Living in Munchkinland

Let's see if I can do a quick wrap up of the week without going on for pages. Michael was out of town in San Jose, CA for physical security training Mon-Fri. I really missed him. The kids went to the second week of their fabulous Texas State University summer children's workshop. They love it. My mother-in-law came to stay with me for a few days. We worked in the garden and really cleaned it up. We swam in the pool and she did science projects with the kids and we had some really great conversations. She is a beautiful soul and I am lucky to have her. I helped my mom cater a party at her house for my dad's band. They were all listening to the first draft of their new album. Pretty cool. We had three pool parties at the pool. There was grilling and beer and lots of fun with friends. I helped host a baby shower at my house and it was lovely. We found a coral snake slithering across the grass right next to our driveway. It's the third one we've found this year...

We had a fabulous weekend. We attended the Ringling Brother's Zing, Zang, Zoom Circus at the Alamodome in San Antonio on Saturday afternoon. The kids loved it. We had thought our seats wouldn't be very good, but they turned out fantastic. We loved the circus dogs and elephants and tigers and the clowns. It was a wonderful experience to watch the circus and see the magic through the boys' eyes. Saturday evening we left the kids with a sitter and Kade at my parent's house and drove out to Club 21 to hear my dad and the Lucky Tomblin Band play. We sat at a big table with my mom and sister and Cheris and Rob came out as well. We ate hamburgers and danced a lot and laughed and laughed. It was a good night. This morning the boys and I presented Michael with a fabulous book called Handy Dad . Michael and the boys immediately picked out a project and went outside to work on building a bottle rocket while I went out for a run. Later we cleaned up and went to church and...

Hi my name is Amber and I over share. I realize the irony of posting this on my blog. I talk too much. It's part of my outgoing personality. I feel obligated to fill gaps or pauses in conversation. This has been a problem my whole life. I feel like I need to be charming and then I share something and later I think that perhaps the listener wasn't asking for quite so much information. I do try to be a good listener. I think I'm a pretty good communicator. My problem is mostly that I take being an "open book" too far. I think maybe sometimes I share things that people don't necessarily want to know. And yes, this is exacerbated by intoxication. I have this quote on my email signature line. "Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?" It's a quote I picked because it reminds of me my intentions. I love it. I will continue working on it. Life is a work in progress, right?

Do you remember when I told you that I bought mushroom compost and put it all over my garden in order to add more nutrients to the soil? Well, it's working. Everything is growing fat and huge and strong in my garden. I don't just mean the vegetables. The weeds and grass and caterpillars and toads and everything else that lands in my garden are also growing. It's like a jungle in there. I can't control it or stop it. I obviously put my rows in too close together and now I climb under and through vegetable foliage like I'm on a jungle safari. Big heirloom tomatoes grow huge and red and purple under the dense vegetation and I have to snake my arms through the vines to reach them. The weeds are out of control. The grass is thicker in the garden than in my yard. It is lush and rich and totally untamed. Nature is winning. It is hot out there. It is humid. I spend at least an hour out there every day and I don't even make an imprint out there. I am cover...

They say that things happen in threes. Let's hope that's the case around here, because I don't know how many more necessary fixes we can take this month. So far these are the repairs and fixes we have had to face. 1. The air conditioning unit broke and we had to replace the entire thing. 2. We discovered we have leak in our roof. We still don't know what we will have to do to fix that. Right now we are waiting on a tile roof specialist and employing a large bucket when it rains. 3. I had a flat tire and when we went to get it fixed we were informed that all the tires were too bald to fix and that we must immediately replace all four tires. Anyone have some money tree seeds I could plant?

