…Hello, Back-to-School Time.

-I’ve been a never-ending complaining sack of coughing lately.  Sorry ’bout that. But, I think we are all on the mend. The girls are back to eating normally, my headache/neckache is (finally!) gone as of yesterday, and now all that is left is the very annoying cough.

-We are anxiously (some of us more than others) awaiting the arrival of Wednesday = back to school. I waiver between joy – the prospect of maybe having a few moments to myself and a routine again, and complete sadness. My baby is going to school. I am now the mom of two school-aged girls, not two baby girls anymore. That reality is setting in finally, and I must admit I’m teary-eyed already. Wednesday is going to be a rough day, I think.

-Emma just curled up next to me on the sofa, kissed my cheek and said “I love you, Mom.” Then promptly returned to watching iCarly. Moments like that take my breath away. I’m so very lucky to have these two sweet babies. (I don’t care what I just said – they are always going to be babies to me.)

-Besides trying to get physically well, I’m also mentally trying to get ready for all of this. School, ballet, soccer, PTA, Brownies…it is all looming next week and I just don’t feel prepared or ready for any of it. I need a few more weeks, but of course even if I had a few more weeks I’d still be saying the same thing, “just not enough time, need to find a way to create more hours in the day.”

-I’m helping coach Em’s soccer team again this year. I’m excited by it now that I have sort of developed a love for the game and I think this is the year to really get her excited about soccer, too. We have one more shot. Although what she is really excited about is the idea of trying out for the swim team. I have instituted the one sport and one other activity per week rule (although with Girl Scouts she technically stretches that rule already) so I told her she needs to wait til soccer season is over until she can try out for swim. I think it may be a very busy year.

-I think I finally wore J. down (or the guys at work did) because he is running the Catalina Island triathlon with me. I love when he gets an idea in his head because he gets a little obsessed and goes all out. He is training very hard and I’m hoping he really gets the race fever. It is nice to have someone to train with. Although, I’m going to have to step up my game a bit or I won’t be able to keep up with him.

-Speaking of races, my sis completed her 3-day walk last weekend! Thanks to those of you who donated (she made her goal!) and for all of your good wishes. I think she could feel the good energy, she did awesome.

-Let’s see, I think we have covered the lately around here. Daddy took the next few days off so we can have one more rendezvous at Disney before summer ends and school starts. So we’ll see you in a few days.

**(Yes, these are all July photos I just found. I also uploaded a bunch to flickr – there are some fun ones with the cousins, too.)

Despite the promises of more updates and blogging, and the fact that it was Crafty Tuesday, it has been a little quiet around BC Chaos this week, no?

(cue the crickets – chirp. chirp.)

But we have been busy RAGING. We were invited to Raging Waters today by our sweet friends Jamie and Audrey…so we spent the day getting very, very wet and full of sunshine.

4 Moms, and 15 kids. Yes. 15. Thankfully Em, Ad, Emma Jean and Audrey were the only “littles” who needed constant supervision – the rest of the kids were off and running doing the “big kid” slides and rides.

And the day was perfect, only marred slightly by the near-concussion.

Yeah, we had not even been there 15 minutes, and Addie came out of the kiddie pool screaming with a HUGE, purple, goose egg growing out of the top of her forehead. She kept insisting that she hit her head on the slide, but a little boy said that he had actually hit heads with her. We’ll never know the real story.

As for the rest of the story…I was pleased that I was able to maintain some form of calmness because I was FREAKED out. After an ice pack and an exam by the paramedic, it was determined that she was going to live. And after some cuddling and a little timeout – she was up and ready to go, like it never even happened.

We are up and ready to go, too. Precious few weeks til school starts and I’ve got a web project that I need to finish this week, so I’m not promising anything – but we’ll be back real soon.

In the meantime, “hang ten!”

Hey there, internet friends. I kinda miss you all a little bit.

Granted I clearly didn’t miss you enough to post more than a Team-Up Thursday here or a Crafty Tuesday there lately, but I do have all kinds of stuff to post. Things are happening and I’ve definitely got photos to share.

It’s just, well…I guess it is just summer, and we all kind of need a break. It isn’t you…it is me. Since coming back from our trip, the realization that it our summer is almost over has hit, and it has hit hard. In 24 days the girls go back to school already.

So we have just been trying to chill and enjoy what is left of our summer.

Today we roamed the flea market a bit and then came home to our hammock and front yard and a pile of books…

Can you believe I get to celebrate 17 years with this guy this week? I sometimes have to give a little pinch to remind myself how very lucky I am…

And you had better believe that this will be printed and hanging somewhere in our house by the end of the week. My new favorite photo of Addison…

Sometimes, it really is hard to do “nothing” but just sit back and enjoy life.  I’m really making a conscious effort to do just that before all chaos hits in a few weeks.

And for me, part of enjoying life is writing this here little ‘ol blog.  So hopefully I can sit down and do a little more of that, too.

Well, I think I have solved the mystery of my early-rising girls. Apparently no matter how late I go to bed (and it was a very late date night last night!), I still am up ridiculously early. Today, however, the rest of the house is still sleeping and I’m going to try to get a little weekly wrap-up in here before they all stumble down the stairs.

I guess the Friday wrap-ups are just not in the cards lately, blogging kind of hasn’t been in the cards, in fact. We have just been busy. I even missed Crafty Tuesday this week! And I had some good stuff to show and a little contest to share, too. Next week for sure. Maybe I’ll start writing it NOW if I finish this one and my family is still slumbering. While I also haven’t been writing, I haven’t been reading or commenting on any blogs either. But I’ll be back, it just may take a few days.

