Blog confessions

So, today I suffered from major boredom. Church got out at 11:30 am., and Dwight was gone until about 6:00. I was going to take a nap, because I couldn't sleep the night before, but I couldn't fall asleep for a nap either. So I decided to waste a few hours on the computer snooping around on blogs. I know alot of you do it too, I always see people from all over reading my blog. And I don't mind, I'm glad someone finds me interesting enough to stay on for an average of 4 1/2 minutes. When I look to see who is on my blog, I can only see from what city,state, or country they are from, not their blog title or anything. So I am just having to guess who it is. For example, on July 28th, someone from France spent about 2 1/2 minutes on my blog. I am quite certain it was someone from the Pitt/Jolie residence. They are currently living in that area, so obviously that is who it must be. He probably did a Google search on New Orleans, read about my trip and the work I have done there, and decided to keep tabs on me for future visits.
Anyway, today I was doing some scoping around myself. Sometimes I will do a blog search to look for someone in particular, or somedays I might just go to someones blog and click on one of their friends, and click on one of their friends friends, and so on, to see if I will ever eventually get back to my own blog, or find a mutual friend somewhere in there. I try to see if the whole seven steps o Keven Bacon rule works in the blog world too. I feel pretty safe doing this. Anyone whoever looks will just see that someone from, my area, has been reading their blog. They won't know exactly who from my area. They could take a guess, but they will probably guess Demi Moore or Ashton Kutcher, never me. So today I went to an old friends blog, and started to click away at her list of friends. One of her list of friends is a wife of an old family friend and they had posted a very sad story. I wasn't able to get through it. (I had a few interruptions) So I came back again and clicked on the friend and read the rest of her post. As I went back to the original friends blog, I noticed something along the side of her blog. I saw the name of the town I live in. I saw it several times down the side of her blog. Then I noticed my name attached to the name of my city. THEN, I noticed it showed ALL the friends I had clicked on from her blog. She had a ticker thing that showed who had been to her blog and where they went from there. Everyone can now see who the big snooper is. I had to laugh. Here I thought I was so invisible. I decided the best way to handle the situation would be to just come clean. I LOVE TO READ BLOGS I HAVE NOT BEEN INVITED TO READ. I don't care if it is family, or
a perfect stranger or an old friend. I love to see what is going on in other peoples lives. Especially when I am totally bored on a Sunday afternoon. I am pretty sure you all do it too. At least I know someone in France does.

Vacation Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5 &Part6

I don't really know why I put "Part 1" on my last post. I think I was just trying to be cool like Jenny, who always leaves everyone hangin' with her 6 part posts. It didn't really work for me though. But I decided to go ahead and do a part 2 just to tell you about the great parts of our vacation. We had a condo in Oceanside for a week. It was right on the beach. I had visions of just spending my days sleeping in, then slowly getting up, putting on a suit, packing a cooler full of diet coke and snacks, and sitting on the beach watching Dwight taking the kids out into the treacherous waters. It didn't quite work that way, but we still had fun. Anyone who knows Dwight, knows he can't sleep in past 6:00am. He also can't handle sitting around. He doesn't like to eat junk food everyday. And he burns easily. So we made a few compromises. He would get up between 5 and 6 every morning. But instead of waking us all up, he got a gym pass to the YMCA down there, and went every morning while we slept in. Then we bought a pass that got us into a whole slew of things in the area; the museums, the zoo, the wild animal park, Legoland, and Knott's Berry Farm. There were a lot more, but those were the things we chose to do. So every morning after he got home from the gym, he would wake us up. Then while we got ready he would pack up a healthy and sensible lunch into the cooler, and map out where we were going to go that day. He said he was going to "walk the crap" out of our kids. He really walked the crap out of me. What was nice about our passes was that we could go to Legoland (for example) in the morning, leave after just a couple hours, and then do the same thing the next day. We could get in as many times as we wanted within 5 days. So that is kind of what we would do. We would be the first ones in, hang out until it got crowded, then leave and go do something else.


