Open Arms

Morning, you guys! How the heck are you??? Me? I'm good. But tired. It's almost midnight. How did it get so late again??? Good thing it's Sautrday tomorrow. So I can sleep in. Don't wake me up, you guys! Maybe I'll even take an Ambien so that I can sleep REALLY well. I think I need one - hehe. And deserve one - ROFL!

I woke up at 7:30m, and was SUPER tired. But I knew that Jake had horse camp, and I wanted to make sure that he was ready. I got up, got a little ready, and woke up Jake. And he said that he didn't wanna go. And I was SO tired that I just let him go back to sleep.

We hung out at home, and watched TV, and cleaned a little, but that's it. It was a VERY relaxing morning, and I SO needed it. We eventually got ready to go to Piano Camp, and Eme and Joe and Aunt Sue and I headed out. Jake was still asleep, Tom was reading, and Jim was watching a movie. Maddie and the girls were upstairs.

We dropped Eme and Joe off, and headed to do some errands. Our cell phone that we use as a house phone broke. So I took it to Verizon to see what they could do about it. And they said that it didn't have insurance. That none of our phones had insurance. Whaaaaat? That's not cool. I've used that insurance before! I know that we used to have it! And I don't remember it dropping. They gave me the phone number for the insurance place, and said that there was nothing else they could do for us. sigh. So I facebooked asking if anyone had an old crappy phone that we could have. ha!

Then we headed back to post, and stopped by the TMC to do an errand for Captain America. He wanted me to go to his BDE desk and find a phone number. And set up an appointment for something or another. So I found who I needed, and got the stuff all set up. And then it was time to head on over to pick up the kids.

Aunt Sue and I and one other Mom were the audience. And Joe and Eme and one other kid were the performers. ha! I videoed all of their songs, but am too tired at the moment to get them off of my phone. Tomorrow. I'll put them on facebook tomorrow. Here's a few pictures that I took, though :)


The recital started at 11:30 and got over at 11:40. Ha! Now that's my idea of a concert - hehe. The kids did VERY good. I got a photo of Eme and Sister Horton, but Joe didn't want one. Little stinker!

And we headed home. And got lunch for everyone, and spent the afternoon being lazy again. LOVE that. I made a Facebook fan page for Aunt Sue's beadwork. She does some amazing work! Click HERE to see her page and like it!

I'd told the kids to go and clean and do chores at some point in the day, and Tom, like usual, went upstairs to do something or another. And ended up back in his room, reading. Or napping. Or something. hehe. I guess it is summer, right?

At around 4pm, the grown ups needed to go and grab a drink from Howdys! We left Jake and Tom in charge of Jim and Eme (Joe was playing at a friends house), and went for a drink. And a VERY fast Goodwill run.

I'm such a perv. Guess what my first thought was when I saw this? Nasty! hehe.


And what's this??? Fake boobs in a box? hehe. Can you tell my hubby is deployed?

I found a few shirts, and a wallet for Jake. Cause he needed to have his High School ID with him at all times when he's at school. So I told him that I'd pick him up one. And I found some Heelies for Jim/Joe for $3.50.

This is so in case you can't remember what you're eating your soup in... ha! Aren't they cute, though?

We popped our heads into Family Dollar, and I found a new belt for Jake, and we got some Ice Cream sandwiches to share. Yum! Then we headed home. I started cleaning up, and then, right as I was about to start thinking about dinner, Tom came to me, SUPER sick.

So he wasn't just hiding from chores after all. He'd been sick! Silly kid hadn't told me. He had a fever, and was burning up. I took his temp, and it was 103.2 Crap! I called Tele-nurse, and got him some gatorade and motrin. And while she was on the phone, I asked about Jim. Because he had earaches for the past few days. Sure, he was a little bit better today, but who knew when it was gonna come back...

It was 7:30pm, and tie for the little ones to go to bed. Maddie stayed home to get them down, Jake was supervising Joe and Eme, and Tom and Aunt Sue and Jim and I headed to Urgent Care on 54 and McCombs. There's a new one out there.

We pulled in the parking lot, and the building was in a strip mall. SO funny :) We went in, signed in, and waited. And it was only about 30 or less minutes before we were called. Jim watched some Backyardigans on my iPhone, and Tom laid down over 2 chairs and snuggled on my lap.



And then it was our turn. They got the kids vitals, and asked what was the problem. And then we were put in exam room 2. It was SO tiny. And after about 5 minutes, they came and moved us to a bigger room. Thank goodness!


