lately . . .

I've been quiet on the blog front for a while. Not much has been going on around here. I consider these the dog days of summer even though someone else decided that this is back to school time. It's too hot to go to school. Let the kids play and swim for a few more weeks anyway, I digress. My kids don't start until after Labor Day so we've got a few more weeks to hang out. Claire's school starts preschool at 2K so it's the real deal (as opposed to MDO which I guess I'm labeling not the real deal). I'm pretty excited about it and plan to make pretty big deal about it since this may be her last "first day of school" for a while since we don't know what our situation will be for the next few years. She is so excited about school and can't wait to start. Ford is going to MDO one day a week so I can have the luxury of running a few errands or cleaning my house all by myself.


We went birthday shopping for a friend of Claire's today and came home with some of these for her and her friend. Look familiar??? Oh yes - they are the 25th Anniversary authentic 1984 version of My Little Ponies. I'm not sure who was more excited - OK, I was more excited. But Claire is pretty pumped too and is loving her new pony "Sky Dancer". She always picks the yellow one of anything if given the choice!

This is our little commuter! He literally "drove" like this for our entire 30 minute walk tonight. He loves the "beep beep" -what we call our little car that Claire has graciously passed down to her little bro. Occassionally she would change the music for him from Rick and Bubba to "Peekaboo I Love You" which I thought was really sweet. This kid went from not crawling one day to crawling all over the house the next day. He is SO happy that he can get around and explore. That is really what he does. He just kind of takes off and makes little stops all along his way checking things out. He loves doors - including our front door that he has nearly escaped out of a few times. Yesterday he crawled into the bathroom with one of Claire's Ariel princess shoes while I was getting C out of the tub. He pulls up on his knees next to the tub (still full of water) and throws the shoe in the water! I managed to convince Claire that it was really funny otherwise she would have done serious damage to the little guy. He crawled out and came right back in with the other princess shoe and proceeded to toss it in the tub too! He broke into a huge grin and chuckled as he crawled off to do something else! He is just precious. He is so content and is so happy to play by himself. He will just go all around the playroom by himself just investigating and playing happily. He LOVES balls. He will sit and play "catch" with you for half and hour. He is so much fun!

So I've been bitten by the Olympic bug which is why I'm sitting here watching Men's gymnastics at 1030 PM. Here are some of my observations so far:

- I was very disappointed in our opening ceremonies outfits. They were somewhere between flight attendant and sailor suit. I thought they looked like they would show us to our life boats or how to use our oxygen masks. The girls should have been dressed cuter (not the same) as the boys.

- The men divers need more coverage - not TV coverage - bathing suit coverage. Borderline obscene.

- The beach volleyball women also need more bathing suit coverage. I really don't want my husband or my 2 year old watching them run around in the sand dressed like that.

- The swimmers are way to fidgety. As they stand up there getting ready to jump in the water they pull and tug at their swimming-unitard-suit, adjust their goggles, swing their arms, adjust their goggles again - it just kind of irritates me.

- I really like the Olympic drama. It totally draws me in. I need to know that the French girl swimmer used to date the current boyfriend of the Italian girl she is about to race against. There's a lot on the line in that race!

- I became a swim fan the other night when Michael Phelps and Co. beat the French team in the medely race after the French were talking trash to the Americans saying they were going to "smash" them. Oh really? Once again - I love the drama.

I usually get burned out before the Olympics are over but I'm enjoying these games more than I have in a long time so I'll ride the wave as long as I can.