Weather: 81 - gorgeous!
Dinner Menu: Grilled burgers, corn on the cob, baked beans, potato salad
TV Alert: Beach Girls

Can I just brag about our weather for a moment? It’s been so gorgeous. I usually rush through summer, anxiously awaiting for Fall because I hate hate hate the heat. But this Summer has been so pleasant I don’t think I’ve complained once. We were in the van today and David is asking for the a/c and I’m sitting there saying the heat feels GOOD. Check out this site Monthly Weather Planner - it tells the highs for every day of the month…. See, I’m not lying :o) I’m going to turn down my a/c as we are in for a few days of 70’s weather.

David and I got some cleaning done this morning. He cleaned out the Explorer (AKA: Garbage Mobile). He must be planning on having a special guest in his car soon or something! Once things were cleaned up and we had lunch, we took the 3 youngest girls to Battle Ground Lake and Lewisville River Park. We were scouting locations for Ashlyn’s 9th birthday party next weekend. I think we settled on BG. The Lewisville park is gorgeous, HUGE, and all… but just maybe a little to big for our liking. We want our guests to find us. I mean this park was HUGE!

We had popsicles and ice cream sandwiches while we were there. The girls wanted to go in the water but it was really chilly and the water hole was in the shade, so we didn’t stay long. It was pretty though and a nice excursion. I took a couple of quick pics… check out our photo gallery at the bottom of the page.

Then we headed over to Bizi Farms looking for caramel corn puffs. One of my long lost friends, Liz… was working there. I haven’t seen her in ages. We lost contact a couple of years ago. She was in my wedding… our kids were pretty good friends (she has 3 boys about the same ages as Tanner, Ashlyn & Bailey). Anyway… we didn’t talk for long b/c Bailey was super tired and cranky, but it was good to see her and hopefully we will talk again soon.

We came home and all took short naps and started dinner…. (David did actually - I did nothing cooking wise today!) And I shopped at Gymboree.com to spend my $250 gift card while they were having this big sale. I save $150 today…. not too bad and the stuff I got was pretty cute. I don’t shop at that store anymore because it’s so dang expensive. Even their sale/clearance prices are more than my tight budget allows most times. But I got McKenzie 5 or 6 outfits, Ashlyn 2 outfits and Bailey 3 outfits. All for school so they will be all cute when the weather starts to cool down!

My mom and I are taking Ashlyn and a friend to the American Idol concert this Wednesday. We are excited to go, but I just found out that Bo will not be performing for 6 weeks due to an injury. :o( I was one of the Carrie voters anyway, but I was looking forward to both of their performances!! Constantine will be entertaining enough I’m sure. But we’ll miss BO!!! I haven’t confirmed this yet, but did find this tidbit… Bo Bice missed Thursday’s American Idols Live tour stop in Las Vegas. Rumors on the “American Idol” messageboards are that the runner-up fell ill, but Bice’s spokesperson could not confirm …

I think that’s about it for today - don’t forget to check out the new pics in our gallery! There is one in there that is guaranteed to make ya smile! I also added some blinkies to my blinkies page (blinkie link found at top right of this page!)

Have a wonderful Monday!

Weather: 88 - beautiful day
Dinner Menu: Kids’ Choice: PB&J sandwiches *cut in triangles*, orange slices, and potato chips (bad mommy I know)
TV Alert: Big Brother 6 - CANNOT wait!! Should be tivo’ing as we speak. And on DVD later: Upside of Anger.
Beauty in the simple things: A 2 hour nap cuddled up next to my baby girl.
Site of the day: How much does gas cost in YOUR area? I paid $2.49 to fill up at Costco on Thursday. It’s now up to $2.52 there. The cheapest is $2.49 it looks like. Good thing we don’t have long commutes to work! If you haven’t seen this site, you can check the cheapest place to get gas in your city: http://www.gasbuddy.com/
DVD Review: Hide and Seek…. good flick. Kept me on the edge of my seat for the most part. I definitely should have seen the end coming way ahead of time, but I didn’t until it was approaching. I don’t want to give to much away - but worth the rental. B+.