My favorite place to go down there was Barber park in San Diego with all the museums. The kids liked it quite a bit too. Here is one of the few pictures I got of all four of them together. (If you recall from my last post "Part 1", Howie wasn't fully cooperating throughout the week)

The kids liked Legoland alot. Ella especially. Everything was just perfect size for her. The boys acted like they may have been a little too old for them but I think secretly they thought it was perfect for them. We went here a couple of times. The second day, we got there before it opened. They wanted to be the first ones to ride a roller coaster that had an hour wait the day before. We were lined up along a chain counting down for it to open. When it did Dwight, Bailey, Calvin, and Ella took off running. I walked more casually with Howie to a ride near the roller coaster that Howie was tall enough for. While we were standing in our line, I heard the roller coaster finally start up. Then I heard a very loud and very recognizable "WHOOHOO". I look up to see Dwight, Bailey, Calvin, and Ella all on the first car of the first roller coaster ride. Maybe you have to know Dwight, but it really was the funniest thing I have ever seen. He kept screaming down to us about them being the first ones on, while the car is clanking up the first hill.
That day, we left Legoland after only 2 hours, and decided to hit the beach. Dwight bought a couple of cheap boogie boards from the grocery store (high quality). And we spent the rest of the day swimming at the beach. It was our funnest day of the whole trip.

Remember how I said Dwight burns easily? Despite put on 50 SPF sunblock religiously every 30 minutes or so, he still got a ridiculously bad burn. We all got burned, but Dwight especially. Within 24 hours, the rest of us would go from red to golden brown. Dwight is still red, then maybe within another day or two, he night turn pink. So the next day we decided to either stay covered up or stay indoors. We chose to stay covered up, and Dwight wore a long sleeve shirt and pants to Knott's Berry Farm. (This is where the boys decided officially that Lego land was too sissiesh for them) And I didn't take my camera, so you will just have to take my word on it that we went there. We did get souvenir cups and t-shirts if you do need some sort of proof though. Our last day, Dwight was still suffering from his burn, so we chose to stay in doors and headed back over to the museums. There are too many to mention, and a person could spend an entire week just looking at all the museums and still not see everything. But the kids thought they were all cool, and I was glad that they were fine with a museum and not wanting another theme park.
Outside of a museum, Howie wanted to wade in a fountain. I told him he couldn't because he would get his shorts wet. This was him showing me how he would avoid that.

On our way home we stopped of at Sam and Michelle's (who if you remember are excellent hosts). They had an amazing meal waiting for us. Stayed up late talking. We woke up to an amazing breakfast waiting for us. Then a tired Sam went off to work, and Michelle and Meagan headed down to the bay with us. We walked around, let the kids get wet and sandy, went over to a restaurant for some of the best clam chowder in the the best sourdough bread bowl. Said our goodbyes, and backed out to leave......when I scraped my car along the side of someones new Honda minivan. I had to go in, find the owner, who was completely shocked I would have done that, and then gave her my info. I haven't heard from her, so I am hoping she was able to just buff it out, but I am not holding my breath. Anyway, we finally made it home at about 3:00 the next morning, and are totally bummed to be home. We are looking forward to our next vacation in October to see family at a mini-reunion. (I am still waiting to hear from some of you, you have to give some sort of response, it is rude to just ignore an invite)

Our vacation Part 1; Howie

Last night I finally downloaded our pictures from our vacation. I noticed a bit of a pattern with them. I had a great time, Dwight had a great time, Bailey had a great time, Calvin had a great time, Ella had a great time, Howie was a brat! Here is a picture of Howie on the bus tour of the San Diego zoo. Dwight was asking him if he liked seeing the anilmals. This was his sweet response to his daddy.

Here he is at Legoland. I was trying to get a picture of him looking like a giant in Las Vegas. You can see how much he appreciated us taking him to Legoland.

