed the car ride.

We tried to spend as much time as possible with Wade and Jodie and the girls before they left for California. That wasn't any easy thing considering all of the friends that they have. Lance and I have decided that we are way to grouchy to be that popular. Anyway, one of the places that they we went together was Landa Park. This is Brennan as he let go of the swing. Aiden (busy adjusting his goggles and nose plug), Aubrey and Wade are in the background awaiting their turns.
Daisy came through her heartworm treatment with flying colors. We're still having days where we're left wondering why we thought that we wanted a dog. Yesterday we went out for our morning run and decided to let Daisy off the leash for a while. We've done this in the past, and it hasn't been a problem. It was yesterday. We kept trying to catch her, and she just kept running. We finally managed to corner her, and Lance leaped through the air superman style, and pinned her down. Of course where they both landed happened to be in a fire ant pile. I took her back to the house, and Lance ran another two miles after he had already completed a four mile run. He was so mad, he probably could have run another two. Somehow, all the irritation seems to go away when we see Brennan enjoying her so much. I still think that she's stinky.

She is starting to calm a little, and she's learned a few tricks. She'll eat just about anything, but her favorite food is bananas. She even helped herself to one one day.

Long Time

Okay, so I've been chastised by a few people for not updating our blog all summer. I've been the "Anti-Blogger", and I really don't know why. It could be that we're a computer/camera loving family, and I never seem to get a turn with either device.

One of Sophie's summer highlights was getting her ears pierced. She and her friend Kelli decided that they were both ready to endure the pain, so they did it together. Sophie has really liked having earrings, and excited about changing them out. She's done really well, and only had a couple of painful moments. Sophie and Kelli have played together a lot this past summer. One of their favorite occupations was the "toad game". I didn't know that toads like to play house, but apparently it's at least a tolerable activity for them. I'm not sure that they enjoyed being scrubbed with toothbrushes, but that was probably the worst that they had to suffer. The kids were nice enough to let the toads go at the end of the day, and go and find new toads when they were ready to play again. And to think, no one got warts. Notice the blob on the couch in the background. Is that really the way that Nintendo intended the Wii to be played?

Brennan played in a 3V3 soccer tournament at the beginning of the summer. There are only three players from each team on the field at one time, and no goalie. The halves are only 10 minutes, so it's very fast paced. The team didn't do as well as they would have liked, but it was a good experience. Brennan is #10.

Aiden has been making movies this summer. So many, that he's been requiring Brennan to sign contracts saying that he will help with the movie. Brennan is apparently tired of being bossed around, and sick of being in films that Aiden makes up as he goes along. I finally took the time to sit down with him, and type out the first three scenes of a script. The video clip is one of the scene's that he's filmed. Brennan thinks that there needs to be some scenery other than the piano and the boxes from Sophie's bedroom furniture. I'll make sure the entire movie gets posted if and when it gets finished.