I am what I am...

"Wow, Briggy! You are eating another plum? You are a plum guy!"

"Yeah. I know. That's because I am a fruit!"

Boy, does he sweat!!

Did you know that your eyes can sweat?

I had no idea that this was even possible. I mean, I have had sweat drip into my eyes, and that burns. But I have never sweat from my eyes.

I just learned this new bit of information from my son.

You see, today we were cleaning. Correction, I was cleaning. Everyone was simply moving things from one corner of the room to the other, as slowly as possible. Including this son. So I did my motherly responsibility and called him out on it.

That's when his eye-sweating began. "Hey, son. You don't need to cry about this. It isn't that big of a deal. Just finish the task. Simple," I told him.

"I'm not crying. My eyes are sweating," he informed me.

Wow. And all these years I thought I was just being sensitive. Now I know that my eyes simply have a perspiration problem.

Last week in pictures.

We had two weeks of cousins. Love having cousins. We played in the backyard. We played in the house. We went swimming a few times. We went bowling. We went to the park. Basically we partied hard.

Here my kids are at the pool, sitting with their swim coach who is trying to convince my daughter that she should try swimming at the meet. She did not convince her.

For as bad as they didn't want to swim, they both did very good! Plus they changed their minds to boot.

I love watching this guy swim. But the butterfly is my favorite. The picture is grainy, but he did fantastic!

A jerk is a jerk is a jerk

He's just not a nice person.

I mean, not that I really know the guy. I have actually never seen his face. Not once. But still, he's not nice.

He's our neighbor. Not our live-next-to-or-across-the-street" neighbor. Nope. He lives catty-corner to our backyard. So it's not that I am an unfriendly neighbor, I just don't usually peek into other's yards from my backyard. At least not when they are outside.

Well, on Memorial Day, we were having a party and a ball that my kids were playing with bounced into his backyard. My kids kindly asked if he would throw it back over. So he did. Unfortunately it happened again, and he threw it back over, but yelled, "If this comes over into my yard again, I am keeping it." And he did. 

Then two weeks ago, in the middle of the day, my kids were out jumping on the trampoline. I guess his dog didn't like that and started barking at them. He came outside and yelled, "Shut-up! You are making my dog bark!!"

Ummm, okay.

Well, the other day, when we had some cousins over, they decided to sleep on the tramp. They woke up at 6:30am and started jumping.

Yes, I said 6:30am. Yes, it was way too early to be making that much noise. But before I could roll out of bed to tell them to "Shhhh!" our favorite person yells, "YOU STUPID, IDIOT KIDS! SHUT-UP!!"

In this situation, I really can't defend my kids' behavior. It was early. And they were being loud-ish. You know, being kids.

But that guy needs to chill out. My guess is that he would never talk to an adult that way. But why does he feel the need or the right to scare and intimidate, berate and belittle my children?

Because that's what jerks do.

Maybe, though, he is out there somewhere, blogging about his jerky neighbors who have some really cute but annoying children.

The difference?

I am not a jerk.

Conflict-avoiders

I wasn't usually a trouble maker. You see, I don't like conflict; prefer to avoid it. To cause trouble meant to be in conflict, which is against my nature 

But one summer's night, I blew all caution to the wind, nature be darned.

We were visiting my grandparents and cousins who lived in a small town in northern Arizona. No, like really small. Everyone really does know everyone because everyone is related to everyone. It's a little scary, but I don't ask questions.

Well, as the evening drew nigh, we drew bored. Our parents were out to dinner with the grandparents and had left us in charge of the youngers....because we were trustworthy and conflict-avoiders.

But I had heard somewhere that if you tied cans to both ends of fishing wire and laid it across the road, when a car drove over it, it would catch on the tires and make a whole lot of noise as it was drug down the street, freaking the driver out. 

Why not test this out here?

And so we did. Several times. It was fun. Fun until the police officer's wife drove over it, went home, called her on duty husband.

Not knowing that was happening, we became bored again and threw the evidence in the trash and decided to do something else. About 10 minutes later, a cop car pulls up and shines a spotlight into the house. We start freaking out, scrambling to turn off all lights on the first floor, because he's not going to notice that. AT ALL.

I'm pretty sure he didn't come to the door, but if he had, we most definitely did not answer it, because, Hello!, we weren't there. No-one was. Didn't he notice the lights were all turned off??

After about 30 minutes we decided it was safe to come out of hiding and carry on with our lives.

Apparently after we had gone to bed, that officer stopped by and had a talk with our parents...who in turn had a talk with us, which completely turned me off to troublemaking.

Well, almost completely...

Does anyone else feel weird?

We had a water fight in the park last week with some friends.  Nothing better than cool water and friends on a hot day.

Okay, so sitting in an air conditioned room with a Diet Coke with lots of ice and a husband, preferably ably mine, rubbing my feet while I watch mindless T.V. programs might be better, but that will NEVER happen, so it was the next best thing.

So I called all the kids to the field and loaded them up with water balloons and water guns and told them to get ready. My 13 year old proceeded to take off his shirt.

"Ehhh," was my response.

"Oh my heck! This is awkward. I just took off my shirt!! I don't know why I did that. This is the most awkward moment of my life. I am so embarrassed," was his response.

Now that you mention it....

Week in pictures

Who says I don't have a pool?

She chopped off 9 inches. Now that I don't have to brush, she and I will be much better friends. 

This is what Briggy does while he waits for his swimming siblings. Not a bad life, right?

Kobe provides us with Endless music in our house. And I do mean endless. Time to get him some new music. 

Let the swim meets begin. There goes my Saturdays. He did awesome, by the way. 

Cub Scout Day Camp was awesome this year! 

This is what a broken dryer looks like. New one coming July 1st. Ugh!

Pretty much the hottest dad there is. I'm that lucky!