Cruisin' along

The summer is cruisin' along with only one week to go and I'm having trouble keeping up - partly because so much of my time is now spent entertaining kids and partly because I have been doing so much for others. I've finally got this one cruise photo posted. Oliver and Lael had a blast on the Disney Cruise. Although there were definitely fun parts for the rest of us and we are glad we went and grateful the rest of Erik's family (with the exception of one niece who was working) came with us, we are definitely ready to take a trip without the kids! We're considering a 10-day Alaska cruise in 2010 with some friends. We'll see ... I will try and get more pictures posted this weekend. Sorry it takes me so long to get to everything! We snuck off to the beach in Santa Cruz with the Englishes Wednesday afternoon and it turned out to be a beautiful day so I was really glad we went. We got there just in time to see the Chinese Acrobats, which was amusing but after watching so much Olympics coverage, I'm a little hard to impress. We're looking forward to Wente next weekend and then summer's over! I'm hoping to get the house under control while the kids are at school. Wish me luck!

The defiant one

Today when we got to the movie theater for the weekly kids summer $1 movie - today was Bee Movie - Lael got out of the car without shoes on. This happens regularly and I am sick of it. If we hadn't had an extra child along (I was helping his mom out), then I would have just sent Oliver in to the movie and I would have sat out in the car with her for the entire movie. As it was, I saw about 15 minutes of the movie because Henry was much more interested in running up and down the aisles and in front of the screen. But I made Lael pay Oliver one point per sock (that's 50 cents), so she wore his socks and he went in with just his shoes and with no socks on. But I'm obviously going to have to make her pay a price soon or this showing up places without shoes on will never end. Honestly, it's this kind of crap that makes me glad to have school coming up so I won't have to spend all day every day with her. It's hard to deal with her without a break.

I've already had to modify so many of my dreams, both because of her choices and because that's how life has worked out. I took these pictures a couple weeks ago on the day I could tell she was going to pull her front tooth out. It made me sad because I really wanted kindergarten pictures before she lost her front teeth. Erik and I have such cute kindergarten pictures and I was hoping the kids would have them too. After our front teeth came in, we both looked a little gangly for awhile. Oliver's kindergarten picture turned out OK, except that someone wetted and combed his hair right before they took the picture so it looks kind of funky. Anyway, so much for that dream.

My current plan for the kids for college is to ship them off to BYU in Provo, UT to be near my family for college. It's really hard to get in now but I think the kids are smart enough. I'm sure I've got quite a few battles to fight with Lael but hopefully she won't choose college as one of them. So far she is quite the defiant child. But darn if she isn't cute!