ONE YEAR AGO

My Aloha Friday Question:

How long have you been blogging?

I started my blog one year ago today. I can't believe I have been blogging for a full year. Time goes so fast!

I look back and I remember reading a couple books and trying to figure out what blogging was all about. I spent a month thinking about the whole thing before I ever actually started a blog.

I have to say I am so glad that I decided to do this. I have found this world of wonderful people who share their lives and who let me share my life with them.

I have made some really great blogging friends who are very real, have wonderful families and are just all around wonderful people to know. I love reading all of your blogs even those of you who rarely ever blog anymore.

Heatherlyn @ Scatter Sunshine
Jenn @ T-Rex Mom & Dad Tales or you can meet little T-Rex himself at T-Rex Tales
LT @ A Day With Two
Peanut @ Peanut, Peanut Lover & the Wee Nuts
Caitlin @ It's Spelled Caitlin
Maggie @ Life With Boys
Diane @ Good Morning, Glory!
Cynically Optimistic
Tiffany @ My Southern Hippy Mom of 4 Life
Ally @ Mommy Love
Jessie @ Muthering Heights
Terri @ Let Me Think On It

That list seems very short to me so if I forgot to add you here, please, please, please forgive me. Check out all of their blogs, they really are great!

Play along at An Island Life for Aloha Friday. If you’d like to participate, just post your own question on your blog and leave your link at An Island Life.

Water Fun

The plan was to go outside and water the garden.
Lots of water but very little going into the garden.

Thomas grabs the sprinkler and has a blast.

See the tongue sticking out,

Thomas is in full concentration mode.

Poor Luke running from his little brother
but loving every moment as he gets wet.

My favorite:
Thomas with a big grin says to Luke,
"come here bruver".

When it is all over you
have two really wet
but really happy boys.

Go see who else is having summer fun.
Visit Angie at 7 Clown Circus for more great Wordful Wednesday post.

Trip to the Lake

When I was a child we took the same vacation every summer. We went to my aunt and uncles cabin they have in Michigan. I can remember doing this for years and years. It was a fun week each year but it also got old doing the same vacation over and over again.

In 2006 my parents asked all of us (my family, & my brothers families) to go each summer to the cabin for a weekend. I thought how fun to take my kids where I had spent many a summers playing with my cousins as a kid.

The play ground is still their and the swings are probably the same swings we played on as kids, just 30 years older.

The roped off area for swimming and the small sand beach is still in place also. Seems much smaller to me today. I would also swear these floating things are the same ones we played on as kids. I seriously doubt they are 30 years old but we played on the exact same things.

The only thing missing is their use to be a small general store down by the water that we always bought nickle candy at. It was the candy store to us and we loved it. OK as a mom I am probably glad this is gone but it was way cool when I was a kid.

Here Thomas sits on the steps in front of the cabin. My mom has a photo of me and my cousins sitting in this same spot with our life vests on when we were probably 6 or 7 years old. I also took a photo a couple summers ago with the kids in their life vests sitting on these steps (it is MIA). Their is also a picture of my uncle as a young boy standing in front of the cabin. He is now in his 60's. If these walls could talk....

Here my boys sit on these really nice stairs that use to be these old stone steps leading down to the water. The old steps are under these...

I dug out this pic from last summer.

Poor Thomas hated the life vest so much he cried himself to sleep.

I don't know how I got a smile because all I heard was off mama, off.
Still does not like the vest.

Grandpa caught a fish and dropped it on the boat floor. It flopped around and Thomas freaked out. I got a pic of Thomas with a look of fear but then he climbed me like a cat so I didn't get a pic of the fish.

Now Luke loves the fish and going fishing.

He can't wait to get out on the boat each year.

This was a pic of Luke fishing in 2006. At 3 years old he loved this!