I just realized that I don’t have a single photo to share from this week. I took some of my phone for a project I am working on with my friend Jamie, and I took my time photo for my team-up Thursday and that is the only time I picked up my camera this week. Boo. That makes me sad, I’m sure the girls have done all kinds of growing up this week and I haven’t even documented it. Seriously, it is amazing to see the seemingly small little changes taking place, yet they all make my girls seem so much older!

Addie is staring her, “how do you spell” phase. I remember when Em started doing that. The other night she was writing a “story.”  Addie asked me the other day, “Mama? How do you spell – Once upon a time there was a…” and then she put C-A-T at the end of the sentence and read it back to me, she was so proud of her little story. She also learned how to spell the word dear, so she has been leaving little scraps of paper with love notes on them for us. She left some under J’s pillow the other night and I moved my keyboard on my desk yesterday and found, “Dear Mommy Love Addie.” Yeah, it melted me.

She goes for her kindergarten screening on Monday. I think I’m a little in denial about it. I also think come August it is going to be even harder to drop my last baby off at real school than it was to drop my first baby. But then my first baby loves school so much (and is almost a second grader!!) and I know that Ad will follow in her footsteps too. That makes it a little easier. A tiny, little bit easier.

Speaking of Emma Grace, she just found her way downstairs, so I guarantee Ad is not far behind.

Em is on countdown mode. Her cousins come in 26 days and she could not be more excited. She is also in the church musical and for not wanting a speaking part, she keeps coming home from rehearsal with more and more lines. They are doing the story of Daniel in the lions den and Emmy is a tormenting lion. (Aha! See why lion heads is on my to-do list, Kimberly and Cara?) I have been tasked with sewing 18 lion heads. And I have finished…well, I have all the material now. I had to make a trip to the fabric district downtown LA for fur for the manes.  And while at my favorite fabric store, I just happened to find all kinds of other fabric for projects that I probably won’t get finished until the girls are back in school. In the fall!

We already have a very busy summer planned. We are trying to sort out some vacation stuff and I’m already having scheduling  dilemmas. So much for lying out at the pool each afternoon with B!

And here comes Addie…well, so much for my alone time. We are off to bagel Saturday and all kinds of other fun today, I’ll be back. Eventually. This wasn’t so much of a weekly wrap-up, but I threw all of my to-do lists away and I can’t even remember what we did this week. I just know that I’m happy it is the weekend.

Hope you are all doing well, have a fun weekend planned and that I get to catch up with you all soon!

Oh, like everyone isn’t insanely busy lately, right? But seriously? This was the longest, craziest, busiest week ever. I haven’t had a free moment to think and I just keep moving to-dos from one day of my calendar to the next day and hope that, well…maybe tomorrow it will get done?

In the middle of the mountains of stuff I had to do for both Em’s school and Ad’s school this past week, I started a house redesign project or two. Or three. I started to clean out the play/craft room so I could paint it. I want to do this to one of the walls. How cool is that? And I started shopping for new fabric for the living room because that room needs some serious help. And then, because I am schizophrenic and can’t stop myself, I was sitting in the bathroom while the girls were taking a bath and thought, “I wonder what this wallpaper is like to get off? I wonder if I just pull that little corner where it is coming up…”

Yeah, within 10 minutes I had all of the paper off all the way up to the bathtub. “Mama!” Emma shrieked, “Don’t peel the wallpaper over the bathtub, you’ll get us all papery!” So after they got out of the tub, I pulled off the rest of the paper. It is seriously cathartic to pull down ugly 40-year old wallpaper, let me tell you. But now tomorrow I really need to get that room painted. It would be nice to start the week with at least one project completed.

Emma said to me, “Every time Daddy comes back we have some new project to show him! I don’t think he likes it when we do that all the time.”

But I think he does like it – it means less stuff on my list for him to do!

J. was gone the whole week to New York and usually that makes for a long lonely-ish kind of week, but our week was so packed that I only had time to miss him when I was crawling up the stairs each night to climb into bed and I only then would I remember that he wouldn’t be home. Thankfully he returned yesterday safe and sound and we had a super sweet date night last night.

We celebrated J’s brother’s  engagement. Oh? Haven’t I mentioned that he proposed to JB, she said yes, and they are getting married?? THEY ARE! And we couldn’t be more excited. We adore JB, obviously love Jeff with all our hearts, and seeing the two of them together and happy is, well, it is just perfect.  So we celebrated last night. A lot. And I needed a whole bunch of coffee this morning, apparently I am too old for this partying stuff any more.

Other things that I may be too old for…Em’s little ant hill. Come to find out the ants, once they started crawling around and building their tunnels, are HUGE! And crawly…ick. The good news is they only live 2-4 weeks and I’ve already prepped Em on their eventual death.

Someone asked about their care – you feed them a popcorn-sized bit of carrot, apple or celery every 3 days or so and that is the ONLY time you open the little top (and ONLY Mommies can open the top – ha!). And the ant, um…poo? I guess it just gets swept out with the dead ants in the end.

If you want to try something with kids, I highly suggest the Butterfly habitat first. It is very easy and much more exciting. That was my favorite habitat so far. Growing the ladybugs was kind of labor intensive, with the always needing drops of water and bits of soaked raisins and such…shesh. It was too much like having 20 little kids!

Just trying to get through this post has made me so very sleepy. I think I need to get some zzzz’s while I still can. Hopefully we’ll jump into next week all nice and fresh and will have a much calmer week.