Mama On The Move

For Katie's Language Arts lessons, we've been covering adjective phrases, adverb phrases, adjective clauses, adverb clauses - you know, things that you'll use all the time as an adult.  If I had a quarter for every time I'd been stopped on the street and asked whether or not a sentence contained phrases or clauses and if so, what type of phrases or clauses they were, I'd be a rich woman today. And if only someone would offer me money to diagram said sentences, well...... thank goodness I have all this knowledge in my head, I'm sure it will come in very handy one of these days. Anyway, Katie has been having trouble remembering the difference between clauses and phrases. I was trying to come up with a silly image to help her remember the difference.  "Just imagine Santa Clause talking.  When Santa CLAUSE speaks, he always uses subjects and verbs!" Katie looked at me like was crazy and said, "Ho Ho Ho has a subject and verb?"

For the first time ever, Kerry, the girls, and I entered a 5K! (I hope you now have the impression that we ran it, and that I am in fabulous shape.) In actuality, we walked it.  Kerry could totally have run it.  The man runs half-marathons and enjoys it.  He's run a full marathon and didn't really enjoy it, but still occasionally says he might do it again.   The girls and I could have run it ........ if someone had been chasing us with an axe........and even then, it would have been iffy. This is before the race. This is after the race.  This is after the "after party" after the race. Let me show you some more. Before the race.  After the race. The girls opted to really wallow in the color which is why they have a lot more on their faces than I do. My arms were pretty blue though.  This is The Color Run and it's billed as the "Happiest 5K On The Planet".  There are four color stations along the cours

This morning, I was getting ready upstairs, when I realized Emily would need me to spray some styling gel in her hair before we left for the hairdresser to get her coiffed for the prom. I called down the stairs, "Emily, could you come here for a minute, please?" She came pounding up the stairs, her eyes wide. "I need to spray some goop in your hair before it dries so it will hold the style," I told her. "Oh, good!  I thought I was in trouble!" she said with relief. "Did I sound like I was mad?" I asked. "Well, since you never yell when you're mad, I can't tell if you sound mad or not.  You sound the same all the time.  I never know if you're calling me up here to tell me a joke or to tell me to pick up my clothes off the floor.  You should yell at us when you're angry so we know.  You never yell at us and now I can't tell when you're angry and it's probably warped my sense of how people interact with o

This year, for the first time ever, I bought season passes to Six Flags.  I decided that we are going to spend the summer riding rides, going to the water park, and attending concerts so we may as well get the best price on it. I also bought the meal plan, where you pay one flat fee and you can eat lunch and dinner every time you go to the park.   We may go there every day just to eat. We decided our first trip to the park would be this past Friday.  Most kids are still in school and parents are working so I felt like it wouldn't be terribly crowded. I was right. I love it when I'm right.   The first half of the day we only waited in line for ten minutes to ride some of the most popular attractions.  As the day went on, it got a little more crowded but we never waited more than 30 minutes to get on a ride.  But I get ahead of myself. The day started off with us waiting in line to get in the park.  I realized while we were standing there that

Didn't know I was a famous supermodel, did ya? This was a total fluke.  A friend of mine who is a Mary Kay lady was holding a fashion show featuring Chico's clothing and Mary Kay makeup to debut the new Mary Kay car which is a BMW. One of her models had to back out a few days ahead of time due to a family emergency. So, naturally, she called me. I'm everyone's favorite choice to model.  Five feet three inches, mom of three, closing in on fifty - it's a wonder the agencies aren't beating down my door. She asked me to run down to Chico's and let them pick out two outfits for me to model.   I thought I'd be in and out in a flash but it actually took a while with me standing like a human Barbie doll while three ladies mixed and matched clothes and jewelry on me. It sounded something like this: "Let's put the denim top on her."  "We only have one left in the store and if people come in wanting one like it, w

While we were in Kentucky, a good friend asked if we'd like to see the stables.  Horses are cool, so of course we said yes! I realized that the girls have a horsemanship badge to earn for their scouting program, so I quickly grabbed a handbook to see if there were any requirements we could check off from this visit. We were able to mark off three for Katie! Emily discovered shortly after our arrival that she is very allergic to horses even if she doesn't touch them.  She spent most of her visit in the car waiting for her eyes to stop itching. Katie (that's her little head peeking out from behind the giant rump) learned how to groom a horse, attach a lead line, saddle a horse, and the difference between Western and English riding. And, of course, how to clean up after a horse. I snapped this shot as she was leading the horse back out to the field.  It is now one of my favorite photos ever!

We went to see the tumbling team at Ben's college perform their final show of the school year. These are clips I pulled that feature Ben. It was one of the coolest shows I've been to - very high energy and lots of fun!