Ken earns his way to the top, summer fun, Could I be a kid again!

One would think that with school being out and my schedule minus a bunch of activities that I’d have ample time to update my blog. Quite the contrary.

The biggest news of the week or year is that Ken finished his EMT classes last Thursday!!!! Yeah! Not only did he finish and pass the test he finished top in his class. Another round of applause!! The kids prayed for him every night that he would do well on his test. Now all he has left to do is take the National Registry test, then he is officially a licensed EMT. Way to go!!

Swim lessons for Daria and Dustin started this week. Every morning 9am sharp. Their excitement helps smooth over the fact that the water is still pretty cool in the morning. Another year older for each means that they are both doing better than last year. As I sit and watch their lessons I realized something about myself. The fact of the matter is, I just don’t prefer water. If I had a choice between the beach and the mountains I would choose the mountains. It could be because I grew up around the mountains, but I know other people who love the beach and never lived near one. When I was pregnant with Daria and learning meditation techniques in our natural childbirth classes we were told to focus on a place that brings you peace and energy. Some recommendations were the sound of the waves. But quite frankly, the sound of waves doesn’t calm me at all. It brings thoughts of hot scorching sun, sticky sweaty humidity, sand stuck on everything and my hair turning into a Tina Turner hairdo. Not a pretty site. It’s not that I don’t like the beach, I just don’t prefer it. My idea of calming water is trickling rain in the forest. Thus, feelings about the beach equal feelings about swimming pools. I just don’t like being hot. My idea of a relaxing time is sitting in a grove of Aspen trees with the dry breeze rustling through the leaves and fresh unadulterated air, sounds of birds and the crackle of walking on pine needles. Now that to me is peaceful, not a city in site! Yeah! Ok, back to reality. The fact of the matter is I live in one of the hottest places on earth. Not only is it hot here but with two children, that means that during the summer months all activities need to include some sort of water immersion…. The pool. So I relinquish my real desires and accept the fact that my summer just might be spent in the hot sticky air near a pool so the kids can have fun. Life could be worse.

The summer is going great. I love the summer because we have a free schedule within reason that is. Basically I look forward to a schedule that is not dictated by some educational facility. But being the “A” type personality I am, without a schedule I fumble and become quite useless. So in order to make sure we have a fun enjoyable summer I did institute a flexible schedule. Each day there is reading time and time to practice math skills, piano practice. That doesn’t take long. Wednesday is library day, Thursday is cleaning day and Friday is reserved for day trips or fun stuff. The rest of the time is sprinkled with playing with friends and bike rides. Tomorrow is cleaning day. I figured that 4 people are making messes in this house so at least 3 people can clean it up. I don’t want to spend my summer cleaning so that’s why I chose just one day. It’s worked out great. The kids know that nothing fun is going to happen until we are all done. Last week Daria vacuumed the house, Dustin folded the laundry while I did the detail stuff (showers, bathrooms etc.). Tomorrow Daria will fold laundry because I noticed that every pair of short and Capri she owns is in there. I’m not sure why since we just did laundry last Thursday. That’s only 7 days and there are a lot more than 7 pair of shorts in there. Apparently laundry will be accompanied by a talk about resources, money, electricity, and water.

Last week we added a new fish to our fish tank, a fabulous red male Beta. That makes 10 fish now (not including the sucker and the shrimp). The Beta is red with white fins, which is highly unusual and hard to find. I think they are called "butterfly". We named him Firewing. Daria, who was just not content with the family fish tank finally got one of her own. A small ½ gallon, along with a very beautiful blue Beta. The beautiful ble Beta is now the ugly step-child because his long back tail fin is now missing due to an accident with Daria's hand. I’m glad we put the blue one in her tank and not the red one! We also have 3 little shrimp in the family tank. By far they are my favorite to have. They are so fun to watch and almost impossible to see as their bodies are transparent.

I wish I could be a kid again. Yesterday after swim lessons we ran by a toy store. Our goal was to get a Webkinz dog that Dustin and I could share. For those of you with kids you probably know what those are. For those of you who don’t, they are stuffed animals that come with a code. You use that code on the internet to play with your virtual pet, earn Kinzcash by answering questions (science, math, language, etc.) to buy food and toys for your pet. I got tired of bothering Daria to play with hers so Dustin and I worked towards getting our own. Now we are the proud owners of a brown dog named “Buddy”. But that’s not why I want to be a kid again. While in the store I was drawn to the Breyer Horse section. As a girl I collected those and still have them packed nicely in a box upstairs. It made me think that I never really thought of myself as a creative person, but looking at the horses brought back some fun memories. My Breyer horse statues (all 62 of them) all had names, I created a stock sheet that showed their made up by me pedigree lines. I made halters out of silver chains, horse blankets out of materials, and the most creative of all was I would stage them in ways that made them look real (minus the fense and giant flowers in the background. Just imagine if I had Adobe Photoshop back then!) and take picturesPretty creative for a kid in elementary school. I remember owning one of those old cameras that took 110 film. My mom must have developed the film for me. At any rate, looking at the new Breyer models gave me the feeling that I wanted ALL of them and I just wanted to go home and play with them. Uh…. Ok, another slap back to reality……