Negative Nellies & Busy Bees

Being negative is usually not my MO. I'm usually the annoying one at a party pointing out the positive in a ugly situation. In other words... Pollyanna. This Friday we had pizza and movie night and watched Pollyanna. Joshua and I were snuggled up sniffling at the end even though we knew the ending. If anyone out there hasn't seen the Disney classic, I highly recommend it. It's got all the things in a movie there should be and those classics for some reason have a wonderful knack of being family friendly without being corny. At any rate, after watching that movie again and then reading my girlfriend's blog I realized that this funk that I'm in has prevented me from opening my eyes and seeing all of the wonderful blessings in my life. So, I'm making a birthday resolution to try and tune out the politics of things and the comments of others and stick to what matters in my heart and what I know feels good in my life.

Joshua is on the road to starting second grade... I KNOW! It really came up quick. We are sticking with St. Mary's again. We were really happy with the attention and religious guidance that they give. It really parallels our ideals and in our opinions, made school such a well rounded place to be. The second grade room is designated as the Busy Bee room. The room is decked out in bees and a bee hive corner for reading. School has come up fast mainly because we have been so busy this Summer. In the beginning of the season, we flew out to Virginia to finally spend some much needed time with Mike's side of the family. Baba and Granddaddy were able to spoil their grandchildren rotten and Mike and I were able to get away to Monticello. I love love love all that historical stuff! After spending about 10 days in VA, we came home to some very sad news. Some friends of ours, a family that we met in Japan but were stationed in WA, were involved in a car accident and the husband didn't make it. My mother was kind enough to take several days off of work to watch our boys so that we could drive up to OR for the funeral. Despite the somber reason for driving up north, we really enjoyed seeing a part of the country we had never seen. Oregon is absolutely gorgeous. We stopped over night in Eugene (GO DUCKS!) and then on to Portland the next day.

When we returned, Joshua had already started his first day of summer school. Because we came in late to the 1st grade year from Japan, I wanted Joshua to go to Summer school at St. Mary's as well so he could pal around with some of his classmates a little longer. He took 4 classes: Road Runners Club, Bee the Solution, Gifted Gardeners, and Lego Engineering. He was out by 11:30 and we all ate lunch and got ready for Sam's naptime. While Sam napped we would work on workbooks. Over the Summer, Joshua has learned how to count money and do triple digit subtraction and addition. With Summer school ending, Joshua wanted to continue a little longer, so we enrolled him in a week of Bible Camp. There he learned about a new Saint each week. I can't remember all of them but they were all very unique an interesting.

After constant urging from my mother, I decided to enroll Joshua in swimming lessons. He has had swimming lessons before, but they were infrequent and probably not the best kind. I was planning on putting him in the community lessons but was afraid they were all booked because I was late in the season. So I enrolled him in Dolphin Swim School just down the road from our home. They are supposed to be the absolute best place and I have been really really happy with them. Joshua can now swim almost to the other side of the pool doing a (sloppy) freestyle stroke. This only took him 3 lessons. I was completely amazed. I suppose this is the Joshua Summer, mainly because he has been showing such interest in different things. The last thing that we most recently did for him is get him set up with guitar lessons. He's been wanting this for months, so we finally bit the bullet. We also bought him a 3/4 size acoustic guitar. We were planning on getting a used guitar, but Skip's Music had a beginner's package which included the guitar, carrying case, tuner and picks for $100 which didn't seem too painful. His orientation with his teacher is on Tuesday evening.

In the midst of lessons, classes, and camps; Samuel had blossomed into a stink flower of a toddler. He is a handful and I never really did realize how easy Joshua was until our little Sam came along. Sam climbs, throws, hits, scratches, pushes, screams, laughs, chit chats and jumps around and he can do a whole cycle of this in a 5 minute period!

Add to that, our backyard has been in the hands of a landscaper for 2 weeks, and I'm lucky I haven't pulled out all my hair! When we bought our home, the backyard was in need of some serious love. A portion of the backyard fence was down and the rest of it was termite ridden. There was no lawn just weeds, which was OK in the rainy winter but once Summer hit the yard turned into a brown dirt clot-ridden mess. We think too at one point when the house was vacant that some homeless folks tried to start a fire in the backyard. As we cleared out the weeds we found all kinds of things. Broken bottles, beer cans, golf clubs and basketballs. This turned into another bite the bullet moment we decided to hire a professional to design a functional backyard. One that our kids could play in without happening upon a shard of glass or a rusty nail. My cousin recommended Raymond Perez at Custom Landscape & Design. We are really really happy with our backyard. Because it was such a big area, we had to work within a budget and I'm so happy Raymond respected that. We basically had them do the trenching and leveling of the yard, irrigation, drainage, concrete and sod. It really made such a difference. We did the shrub planting. Near the house are gardenias, leading down the path to the front are orange and red lantanas, I've got a small succulent garden near the sliding glass door. In the front yard, we had Raymond's team install sprinklers and a mow strip. We've put in river rock, bark, about 30 box wood bushes, and several azaleas (purple and coral color). Because the lawn in front was riddled with roots it was recommended that we plant seed. So, right now our lawn is growing. But, once everything is in, it really will look beautiful.

Pictures will soon be coming. In Mike's own words he's been working like a dog. He's out there right now fixing the back fence and gate. Needless to say we have been so busy. But it's a good kind of busy. There has been some hurdles but the end result has just been so fulfilling. I hope this blog entry finds all the readers out there in good spirits too!