Indy Zoo

Meemaw took Jaykeb, AJ, and me to the zoo. Jaykeb got to feed the giraffes. Of course he ran up there and gave them the food before I could get there so the picture I got was good of the giraffes...not so good of The Boy...

He finally went in and pet the goats. He was really afraid of them but luckily these goats didn't move much...more like at all.




The bear who was confused...he just kept going in and out of his cave. In and out, in and out...

The zoo has cheetahs right now for some Tony Stewart promotion thing. I took this picture for my Dads who are Tony Stewart fans. Surprised my camera didn't break. :)

Jayke and I both pet the sharks. It was really hard for Jayke to reach them and if you look in the corner of the picture Meemaw had a hold of him so he didn't go for a swim. They felt like rubber.

These seals were having a disagreement. They were the first thing we came to and I didn't think we were going to get Jayke to move on. He liked the seals. They were probably the most active of all the animals we saw all day.

My favorite part, and I think everyone else's too, was the dolphin show. I don't have any pictures of it because we were too far up and the lighting was bad but it was really good. I can't remember ever going to a dolphin show, although I'm sure I have since I have been to Sea World. It is something I would like to go back to. Next time I will make sure we get there early though so Jayke can sit down in the front and get splashed!

Out of the Mouths...

The Boy says funny stuff every day but here are few things he has said lately that cracked me up...

Jayke, talking to my mom on the phone...Well, my Mommy is all worked up about her minutes so I have to go!

Jaykeb walks into the living room the other night, Mommy, I have angina...I'm going to take a bath. I asked him if he even knew what angina was. He said yes, chest pain and kept on walking as if I were the biggest idiot on the planet for even asking!

A couple of days ago my mother called me to inform me that my son attempted to hire her as our "maid" for $50 a week. He had an entire list of things for her to do. Now I have two concerns about this...one is the fact that he thinks we need a "maid" and the other is that he is conducting business transactions without my knowledge. My mom can be concerned about what he thinks she is worth.

I glanced at my adorable son the other day and he replied, "What are YOU looking at you evil little elf?

Sunflowers--By Jayke

This is actually a lot bigger than what is pictured. I'm going to frame this and hang it some where in the house. One of my favorites.

First Day of 1st Grade!!

Jayke's first day of 1st grade went very well. He likes his teacher and we were very happy to learn that two of his best friends from last year, Ben and Parker are in his class again this year. He also found out that they changed the bus routes so his very best friend, Ian, now rides his bus as well. Such a difference from the end of kindergarten when he was turning up "sick" every Thursday. I finally figured out that he didn't like computer lab and that was the reason for his mystery illnesses. So far so good this year...it is only day one but at least I didn't have to fight with him to go.

Collection--By Jayke

Three art projects Jayke did in kindergarten.

Cluck, Cluck!

Jaykeb came in the house today with THIS on his head...





It seems his little friend, Beatrice, from down the road won this for him in one of those crane machines. She has a matching one. His first gift from a girl. He was quite proud of it!

Workers

After spending a couple of weeks watching Mike and Chad put a new roof on Mike's house I'm now watching him and Gunner reside my dad's barn. I don't think we could have picked a hotter day to do it either! Good thing the pool is there for them to jump in when they are finished. Mom grilled for us too so after the barn building was finished for the day, there was swimming, and dinner with my parents. I feel a little bad because Jaykeb really wanted to come with us when they were doing this but he is with his dad for the weekend. I think he will get to come back with us next time because they are going to have to come back to finish it another day. It looks so much better though. Mike and Gunner are doing a great job!

Comedians

We have an Employee of the Month at my place of work. It really has nothing to do with job performance since they draw your name out of a hat, but it is a treat. It is a way for our boss to reward us through out the year. You get balloons for your office, fresh flowers delivered, small gifts given to you randomly through out the month, a prime parking spot at the front door, and at the end of the month you get a lunch in your honor. Of course, lunch is paid for and brought in from a restaurant of your choosing.

I have been there going on 3 years and had yet to win the Employee of the Month honors. My supervisor even went and checked to make sure my name was in the "hat" because we couldn't believe that it hadn't been pulled yet. It had become sort of a joke around the office because my name was never announced. I really was convinced that I was not meant to win it when one month I wasn't present for the drawing (you have to be there to win) and they DID pull my name. Since I wasn't there they had to draw another name and it ended up being Holly, my best friend at work. THAT made it even better for them all. I got a phone call immediately after to fill me in on my "loss"...and her "win".

This month...I FINALLY won!! Woohoo for me! I'm already trying to decide where I want my lunch to come from and can't wait to get my flowers tomorrow. I did receive my balloons though and placed them in the corner of my office where I can see them. I should have known the "funny" people I work with would not pass up an opportunity to continue to tease me about this though. When I came in to work this morning this is what I found...





That would be my seahorse balloon 'working' at my desk. There was also a sign that read, "We found your replacement!" They are real comedians. It was pretty funny though. I plan to enjoy my reign as Employee of the Month regardless of their jokes. Ha!

Did Ya Hear Me Scream??

I found THAT in my shower this morning!!! The brown bottle is my shampoo which this not-so-little guy was wrapped around. I reached for it and luckily saw that it looked a little peculiar so I picked it up by the corner for closer examination. At first I thought that Mike (Mike number two) had put it there as a joke. I didn't think it was real. Then it moved. So, I'm wondering if you heard me screaming this morning? I'm not scared of bugs and stuff, but this caught me off gaurd. You just don't expect a slug the size of a baby snake to be in your shower in the morning! Now that I've calmed down I'm wondering how he got in there. Had to be from the drain but HOW?

I sent the picture to Mike at work...he, of course, thought it was hysterical. Probably wishing he DID put it there so he could take credit for it. He will go under the house after work to see whats going on under there. I put the slug out back and went back to finish my shower...hope he deosnt' find his way back in!

He is 6!

We had a SpongeBob theme for Jayke's birthday this year. The party was held at the YMCA and his entire kindergarten class was invited. We were very pleased that most of the boys showed up and a couple of the girls too. They played games in the gym and got to play the Wii, ping pong, and ski ball.


Here is Jayke with his friends Kara, Parker, and Ian.

Arrrghhhh!!!

Here's my little pirate. I'm so glad HE chose to be a pirate this year because his years of wearing "cute" costumes is coming to an end. I didn't want to have to MAKE him be a pirate. He will no doubt want to be something scary, bloody, and disgusting before long and I was determined to have a pirate picture for my Halloween album.

We went trick-or-treating last night with Mike, who drove up for the weekend. We first went over to Oma and Opa's house where he not only got candy but legos as well. He wasn't having any visiting though we had to get moving. There was candy with his name on it! We came back home and went around our neighborhood then headed over to the neighboring hood. Farmington is HUGE! We made it about half way through before Mike suggested we start heading back towards our house. Good thing he did because shortly after turning for home Jayke no longer wanted to trick-or-treat. Mike thought as long as we were heading for the house he could hit all the houses along the way. He went willingly at first but soon was yelling at us, "I DON'T WANT TO TRICK-OR-TREAT ANYMORE! I WILL NOT GO TO ONE MORE HOUSE! MY FEET HURT!"

When we got back to the house we had to "inspect" his candy. This is just what parents tell the kids so they can pick out the pieces they want. Jayke was kind enough to give Mike and me each a Reese's cup, which is both of our favorites. They left shortly after to go back to Mike's parent's house where Jayke could trick-or-treat...and hopefully get more Reese's cups.

Today I had to load the pirate up and take him over to my dad's to trick-or-treat. Halloween turned out to be just like Christmas...never ending. We had already gone trick-or-treating at the nursing home on Thursday. Grammy got to see Jayke in his costume, of course she didn't know who he was until she saw my mom and me standing over to the side. I would say total he got about 4 buckets of candy. I think I will be hauling some of it in to work to fill my candy bowl in my office. God knows I don't need 4 buckets of candy sittin' around my house waiting to make it's way to my butt and thighs! Jayke certaing won't miss it either!

Fun on The Farm

It was field trip time a couple of weeks ago. I'm hoping next year we will go someplace different. Not that I don't like One Fun Farm, I actually really like it a lot, but we went there for his field trip last year in preschool too. At least this year they got to do a few new things that they missed out on last year.

One of those was jumping on this HUGE trampoline...

(Jayke is the fourth kid from the left...it's hard to tell because all the kindergarteners wear orange shirts when on field trips.)



It was funny to watch all those kids bouncing but then one brave dad joined them along with Mr. Logan, the cadet teacher, and the two kindergarten teachers. The kids all immediately went into attack mode and had the two guys down on the tramp. There were so many kids on top of them you couldn't even see the poor guys. I was shocked no one got hurt. There wasn't any crying at all which amazed me.

Since I passed my criminal background check...snicker...I was permitted to supervise Jaykeb and his friend Ben while on the farm. I think in the future I may request to NOT be in charge of my own kid. They all have told me how well behaved he is but as soon as I show up he looses his mind! I was about to ask that the teacher have him pull a behavior card. Ben, on the other hand, was extremely well behaved. I'm sure if his mother had been there it would have been a different story for him too. Mothers seem to bring out the worst in their kids.



I tried to get a picture of the whole class but trying to get all those kids to hold still is difficult. Not to mention that I got out there and discovered that my battery on my Nikon was dead. I had to rely on the cell phone camera again. Jayke is sitting up on the straw bales next to Mr. Logan, their cadet teacher from Delta High School.




We got to eat lunch there and before leaving all the kids got to go into the pumpkin patch and select a pumpkin to bring home. Jayke brought his straight home and colored it black. We had perfect weather for our trip and I think aside from Jayke's grouchiness at times, we all had a good time.

This week is Red Ribbon Week. They are wearing bracelets everyday, Wednesday is Red day, Thursday is Jersey day, and Friday is crazy tie day. Oma made Jayke a lovely little tie to wear. They also have a skating party Thursday and fall party on Friday. I hope I can keep track of all this!

Meet Jack

We carved our pumpkin last night. I decided to just do a face this year instead of some intricate design that takes forever. Jayke picked the face out of a book of patterns.



As you can see, we had plenty of help. Luna was right in there eating the pumpkin guts as we pulled them out and put them in a bow.







Jayke got to go to a Halloween party at the YMCA tonight with Opa too. They had a magician there and now he is interested in magic. They bounced in a huge bounce house, played bowling, and got a small pumpkin and treat bag. He is counting down the days until Halloween. Mike is going trick or treating with us and Jaykeb is very excited about that.






We went on our field trip the other day. I have a coupld pictures that I will put up tomorrow. Jayke also got his school pictures back, finished up another season of soccer, and got his first report card. His report card was very good. Pluses in everything. She says he is the quietest most well behaved kid in the class. He is an excellant role model for the other boys who all like him. He does all his work and is right where he should be. They all want to take him home every night. Nothing shocking about that!

Meow

Oh suuuuure she looks sweet here but in reality she is a flying ball of fur and teeny tiny claws! It has been a long time since I have had a kitten and I had forgotten what they are like when they are really little and before they can get their claws removed. I have tiny claw marks covering my arms, hands, legs, and feet. The worst part though was when I woke up the other night and Luna was standing on my face. I reached to move her and it must have scared her because she tried to run, digging her claws into my face. I hesitantly got up to look at the damage in the mirror and was shocked! I looked like a vampire! Blood all over my hands and face. She is lucky she lived through that night.

I am not the only one being abused by little Lunatic...the dogs are being tormented on a regular basis. They walk through the house with a kitty hanging from their tail. My accessories are being rearranged and my floor lamp with the paper shade took a hit the other night. It sits next to the couch and apparently caught her eye for the first time because she all of a sudden leaped from the couch to the lamp, landing almost at the very top. She hung there motionless as the lamp slowly began to fall over. I could read her mind by the way her eyes were bulging from her head and her ears were laying straight back. She was thinking, "Oh sh*t! What have I done?!" I caught both cat and lamp as they made their way to the ground saving them both because Luna would have been in big trouble had she ruined my lamp. I had to carefully extract her tiny claws from the paper shade. She sat there afterwards looking at me as if I had ruined all her fun.

Jaykeb is particularly careful with the little terror. He hasn't managed to avoid her completely though. She barely caught him on the thumb with her tiny claw the other day and the drama that insued was oscar worthy. First there was a lot of screaming for a bandaid. From the racket I thought she had bitten his thumb clear off and was surely sitting in the corner munching on it. Upon inspection, I found a very small hint of blood on his thumb but proceeded to bandage it as if it were the traumatic injury he thought it was. After we tended to his wound he turned his attention back to Luna. "I HATE LUNA!!!! I WISH SHE HAD NEVER COME HERE!!!" This went on for probably 45 minutes. I finally threatened to give her back to Holly and this slowed him down a little but not completely. My child is the king of drama and isn't afraid to show it.

Only 4 more months until we can get her claws removed...please pray for her that she makes it!

Friends and Enemies

I think Jayke had his first fight with a friend at school yesterday. Not a physical fight...just a disagreement. He has had two best friends at school since he started, Ian and Ben. Yesterday he came home and told me he IS NOT going to be friends with Ben anymore! Apparently Ben got out of line while coming back from the library and when Jayke moved up and took his spot Ben tried to say that Jayke cut in line! Jaykeb then proceeded to go and tell on Ben for accusing him of this. I don't exactly know where things went from there but Jayke came home determined to NOT be friends with evil Ben anymore!

I think Alex has now taken Ben's spot on the friend's list. Jayke has his friend on the bus, Jonathan AND his "Arch enemy", Parker as well. Parker is not in his class but is always on the playground where he throws rocks and torments everyone. Alex and Jonathan also both play soccer but not on our team. Ian just lives down the road to the east of our neighborhood and Jonathan lives in the neighborhood directly to the west of ours. Jayke clearly doesn't know in which house though because he took me on a wild goose chase the other night looking for it. I'm happy that there are a couple of kids close by who he is friends with. Maybe eventually they will play together at home.

So did you follow all that? If so could you explain it to me 'cause I'm starting to think I may need a score card. All this will clearly wear a person out!

The Team

We got our soccer pictures taken tonight. Apparently 60 mile an hour wind gusts is not a good enough reason to postpone picture night. Jayke is the second boy from the left. It will be interesting to see how these turn out. I'm just glad Jayke doesn't have any hair to be blowing around!

What We Have Learned In School

We have learned that the teacher does not want to tie 24 kid's shoes so if you don't know how to tie your own, you have to wear them during nap time and also full of rocks from the playground.

We have learned that there is a big ol mean girl who will choke you if you refuse to play with her friend, Parker.

We have learned that being "Special Student" is GREAT until you have to get up in front of the class and tell about your "Show and Share" item. When you find out about this little chore you no longer WANT to be special student. You will also fight with your mother about what you want to take to "Show and Share" even when she only has your best interest at heart.

We have learned that there is an uber hyper child named Parker who will sit with you on the bus and hit you. He will also throw rocks at you on the playground and stretch out the necks of all your favorite t-shirts. Unfortunately, this will lead you to the realization that the teachers on the playground, who are supposed to be watching the children, are actually chit chatting with each other. Thus, we learned that Mommy has to march out to the bus and tell the bus driver about Parker, the little menace...otherwise known as Jayke's "Arch Enemy", causing the bus driver to give you a HUGE hug and embarass you to death but also promise to "get" parker that night.

We have learned that they only teach "Everything you already know" and it is boring all the time. Plus...they won't let you use the computers nearly enough.

We have learned where the nurse's office is. Scraped knees are common on the playground.

We have learned that there is a boy, Logan, who gets to visit the principal on a daily basis...sometimes two and three times a day and WE ARE NOT GOING TO BE LIKE LOGAN!

We have learned that if your eyes are red from allergies and you are just sitting at the lunch table eating your lunch, a perfect stranger will come up and send you to the nurse who will then call your mom and make her leave work to come and get you. Apparently taking your temperature twice and having it read normal won't deter them and neither will your mom's word that it is simply allergies and the same thing happened last fall. We learned that Zyrtec will quickly make the itchy eyes go away and the rest of the day will be spent shopping, running errands, and mowing the lawn.

We have learned that if you forget to take your library book back on library day you will not be allowed to choose a new book. This will cause you to go home and blame it all on your mother for not remembering the schedule! You will probably bring this up many many times over the course of the evening because it was clearly traumatizing.

We have learned that 5 year-olds cannot do a sit up.

We have learned many songs and dances in music class that are "just dumb"!

We have learned a lot and it isn't even the end of the first grading period! It is exhasuting! We have learned that taking a nap after school, however, will only make us grouchier for the rest of the evening. This not only happens to five-year-olds but to thirty-six-year-old mother's as well. Sometimes this makes one wonder how any mother does it without a cleaning lady, nanny, chauffer, and yard boy!

As you can see, Jayke and Luna are good friends now. She even cries and looks for him when I get home from work before the bus drops him off. He says she is his favorite kitty. I don't bother mentioning she is his ONLY kitty.



Grandparent's Day is coming up at school. We had to send in pictures of the grandparents. I tell ya what, school is more work for me than I ever imagined. I spent days looking through all my stuff trying to find pictures to send in. I couldn't find any that were recent enough so I had to go take one. I found one of my dad and "Other Mother" to send but not of my mom and Jim so I went and made them sit for a picture. I had to order the others to be printed and picked up at Walgreens. When I got there to pick them up turns out I didn't hit the confirm order button so they weren't there. I had to go back home and do it all over again. Spent two days on that! If I had time I would have gone to Dad's and gotten a new one of them with Jayke too but there wasn't time and Mom is in Florida.



We also had an art project to do together at home the other night. We had to decorate a paper pumpkin that will hang from the ceiling in his classroom. We made one side a pirate and the other was just a jack-o-lantern but anyone who knows me knows I couldn't just cut out some shapes and glue them on. No, I had to make crepe paper hair and use scrapping felt bat stickers for eyes. We used black cardboard letters that spelled Jaykeb for the mouth. It is awesome! I even let him help me with MY art project! LOL I guess I should tell the truth...Jayke did glue everything on but I showed him where to put it all. I looked at it later after he had gone to bed and decided there was no way the teacher would believe that he helped with it so I pulled a couple things off and glued them back on a little crooked. I know...I'm scandalous!!

Here She Is!

Luna came to live with us today. My friend Holly's cat had kittens and I finally decided to take one. The past two years were the only time in my life that I haven't had a cat and Jaykeb has really been wanting one so here she is!




Luna is short for lunatic because I unknowingly chose the feistiest kitten of the group. She wasn't so rambunctious when I first saw them and chose her. I didn't have much choice because the others were all spoken for but after seeing them I would have chosen this one anyway. She had the cutest face out of the bunch and was the littlest one.

Jaykeb wanted to name her Myrtle but I couldn't see myself calling, "Here Myrtle!" We finally agreed on Luna. He is very excited about her but afraid of her too. She scratched him right away so now he won't hold her and will barely touch her. He will get over it I'm sure.



One of my dogs didn't care about her at all. The other is very interested in the little critter but she took care of that right away by giving him several smacks to the face. He then came over and buried his face in my lap as if he were crushed and hasn't paid any attention to her since. Poor guy. Probably a good thing though cause Luna is VERY tiny. I think she is missing her momma today because she cries loudly if I'm out of her sight and curls up on my shoulder when I'm sitting on the couch. I gave her a stuffed animal to sleep with and comfort her when I'm not here. I will probably be getting even less sleep now that I have little Luna to romp on my bed all night but I'm glad she is here.

YAY!! It's fall!

It's that time of the year again! My favorite time of the year. FALL!!! So how early is too early to decorate for Halloween? Apparently for us the second week of September is not too early because we are completely decked out! It looks like someone vomitted Halloween all over my house!

We only decorated the inside. We don't want the neighbors to know we are crazy or anything. I will do the outside next month.

It has been three years since I've seen all my Halloween decorations and it was like Christmas...only spookier! Most of my stuff I had only used one time before my move back North so I didn't even remember most of it.



I found this vintage cat mask that I had bought the Halloween before I moved back here. Jayke wanted to try it out. This is not NOT his costume for trick-or-treating, of course. That I'm saving for a later post. I will say we had the annual costume debate and I was able to persuade him into being something more age appropriate than what he was wanting...probably for the last year. I think I said that the previous Halloween though too so we will see.



Here is The Boy decorating our Halloween tree. Yes, we have a Halloween tree, actually two but I can't find the other one. Whats a holiday without a tree to decorate???



I would use The Boy's CROP for decorating purposes however, I think we saw how that turned out! Hopefully I will have some fall field trip pictures later, pumpkin carving pictures, AND finally, the costume pictures! LOVE FALL!!

A Student AND an Athlete

I had no idea there would be so much homework in kindergarten!! The Boy missed a day of school last week and when he came home the next day he even had make-up work to do. So far he doesn't mind doing homework. He gets most of it on Fridays so I make him sit down as soon as he gets off the bus and do it to get it out of the way and lets be honest, mostly so I don't forget to have him do it. I wo my homework while he is doing his. I go through all the notes from the school and fill out anything that needs to go back to school. We also go through the menu for the following week and decide IF he will eat each day. He seems to like to take his lunch about once a week. I get his lunch money ready and back in the bag so I won't forget that either. Proof for my parents that yes, I do know how to be organized sometimes!



Soccer started tonight. I don't know who was more worn out The Boy or his mother. I felt like I had played or something. I'm not used to getting up at 6a.m. and going all day. We didn't get home until almost 7:30 then there was dinner, homework, and a bath. By the time that was done it was bedtime. Good thing we took those naps after school! LOL

I think soccer will be more fun for him this time because he is now one of the older ones on the team again. He came close to scoring a couple of goals tonight and saw one of his friends from his class. He has a couple of friends he talks about everyday now, Ian and Ben. I guess there was a playground incident Friday that his friend, Ben, tried to save him from. Some girl was choking him on the playground because he wouldn't play with Parker. I don't know who Parker or this girl is but if she chokes my boy again I may have to go find her...or put him back in karate so he can take care of her himself!

The Boy and His Crop

Okay, so it isn't much of a crop. Someone should tell my mother that you HAVE TO WATER YOUR GARDEN!! I think he has about 5 gourds that made it. I have no idea what happened to the pumpkins although if I had to guess, it would probably be safe to say LACK OF WATER killed them! I know they planted flowers as well and there wasn't even a hint of a flower in the vicinity. Plenty of weeds and hard, cracked, dry earth though. Oh well, as you can see The Boy is quite proud of his poor little plants. We just don't talk about the ones who tragically died.

Roadblock!

Jumpin' Jumpin"

We went to a birthday party for my friend Holly's daughter a couple of weeks ago. Jayke had a blast jumping on the trampoline with her younger daughter, Kennedi. He didn't want to talk about it when we left though. Girls are off limits. I tried to tell him it didn't mean anything if he played with a girl. His response was that he wished Holly didn't even have a trampoline so he didn't have to go there and jump on it anymore!

If You Pitch it They Will Come

Apparently if you pitch a tent in your front yard little girls will show up with Capri Suns wanting to play.

Just School and Stuff...

We went to Jayke's open house as school tonight. Seems silly that they would have open house so soon. He showed me around his class room and pointed out all the kids. He had one little girl chasing him around the room which just about made his eyes roll out of his head. He HATES having any attention from girls or having anyone mention girls in front of him. It always induces eye rolling and evil glares.



I think riding the bus is still his favorite thing about school. There was one day he came home and asked me if I could pick him up the next day because he couldn't find a seat that day. I made him ride though and now everything is fine again.



We have already had homework. He prefers to drag his little chair out and sit at the coffee table to do it. I make him do his homework as soon as he gets home from school so we don't forget it. I still haven't decided if I like his teacher or not. I've had several things come up that have made me wonder about her but I'm trying not to form an opinion yet. I have a conference with her on October 22nd so I will know better after that. One of the issues may be more because of Jayke than the teacher. There is some fibbing going on about whether or not she will tie his shoes for him or not. He comes home from school with rocks in his shoes everyday and says that the teacher won't let him take them off to get the rocks out because he can't tie them himself. I haven't quite figured out if she really won't do it or Jaykeb just won't ask her to.


Soccer starts again next week. I wasn't going to put him in this fall because I was concerned that going to school and soccer was going to be too much for him. He is already exhausted after school but that is getting better now that he is getting into a routine so we are going to give soccer a shot and see how it goes.

I am also adjusting to getting up at 6 a.m. for the first time since I went to school and getting to work by 8a.m. for the first time EVER! I no longer have to take a nap every afternoon and am finding it easier to fill the long afternoon and evening with activities other than laying on the couch watching NCIS reruns. It is actually kind of nice to have all that time to get stuff done and errands run. We will see what happens when it is freezing cold and still dark out when I have to get up in a couple of months.

Almost...

....ready for the training wheels to come off!