The nurse came in and did a preliminary check of the boys, and then about 10 minutes later, the doctor came in. He checked Tom first, and ordered a Strep kit. Which, luckily, came up negative. But his throat was super icky. And one ear was a little red.
Joe's turn was next. His throat was good, but his nose and ears were a bit red. The doctor said that they were not contagious. Thank goodness! And prescribed them antibiotics and ear drops. Sounded good to me.

We loaded up, and headed to McDonalds next door. And grabbed a super quick dinner, then headed to Walgreens. And dropped off the prescriptions. The lady said that it would be about 20 minutes. Too long to wait inside, but too short to go home. So I went back to the car, and we waited.

Oh yeah, and when I walked out of Walgreens, my shoe broke. Randomly, out of no where, the freakin' shoe breaks! I need to gorilla glue it, I think. Because they are SO comfortable! Well, when they're not broken. ha!


We waited in the car for what felt like forever, then went to the drive up window. And waited for another 15 minutes in line. Then FINALLY got all 3 meds. And paid, and headed back to post. Jim fell asleep in the car, but not before we could give him the first dose of his meds. Tom too.

We got home, unloaded the car, and put the kids to bed. I gave Tom and Jo their ear drops, and had Jake take his pill, and then go to bed. It's now 12:43pm. And I'm SO tired. I wanna sleep in forever tomorrow. Ha! We'll see :)

Click on the link below to go to my account to download the PNG file, and leave some love if you like my work. Thanks!

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Awwwwwe...... *sniff*.... . can't wait for this to be me!!!!! Thanks, Sharon!

Happy, Happy Birthday (with blog)

New stuff in the store, ladies! I snuck in the Water Sports one without poor Sharon knowing, so there's no layout for that one. Sorry, girl! Click HERE to go to my store and check out all the new goodies!











Hey girls! Good morning :) So I'm back, bright and early (ish) to blog! I was SO wiped out last night when we got home after midnight that I just couldn't keep my eyes awake long enough to blog! So here I am, 8am, blogging now.

I woke up yesterday at 7:30, hopped up, and started on birthday party preparations. The cupcakes were already baked and cooled, so I frosted them. And decorated them. I was putting this grass stuff on there, and couldn't resist posing with it first. hehe.

Here's the cupcakes before the green stuff was added

And after! What do you think?

Joe liked it, and that was the important part!

And then I sat down and started filling out Ross Middle School registration papers for Tom. And printed out our most current LES from the army. And grabbed our big folder of all important papers. And Jake and Tom and I headed out for our SUPER busy morning of school preparations.

First stop, follow the navigation directions to Austin High School. I'd never been there before, but luckily, it wasn't too hard to find. It's a beautiful campus. It used to be a church, but was converted to a school.









We found a HUGE line waiting to get into the school. I wasn't sure where Jake was supposed to go, but figured that the line was a good place to start. I asked a few different families if this was the NEW freshman orientation place, but no one spoke English. Sigh. I did ask at the front office, and yeah, he was in the right place. Tom and I left Jake in line, and headed out. Needed to be at Tom's school at the same time...

We drove to Ross Middle School, and got in line for Tom's registration. I had most of the paperwork filled out, but forgot a few. I filled those out, and went to the 4 stations that needed paperwork filled in. Tom got his schedule, and we walked around the school finding classrooms. He seemed pretty pleased with his schedule and school. He has all GT classes. Good going, Tom :)

It took about an hour from start to finish to get registered, then we headed back to the house. I dropped Tom off, picked up a missing paper that I needed, grabbed Aunt Sue, and the two of us headed to pick up Jake.

Amanda had dropped by my house at 945 ish to pick up Joe and Eme and take them to piano camp. Jim wasn't feeling great (from his teeth), and was napping in my bed.

We got to Austin High about 20 minutes before the orientation meeting was done. I grabbed a registration packet, and made sure that this was, in fact, the correct High School for Jake. Most people on post feed into Burgess high school. But because of our location, we are Austin. They had his records, and his special ed info, so we were good to go for registration at 1pm.

Finally, Jake's thing got over, and we grabbed him, and headed over to the SKIES building at Logan to pick up the kids. Joe and Eme were both super excited about their recital tomorrow after class. Such sweet kids!



We headed back to post, and I got lunch ready for everyone. I filled out the Austin High School paperwork, and at 1240pm, Aunt Sue and Jake and I headed back to Austin High for registration. And the line was SO freaking long!
We waited for what seemed like FOREVER outside. And finally got to the front of the line. And they looked up Jake's name, gave us a check off list, and showed us the NEW super long line to wait in... Inside the cafeteria. Great. There were about 45 bodies in front of us...



