A Little Organization

My other project yesterday (besides Legos) was to organize/purge our massive pile of downstairs toys. The kids and I took a trip to Target in the morning for some storage bins, and they "helped" me assemble them. (Okay, Ben helped and Rebecca got in the way and/or cheered "Go Mommy! Go Mommy!"). Then we went through all of the toys the kids keep downstairs and threw away about half a dozen broken remote control toys, numerous other broken toys/pieces of toys/happy meal toys/baby toys, etc. We filled a trash bag and a half with junk. Then we attempted to organize the remaining toys as best we could. The result looks a lot better than before, however we still need to tackle the UPSTAIRS toys! That is a project for another day...

Legos

As previously mentioned Ben received a lot of Star Wars Lego kits for his birthday. He cleared off a shelf on the book case over his bed to make room to display them, and set about nagging Joel and I to help him put them together. So Joel did one with him the other night, and I did one with him yesterday during Rebecca's nap. It took me all of Rebecca's 2 hour nap to finish this 177 piece project, and I am rather proud of myself. I did have a few tiny pieces left over after I finished, which I am hoping were just extras! Ben was very happy with the result.

Pool Time

We've been spending more time lately at our community pool (in our subdivision) instead of going to the JCC pool. We've been going after dinner or bringing sandwiches with us, and it's been very enjoyable and relaxing. We usually see several neighbors there in the evenings as well as a couple of Ben and Rebecca's school/camp friends who also live in our neighborhood. So there's usually plenty of company and kids for Ben and Becca to play with. Here are some pictures from Friday night/last night.

First Day of Summer Camp

The kids started summer camp today (and mom and dad both went back to work after a week off, boo...) The kids both had a great first day of camp. Rebecca didn't seem to notice at all that she was with some different kids (about half the kids in her group she knows from preschool and the rest are new) and she seemed to adjust fine to her new camp counselors. She separated easily from me this morning and by all accounts had a great first day.

Ben as usual was a little more reticent, worrying about who would be in his group that he knows, but once he saw that he knew three of the boys in his group and one of the counselors, he was fine, and shooed me away. He described his first day as "awesome", and told me all about swimming, tennis, computers, arts & crafts, drama, and how he got to have a popsicle.

At home tonight, far from being tired, the kids had so much energy that at one point they were both down on their hands and knees scrubbing my kitchen floor with sponges. Not that I am complaining about that, exactly, I was just hoping that camp would tire them out a little more!

Abby's Charlotte Pics

I am borrowing Abby's slide show of pics from their visit last week. With permission, of course.

Ben Turns 6!

That's right, 6 years ago today I had a baby boy! We started the celebration early this morning (a little too early -- "Your clock only says 6:57 but I swear the one in my room says 7:02" he told us). His present from us was a Nintendo DSi, which he has only been talking about at least once a day for the last six months. We got him a couple of games to go with it, and both sets of grandparents also got him some games, so he ended the day with a total of 7 games for it so far, so he's quite happy.

We continued the celebration later on with a birthday party with 7 of his friends at Sports Connection, then came back home to open presents. Every single one of his friends got him various Lego Star Wars kits except for one who got him a Lego Ben 10 kit and one who got him some other type of Lego thing. Legos are awfully popular right now it seems... actually come to think of it, when we go to a boy's birthday party I usually give Legos as well! Maybe I should rethink that. The Lego thing may be slightly out of control. Anyway, Ben's going to have a lot of Legos to put together. Not my area of expertise. Hopefully Joel will step in.

After present-opening we headed to PF Chang's for dinner along with Joel's parents (after telling Ben to pick a second choice because The Pancake House, so we told him, did not have a table for six). Now we are home, Rebecca is in bed finally, after missing her nap today and becoming a quivering ball of nerves as a result by the time we got home from dinner.

However the day is not done yet because somehow the "birthday tradition" of letting Ben stay up as late as he wants on his birthday has arisen. Last year he made it until 10pm, but I am pretty sure his stamina has increased dramatically since then. Still hoping to talk him into bed by 10 ;) I am tired!

Below are the obligatory pictures and videos from this momentous occasion.

Driving Me Nuts

Joel was golfing in a charity tournament today, so I decided the kids and I would use the day to get necessary errands done, including getting party favors/decorations for Ben's birthday party tomorrow. For some reason, although I have driven past Party City about 8,000 times I have never made a precise mental note of its location, because I don't usually have any reason to go there. But today I decided we needed to go there to get supplies to make goody bags for the party.

Mistake number one was not looking up the address before we left. We did some other errands first, and I thought Party City was somewhere in the vicinity of where we were. So I typed "Party City" into the GPS, and it said Party City was less than a mile away. So with that as confirmation, I started to follow the GPS's directions, which I thought were a bit odd because it was taking me off of the road that I was pretty sure Party City was on.

Mistake number two turned out to be not renewing my vehicle registration when it expired at the end of May. Because instead of taking me to Party City, the GPS delivered me right to the Matthews police department, and as I was driving past admiring all the shiny cop cars, one of them pulled me over for the expired registration. As I waited irritably for the officer to come back with the citation, Ben asked, "Are you going to jail?" And then Becca started singing, "Mommy's going to jail... Mommy's going to jail...." (It turns out that Mommy is not going to jail, and as long as Mommy gets the registration renewed two weeks prior to the court date, Mommy does not have to pay the fine either).

After that incident I was quite irritated, switched off the GPS, and (correctly) determined that Party City was on the road I thought it was on, but clear on the other side of town from where I was. So we set off again, with Ben whining somewhat understandably, about how long it was taking to get to Party City (this whole adventure took upwards of an hour I am sad to admit, including a potty stop for Rebecca who announced that she had to poop and wanted to do it in the potty so she could have "fruits" [fruit snacks, her reward for doing number 2 on the potty at home]. We stopped at a bagel shop where she entirely refused to sit on the potty).

We finally found Party City and set about getting the things we needed for the party, while Becca tried to snatch everything she could reach from her seat inside the shopping cart saying, "That's mine! I want that! LOOK! BACKYARDIGANS!" every 5 seconds and Ben countering with, "NO, that's NOT YOURS! It's MY PARTY! Can we get this? How about this? This? This? This?"

With sanity rapidly slipping away we wrapped it up at Party City and headed for the car. At some point in the parking lot one of the kids did or said something - I don't remember what at this point - and I yelled, "You kids are driving Mommy NUTS! NUTS! I am about to run through this parking lot screaming like a lunatic! That's how nuts you are driving me!" (Which outburst Ben thought was very funny).

We got in the car and started to navigate into the drive through lane at McDonald's next to Party City because by this point it was 1:30 and we had yet to eat lunch. As I stopped to yield to another car entering the drive through lane Rebecca yelled, "Mommy! GO! You are driving me NUTS!" Egged on by our laughter she continued to intermittently yell, "YOU ARE DRIVING ME NUTS!" all the way home.