Brenden's first game

Brenden's team won their first game with a score of 12-0. Each time the kid on his team that kicks the field goal made the attempt, it never got high enough and kicked the kid in front of him directly in the butt. It was hilarious! I got soooo sunburned! It didn't even dawn on me to wear sunscreen and after 3 hours out in the blazing sun, my arms, neck and face are very red and hurting. The kids are fine, I'm just a dummy who forgot about sunscreen for me. Reminds me of what Richard does every vacation when he says "No I don't burn, I don't need sunscreen" and inevitably gets a bad burn on the first or second day on the beach all day. So anyway, no better way to start the season than with a win!

School starts this week

The summer break from school has come to an end. The boys start back to school on Wednesday and my day goes back to just me and Cassidy. Cassidy starts ballet class on Sept 1st in the morning and we'll have library day once a week too. She's really looking forward to ballet and the boys are excited about going back to school. Spencer found out who his teacher will be and who is in his class and Brenden had orientation last Wednesday afternoon and we toured the school and mapped out all his classes since he only has 3 minutes between classes to get from one to the other. He met his first period teacher and he didn't remember her name but Spencer does. Spencer has my memory skills:) Figuring out the locker combination proved to be quite the task for Brenden but he eventually got it. He's so super excited about starting junior high. His first football game of the season will be next weekend too. His team had a car wash today to raise funds for the team banquet at the end of the season. Spencer has yet to have a good practice with his team yet for football because his coach is in the hospital with pneumonia so his wife showed up last week and said "does anyone know anything about football?" Oh boy....so some assistant coaches from other teams practicing that day came over and helped out. I'm enjoying my weekend off this weekend. It's been a while since I haven't worked on the weekends for a few hours on one or both days. But my work has been going so well and I only worked 3 days this week and made my weekly goal already. I'm a 5 star agent which is the top amount of stars and I'm only 1.5% away from being in the top 10% of agents so I'm very happy with my progress the last few months. It truly has been a godsend to not have to leave home to work and I can still be here with the kids and be here for the last year before Cassidy starts school. And with her nap coinciding with my work schedule, she'll only have to play in her room by herself for 1 hour and then take her nap and when she wakes up if I'm not done working then Brenden will be home so it all works out quite nicely. That's all I've got for now. Gotta go make some Chef Boyardee pizzas...Yum, Yum!

Let there be cold air!

Our AC is fixed! The guy came today at 5pm and it turns out it was a small part that makes the motor turn on so we are all relieved to be not sitting in a hot house any longer. Three consecutive days of 90 degrees in the house made us realize how good we have it to have air and not everyone in the world has air conditioning. I took off work on Thursday and Friday so we could spend the days outside in the water and I had to work today, in my office, with the window closed because I can't have noises from outside, so I had two fans circulating hot air around my room while I was sweating for 6 hours and working and it sucked. But I made good money so no biggie. The kids played in the water all day again today. Our old dog is laying on the vent right now. Poor thing, he had to be so hot with all his hair. We left a fan downstairs blowing for the dogs at night to try to help them somewhat. So the AC drama is over and peace has returned to our house. Now maybe the quiet can too because the kids can play in their rooms again instead of being downstairs at all times:)

UGH!

So, it's still hot in our house. Turns out the AC wasn't just frozen, it's dead. So far we know it isn't the outside unit, it's working fine. It's inside the furnace. Richard is going to try to fix it himself because he thinks it may be the blower so we'll try that first before calling the expensive repairman who will charge us loads of money. And what perfect timing, right at back to school time when we are shelling out money for school clothes and supplies. Lucky for me I've already got some school clothes I just still have to buy the supplies. Our neighbors gave us a box fan to use so we've got three fans going and last night they offered us their spare bedrooms if we needed. That was so nice. But we stayed here and put two fans in the kids' room, we had them all sleep in Cassidy's room, and we put one in our window and we have a ceiling fan so we were just fine. The kids' room was so cool I almost wanted to sleep in their last night but once the fans got going in our room it was nice and cool in their too. This morning I even covered up with the comforter. So I'm off work again today to spend the day outside with the kids on the blow up water slide so they can be cool and Richard is going to try to take a 1/2 day of vacation time (yep, he was given vacation time right at his start date, how cool is that!) to come home and fix the furnace. But it could be worse. This could be happening in winter and we could be freezing right now and it certainly is easier to cool off than it is to warm up. I know, we've been through that too. 2 years ago something went bad on the furnace then too and a small part had to be replaced and we only spent one night freezing in the living room all in front of the fireplace. My house is only 13 years old, aren't these things supposed to last longer? Apparently not. I don't know really, never researched how long furnaces are good for. So wish us luck!

