i have a couple of quick things to say before i grind out more copy. for the record, it is 3:30 on a tuesday and i am STILL writing and getting ready to sink my teeth into a nice piece for my neighbor who owns a pheasant preserve. this guy is the king of all neighbors. he loans us huge tractors with air-conditioned cabs. he loans us bobcats. he blades the snow out of our driveway. he works in our yard even when we aren't home. he GAVE us a hunting dog. we have run out of gift cards and cases of beer. it's time to do something serious, so bobbi and i are going to make him a pheasant preserve brochure that'll knock his socks off. no pressure, bob. his preserve is actually something like 3,000 acres of prime SD land with two huge hunting lodges on it and clients that fly in from virginia...so it is actually a pretty cool place. we love our neighbor. the coolest, most casual good ol' boy you'd ever meet. and you know how i love a good ol' boy.

yet i digress.

the couple of things to say.

*i am reading an awesome book. it's called The Help. i think it's going to be a movie, or is a movie, who knows? i'm a little out of touch. but the book is perfect.

*we decided to play tennis the other night at about 10 pm. we played under the lights while swarms and swarms of mayflies landed on us and around us and under us. it was like a mayfly snow globe. good thing they are cute bugs or i would have been freaked out. the nice thing? not a single mosquito bite all night. mayflies rule.

*little j has the best hockey picture ever. i tried to scan it, but apparently my scanner is on vacation. the picture is for his AAA team...13 boys and 1 girl. all 13 boys are not smiling, simply glaring and looking tough into the camera. little j looks like the biggest punk on the planet--his solo picture is priceless. but the girl? she is grinning from ear to ear. i love it. i will seriously treasure this picture forever.

*speaking of girls. we had a surprise visit from the husband's brother in washington and his family of four little girls. well, it was surprise to us only because we never answer our phone. anyway. the little girls are just...wow. all of them have this crazy wild totally curly hair and they are so outgoing and full of life, just beautiful. i got to watch the two-year-old while the rest of the crew went tubing and she just made my day. we are both sporting bright blue toenail polish right now and i'm not taking it off even for a client meeting tomorrow. ah. a girl fix. funny how much i needed that.

*we were in sioux city (more hockey) on sunday and on the way back we decided to detour through yankton to see the famed gavins point dam rushing with water. we were giggling the whole time because the first sign we came to said "Dam Road Closed." that started a snowball from the peanut gallery. "Dad, how come we took this dam detour?" "Dad, where did all this dam water come from?" you get the picture. for the record, it was dam impressive.

*we are gearing up for some serious waterpark action. going to water world on saturday--the biggest water park in america. located in denver. then a couple weeks later we will hit noah's ark at wisconsin dells, and possibly the waterpark at valley fair. my fingers are raisins just thinking about it. i bet bobbi wishes she could come :)

*i really think i had more to say but my internal buzzer went off and i do have the cool brochure to write. i may or may not talk to you for a long time. school starts august 17 and i promise i'll be back. dam. where did summer go? (that was for you, deann).

wow. july something or other already. less than a month til school starts. crazy.
i'll update you a bit with some random procrastination. i do have a billboard campaign to write. actually, two of them. i'll try to make this quick because billboards can be tricky. now let's see. where do i begin?

*the boys have hermit crabs. three of them. sara and the girls got little j one for his birthday and it started a frenzy. remember, little j is never content to do anything on a small scale. the kid is always about more, bigger, better, and then some more. unfortunately, we read that hermit crabs are not hermits at all. they like friends. they become depressed when they are alone. how they know this i have no idea. anyway, the pet store was closed the day we read this and it was a loooonnnnng day, let me tell you. i think little j talked about his lonely hermit crab for 5 hours. the next day we went down and got two more. one of them is HUGE. he scares me. actually, they all scare me. slightly freaky looking and that big claw is intimidating. i don't remember being afraid of the ones i had when i was a kid. so, their names are digger, dagger and hermie. digger and dagger are little j's. hermie is big j's. like i said, dagger is big and scary and i am sure i will have nightmares about him escaping and taking us hostage. all he needs is a tattoo and a harley. he's that bad.

*my house is coated in spider webs. it's weird. i sweep webs off the deck posts, the windows, the gutters, the flower pots, the front porch, the rock, everything...and the next day it is coated again. you would think the spiders would get sick of rebuilding but they seem to double their efforts with each sweep. it's a little mini war we have going on out here. me versus the spiders. maybe i should sic dagger on them...

*it has been beyond sweltery here. i think the heat index since last weekend has been like 115 every day, with humidity so thick you can just cut out a piece of the air and eat it. the other night little j and the husband wanted me to spray them while they jumped on the trampoline. it was about 10 pm, and they were both grimy and sweaty from being outside all night. i had just washed the hound and threw the shampoo into the boys and they took a trampoline shower (with trunks on). right about then a friend and his wife from out of town drove up to surprise us with a visit. he he. i will say that i am positive it won't be the last trampoline shower to happen around here. in fact, our actual shower may never get used again. isn't
al fresco showering kind of european? see how fancy we are?

*little j's baseball team won the city championship yesterday morning. it was a nail biter. they won by two runs but it was close the whole way. they beat an undefeated team so kind of surprised themselves.

