Lobster Crabs and Toons

Well my family is all on vacations. With out me.....

But that is OK!

I sacrificed my airline ticket so that my brother could come visit for 10 days starting the 25!

Some things are just worth it!!

The night before the boys left for WA, we decided to celebrate Father's Day. So I told Mikey he should pick whatever he wanted at the grocery store and I would fix it.

He came home with a LIVE lobster, pound of shrimp, and scallops.

Yummy!

But what about this LIVE lobster??!!

Our poor lobster.

We called it Larry. (from Spongebob of course)

First we tortured him and the cats with it by making it chase them around the house.

Then we put it on the floor and took turns posing with it for pictures.

Then we showed him to Speedy.

Then we put him in the sink with water while I cleared out a space in the freezer.

Then he drowned.

HUH?? I had no idea that putting a LOBSTER in WATER would drown it.

oh DUH, its FRESH water not SALT water.

So we had no problem putting it very boiling water after that!

It was only after we tortured it, drowned it, cooked it, that we realized we had also been insulting it the whole time.

Larry was really LAURA. Oops.

As you all know, I eat every kind of sushi, but I just couldn't get myself to eat the caviar from Laura. It was black and gooey. So we rinsed it off and enjoyed the rest.

Even the boys had a few bites of Laura. But mostly they ate the mac and cheese.

Saturday morning (at 4am) I got my hubby and boys off to WA.

Daddy bought them new Jets. Caleb LOVES his jet planes, but Zachary looks like he is having fun too.

Here there are in WA on a Ferry out to Longbranch. Thats where Gramma and Grumpa live. But Grumpa doesn't seem grumpy in this picture.

Note to Dad2: Have fun with my boys!!! And put Mike to some good hard work.

Here are my 3 boys with Makayla on Gramma and Grumpas beach.

They went crabbing and had a wonderful dinner!

Here they are with Alaina and Uncle Kevin on the boat to get the crabs. They are all having a wonderful time.

Wish I was with them.

Christina is in AZ with her dad, and my family.

She had a fun flight home. First she stopped off in Tennessee, then flew to Phoenix where she got off the plane and spent 2 hours having breakfast with my mom and brother Frank. Then she boarded a flight to El Paso Texas. Her dad picked her up and drove her to where his parents live in New Mexico. So in the span of 12 hours Christina was in 5 different states! WOW!

Everybody returns home the 24th. My brother comes the 25th.

It will go from quiet here to very busy, very quickly!

So, you may ask, what am I doing?

CLEANING. Yep. Mike and I got sick after our camping trip. We were literally out of commission for almost 2 weeks. So nothing NOTHING got done around here. I am spending my first few days cleaning the house from top to bottom. Inside and out!

I also got some John Grisham books from the library. I'm on a Grisham kick right now.

Then there is always Toon Town. It is online interactive Disney game. Zachary and I both have accounts. In the evenings, he is allowed to get on and play a little bit with me. I love it because it is totally CLEAN and SAFE. Noone can chat with you except to say what is in the Speedchat boxes. All Disney and happy related. Like "you rock" "lets play again" "I need to do a Toon Task" "ToonTastic!!" etc. Zachary and I can chat and say other things only because we have a True Friend code. Its a code that you can only verbally give someone you know to type in. It is alot of fun. We go around Toon Town and throw pies and water squirts at the Cogs. (bad guys)

I imagine it will be the longest 10 days of my life, but will also go by so quickly when I look back on it.

Camping with the Lovebugs

We got back from camping yesterday afternoon. It is sooo nice to have it so close. We used to have a several hour drive back home. Now its 25 minutes!! I still don't have any pictures. I think its something wrong with our phone server. Because now Mikey cant send pictures either. Maybe we can fix that today. Originally on Thursday we were going to camp at a certain place that Mike found online. But when we checked it out, we didn't care for it. Crowded, small spaces, and right next to the freeway. So we were driving back and I saw a sign that said Air boat Rides. We drove down a dirt road for about a mile and came to a beautiful lake, grassy area, lodge, and some cabins. Its called Loughman Lake. www.loughmanlake.com It was only 15 a night (versus 40 at the other) and we could camp anywhere in the 5 acres of grass and trees that we wanted. However, not too close to the waters edge because of alligators. We camped towards the right, upper middle. See the tiny water hole? Not to close to that. The boys walked over there while we were setting up and a huge 9 foot gator started swimming our way. We also saw big turtles in it. But it was the gator that gave us the most concern. At least they are fairly slow, and as long as we kept our eyes open we were OK. But nobody else (I did) wanted to go fishing. The Chickens!!! Thankfully these are not biting bugs, but OMG. They swarm in the millions. They were all over us. All over the tent. EVERYWHERE!!! They were soo bad that we were going to pack up and leave. Forget the shuttle, forget camping. Just get us away from the BUGS!! They are called love bugs because 2 times a year, May and Sept, they emerge from their eggs and they mate. Thats all they do. Mate and die. And OMG do they ever mate. It was horrible. The boys thought they were funny and would try and pull them apart. But after a few minutes they were done with the bugs too. The bugs are also very fragile. If you wipe them off your arm or leg, you kill them. Which means you have bug guts smeared on you now. Mike called Walmart (first time we have shopped at one since we moved here) and they had bug screens for our canopy. So we drove into Titusville, got a cover, set it up and enjoyed the rest of our afternoon. The launch was a perfect sight!! It was alot of fun watching it so much closer. (we were about 10 miles from it) We all brought our golf clubs, and since there was NO OTHER campers (!!Yeah!!) we played tree golf the rest of the afternoon. (Hit the ball to a palm tree. Palm tree is the *hole*. So, other than the first morning with the bugs, we had a very nice camping trip, and are looking forward to doing it again. MINUS the lovebugs! NO camping in May or Sept in Florida!!!