We got up early and got the kids out of here so my dad and his friend Hal, could work on my playroom ceiling fan and the gutters outside. They have to cut cement to fix a line or something so it will drain more efficiently when rain season starts. Oy, I hope it doesn’t rain anytime soon, as the gutter is in pieces right now. LOL. What a mass that would be!!!

So, we ended up going to Jantzen Beach Mall in Portland, so that David could talk with the guy in charge of the Scream At The Beach, which starts Oct 1st. This is a big event here, where they have several different haunted houses and tons of other fun activities. They have started setting it up and David was going to go see about having a concessions booth there. Another part time gig for me. It’s 3 or 4 nights a week is all - so not too bad. The worst would be Halloween, because I wouldn’t be able to work that day - being that spending trick or treating with my kids is much more important than any amount of money. Sorry honey! We’ll know more on that later.

I took the 3 youngest girls into Toys R Us (TRU) — my oldest two are at my grandma’s house for the weekend. TRU is having their green tag sale (50% off the green tag price). Got a few Christmas gifts knocked out of the way. Finished up shopping for Ashlyn’s birthday (which is next THURSDAY!!). I think we finished up that store in an hour. LOL. The girls were just in seventh heaven looking at all the toys there.

We went to lunch at the mall and took the girls on the carousel before David had to leave for work. Then, we headed to Target… thinking back to school clothes but boy… their girls’ clothes section stinks! I wasn’t impressed I got some little cleaning items, homestyle pop secret popcorn (MY FAVORITE! ) and we decided to look through the DVD’s… I had read about this deal online where people were finding season DVD sets of things like Spongebob, Blue’s Clues, Little House on the Prairie, Newlyweds, Dora, etc. I found 6 different ones that were marked 5.99 but were scanning full price ($34.99). I took them to checkout and they called back for a price check. Sure enough, they were mis-marked… and they gave them to me for the $5.99 price. I was soooo stoked! I only bought one of each to keep, but could have bought extras to sell on ebay and made $25 a piece or so! So yay - good deal for me!!!

I had to buy Bailey some new sippy cups. I had a pretty good stash of them and we are down to 3 from when I was gone working at the fair. I’m sure they are just hiding somewhere in the house, but… 3 just doesn’t cut it LOL. So, I bought 4 more and she picked out this new sports bottle type one. Can I just say I love the Nuby sippies? They are soo awesome because you don’t have to take out any pieces to wash, the spill proof mechanism is built into the sippy spout. Sooo cool. And Bailey has no problems getting juice/milk/etc out of them.. she has a heck of a time with the Gerber and Playtex ones.

When we got home, Bailey and I watched Meet Mister Mom (and ok, where do I sign up for this show — too funny!!) on Tivo and took a little nap. (shhh, don’t tell David ::wink wink::) McKenzie & Ashlyn were being so good. They watched a movie, played with their new toys they bought with their Fair money and wrote with sidewalk chalk outside. They only disturbed me about 6 times I think LOL.

Bailey told me she was “squishy” when she was wet.
She has this little beaded bracelet, I bought for her when she was a newborn. I bought it from a WAHM seller on ebay and it’s sooo gorgeous… with a little charm on it that says “mommy’s little girl” in the shape of a heart. It’s always been too big, her wrists are sooo tiny. It will fit on her now without falling off, but if she tried she could pull it off. I explained to her how special it is, that I bought it when she was a baby. Now she tells me that it’s “mommy’s heart and Bailey’s heart”… it totally melts me!
Bailey told me that she doesn’t like this house anymore. “Don’t like this house mommy”…. “why Bailey?” “Because it’s messy - sissy did it” lol. Mind you, the playroom was NOT messy when she said this, maybe a couple of toys on the floor.
We drove up to the mini mart this evening to get myself a soda. If any of you know me really well, you know that I would love to have an IV drip of fountain pepsi. It’s really bad! I loooove it and there is such a huge difference between can/bottle and fountain - you just got to find the places that have the perfect mix. Safeway, Fred Meyer, KFC, Taco Bell, certain gas stations. Anyway, I sent Ashlyn in so I didn’t have to unload McKenzie and Bailey. I told her MEDIUM soda…. she came out with this honkin’ big soda that was as big as she was practically. It was so funny watching her carry it out to me. I couldn’t drink this much soda if I tried. I think it’s about 64 oz… the picture just doesn’t do it justice LOL. It’s really ROUND and even the little dots you push in to select the flavor of soda inside — they are MEGASIZE lol.

