I KNOW I KNOW

Ok...so I'm now 10 days behind on my project 365. I've taken photos over the past 10 days but for some reason I just haven't been up to the blogging thing. So here's what I'm going to do...I'm going to start up in about 4 days and then I'll go for an extra 2 weeks in January. Maybe. If I can make myself finish. You wouldn't believe how HARD it is to make yourself take a photo every day and then blog it. Eesh. In the meantime...if you want to see my pictures from the past week and a half head over to Flickr. Noah has a mohawk and I have gone on a few "outings" with fellow photography nuts :)

I'm trying to get through this summer without spending a ton of money. Because 1) we're going to DisneyWorld in December and I'd love to have the money to actually do something other than fly to Florida and 2) I've got a problem with buying stuff I don't need even though my house is overflowing with stuff I don't need. I'm going to be like the hoarding lady on Dr. Phil. So the boys and I have been sticking close to home or going to the park, my mom's or my dad's or Meijer Gardens quite a bit. I'm fine with staying home in bed but for some reason the boys don't like that. They're no fun. Nicole is coming home this weekend. I've seen her ONE time in the past month and I miss her. I know she wants to be with her cousin Tiffany while she's still living in this country but it's really wierd not having her here for so long. It just feels wrong. And the boys keep asking me if she's going to come back and I don't know that they believe me. I hope they'll be pleasanty suprised this weekend.

187/365 Karen

187/365 Karen, originally uploaded by laniee75.

Friday July 5: Karen is my stepmom. She's 15 years older than I am, is the mother of my 3 little brothers and my only sister and is one of my best friends. It wasn't always that way...we had some pretty rough years when I was a teenager. But she helped raise me and I think she did the best she could. I do love her and I am happy she's in my life. She's not my mom but she IS one of my parents.
She hurt her arm when she fell a while back and now she's supposed to wear that splint 24 hours a day. HA...if you know Karen you know she's not big on following doctors' orders. She has a stockpile fo old prescriptions that she uses when she thinks she needs them. She just told me how she took 60mg of prednisone and woke up feeling "funny". She's such a goofball.

186/365 Happy Independence Day!

186/365 Happy Independence Day!, originally uploaded by laniee75.

Friday July 4: Mike, Ben, Noah and I headed over to my mom & Ted's for the day. My brothers RJ & Jeremy and my sister-in-law Khamala were there along with 4 of my nephews and my daughter was also there with her cousin Tiffany. It was a nice day...perfect weather to play outside. Around 9:30 we started the fireworks. Ted ran around the yard lighting them off while we ooohed and aaaaahed at them. Michigan has some pretty strict firework laws...basically we can have sparklers and those little snakes and that's almost all. That's why I'm not going to tell you where Ted lives :)
That night my mom and I slept in a tent with Ben & Noah (their first time) and I heard fireworks until about 1am. yuck. I can't stand this week of summer. Every night for about 4 nights I will hear firecrackers late into the night.

185/365 FMG cleanup

185/365 FMG cleanup, originally uploaded by laniee75.

Thursday July 3: Lori, Joe, Ben, Noah and I went out to the children's garden at Frederik Meijer Gardens again. It was a cool morning but the boys got soaked in the fountain anyway. It turned out to be a really nice day and we got out of the house again for some cheap entertainment.
They were having a good time cleaning up in the cabin. I think I may move into this cabin someday. It's so nice in there. It will need a different lock on the door though.

184/365 Beaten Down

184/365 Beaten Down, originally uploaded by laniee75.

Wednesday July 2: We had some really good storms come through. We even had some hail bigger than the normal pea sized that I've seen around here. I sat in the window and watched most of it with Stitch. We got about 5 inches of rain and our road flooded (something I've never seen in the 7 years we've lived here). We were fortunate and didn't lose power or have any wind damage.

182/365 Making friends

182/365 Making friends, originally uploaded by laniee75.

Monday June 30: We spent some (more) time at Frog Hollow where Ben and Noah found some (more) friends. For some reason Ben is able to get kids he doesn't know to play with him. I told him Kaleyshka probably wouldn't like knowing this other little girl was chasing him around.

Noah, on the other hand, needs to work on his social skills. He kept running up to people and saying "I'm going to put you on fire!!!". He doesn't seem to realize that those words don't make a good pick up line. I finally had to tell him to just not say anything unless it was about Carebears.

183/365 Back off

183/365 Back off, originally uploaded by laniee75.

Tuesday July 1: The boys wanted to go to Frog Hollow as a reward for cleaning their room so we headed over there for a little bit. After about 30 minutes I realized it was just TOO HOT and the boys were all red and sweaty despite drinking tons of water. So we headed home and they played in their new pool on the deck. Noah won't sit down because it's too cold but Ben always looks as if he's in a hottub. Noah was squirting me so I wrangled this gun away from him and kept him at bay.