Big thanks to my good friend Ino who was able to get my banner at the top of my blog! YEAH!

For a blogger it seems that we are always bloggin even if we don't actually post it. I've had such great intentions of posting to my blog, but seem to get side tracked by the most ordinary daily life routines. In order to not write an 200 page post I'll just put snippets of what we've been doing.

Well, as most human beings, my life has been pretty uneventful this past week. Well, not completely uneventful but nothing of noteworthy to report.

Today I had some funny random thoughts and just had to share.

1. Dustin. Yes, Dustin continues to be funny, all the time. While I like his funniness I hope he will figure out before he goes to kindergarten that there are times to be funny and there are times not to be funny. Saturday night we went as a family to Panera Bread for supper. While on our way Dustin had the biggest grin on his face. The grin was associated with the fact that instead of putting on his own tennis shoes before we left, he purposefully put on my tennis shoes, tied them and all. He was very proud of this, and not the least bit hindered by the fact that the shoes were 10 times bigger than his feet. So.... we continued driving to Panera and went in and ate. I tried to ignore the fact that some people must have wondered why our 5 year old had overly large shoes on.

2. Going to the bathroom. Everyone knows that once you become a parent the notion of "privacy" quickly disappears. I was in the restroom (to much information I know), and I could hear Dustin coming down the stairs saying "Mom! mom!, Dad, do you know where mom is?". A moment later Dustin appears at the bathroom door with a handful of super heroes he has just drawn on a stack of construction paper. He is oblivious as to what I am doing and goes on to ask me to look at them and tell him which one is my favorite. I calmly told him that I would be out soon. So he lays them out systematically on my bed and as he walks away I can hear him say "just look at them and then bring them upstairs". The life of a mother.

3. Logic. Each day with kids is a reminder that there are just certain areas of a childs brain that haven't fully developed yet, like in the logic area. Daria took a shower, and used a regular towel. This is normal for Daria, she's a very logical, systematic person. Then Dustin takes a bath, I came in and gave him a towel, and he says "No! that's not my towel, mines the small one" I look over to find that he got out a hand towel to use when he was done bathing. I can't even figure that one out.

4. Piano practice. It's spring break. This means that all normal routines in this house are on hold. Daria hasn't touched the piano all day. She usually practices in the morning, but she's enjoying these days off (even though she still has lessons this week). I finally get a chance to practice late this evening. The moment I begin, it seems to draw Daria to to the piano. She is anxiously waiting behind me with a song book in her hand "hurry mom, I've got to play this piece". I remind her I'm practicing, it will take awhile. With each page I turn she asks if I'm done yet. I eventually got her to leave and find something else to do.

5. Parents. I think the coolest thing about being a parent is it forces you to look at your own parents through eyes that have the layers peeled back. All of those things that one used to hate that their parents did, becomes so understandable and logical as a parent oneself. Like the long showers for instance. I would think that given Daria's small size that a 10-15 minute shower would be good enough. Not so! Daria can drain our water heater in one washing. Now we've put limits on it. She's getting better.

6. Floors. There are two things I really hate to do. Wash floors and clean toilets. It goes back to the "in-box is never empty principal" in the Don't Sweat the Small Stuff book. The fact of the matter is, my mind tends to be to logical sometimes. Like, it just doesn't seem logical to clean the kitchen floor when you KNOW it will be dirty in less than an hour, which is rare, it's usually less than 20 minutes. The same for toilets, you clean them and they get used right away. I was thinking of this tonight because I really feel like I"m on a cleaning strike with my kitchen floor. It drives me insane to clean it. Oh yes the kids will sweep it when they make a mess but that does not always do the job. The kids will help mop, but again, it's not always thorough. So for now I must endure the pain of a floor that will forever get messy.

