I finally got Emma’s “Dry Bed” and “Bye Bye Kiki” party all set up. We decided to just go ahead and rent out Bouncin’ Off the Walls. This way, we won’t have to share the place with any other kids. She is thrilled and can’t wait. Every night she asks me how many more days until her party.

She has been working on invitations. The one that she made was so cute, I just had to post it:

I just love how she spelled the words, and how she put it all on the card. BiBi CeCe, and Dri Bed Pardy, how cute is that?

I made some too, to send out. I thought people might have a hard time figuring out the details of the party if we sent out Emma’s

I was dreading today. We had a busy day planned, and I was just stressed out thinking about it.

Scott had a meeting early, and then he was off to Logan for his weekend century. To start off, I first took Emma to her last golf clinic from 9-10am. Then she had the closing luncheon at 12:30pm. My mom made plans for me to meet her and the Gonzalez kids at the Glenwild pool. Then we were supposed to go to a horse show with Vicky.

My mom decided to take Ian with her to the pool in the morning, and I would go meet them after lunch. She picked up Ian at 10am. I picked up Emma and decided to run a quick errand before her lunch. It didn’t turn out to be so quick!

My tire pressure sensor has been on for a week or so. I figured I just needed air in one of my tires. I figured wrong It turns out one of my tires had FIVE leaks in it. Lucky for me, since my car is AWD, I had to replace all 4 tires. But, they were worn down anyway. I guess my car had been out of alignment and I didn’t know it. The inside of my front tires were totally bald. I have the run flat tires in my van, so I was dreading having to replace them. I knew they were going to be outrageously expensive. I was right. About $1000 later, I got 4 new tires, and an alignment. All this on a day when I hardly had time to breathe!

But, it all turned out OK, and I actually had a nice day.

I decided yesterday that I just couldn’t pull off the horse show too. I just thought I would be too rushed at the pool. If I didn’t get there until 1:30pm, there wouldn’t be much time to swim and then shower and be in Oakley by 4:30pm. I was sad to miss it, but I felt a lot less stressed when I cancelled.

Before we left for the pool, the Gonzales’ called and said they were not going to make it to the pool. Livette had the stomach flu, and one of the kids wasn’t feeling well. I was disappointed that they weren’t coming, but that helped me feel more relaxed too.

The kids had a great time at the pool. All 3 of them loved the pool. Nora did so much better in the pool today. She ran around in the kiddie pool, and she only went under about 10 times instead of 100 like usual They played so hard and they were exhausted when we got home.

I am just happy that I made it through the day!

I haven’t been very good about keeping up my blog lately. I guess it is the summer

Saturday was our 11th wedding anniversary. Scott and I had a great weekend. It has been such a long time since we have done anything special for our anniversary, so this year I decided to plan something. The whole weekend turned out great. My mom and dad kept the kids for the whole weekend. On Friday night there was a couples scramble event at JRCC. Scott and I played great, and had a lot of fun. There was dinner and music after. We both enjoyed it, and felt really happy that we had joined the club.

Saturday we planned to play golf, go on a mountain bike ride, and then go out to dinner. We played golf–but only 13 holes. The first 9 was fun, but it was really slow. On the back 9 the twosome that we were playing with quit, and then the waiting just got unbearable. We decided to just quit early and go on a longer bike ride.

We ended up riding the Flying Dog trail. We started at Graduate and then did Fink Again to get there. We ended up running short on time. We turned around when we were almost to the top of Flying Dog. We realized later that we should have just kept going a bit longer, and then taken The Preserve Connector down. Oh well, maybe next time. It was a beautiful ride and an incredible workout. I had to stop and rest a few times, but I was happy that I was able to do it. When we were all done I felt great, and so ready to go out to dinner.

We ate at Ruth’s Chris–one of my favorite restaurants. It was delicious, as always. After we spent the night at The Grand Summit at The Canyons (Thanks Vicky!) It was really a nice weekend. It was so great to just spend some time together alone.

On Wednesday Bryan’s old girlfriend Lindsey invited me to a Modbe party. I always love seeing Lindsey, and it sounded like fun. I convinced Vicky to go with me, and off we went to try on swim suits. I was pleasantly surprised, and really liked a lot of the swim suits. Finding any bathing suits that I like is always a challenge, so I was excited.

They are all tankini styles, so I got one bottom to go with both tops. I got this one:

and this one:

I really had a lot of fun trying them all on. So much that I am thinking about having a party of my own. I’m thinking I might wait until September, because that is when the new styles come out. A bunch of the prints that I liked were no longer available, so I thought I’d wait until the new collection comes out. I think it will be fun–invite a few friends, drink some wine, and try on bathing suits

It looks like Emma’s bed wetting alarm did the trick! We have been using it now for about 2 months. Once she was dry for 2 weeks straight, we were supposed to start using it every other night for 2 weeks. But, honestly she has been wearing it for about the last month with no accidents and no alarms. I don’t think it is going to make a difference if we use it every other night, or if we just discontinue it. So last night we stopped.