Whew… 16 days since I’ve updated!! Wowsers. We just finished up the Clark County Fair…. what an exhausting trip that was. I had a great time with it though. Made a few new friends and learned alot. I discovered I do miss working, but I missed my kids sooo dang much. Bailey had a really tough time with me be gone. I was basically gone from 8am to 11pm every day for 10 days. It was REALLY hard… We wouldn’t have been able to do it without the help of our parents. My dad, who helped David out quite a bit… and watched the girls a little bit, my mother in law, who kept the girls all during the week and at night while we were gone and my mom who watched the girls a little bit on the weekends. Knowing the girls were well taken care of, made it easier for me to go into work each day. Oh and David’s brother, Joel who ran Donuts for us — he was a trooper, even with as crappy as Donuts did - thanks Joel! Thanks to Brian and Crystal ~AND~ Jon and Tiffany too for coming in to help out. We had two employees, Kaitlin and James that were big help… THANK YOU ALL!!!!
Onto my booth at the fair — Ice Cream w/fresh made waffle cones. We had 10 flavors of ice cream: Strawberry Cheesecake, Wild Mountain Blackberry, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Chocolate Chip Mint, Chocolate Chip cookie dough, Chocolate, Vanilla, Rainbow Sherbet, Espresso Almond Fudge, and Cotton Candy. The big fresh waffle cones and bowls were $4.00. Small cones & bowls were $3.00. Rootbeer and Orange Creamsicle Floats (vanilla ice cream, orange soda, topped w/whip cream) were $3.50. Sundae in a waffle (two flavors of ice cream w/chocolate syrup, whip cream, sprinkles, nuts & cherry) were $5.25. They were freakin huge and soooo fun to make/look at. Awesome ‘oooohhhh ahhhhhh’ factor! I loooooved making the waffle cones. Those things smell soooo darn good. I had one scoop of ice cream the entire time we had our stand and it was the final day of the fair (Sunday). But, I cannot even begin to guess how many cones I ate by themselves. All the unusable cones (big holes in bottom or not the right cone shape), would very rarely get tossed. YUMMMY!! Something I don’t normally do at the fair, get a sampling of pretty much all the food vendors there. I can tell you exactly where to buy the perfect cheeseburger, yakisoba noodles, shaved ice, curly fries, blooming onion, etc. LOL… Good thing I was on my feet for 15+ hours per day - I could let myself eat that junk a little bit each day and still manage to lose a few pounds. I will say though that I have to find a local store that sells JUICY TWISTS…. know what these are? They are flavored licorice and OMG they are soooo yummy. The stand across from us was selling giant ropes of them for $1.00. I tried all their flavors .

We sold out of every single flavor of ice cream the final day of the fair. I think we had something like 17 tubs of ice cream to start the day and slowly I was marking them off our flavors list until 7pm… when everything but our Espresso Almond Fudge was GONE. That place was insane the final day… we got to see Mark Chestnut, Joe Nichols, Miranda Lambert, and Trace Adkins… then Ted Nugent and Styx (who even commented about our awesome waffle cones). Our booth was right by the grandstand so we had a good view of the demolition derby, bull riding, tough trucks, monster trucks, etc….. some AMAZING stuff. The bull riding night, a small bull came out and trampled a lady. Happens every year - but it came right by our booth. I’m so glad my girls weren’t there that night!

Donuts did pretty poorly. I just don’t think they are a fair food, maybe? They were pretty good… just didn’t sell well at all. Which sucked. But Ice Cream did phenomenal and we’ll be back next year, already making plans for it. Great way to make some summer cash and while the hours were long, it was good times and I enjoyed myself over all. Way worth it!

I added our annual fair photo button pic to our photo buttons page. Check it out!!!