We waited and waited and waited and waited. And finally were the to front of the HUGE line. It had grown while we were waiting. And the closer I got, the more I wondered what exactly the line we were waiting in was for. We got to the front, and it was to check our paperwork and make sure that everything was filled out right. And we had proper documentation. Seriously? So we hadn't actually registered or anything???

We were checked, and told that it was all in order, then sent to another line. Luckily, the next several lines were much shorter. Only about 5-8 people in front of us. We had 8 stations to go through. And signatures to get on the forms. I did pretty good at first. I really did. See, I'm still having fun here. This is Aunt Sue and I excited for the AC. Every once in a while, we'd get under a vent and it would feel SO good.

At least Jake wasn't too embarrassed that his mom came to Freshman Registration looking like this. hehe.
But as the day wore on, and one hour turned into two, my mood deteriorated. I was SO sleepy. And ready to be done. And to not be here. Jake was getting bored, and poking Aunt Sue and I. And I really didn't like it. Aunt Sue handled it better. Logically, I know he does that to be playful, and let us know that he loves us and is thinking of us. But it was bugging me.

The ID station was the 2nd to last, and I went and sat on some chairs when we got in the room. My feet hurt. And check out the dude in skinny pants. Nice, huh? hehe.


Next stop was textbooks, and I was really really losing my patience. I just wanted to go home. I said something about being frustrated that it was taking so long, and Jake replied with "Well, you know it IS your fault mom. You're the one that had SO many children". And I snapped. I looked him in the eyes, and said "Screw you, Jake", then turned away. I know, not the best. He left me alone after that. We grabbed the books, and headed out.

And I realized that we hadn't got the bus pass. So we went back to the front to see where we'd missed it. And I'm POSITIVE that that table hadn't asked us about transportation. So I waited in line again. And got the bus pass, and we headed home.

And when we got home, I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep for a few hours. But I couldn't. We had about an hour and a half until Joe's birthday party at the pool. I got some stuff together for it, then popped the corn dogs in the oven. When they were done, I wrapped them in tin foil. And baggied up the pretzels. And made some orange limeade. It wasn't too bad.

Then we loaded up the truck at 4:30, and headed to the pool. And got everything unloaded and set up, and it was 5pm, and our friends started coming. We had Leigh's kids, and Maggie's family, and Amanda's family, and Liz's family, and Maddie and kids, (Aunt Sue and Jake stayed home), and Kari's family. Terra came a little late and dropped off a gift, but couldn't stay.

We really did a have a fun time. The kids swam for about 45 minutes, then we had corn dogs and cake and presents. Then they swam for another hour.

Joe ended up with a TON of great presents! Thanks, you guys! Our friends ROCK!

At 7pm, we cleaned up, loaded up, and headed back home. I had exactly one hour to load my store and change clothes before our Girls trip to Walmart for price matching! So I had to hurry! I got done after about an hour, changed clothes, got the kids all situated, and we all headed out. First stop, Rudy's BBQ to pick up some take out for Amanda's hubby. I got a little turkey and some coleslaw and a soda. That corn dog at the pool just wasn't cutting it.

We paid, and headed out. And had WAY too much fun on the drive. hehe. There was a MASSIVE thunder and lightening storm that was lighting up the whole sky. It was quite impressive. Aunt Sue didn't think so. She's afraid of it. Kinda like me and manholes... hehe :)







We got to Walmart, and kept seeing people dressed funny. Like this dude in a formal. Yeah, DUDE!

And there was this fly that just WOULDN"T leave me alone!

And when we walked in, Aunt Sue got tangled in some invisible cord stretched across Walmart. It must have been fishing wire. It was the STRANGEST thing ever. hehe. It eventually broke, and she got free. ROFL!

We found all the price match items, and a few food things, then headed to pay. I was SO sleepy. And the cashier didn't know what he was doing. So called over the manager. Who, of course, was SUPER strict with the price matching. So we didn't get very good deals like last time. Robert from last time was amazing. Daniel from this time, not so much. I did get a few things for a penny a piece, which isn't bad. But 10 of them would have been better than 5... But beggars can't be chooser, right?

We paid, and headed across the road for a Frosty run. Here's Amanda and I, both posing with our tongues inside of our frostie. ha! And it wasn't even planned!
We were all SO sleepy, that we got the giggles. And had SUCH a great time home. Laughing and giggling and having a grand old time. Amanda dropped us off, and I moved the kids from the couch to their beds (I don't know what they were doing, sleeping on the couch! hehe), and did the bare minimum on my blog. And went to bed. Cause I was SO sleepy!

Click on the link below to go to my account to download the PNG file, and leave some love if you like my work. Thanks!

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LOVIN' this Birthday layout, Sharon! Looks fantastic!