This morning was the 1st grade awards ceremony for the year.  And being the most with-it and awesome mom that I am, I totally forgot about it.  Thankfully, I had friends there that acted as my proxy and took pictures.  Especially since my boy won “Mr. Manners!”  Yay!  All that beating paid off!!  🙂  You’ll notice that not only did he get my exquisite perfect manners, he’s also inherited my love of personal space invasion.  

After getting Colin to school, I made it in time for the last Huddle of the school year.  Where my just awared Mr. Manners was very quickly pulled out of line by the principal! 

He was pretty embarrassed, but I made sure to let him know that I didn’t care.  The other moms and I laughed about it.  It’s the end of the year, he’s already been through one presentation, and now he’s sitting in line for another during a time that’s not crucial to be super quiet or paying attention.  What.Ever.  Apparently, the principal didn’t share my same ambivalence. 

Once it got rolling, he got called for A honor roll AND perfect attendance for the whole year. 

Needless to say, we’re pretty damn proud of this kid.  He maxed out his first grade reading level well before the school year was half over, constantly got over 100 on his spelling tests, rarely came home with a grade under 90, and all the while keeping up with his two seasons of soccer, where they placed 2nd in the championships. 

Yup.  I’m a proud mom. 

Here’s a little gem nugget for you…I’m in my room yesterday, turn around, and Colin is standing in the doorway.

“Can we eat clams?”

“What?”

“Can we eat clams?”

“Who?  You?  People in general?”

“No!  Can WE eat clams?!” *he’s now starting to look at me like I’m a little slow in the head*

“Right now??”

“NO!!  Can we EAT them?!”

“Technically yes.  Some people do.”

“EWWWW, but they’re seafood!”

“Yes.  Some people like them.  Daddy and I like them in clam chowder.”

“Gross!!”

“No, clam chowder is good.  It’s soup.”

At this point, he starts making gagging noises, slaps his hand over his mouth and runs away.  Then I hear “Oliver!!  Mommy and Daddy eat clam powder!!  Gross!!!”  Mmmmm, clam powder. 

Today is finally back to normal routine day.  After 18 days of the boys being out of school (not that I counted), I’m so ready.  One is already at his and the other is leaving in a few.  Then, back to the gym for me!  I’m actually looking forward to it.  3 weeks off is way too long.  2 months before that of half-assing it is even longer.  Time to sweat.   

I’ve got loads and loads….and loads…of vacation pictures to go through.  I fully intend to get them all in one place and then making a post about it and pretending like I have a bunch of people in my living room being forced to go through the slideshow all the while wishing they could at least be drinking through the explanation of each picture they couldn’t care less about but they have a horrible host who refused to serve them anything until the presentation is over so their suffering only grows with each slide.  I’ve always wanted to be that person at least once.  Not really, but it makes me laugh thinking about it.  But, I won’t do any of that today.  Today is sweat, lunch date day (YAY!), errand doing if there’s time, and then school’s out.  And, I don’t actually have all the pictures in one place (ALAN! :p) yet. 

I love this article.  You should read it. 

Seriously.  Just.  Screw it. 

Here’s some stupid cute pictures of the kids and one of our stupid elf (that I secretly love, but hate trying to come up with new ideas every night). 

Oliver’s 1st Grade Picture

Colin was home sick one day. Took a pic of him sitting with his tablet, kleenex, and gatorade. He saw the picture and had to pose.

The one picture I have of Beauregard so far this year.

We leave for Florida on Friday.  Guess who’s so unbelievably not ready.  No really.  Guess!!  Yeah, ok, it’s totally me.  At least I’ve got *some* presents bought.  Not stressed about that at all.  Nope.  Not me.  Totally not stressed about not having bought our tickets for Disney and Universal yet, either.  Sooooo not stressed about that.  Ha!  No stress here!!  *insert maniacal laughter here*

There was a ridiculous amount of amazingness that happened in my kitchen today. 

Wheat free chocolate chip cookies.  Good ones!  I found this blog post on how to make your own all purpose flour to sub into any recipe 1:1.  That right there was a win for me.  Then, I tried one of the combos in my go-to pancake recipe.  Oliver declared them better than his “normal” pancakes.  Which is big because if you tell that kid something doesn’t have bread (what we call wheat around here) in it, he automatically doesn’t like it.  So, I got to thinking about what else I could try it in. 

Colin has been a real trooper with giving up wheat.  I’ve made several things here and there to try to keep him “in bread”, but things have still been sorely lacking.  There’s been a bag of chocolate chips sitting on my counter staring at me for a few weeks, so I figured I’d give the cookie recipe a shot.  I’d love to lie and say it was for Colin that I was doing this, but, come on….it’s chocolate chip cookies.  This one was totally for me!  

I was super tired this morning after dropping the kids off at school so figured surely I could use my food processor to whip up the dough.  In looking for the proper way to do that (yes, I was looking that up), I stumbled across this recipe.  I’ve never had Doubletree Hotel cookies.  Didn’t even know that was such a thing.  Apparently, it is and it’s got a cult following.  If people are spending 9$ on 6 cookies, they gotta be good.  Which meant I obviously had to make that recipe.  So, I did.  Using my wheat free all purpose flour.  And, they were amazing.  Once again, Oliver declared them better than the “real cookies” and he’ll “save Daddy six cookies, take some to Gramme since they don’t have wheat, and Colin and I will eat the rest.”  There may be a cookie showdown later tonight…     

Now that Oliver is in first grade, he gets actual number grades for his work.  This week, we got his first progress report.

That’s right, my kid’s got straight A’s.  Yes, it’s only been 3 weeks of school.  And yes, he’s only in first grade.  So!  He’s a genius!

This school year, Colin got moved up to the big kid class in his montessori.  He had a really rough time in his last class, so it’s been a relief to see him transition so well.  I think between him actually being challenged with work and them learning that he loves to be a helper, he’s enjoying school again and isn’t acting up nearly as bad. 

That’s all I got.  Bragging complete.

Meet Lola. 

Oliver kept trying (and succeeding) to photobomb her picture, so I left it to look like she’s attacking him.  It made me laugh.  The boys LOVE her.  Every time they go out the front they have to go check on her.  Then, they look for bugs to throw in her web and then watch her wrap and eat said bugs.  

I learned that she eats her web every night and then rebuilds it in the morning.  While I read that on the internet, I did make it out early enough one morning to watch her rebuilding, so I believe that part of the internet is true.  The sad part is, it said that she’ll probably die around the time frost starts, so she won’t be out there for too long.  But, she’s already grown twice her original size (to us), so hopefully she’ll just keep getting bigger.  

Yes, I’m horrible about updating this thing.  We’ve had quite a few things that I had imagined I’d update it with, but obviously haven’t.  So, I’m done saying I’m going to try to be good about updating it.  We’ll see how far that gets me.   

Here’s what happens when it’s raining and you can’t go to the pool.