Guess who lost her first tooth.....

A few hints:

-She starts every morning with either "look who's lookin hot today" or "mom, I've been practicing some new moves, wanna see em?"

-She is super duper excited about life in general, which makes losing a tooth that much more exciting

-She has big blue eyes.....

Are you ready?

This is exciting!

My fundraising page

http://pages.teamintraining.org/dm/tinkerb12/2

If you have a minute, please check out my fundraising page. Thanks!

This has to make you smile!

School Days!!

I stood in my bathroom getting ready this morning reminiscing over the past couple of years of having Maddie home during the day. I knew we would both miss our movie-watching-cuddle time while Kenzie takes her afternoon nap. This would be such an emotional day for us both. Then my Madison came into the bathroom and casually, but assertively tells me "I don't need you to take me to my class, I'm fine." Really?!? Don't you mean, "I'll miss you mom, give me a hug?" Nope, she has grown into a confident little school girl overnight, and was sure she could handle school without us.

Of course, we went with both girls to school to get them settled, and took a gazillion pictures while wearing sunglasses and crying, a yearly tradition. Does this ever get better? Geez...Rylee is in 3rd grade, time to stop crying mama!

I love this picture, it captures their goals for the school year so well. Rylee wants to get better at multiplication and division, and Maddie would like to have play dates every week.

Where ya been?

Rocky Point, Cabo, California, and here... It's been a crazy busy summer, i'll update speed-date style:

Rocky Point - Nothing says family togetherness like the 5 of us in a trailer for 6 days, but we do love us some Rocky Point! Great ocean, great friends/family, mangoes, and arctic-cat rides....

Cabo - To recover from said Rocky Point togetherness-time, and to celebrate 12 years of marital bliss, we spent 5 days there while Nana and Papa watched the kids. Nana and Papa were half-way backed out of our driveway, heading home when we pulled into our neighborhood after our trip, not really, but they did look extra tired. We had a great time, played beach volleyball, slept in (till 8, parenthood has actually robbed us of the ability to truly sleep in), visited Cabo Wabo, and did a Sunset Dinner Cruise (here's a fact I learned about myself, I get seriously sea sick. A fact I learned about the boat, the bathroom doors don't lock. Bummer for Todd who spent the cruise outside the bathroom telling ladies to go away, his wife was puking). We also left our camera in the taxi on our way to the cruise-of-doom. Todd calmly told me the camera was gone, and all I could think about was all the pictures of preschool graduation on it, and did what every mother would do...took off running down the pier, through the street, to the hightway where I flagged down a taxi full of Americans, and had them all check the seats in the taxi-van, then realized it was the wrong taxi. I turned around to see my calm husband, and many locals running after me, seeing an opportunity for some payment. The locals ended up calling the taxi company and flagging down the righ taxi, and the camera was saved....phew!!

CA....because we love a good adventure...I flew to CA with the 3 kiddos and our niece. We had a great time, and I saw a whole new side of the TSA employees, who continuously said "You have your hands full" and were very accomodating. Everyone did great traveling, even Madison, who yelled "I'm leaving this plane" at the top of her lungs, while getting out of her seatbelt after the pilot gave his take-off speech. I assured the fellow passengers that she was an air marshall, and we were good to go. We met Nana and Papa in CA, and had a great trip, filled with legoland and eating bad-for-us food that daddy would never have approved of :)

Here are some pics from our trips

The girls at the aquarium, Rylee boogy-boarding, lovers arch from Dinner Cruise, Todd and the Rolling Stones, me at the Cabo Wabo bar,

Home Improvement Help

So I am the Queen of unfinished projects. Seriously, my home improvement style is somewhere between Autism and ADHD. I get totally overstimulated shopping for home decor, and if I do make purchases, I don't have the focus to put the items somewhere when I get home. Really, I hired an interior decorator to help, you know what my first project was for her? I showed her my corner. That's right, the corner in our front room where I threw everything I bought to decorate with; clocks, frames, flowers, all right there, behind the door in our front room. She helped, but I never called her back to do any more projects.

Then there was the painting of the interior of the house. We picked colors. We agreed. Then I came home while all the men were painting, saw the color they were painting the niches in the entertainment center, and cried. Then like a crazy person (yah right "like" one...uh huh), I asked each of the men if they actually would paint that ugly color in their own homes, referring to it as baby poo. Of course they didn't speak English and just looked at me saying "I don't know." So, I made them stop painting and wait for me to go buy paint. While at the store, Kennedie put all the paint swatches in her underwear "to keep them berry safe" and we had to throw them all away. It was a good day.

If you've been to our house, you've seen these frames. This one has two happy little girls, and says "Kids, they make life sillier" I have great pictures of my own happy little monkeys, but who do you think the girls in the frame are? That's right, I don't know either, they came with the frame in December:

How about this one. A family tree picture that's been hanging over our fireplace for three years, recognize these people? Other than the three pics on the top, I don't recognize any of them either.

SO....here's where I need some help. I know I do not like our kitchen cabinets, and am getting some bids on redo'ing them next week. Todd says I better know what I want before the poor suckers come to our house. I like black distressed cabinets, and white cabinets, also expresso colored.....here's a picture of our kitchen, what would you recommend? Fingers crossed for no tears, and a completed project this time!

Rocky Point Triathlon

It's over! This year my parents and our family friends Bob and Becky, as well as our friend Dan, and my brother and niece all headed down for the race. The Rocky Point tri has actually been rated as having one of the best after parties in the country, but we were in bed by 8:30 that night, rock on!

The wind was awful, my bike actually got sand-blasted and is missing paint, and my face and arms got a fabulous exfoliating.

My pictures aren't co-operating, so I'll post them perfectly backwards, starting with an overview of the beer tents and after party:

A picture from the bike course, that dirt in the street is actually blowing across

After the swim, shirt and shoes and socks thrown on, getting my once-shiny bike off the rack, ready for the 16.5 miles of exfoliating fun!


Coming out of 1000 meters of swimming-in-the-ocean fun, running up the hill to get to my bike. Note the men behind me, they actually started in the heat before me....some slow men this year (trust me, I'm not fast, so that's actually kind of sad)!

And the end of the backwards triathlon (with no running pictures)