8/4/09 - 8/9/09

Tuesday 8/4/09 – Tonight was National Night Out and the block next to ours had a party (as they do every year). We all went and hung out with our neighbors, and met a few new ones. They had a white elephant exchange and we got a motion detector and Clark won a $10 gift certificate from Target in a drawing. Our neighbor Amy had a bucket of bleeding hearts she gave us to plant in our yard, since I mistakenly ripped mine up thinking it was a weed before it started growing this past spring. Lijah rode his bike up and down the street with the other kids. He had to go to the bathroom and we were not close enough to home for him to make it so I brought him down the street and let him go in someone's yard. I sure hoped that they were not looking out their window watching, or if they were they understood of the situation….. No one came out so one of the two happened.

Wednesday 8/5/09 – After work Jason picked up the veggies for the week. This week we got potatoes, yellow and green beans, onions, carrots, kohlrabi, collard greens, swiss chard, summer squash and zucchini, basil, and dill. I dried the spices in the dehydrator. Clark has been enjoying the curtains in the living room lately. He'll go behind them and play peek-a-boo, or he will walk out from under them making himself look like a nun and most times get himself twisted up in them. But along with the fun comes the downside, the cheap curtain rods that we have are now all broken and we have this last one jimmied up, which is not very safe.

Friday 8/7/09 – I took today off work, initially to go to the beach with Lijah, but it poured rain all day long. So instead the boys and I went to WalMart to get some new curtain rods. The cheapest decent looking ones were $14 a pop so there went $50. When we got home Clark went to sleep and Lijah and I sat on the couch on the porch together. We watched the rain, and I read a book. I asked him if he was going to go to sleep on my lap and he said "no….I'm just relaxing a bit". It sounded so grown up….. Then Jason suggested that I go to SR Harris to get some fabric for some new curtains. I was pretty excited to go but then when I figured out how much fabric I would need I got less excited. I would need 14 yards and even if I found some fabric for $5 a yard there it would still be $70. Plus I am not too confident with my sewing skills, especially after remembering that most of the blankets I make are all crooked along the edges. I saw some at WalMart for $16 a window (about $70) and thought about those, and then started looking online. I found that Kmart had some decent ones so we headed up there. Well, I was wrong and Kmart was a hot mess. They had about 1 of each curtain available so we left and went back to WalMart and got the original curtains I saw. While we were at WalMart Lijah decided that he no longer wanted to walk normal, but that he needed to slide down the aisle on his feet. He was as slow as a turtle. Even an old couple passed him up and laughed at how slow he was going! Clark was getting cranky in the basket being strapped in so I put both boys in the big basket part and they had a great time! When we got home we made some zucchini cake – but while making it noticed that we were out of cinnamon! But we did have cinnamon sticks – so I busted out my new magic bullet and ground up a stick – it worked like a charm!!!

Saturday 8/8/09 – In the morning we went to the library and thrift store. Both boys were badly behaving and driving me crazy so our stops were short. Clark did not want to be help and wanted to rip up all the books in the library, while Lijah opened the defibrillator and set of a very loud alarm. The boys needed to get out some energy so I stopped by the water park on the way home (near 33rd and Silver Lake Road). Lijah was soaking wet by the time we were done. Clark kept running into the water and then getting upset because he was getting wet. So I'd pick him up and move him away from the water, and he would keep running back in. He was soaked as well and he started shivering so I figured our fun was over. So I stripped down the kids and we headed back to the car. Lijah thought it was pretty funny to try to walk with his shorts around his ankles, which made him trip and fall in the grass. When we got home Clark went to bed and I needed a nap so Lijah and I went up to my room, I read him some books, and I rested a bit (not sleep, since Lijah did not want to sleep – but I made him stay on the bed while I rested). Jason got Lijah's motorized bike working again so we went out and rode that for a bit and then I planted my bleeding hearts from my neighbor.

Sunday 8/9/09 – One the way home from church my neck started to ache a bit. When we got out of the car I was trying to stretch out my neck and suddenly *snap* I heard the loudest snap ever within my neck and a sharp shooting pain came with it. I could not even move my head it hurt so bad. So I went in and took some pain medication. Clark went to sleep and Jason took Lijah downstairs to play while I laid on the couch. Jason put on Twilight for me and I sat and watched the movie. Everyone had been telling me to read the Twilight books, but I was like "no way am I reading stupid vampire love stories". But…I LOVED the movie and am hooked now. I want to read the books. The author is a member of the LDS church so the books are clean, which is a huge plus – and the movie was clean too. After the movie Lijah came upstairs and danced with his new favorite stuffed animal – the cow – which I remember getting at the MN Zoo on a school field trip. I vaguely remember a boy in my class stealing it, so I think it is actually stolen goods. Clark decided that even though I was in pain with my neck he would stay up all night crying. Thanks Clark…..