Legoland started to get a little too packed for our taste, so we headed over to the Wild Animal park. You can see how excited he was about that.
When we were back at the condo, he wanted to watch Ben 10 and it wasn't on yet. You can see how happy he was the hear that.
We decided to go back to Legoland a second morning to finish up the rides and beat out the crowd. He wasn't excited about it, until I found this. . . . .

Anyway, I guess it was just all a bit too much for a 3 year old. He did love his time with his great uncle Sam though. The rest of the kids were perfect throughout the entire trip and were so excited and happy to go wherever we said we were going to go. Bailey even babysat for us a couple times, while Dwight and I went out to dinner. I'll post pictures of my happy kids tomorrow (or sometime within the next 3-4 weeks).

Lost pictures

I was on my snapfish account, ordering some pictures. I had an album downloaded that I had never ordered pictures from. I pulled up those pictures, and I found this one. It was from about 3 years ago on the day Howie got blessed. My kids are so cute. (I know you were thinking it too!)

I was sad for a minute, thinking about how fast they grow up. But then I snapped out of it. Although it was fun having a baby around, and I miss Ella's curly hair, things are pretty great at the phase we are in now. Bailey is so responsible, and he gets along so well with his brothers and sister. They all look up to him so much, I am just so glad (and lucky) that he is a good example to them. Calvin is a bit of a daredevil, and is so entertaining. He is easy to make laugh, but you have to be careful, he will pee his pants. Ella has so many questions, but they all have to do with her getting a pet. I used to just say "uh-huh" in response to whatever she was saying. But she takes that as an agreement, and apparently I told her she could get a hypoallergenic dog if we won the lottery. Howie is at, what I think, the funnest age. He is mimicking all of us in the things he says and does. He is such a smart little guy, and has been my easiest toddler. He isn't too hyper, he doesn't have too many questions, he doesn't get into things, and he has never started a fire. Anyway, what I am trying to say, is that I have a freakishly good time with my kids, especially as they are getting older. We are getting ready to go on our family vacation, and I feel as excited about it as I used to when I was a kid myself. I LOVED our family vacations and I have the best memories from them. My mom and dad were always good about planning great family vacations. Two years ago we took the kids to a bison ranch in Arizona, and we had the best time. But Howie was little, and it stopped us from doing a lot of things we would have liked to do. This year we are going to go to San Diego. We have so many things planned, my only worry is we may have planned too much. We even changed our route on the way home to be able to get in a quick visit with Sam and Michelle. They have Emu's, so we are going to refer to this vacation as the one where we went to the Emu ranch. So, I will be taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging, not that you will notice much. But I will have plenty to tell about when we return.

Our weekend

I guess I pretty much suck at this, but I will go ahead and post about our 4th of July weekend anyway. We had my brother Tom and his family, my sister Jenny and her family, her brother n-law and his family, my brother in-law Cory and his girls, my sister Sara and her family, and my parents all over for a 4th of July b-b-que and a pretty dangerous fireworks show. It is the same thing EVERY year. The guys go out to the "Ill-Eagle" fireworks stand and buy about $150 each worth of bottle rockets, firecrackers, and anything else that their wives would freak out about them buying. They start letting off their dangerous explosives 48 hours before it is necessary to do so. Their wives (including me) start screaming at them about 48 hours before it is necessary to do so. They act shocked that we are stressing out about them sticking a firecracker in one end of a tube while a three year old has his eye to the other end. It is finally dark outside and they have barely managed to save a few fireworks to put on a scary, but decent show for us, and also manage to do so without any serious injuries or deaths. Then I go around the house looking for any leftover bottle rockets and firecrackers and hide them until the next year. I was raised with such extreme caution, that it makes this one of the most stressful holidays of the year. But we all did have a really great time....we meaning Dwight and the kids.


