Keeping Up With the Joneses

On Thursday night (7/25/15) we found ourselves in the hospital with Myles. That afternoon he started complaining that his stomach hurt. Eventually he was in so much pain he couldn't walk and was just moaning and groaning. He said he had a sharp pain in his lower right quadrant and so I thought he must just have pulled a groin muscle. We went to Candi's apartment complex to meet the family for Daniel's birthday party, and when his grandma and aunts saw Myles and heard where the pain was, they were concerned it might be his appendix. The idea had not even occurred to me, but after looking it up online, I decided it was worth a trip to the doctor. We called the pediatrician who told us to come in right away. He examined Myles and told us to head straight to the hospital for an ultrasound and blood work. When we got to the hospital we had to wait an hour for the ultrasound tech to come in, and in the meantime Myles got his blood drawn. He was so great about it but then a few mi...

Despite having a great summer so far, the kids are VERY eagerly anticipating their first trip to Waterton this weekend. Myles is counting down the days, and whatever the count he rolls his eyes and gives a huge sigh and says "that's way to long. . .I'm going to die waiting!"  When we ask him what he wants to do up there he gets a twinkle in his eye and says "go on grandpa's boat and go really fast!" Max keeps talking about Canada and the playground and candy store. He also fully expects to find buckets and buckets of saskatoon berries waiting for him (he might have to wait until August). Mason is by far the most excited. He is planning on staying 3 weeks (one with me up there, one alone with the grandparents, then one with the whole family). Last weekend I was driving him back from camping with his dad (he came home early because he had a stomach ache) and he talked and talked. While driving, I said something about how pretty the mountains were a...

About a month ago Marshall and I decided to tag on a quick cruise to his business trip to Miami last week. Because his company covered airfare for him, and we had enough credit card rewards to pay for the cruise, all we had to pay for was my airfare! Marshall left for Miami Monday morning and then I came out Thursday morning to join him. Thursday I took a bus tour of Miami (included with the cruise) while Marshall worked, and then Friday we boarded the Majesty of the Seas for a 3 night cruise to Coco Cay, Bahamas and Nassau, Bahamas. It came at a great time. Marshall was really stressed from working and attending a conference, and a cruise was the perfect vacation because he had a whole 4 days away from internet and work problems. This is us sailing out of the Port of Miami.  CoCo Cay was my favorite spot by far. It is a private island in the Berry Islands that Royal Caribbean owns. They tender you to shore and then the island is set up with beach chairs, snorkeling, swimmi...

Yes, I know I over-do things. We'll just get that out of the way. Last summer the kids worked hard on summer school and reading to earn a trip to Legoland . Well, we don't have any big trips for the kids on the horizon, but I wanted to motivate them to not just sit around and play videogames this summer. So I came up with the idea of doing BEE BINGO! Every day they get a new BEE BINGO card: They have to complete "BEE BINGO" every day before they can use any screens (tv, movies, videogames, computers for fun, etc). Each of the squares is a different activity (i.e. Busy Bee = help mom for 30 minutes; BEE strong = exercise for 30 minutes; Bee a Speaker = practice their second language for 30 minutes; Bee a Teacher = Read to someone else for 30 minutes). They have actually really enjoyed doing this everyday so far. I made up a poster with the rules and instructions on it: I may not be super crafty or creative in a lot of ways, but this is the kind of thing I...

Yeah, yeah, I know Max actually doesn't turn 6 until August, but the average age of guests at his party for the last few years has been around 70 ( see last year's party ). Because his birthday is in August, we always end up celebrating it in Canada with family instead of friends, and he has been talking for months about how he wants a birthday party with his friends. About a month ago, while I wasn't watching, he actually made invitations, complete with stamps, for an imaginary birthday party and tried to put them in the mailbox to go out (and wasted 5 stamps). Because I love this guy, and also because it is hard to gather together friends in August when everyone is out of town, we decided to have a party for him a few weeks ago, right after Kindergarten got out for the summer. He wanted a "Robot Party" and was very, VERY specific about what he wanted: 4 specific friends, a robot piñata, a cake that looked like the robot piñata, a game moving rocks with robot han...