7. Fruit snacks. Ok, I hate that they call these things fruit snacks. I consider them fruit flavored candy with vitamin C pumped into them. My kids know I wont buy them. But even after years of them knowing I wont buy them, they are still drawn in by the marketing tactics of the boxes while we're at the store. It happened today. The princess box of so called fruit snacks practically jumped off the shelf into our view. I was a bit on edge anyway and told the kids that they would probably be better off going home and eating a table spoon of sugar instead! joking of course. I'm reminded of the fact that Costco here stopped carrying the all natural fruit bars. So when I visited my friend in Utah last year, we went to her Costco and I bought 10 boxes. The problem was trying to figure out how to get 480 fruit bars home. It's amazing how heavy they can be once put together in large groups. I finally figured out I could take them out of the boxes and stuff them into gallon bags and place them in multiple suitcases to even out the weight. It worked perfect!

Now that all of you have read my random thoughts I'm sure you feel much better for it! Ha, ha.

So I'm playing around with a very cool site "SmugMug", more of a professional photography picture hosting site, but I like its tools. I placed one gallery on my blog as you can see on the upper right hand corner of my blog. It's password protected. I of course will give the password to family and close friends but please do not share it with others, for the privacy of my kids! If you want the password you can e-mail me.

I'm having blog withdrawals as I haven't been able to post for 11 days!
Last week we celebrated Ken's birthday. The big whopping 43! Doesn't that sound crazy? This is the first year it has really dawned on me that we are, uhm, growing up??

Tuesday was our annual trip to the largest rodeo in the world (a fact). Ken's dad raisesSimmental Show Cattle and they always come down for the Simmental sale. I love it. I never realized how much I enjoyed going to the rodeo. We didn't actually go the rodeo part that night, but stayed in the livestock area where they have the auctions and all the booths where kids can learn about milk, beef, bees, cotton, farming, ride ponies and pet animals. Daria and Dustin love this. Daria and I spent a good hour or so walking through the vendor booths to see what was for sale. A lot of neat stuff, but we just window shopped. Then she wanted to go up and down every isle of cattle. If you've never been to a show like this, just imagine nicely cleaned rows of pristine cleaned cattle from ranches all over the US tied to a rail, my guess is maybe 250+ maybe 300+. It is the funnest way to look at cattle, because they are clean and there are no flies. But still, after seeing a handful of cattle you've seen them all, unless you are there to buy and can see the differences. No problem though, we slowly went down each isle. I didn't mind. Daria is such a animal girl and says she wants to be a veterinarian. So I let her have as many experiences with animals as she can. The funny thing is as we walked she would say "There's a mom cow", "There's a dad". These cattle are HUGE animals (most were Brahma's and Simmental some of the tallest cattle standing as tall as some horses) so it's VERY easy to tell which are male and which are female.

Daria didn't want to attend the sale because she said she couldn't understand what the auctioneer was saying. I told her all they do is say "Blah, blah, blah, $5000.00, blah, blah, blah $5001.00, blah, blah." We both laughed.

I love the sale. I think that it's an art for the auctioneer and the guys who watch the bids. Everyone is always clean cut, trimmed hair, pressed shirts, pressed pants and cowboy hats. There are always the same 3 auction men standing at the bottom of the bleachers. Their job is to watch for the bids in the audience. Once the auction starts it becomes this fabulous show of fast number calling and the men pointing back and forth yelling "HA!" which must tell the auctioneer to up the bid. It's very impressive. Ken's dad didn't buy anything this time.

The highlight of the evening was riding the light rail down to the rodeo. We did this last year. The kids love it. You get to see so many different types of people. A fun ride.

Frustration for the evening was the tiny camera I brought. Ken won this HP camera at the HP world convention last year. It's one of those small throw in your pocket types. We thought it would be great for quick pictures. Well, I'll tell you, I'm not a small camera person. I like all the gadgets and bells and whistles that mine has. I like manipulating the depth and speed or even lighting. This thing takes horrible color matching and has absolutely no shake resistance so most of my pictures were blurred. Why I didn't bring my trusty Nikon is a mystery as I love taking it with me everywhere and have a great backpack that it goes in. Next year, it's coming along.