So. Here are my thoughts about the camp out at our river bottom that we hosted this weekend. It was hot. It was a lot of work. It had some really fun moments. If I had just gotten to attend, I would have loved the party. The party part was awesome. But the throwing part, that was so hard it made it not worth it. That being said, we loved the actual social fun of it all. The river was gorgeous and the perfect temperature for swimming. It was really fun to float in the river. The kids had a blast playing with each other and playing in the sand and water. I loved to listen to our friends play the guitar. It was fun to drink beer and eat chex mix and sit on the dock and hang out with our friends. We have some pretty awesome friends if I do say so myself. But the getting ready was so hard because it was so humid and hot. And sleeping in a tent in 90 degree weather is miserable. And only about half the people who RSVP'd yes actually came. So. Next year if we do this again, we ...

Have you ever heard this song? It's called Code Monkey and I listen to seven times a day. Seven is the top amount the kids are allowed to listen to it in the car before Mommy goes crazy. We have to listen to at top volume and when I drove to drop off or pick up the kids they would request that I have it only loudly with the windows open so their friends would think they were "cool". Our friends Rob and Cheris gave us a kids mix CD and a grown up mix CD for Christmas. These CD's are number 2 and 3 in our car and this song comes from CD number two track 6. I found a video of the song and put it here so you can check it out. It's great. Then I made a video of the kids performing the first verse from the song as well. Make sure you get to Sam at the end. He cracks us all up. Enjoy.

We've been spending a lot of time this summer having "pool parties". Pool parties can sometimes just be me and the boys having an afternoon swim, but often it has been a group of friends playing and swimming and drinking wine and grilling. It is by far my favorite summer activity. The big news of this summer so far is that both my boys can swim! No life jackets or help or anything. They just swim. And I can sit on the side. I still have to watch them closely, Sam especially, but this development is pretty awesome in more ways than one. I really like spending time with the boys this summer. I'm glad we have this break from school and that I really get to spend huge amounts of time with them just hanging out. And they love to spend huge amounts of time with each other. They are best friends. They play all day every day for hours. They fight, sure, but usually work it out in minutes so that they can get back to playing together. We are spending the summer wi...

Yesterday morning we signed the membership book in a small ceremony at our new church. We are officially members number 55 and 56 of the San Marcos Unitarian Universalist Fellowship . We really like this tiny church. We enjoy the people and the community that they offer. We were members in Austin at the UU church there (that's where we had the boys dedicated) but never felt welcomed or part of it all like we do here. We love their open mindedness and liberal leanings. It's a small haven of this in a relatively conservative town. We like the quirks of being in a small church. It really has a family feel to it. They have a discussion time after the sermon so we can discuss what we think while sitting there! I have joined the choir and look forward to singing again. Some of our most wonderful friends are already members so that is a bonus as well. Yay for more community and support in our spiritual growth!

I finally have all our pictures downloaded and can share the story of our latest vacation. This year we decided to cruise Alaska again. We thought Alaska would be so amazing for my grandparents as well so we asked them if they would like to go with us and they accepted! We decided to go on Norwegian Cruise Line because we had not yet done Alaska with them (we'd already cruised Princess and Royal Caribbean to Alaska) and because we loved their "freestyle" cruising on our honeymoon. We chose the Pearl (the name of our ship) because we wanted to cruise out of Seattle in order to spend time with my friend Katie and her son. We flew into Seattle on Alaska Air because they had a direct flight. We stayed at the Embassy Suites at the airport for a great rate (thanks Manie!). Katie met us in the morning and we all had coffee and the boys played until it was time for us to head to Dock 66 to board our ship. Boarding was so easy because my grandparents had booked a penthouse s...

We're home! We got home yesterday evening and are now playing that unpacking/readjusting/catching up game. We are also still on West Coast time. The kids stayed up till ten last night and Michael and I didn't go to bed till Midnight. (You know this as unimaginable if you know me at all) We used this time wisely to watch all four and a half hours of the Lost finale. We rose leisurely at 8:30Am this morning. Anyone want to ask us out for the evening? Now would be the time. Off to download pictures from our fabulous vacation. And drink coffee. XO!