It's HOT!

Well the storms knocked out power in all of Lancaster yesterday except for my neighborhood. We lost power for only 20 minutes but since we are in the newest part of Lancaster we actually have a different electric carrier than the rest of town so all AEP customers lost power. So we got lucky there but last night we began to realize it was really hot in here and this morning Richard told me that our central air unit had frozen. So right now it is 90 degrees IN MY HOUSE! I went and bought another oscillating fan so now we have 2 fans going in the living room. I had to take the afternoon off of work because I don't even want to know how hot it is upstairs right now and that's where my office space is. When the kids and I left to go to Walmart to pick up the other fan we just sat in the car for a few minutes with the AC on full blast and we were loving it. I think before football practices tonight (both have practice tonight and poor Brenden has to be in full pads and helmet) we'll leave early and sit in the car for a while. Now I'm fully aware that back in the day people lived without AC but I've never had to and I don't like it! At least I've got the fans so it's manageable. I don't know how people could have possibly managed this kind of heat without fans.

5lbs lost in 3 days!

The good news is it's true! The bad news is that it didn't come off of my body, it was Brenden. He's been going through football conditioning this week 2 hours a night and last night when he weighed himself he'd dropped 5 lbs. So now I know what I'm doing wrong....I'm not playing football! The boy eats like crazy and dropped from 91 lbs to 86 lbs in only 3 days. I wonder if I can ask the coach to include me in on the conditioning for the next few weeks LOL! Or maybe if I run 2 hours a night that might help too, but 3 miles is hard enough and that takes me around 40 minutes so 2 hours oughta just about make me pass out on the roadside somewhere. Maybe I'll shoot for 1 hour (little over 4 miles) and go from there.

Nice day with the kids

I took the kids to see Cats and Dogs today at the movie theater. It was the first time Cassidy has been to the movies. She loved it! We stopped for pretzels in the mall after the movie and also did some back to school clothes shopping. Aeropostale is having a 2 for $15 shirt sale so I picked up a couple for Brenden. We also went to some other stores and found 2 shirts for Spencer that he wanted and another one for Brenden as well as football cleats for Brenden since his practice starts tonight. (I didn't schedule myself any work today so I could take them to the movie.) So now both boys are at friends' houses and Cassidy is still playing in that box. I have a little down time before I have to make supper and go to a 2 hour football practice. Today was so nice, makes me happy to be able to still be home with them.

2 things...

I wanted to share this morning that Cassidy has been playing in a big box for the last 2 days now. She has a room full of toys with a kitchen, a doll house, a tent and where has she been...in the box with her baby dolls. Richard's lawnmower gave up on him the other day and he had to buy another yesterday so she's been playing in it. Spencer is in there too. They both fit in together and close it up. Cassidy was even pulling Spencer around the house in it and he's 53 pounds! Spencer said she had pulled Brenden around in it yesterday too and he's 91 pounds! She's been eating her Wheaties LOL! She says it's because she's been doing her push ups and she's strong. That's the same thing she says to me at the grocery store when she wants to carry something instead of putting it in the cart. She carried her new booster seat all through the store and loved every minute of it.

And for number 2, boy is life about to get busy around here. Brenden has practice Monday through Thursday from 6-8 and Spencer's practice is on Tuesdays from 6:30-7:30 and they'll both have games on Saturdays. Brenden's games will last about 2 hours and Spencer's are just 1 hour. And I've been working from 12-4 so I'll have to make a quick dinner before taking them to practice and then I'm going to come home on some nights and run here or just run at the park where Brenden practices. I'll admit, since July 4th weekend I haven't run much. It's been humid and it's hard to run in that kind of weather and I just needed a break because I was up to 5 miles a day and worked myself really hard. So tomorrow or maybe even tonight I'll get back out there again.