Luke also went tubing on the lake. His dad did it with him this year. The water was freezing so I wasn't getting in. Each year I want to go tubing but with my husband and brother at the controls of the boat, no way. They will dump me into the lake for sure. No pic because once again, I forgot my camera. My SIL took pics and said she would send them to me.

We have gone the past 4 years on this family weekend get away. Luke is now at an age where he asks as soon as summer hits when are we going to Michigan. He knows we will go....I am just glad he likes going.

Do you have a vacation destination that your family likes to visit often?

Aloha Friday, TOYS, TOYS, TOYS

Aloha Friday Question:

What is your favorite tip or trick for organizing toys?

For those of you who don’t have kids, how do you organize your toys? It can be anything really, I just need ideas to reduce the clutter, have easy access to things and not such a mess all the time.

I spent two days this week doing nothing but organizing toys. I threw two bags of broken, not working toys in the trash and I have another two bags of items to give to charity. The toys in this house are out of control. We have two toy boxes, and a couple shelving units that have baskets of different toys. Yet, I still can’t keep my house in an organized state.

I find it so easy to toss out things that are broken and don’t work. I have a harder time getting rid of things that are not broken but I can do it. The kids are even worse at letting things go, Luke will happily give up a toy if it means he can go buy a new one. Someone needs to explain that it doesn’t work that way.

I have three large baskets full of big, medium and small Lego’s. Really, how many Lego’s does a kid need? Three, count them three baskets of cars… We can’t play with this many cars at one time so why on earth do we have so many? Then there are all the trains, dinosaurs, games, puzzles…. Do I really need to go on, I think you get the idea. If you have kids, I know you get the idea.

The worst part is I must do all this when the kid’s dad is not home. He is worse than the kids and he won’t let me get rid of a thing. Luke has bunk beds and the top bunk is covered in stuffed animals. I said I was going to bag most of them up and get rid of them and he had a fit. Seriously, no one plays with them and they are doing nothing but collecting dust. Personally, I don’t think the wall-to-wall toys bother him because he doesn’t pick them up all the time like I do.

Play along at An Island Life for Aloha Friday. If you’d like to participate, just post your own question on your blog and leave your link at An Island Life.

MY FLOWERS

I love flowers but I do not have a green thumb. Every spring, I go out spend a bunch of money on flowers, plant them and by mid-summer I have killed them.

Here is one of my flower beds I planted mothers day weekend.

I am pleased to say I have found my green thumb.
I took this yesterday! Same flower bed & it is mid-July.
Isn't she a beauty!

Here is the front view of the same flower bed.

Now this is the matching flower bed on the opposite side of the drive way.
I also took this picture mothers-day weekend after I planted it.

And yesterday!!!
Next year I wont put snap dragons & marigolds in the same bed.
Colors don't mix well.

And the side view...
Can you tell how happy I am over my flower beds?

When I was all done with my beds I had a few flowers left over. I dug this pot out of the garage and planted them here. I love these blue Sylvina's. They always have a flower on them.

Go visit Angie at 7 Clown Circus for more great Wordful Wednesday post.

Way back when....

This weekend we took a break from our busy Sunday and took Luke to see the new Ice Age movie. I must say this was a great movie for the kids and the grown ups.

What I found so fun about going to see this movie with my son was the fact that approximately 7 years ago Eric and I saw the first Ice Age movie in the theaters. 2002 seems so long ago...

I remember this specifically because we went and watched it while we were in Chicago. We took a long weekend and spent it joyfully exploring Chicago. Silly us, we decided to go to Chicago at the end of March. Hello, it is freezing cold still in March, especially in Chicago. This prompted us to go inside where it was warm and watch a movie and we picked Ice Age. I guess we are big kids at heart because even before kids we were going to kid movies. I even remember the theater being so different because it was in a big tall building with lots of escalators to take you to which ever floor your theater was on, so different from my suburb type life style.

To my point, this was our last trip as a childless couple. Luke was born the end of December that same year (do the math). LOL... Did I mention it was really cold that weekend. ;-)