The party started on the back patio, until we all started to get smoked out. Then we moved it to the front yard for the BIG show. (I didn't get any pictures of that part, so you will just have to look at the back patio ones)
With all the cousins in town, we decided to throw Ella an early b-day party. It was just a day early. We decided to trash mom's house for that one. Ella was so excited to be able to have a party with most of her cousins there. We were only missing Becky's kids.

Here's one of the whole crew. Jenny sat in the picture, so Wolf would. Plus, she looks so young, no one would even notice.

I just had to add this next one in here. I have never seen my mom's house so trashed, I just had to take a picture to document it. I took some from several different angles, and you still won't get the same affect as you would have had you been down in the basment in person. The smell of 20 sweaty kids all playing down in a basement together is something that just can't be captured on film, but take my word on it, it was pretty bad.

So, everyone left today, and my kids cried all the way home. And I had to spend the whole time getting them excited for all the other fun things we could do during the rest of the summer. They want everything to include their cousins though. Bailey said he would rather spend time with his cousins than with any of his friends. I am so glad that all my kids get along so well with all of their cousins. It makes it so fun to get together with family. Thanks to Tom, Cory, and Jenny and their families for taking the time and spending the money to come up and visit us. We only wish it could have been for longer.

So I am a little late.

I am a week late, but Happy Birthday Jenny!! I had planned to do something really great for her, but I kept putting it off. But I am posting her birthday post before two of my kids birthdays that I forgot to post about. So that should really make up for it. Jenny is the most thoughtful of the Morgan clan. She remembers every ones birthday. She always puts so much thought into the gifts she gives and the things she does for others. She would never yell at any of her nieces and nephews like mean aunt Amy. She is extremely talented.

Her house is beautifully decorated. She can paint very well. She can play the guitar. She is super smart (Except for spelling.....now I hope I don't misspell anything...I'll try to remember to use spell check.) She is very creative. She is a very gifted writer. She is very funny. And she is one of my very favorite people to be around.

Odds and Ends of the last month. #1

OK, so apparently I am a big lazy blogger. I have decided to try to catch everyone up. School is finally out for the kids. The last week was a kicker though. The school has to invite you to come watch your kids do something everyday. Don't they realize we are trying to rest up? A couple days before school got out, I was driving the kids to the bus stop and Ella informed me that I was supposed to come to their class for an author's tea. I asked her what it was and she said an author was going to come and read their book, then she added that ALL the moms and dads were suppose to be there. Way to put me on the spot. So I told her I would be there, then for the next 3 hours I complained to anyone who talked to me, about having to go to the school and listen to some author read their book to my child. Why did I need to be there, other than to have Ella be the only one without her mom or dad there. I get to the school, find my seat in the front row of the class so Ella will know I am there. Then the teacher gets up to start things out, and as it turns out, the kids are the authors, and they have all written books that they are going to read to us. I felt like such a jerk, and was so glad that I had made it. Ella's was the best. She was also first, and so I was able to leave right after she was done. So I guess I deserve to feel like a jerk.

A couple of weeks ago we decided to give in and get the kids a pet. Dwight, Bailey and I are all allergic to cats, rabbits, and most dogs. But Ella came up with a great idea for a pet and Dwight went along with it. We got the kids 3 baby chicks. They were cute (I'll get back to that in a minute) Dwight and the boys built them a box, then Dwight left. He came back with two more chicks, apparently he thought they were cute too. Our garage quickly turned into the hugest stinkiest mess, that seeped into the house everytime the kids would even open the garage door. Dwight finally decided they were big enough to put outside. I got the garage cleaned out, and was glad to have them in the backyard. They wander around the yard and give a great country feel to our home, as long as you watch your step on the back patio. I have spent the last week hosing off the back patio daily. Then I went out of town for the weekend and while I was gone Dwight built a gate for the side yard to keep the chickens confined to that area and off of my patio. I was glad. Then this morning I heard someone tapping at my back door and when I opened it, there were five chickens hanging out on my back patio. I don't know how they got out. Dwight thinks we are going to save so much money on eggs, but I think we will save even more on whole fryers.....get it?