I am so happy and so proud of Emma. I am so glad that I decided to go ahead and order the alarm. It was really easy and painless, and it has made her so happy. She is very proud of herself that she is totally potty trained. I promised her she could have a dry bed party when she filled up her chart. So, tonight she was busy planning out her party.

She has been wanting to go to Classic Skating. Tonight I suggested that we go to Bouncin’ Off the Walls and she was thrilled. I told her she could invite one friend, and that we would plan it for one day next week. I am going to try to combine it with a “Bye Bye Kiki party”.

We have been talking to her about giving up her blanket. I think it is time, especially now that her teeth are falling out. Her permanent teeth can’t be far behind. I think if she gets rid of the blanket, we can start working on getting her to stop sucking her thumb. I think it will be impossible without getting rid of the kiki first. She seemed receptive to the idea of making it a two for one party. Hopefully she will still feel the same way as it gets closer!

Today my mom watched the kids while I went to the Dirt Series Mountain Bike Camp. It was lots of fun. I really could tell a huge difference this year in how comfortable I was on my bike. I remember last year being so timid. Just riding around in a big group freaked me out. I was always worried I wouldn’t be able to stop in time, or that someone was going to run into me. This year I just feel so much more confident. The skills didn’t seem as hard–but I think many of them really were not as hard. Last year we did the teeter totters and bigger boxes on the first day. But I think we will do more of those tomorrow.

Anyway, I wanted to write about a funny story my mom told me. Today at my mom and dad’s, Emma decided that she was going to have a party. She has been doing that lately, and it is so cute. She made up little invitations and a guest list. I guess something happened and Ian and Emma were fighting over something. Emma had it, and my mom made her give it to Ian. Emma was just heartbroken. She is used to getting her own way with Nana, so she was just really mad. She told my mom “Nana, you are not nice to me. I am not inviting you to my party!” and she proceeded to cross of Nana’s name off the list. Then she thought about it and remembered that Grandpa had yelled at her one time, so she crossed him off too. Then she decided that Scott and I had been mean sometime, so she crossed us off. Ian, of course, was the first one to be crossed off. So, just her and Nora were left. She told my mom that just her and Nora were going to have a private party!

I thought it was so funny and so Emma. She has been so funny and sassy lately!

Here are a few of the pictures from our beach photo shoot. I was able to tweak them in PhotoShop, and I ended up feeling pretty good about them.

We have been staying at Wrightsville Beach for the past few days. The kids have been loving the beach and the pool. They are all at a really great age for the beach. Nora loves to just run around and play. She stays pretty close, and entertains herself digging in the sand for quite awhile. Emma and Ian have spent hours making dribble castles with Nana. Ian can entertain himself for hours with just a stick. He has been playing karate for most of the trip. None of them are overly brave, which is nice, so they stay in the shallowest of water. This is a great beach–big wide sandy beach with pretty small waves. It is perfect for kids!

Last night we went to dinner at an outdoor restaurant. The food was mediocre and the service was extremely slow, but the views were fantastic. We went just before sunset and the lighting was amazing. I was dying to take some pictures, but I didn’t have my camera. I decided that I would take the kids out on the beach the next night to take some photos. I scoped out a place just up the beach from our hotel.

We left the beach a little early, got everyone bathed, into their cute new outfits, and off we went. I found an awesome spot. The sand was great, it was a bit elevated, so the ocean was nice in the background, and there was some nice sea oats growing there. Despite the great setting, the whole thing was sort of a flop. We got there a little too early, so the sun was still a little to high in the sky. It was also just over my shoulder so the it was always in the kids eyes. I couldn’t get them to look at the camera because it was so bright. And something was going wrong with the white balance. I am not sure why, but when I zoomed in, the colors came out too red. When I zoomed out with all the same settings the color balance looked fine. I’ll have to do some research and see what I can do next time to improve. By the time the sun was getting to a better place, the kids were totally done. I wish I had another night so we could do it again. At least I learned a few things

I took about 600 photos. So, I’ll have to spend some time going through them. I am sure I can process a few and make them look decent. Hopefully I’ll have some worthy of posting in a few days!

Yeah! Our pictures are up at Peekaboo Photos. I think she did a fantastic job, as usual. I love the one of Emma looking all grumpy! I can’t wait to see the actual prints.

Here are a few shots from the kids’ graduation. Look at these of Ian on the stage. Waiting is hard for him

Here are a few funny ones of Emma on stage too. I guess waiting isn’t any easier for her!

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