*baseball, swim lessons, tennis and golf are all over for the summer. smooth sailing from here til august 17th when school starts. we have a trip planned to colorado and one more trip planned to the cities for hockey, wisconsin dells and valley fair. so after next week, i am playing for about 13 days.

*until then...i better get going. before i get to play, i need to kick out the work. wish me luck and mountain dew over the next week and a half...the list is a long one!



*

so we made our annual trek to wild water west yesterday. it was a great day, we came home tired and sort of blotchy sunburned. i really need to figure out what is up with my application methods--i have a red circle on my back, a splotch on my thigh and a couple of weird shapes on my stomach.

anywhoo. i have nothing much to tell, except for a funny and kind of x-rated story.
i was standing there waiting for the husband to come off the free fall slide, which pretty much shoots all your clothes at the end. you have to lay there and pull your suit out of your butt and check your top before you stand up. i watched a couple of tweenage boys come down and they were waiting for their sister (i think she was the sister, anyway). she was probably 16. she comes shooting down the slide, screaming her head off, and then gets IMMEDIATELY UP. i wanted to do a flying leap and push her back down, but it was too late.

you should have seen the look on the brothers' faces. i yelled "your suit! your suit!"

she casually and slowly (way too slowly for me) adjusted her rather large bikini top, looked around and shrugged.

"sorry about that."

and sauntered off laughing. what the heck?

i am SO GLAD i don't have a teenage girl.

little j turned 8 today. he had a party with 16 of his little buddies, mostly his mite hockey team and a few kids from his class.

i either need to go for a long run or i need to go fetal position in a dark room for awhile.

after that, i might post some pictures.

i believe i'm suffering some type of post-traumatic birthday syndrome. and to think we actually thought about taking the little scamps to sioux falls for carload night at the water park.

the volume level in the car alone might have caused me to drive straight into a bridge.

remind me next year: 16 little boys is about 15 little boys too many.

happy birthday, little j. i can't imagine you doing it any other way.

i wish my camera worked. i took a great picture of the top of one of little j's birthday presents. it came in a big cardboard box about a week ago, and he wrote in scrawling letters:

Pleeese let me open this! Pleese? Open now! Let me open! Josh needs to open this now. Pleese. I love you. Let me open this. Love Josh. To mom and dad. Pleese?

His birthday is Monday and this gift has been taunting him for nearly two weeks. The sad part is, he knows exactly what is inside and he STILL can't stand the suspense.

We heard about the day it came to the door in exact detail about 37 times.

It was just sitting in front of the door and he KNEW it was for him even if it said dad's name on the front because he could see where it came from and he KNEW dad wouldn't order something from that place because that place sells airsoft guns and that's exactly the ONLY thing he wanted for his birthday, and he hopes it is a black one because they really shouldn't make them in any other colors and do you think the grenade launcher really shoots grenades and is it the big one he wanted and put stars next to and does it come with bullets and we should probably open it to make sure it's not broken because if it's broken we still have time to send it back but if it is broken and we don't send it back now he won't have it to play with on his birthday and what kind of birthday is that when a kid can't play with the only toy he really wants. We should probably open it now Right mom? Mom?

37 times. Just like that. Only louder

:)

the day after a holiday is always a doozy.

let me tell you about mine.

it started out too early, thanks to tennis and baseball for the j boys. it felt like we had just gone too bed after one long 3-day party.

perhaps because we had.

living out here on the 4th of July is dangerous business. things started out last friday night with the neighbors across the water installing a waterslide that twirled its way into the lake. of course, the installation required a bucket of pina colada slushy. for the record, the husband was the first one to go down the slide head first. he is also the one sporting the giant slide-shaped scab on his back.

saturday we actually did yard work until about 4 and then swam over for refreshments. we kidded that the other side of the water is the resort side and we're over here on the working dude ranch. the night ended at our house with neighbors, a bonfire of empty pallets and a celebration of a finished wall, the delivery of black dirt and the borrowing of a skid loader.

sunday was sweet. the party across the water was in full swing, we had the blue dragon dragging people around on tubes all afternoon and we hosted the husband's family for dinner and blew up every bit of fireworks we had--even the stuff we were saving until the 4th. even so, the only burns we had around here came from the sun. it's a miracle.

monday...so...very...tired...must...keep...going...

sigh. the fourth was like ground hogs day. more sun. more water. more boat. more slushy. more freckles. more fireworks. more bad food. but we ended the day sitting on the lake in the blue dragon, calm water, starry skies, watching an amazing fireworks display right over our heads.

ah. life is good.

but today. today was a gentle reminder that life is good but it is not one big vacation. today was cranky, stinky, sunburned kids with lake hair going to play sports in the humid heat at 8 am. clients emailing wanting me to actually work. a brain that wanted a nap. a hound who celebrated her birthday with too many treats and had diarrhea ALL DAY (and even as i type). a dinner that didn't quite work out. a husband who cut the Internet, cable and phone cord with the skid loader. a job that was finished but not saved when the cable was cut. a night spent rewriting the job...

he he. let's go back to sunday, shall we? can someone please turn up the jimmy buffet?

Happy first birthday to Crosby. The boys have a big day planned for the birthday girl. She even gets her own fireworks celebration.

Have a happy fourth. Blow something up in honor of Crosby :)