Tuesday, June 26, 2007

roughing it

Last weekend we went on our first camping trip of the summer. Oddly enough we camped in Santee, just a quick drive down the 52 from where we live. The kids had a great time catching tad poles in the lake and running around like little holligans. On Saturday morning Aaron came up with the genius idea to figure out if we could find a hiking trail that led to our house. Sure enough we found one. Aaron, Steve, 6 boys under the age of 12, and I, set out on a mini adventure. In all it took about 2 hours to get to Tierrasanta where we were able to eat otter pops from our fridge and swim in our pool, now if that's not roughing it I don't know what is.

Here are some photo's from our adventure:

David by far was the greatest little hiker in our group. He will be a future athlete for sure

Jamie and big jake. They are old enough to find hiking tiresome amd boring. We nicknamed them the my little ponies. We are mean!

These guys were nicknamed the hardcore group (minus Andrew who hung back with the my little ponies) because they kept up with the grown ups and didn't complain.

Mr. Braun

juice break

Scary trantula that Nicole, Aaron, and Steve found on the hike home.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The single life

Aaron has been out on one of his dive trips since Monday. He was gone all of last week as well. I'm kind of over it. The kids started their summer break on Monday. Jake and Amelia are already at each others throats. Jake likes to play this game with her where he says,

"Your not Amelia, you're a ladybug, oh wait no you're a bee, or a ghost, no your a horse."

Amelia will scream and yell about how she is not any of those things she's Amelia! She gets really mad and kicks her little legs and crosses her arms. Jake loves it. There is nothing more enjoyable to him then making her freak out. As a result, Amelia will come up to me several times a day, for no reason at all just to let me know "I am Amelia." She will stand there patiently waiting for me to agree that she is in fact Amelia. Sometimes, because I have a mean streak, I will say something like "are you sure your Amelia, or are you a butterfly." This does not make her happy. I am a little bit evil.


I am not at all adjusted to life with the boys being around 24/7. My quiet house is filled with the loudness that two boys bring to a home. This afternoon I walked into the kitchen to find Jacob forcefully shoving popcorn into Amelia's tiny mouth.

"She wouldn't stop asking me for some of my popcorn so I decided to give her a lot."

I never thought I would ever have a conversation with him about overdosing his sister on popcorn. Jacob makes things interesting around here. He keeps me on my toes.

I feel like the boys constantly want to eat. They are always hanging out by the fridge looking to scarf something down. The other day Andrew told me he was so hungry he could eat Jacobs head.



I have not made a single dinner since the departure of Mr. Braun. On Monday we walked to the local Chinese joint. Its two blocks away and Andrew begged me to drive

"but its sooooooo far." he whined

If you strain your neck in our living room you can literally see it, it's not sooooo far!


The lady working the night shift seemed pretty put out when I said "for here" instead of to go. She snatched up all but one set of chopsticks from the table saying

"I don't want them", while motioning towards the boys, "sticking these up their noses."

Andrew was pretty outraged that she implied he would stick anything up his nose. Jacob thought it was downright hilarious. Because Andrew is 8 and can basically get away with saying anything that suits him in the moment he said very matter of factly

"why would someone stick chop sticks up their nose?"

Our waitress ignored him. I was wondering the same thing. I went ahead and assumed that perhaps our waitress had witnessed an extremely traumatic chop stick nostril moment. Maybe she has been marred by the experience leaving her to flinch at the very sight of chop sticks in little boy's hands.

When our food came the boys were pretty bummed out about not being able to eat with chop sticks. They always eat Chinese food with chopsticks. That's the fun in Chinese food. I motioned the waitress over and asked her to bring two more sets of chop sticks. She was annoyed and let out a irratated sigh.

I didn't care. I was glad that I was assertive enough to ask because I never am. Normally I would have just let her go on believing that all little boys shove chopsticks up their noses. Maybe I taught her a valuable lesson!


I only have one more day as a single parent. I'm looking forward to Aaron being back home so I can regain my sanity!

My little knuckle heads: