Climbing the wall

At Girls Camp last week there was an obstacle course. I was assigned as the leader to help the girls get their harnesses on. So I helped close to 90 girls get ready to do this event, let alone encourage them on their way. Some of my own Mia Maids figured out that I'd NEVER climbed this wall, let alone any wall. They were appauled that I'd put them through this. Let it be known that I'd already anticipated climbing as soon as all the girls had finished. So this just finalized the idea. So as soon as I'd put the last girl in a harness I got mine strapped on.

Let me just say, you'd better have the right shoes to do this. And tennis shoes are NOT those shoes. I have very weak upper body strength so this was going to be difficult no matter what BUT the shoes didn't help. I couldn't get a grip so I couldn't push up. I tried by golly! I hung there longer than any girl and tried just as hard but the bottom-left picture is as high as I got. This was quite an experience. One I'd like to try again someday.

Did I mention that the nearby pool has a climbing wall over the deep end. I have to try this sometime when I'm without kids.

He's related to Me

This did not come from Daddy's side of the family.
(Well, ok, he doesn't handle spicy foods THIS good but he definitely does better than his sister.)

Happy Birthday to Me.

So Daddy and M went to great lengths to make me a Red Velvet cake for my birthday. If you look closely you'll see that they dyed the filling frosting blue. With the white cream cheese with coconut pecan icing on the outside it was truly red, white & blue. It was good but didn't make the Recipe Canon.

Another quirk you should know about is that I'm a FIRM believer that there should be the correct number of candles in a cake. I'm grateful we can find the box of 500 or something for about a dollar at Party City because I also don't clean candles. Are you kidding? Licking them off is part of the fun and I'm not washing that many candles! So the top of the cake had plenty of holes. Anyway, I got back from camp on Saturday and we celebrated a day early by going to dinner and having our neighbors come over for cake. Then we put the kids to bed and watched fireworks from our cul de sac. We were going to watch from the roof (AND I even climbed on the roof!) but alas our own trees blocked the view.

Sunday was fairly low key but we sang all my favorite hymns and M even picked up part of America the Beautiful. (Thank goodness for repetitive phrases in hymns.)

Every birthday is a review of where I am and where I want to be. I've decided my key words for next year are these.

Smile.

I can see the wrinkles developing. I think smile wrinkles are cute and frowning ones aren't. I want to make sure I get the right kind.

Play.

I want to be part of my kids life and I think this is imperative to the process.

Laugh.

See above.

Listen.

Sometimes I open my mouth without listening. I need to do better at this.

Love.

I'm trying to be like Jesus.

If I do more of all of these I will be a better mommy and a better person.

Saturday Morning cartoons?

Not in this house.

So the other morning M set up this little bed (I'm seeing a trend of her making these nests lately) so that she and Daddy could watch a car show before Daddy had to leave. Ok, this wasn't Daddy promoting the watching of a car show. This was M asking for a car show. No. I think she knew I'd say no to Dora but she knew Daddy would melt if she asked for a car show. For a while now Daddy's been sharing his love of race car and car fixing podcasts with his kids (one morning he let me sleep in and I found Daddy and F eating Cheese Nips and watching race cars). Daddy tells me she actually really likes watching them fix cars and will request them when he's in charge.

I guess it's all fair. I get to watch my Stacy Julian videos because Maddie really likes them. So I guess we have a scrapbooking/car junkie on our hands. Oh, and F likes to play with the toy kitchen and wants to be held while you're cooking so he can watch you cook...chef anyone? The only question is whether it's pastry or main line.

Happy Fourth of July!

Ok, it took three tries but I'm SO pleased with how this picture turned out. Yay that M smiled and F looked at the camera! Thanks Nanny for the shirts. We were quite patriotic!