No Pictures :(

My new phone really stinks. I cant get it to send me the pictures to my email. And the ones it has sent are pretty crappy quality. Mikes phone takes OK enough pictures, but its a Blackberry, which means it is complicated just to take a picture. My phone you just flip it open, and push the camera button and its ready. His, you have to open it up, go to the main menu, scroll thru all the icons, find camera, click on it, then click on Image, then it takes about 2 seconds to bring that up. By the time your ready, the moment is lost. And I really don't like 'posed' pictures. So this is the reason I haven't been writing the blog lately. I'd rather do it with pictures. ANYWAY..... Zachary is going to 2nd Grade!!! YEAH!!!!! Mike and I are sooo relieved. We have worked so hard with him and his reading. Plus he has been in tutoring, and that has really helped. He has mastered over 80% of his requirements for 2nd grade. (you need to be at least 70%) He WAS at 68% a few months ago. We had a PT meeting this morning, and his teacher said she was SHOCKED that he came up so quickly. She has never had a student that she really thought needed to repeat and then improve as well as he has. Yeah Zachary!!!! I got a bunch of scholastic workbooks to do with him over the summer so that he can continue to advance. His teacher will be teaching 2nd grade next year. We are kind of thinking about seeing if he can be in her class again. We figure she knows him, how he works etc, so the first few weeks wouldn't be lost on a teacher getting to know him. This is what happened with Christina in 3rd and 4th grade. Sort of the same thing. We didn't care for the teacher all that much, but by the time Christina was done with 4th grade, she was a much much better student. We also got back all the Stanley letters today. WOW!! You all ROCK!!!! Zachary won for most letters, and the furthest away. 3 in WA, 1 in OR, 1 in CA 1 in ID, 4 in AZ. We still haven't got Stanley back, as he is still on the road. He was last heard from in Idaho. We had a fun Memorial Day weekend. On Sunday morning we dropped Christina off with her friends at Universal Studios, and we went south to Palm Beach. Our hotel we had before, and it has a little 3 hole putt putt, and a swimming pool. Caleb was so excited to be golfing again. Zachary spent alot of time in the pool. He is ready to learn how to swim any time now. But he doesn't want to try it without his vest. Caleb used to hate being in the water if his feet couldn't touch the bottom. So all his time would be spent on the stairs. Not anymore!! The last 2 times he has been in the water, (Saturday at a birthday party he and Zachary went to) he has ventured out and started swimming all over the pool! Yeah Caleb!! He is so proud of himself! Zachary was so proud of him too. He kept yelling "Caleb your doing it!! Your doing so good! Mom, DAD, look at Caleb go!! Woohoo Caleb!" What a good big brother. Our room was on the first floor, right next to the pool and putt putt, so Mike and I could sit on our patio and watch them AND the NASCAR race. It was a fun night! On Monday we went to the beach. We didn't go in the ocean tho because there were riptides. I read about at least 1-2 people drowning every month from them. So we played on the sand, and built sandcastles. This weekend the space shuttle is being launched at 5pm. We are planning on going camping close by there. Unfortunately we didn't get a space reserved in time at Cape Canaveral Camping, so we are having to camp a few miles away. Thats OK. It would of been very crowded. But we still should get a very good view of it. We have been showing the boys the pictures we received on emails on the International Space Station. (Mike and I saw it years ago when it passed over AZ. Looked like a slow moving airplane.) We will be leaving tomorrow after Zachary gets out of school. MAYBE I will get some decent pictures to blog. I hope!!