Friday Five

1. Have you ever been called for Jury Duty? Did you get picked? Nope i've never been called in Canada or the states.
   
2. Would you try to get out of it, or would you serve and why? I think it would be interesting to actually be part of the process, but with the kids I'm not sure I'd be able to
   
3. Is there any kind of trial that you don’t think you could sit as a juror? anything with murder or abuse of a child. My mom was a juror on a child sexual abuse case when i was a kid...I remember how it tore her up
   
4. Have you ever been in court for any other purpose? i've never seen the inside of a court room
   
5. Are you ready for the time change this weekend? It’s time to spring forward! I hate the whole spring ahead and fall back thing, but I'm ready for the warmer weather to finally show up

Answering these questions in hopes of winning a great hat :) http://talesofablendedfamily.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/five-for-friday-a-giveaway/#

Right now I am reading a book called "Fall On Your Knees" by Ann-Marie MacDonald. I am over 3/4 of the way thru this book and I just want to power read thru the rest of it because the way she writes and the story has me captivated. Yet at the same time, I want to take it slowly and have it unfurl for me a little at at time. I just finished reading a revelation in the book that was like a punch in the stomach and literally brought tears to my eyes. Its a good thing I'm volunteering at the kids school this afternoon, otherwise I'm pretty sure there would be a solid ass grove in the couch and the book would be done by the time the kids got home.

Tomorrow we are heading to Great Wolf Lodge for the day. I'm excited to get away with the kids and hubby, if even just for day. We're going to have a great time doing the slides, well the kids and hubby will anyhow LOL. The one time I went down one of the slides when I got up my knees were bouncing up and down because I was petrified. This will be our first time going when the outdoor pool isn't open, the outdoor pool is actually my favorite spot. I love floating and hanging out in the water and feeling the warm sun shine down on me.

Friday we get to bring home the dog we have adopted. Him name is Toby and he is a 7.5 yr old Labradoodle. I'm soooo excited to bring him home. We've wanted a dog for such a long time, and we've literally found the perfect dog for our family. Its going to be a change for sure, but I can't wait.

Before I go, a couple of kid funnies from yesterday. First Lucas had a really rough night Monday, he woke up several times crying in pain, saying his ear hurt. Because of this he slept in late, he's usually the first one up wanting breakfast around 7. On this day he didn't wake up until almost 930, by this time Peter had already headed into work, and he's the one that does the kids breakfast (since I do lunch and dinner). So Lucas wakes up, and the first words out of his mouth are "where's daddy?" I told him that daddy was already at work, to which he responded "but he's supposed to give me food" LOL.
Next involves Juleigha, Lucas and Melyssa. I was getting things ready to start cooking dinner last night, preheating the oven, putting tinfoil in the baking pan. When the kids noticed I was starting to cook dinner, all three of them go "why aren't we having pancakes?? Today is pancake day". Apparently their Kindergarten teacher had shared with them that today we pancake Tuesday, so my meal of oven fried porkchops got scraped and pancakes were made instead.

Burgh Baby is having an awesome contest with lots of goodies donated by lots of different bloggers. All you have to do to enter is comment on her blog post and let her know which of the goodies you would like to try to win. You can enter as many times as your fingers let you during the contest period. And if you link up to her post you can get extra entries!!

While you are over there checking out her blog (which is damn funny) please do some ad clicking. All the proceeds for this month from her ads are being donated to the 9/11 fund for the Pennsylvania memorial. So check out this post for the details, and then click on those ads!!

Things Lucas has said lately that made me laugh....

Yesterday at the bustop, there was a banana peel on the grass. Lucas pointed it out and I said how someone was bad and had left it there instead of putting it in the trash. Lucas got very serious looking and began to think, then he looked up at me and said "maybe a monkey"

A few nights ago, Peter was reading one of his books after dinner. Lucas came into the room and picked up the book off the couch and announced he wanted to read it. He started flipping through the pages. When he had flipped through the majority of the book, he tossed it down on the couch and proclaimed it a "tupid book". I asked him why it was a stupid book, told him Daddy really liked it. Lucas again proclaimed it a "tupid book, it has no pictures".

I've been tagged!!

Well we are back to the grind...kids started school this week. Lucas is off to Kindergarten with his sisters this year. I can't believe my baby is now in real school. I did really well though...i didn't cry when i put him on the bus yesterday. I think it was because he was so excited i just was excited for him too. So far they all seem to be enjoying it. Lucas is in the same class with Juleigha and Melyssa which is great because they all have each other. Melyssa came home from school today and started to cry because she didn't get a chance to play with Juleigha at school. Of course they have all afternoon to play with each other at home, but Melyssa really wanted to play with her at school today it seems lol. With all the kids in school now, i have about 2.5 hrs or so all to myself in the mornings. Its so weird to be all alone, and i'm trying to find things to do with my time. Today i switched over the girls fall closet so that its ready for them, and tomorrow I'll bring out Lucas fall stuff. I've got to get Daynah to start trying on her clothes so i know what fits and what doesn't. I plan on working out at least three mornings a week....i'm going to start that next week though. I'm also going to volunteer at the school at least once a week. I've wanted to be able to do that since Daynah started but couldnt' because of the younger kiddos, now i can and i can't wait!!

Daynah started 3rd grade this year and she's in a 3/4 split. She has a male teacher this year, her very first, and he seems quite nice. He's in his 10th year of teaching and seems to really enjoy what he does. He already has their first fieldtrip scheduled. Daynah gets a locker this year, so she feels like she's all grown up lol. Of course while she has a locker she keeps forgetting to leave her indoor shoes and extra clothes in it....i reminded her a million times this morning so hopefully she'll remember today.

Daynah turns 8 on Monday, so we are heading to Great Wolf Lodge on Sunday to celebrate. I don't feel like throwing a bday party this year...with her bday so early in September its hard to get one planned with school having just started. So Peter and I decided this year we'd surprise her with a trip to the Lodge. We'll head there Sunday afternoon and stay the night and skip school monday to play at the water park before heading home. Hoping to keep it a surprise until we drive up in front of it :)

Now here's a few pictures of the kids on their first day of school

The Big Read estimates that the average person has only read 6 of the 100 greatest books ever printed.

Copy and paste to your blog and play along! Bold books you've read, and italics books you love.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling (have this on the shelf to read at some point)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Phillip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller.
14 The Complete works of Shakespeare Most of ‘em.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune- Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 notes from a small island
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town like Alice- Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet- William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Anniversary tattoos!!

We got a babysitter for a few hours so we could go out and get our new tattos. The tattoo we got is called an eternal love knot and we got it to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. Mine is on the inside of my left wrist, while Peter's is on the inside of his right.