I'll take random thoughts for 500, Alex...

You can click on any of these images to see a larger version and the credits:





I'm going to start this and future posts with a layout or two. Mainly because it's more fun to look at something nice rather than just read my mundane blog. I used to post every layout that I did, but that would require me blogging more often. I just can't make those kinds of promises... LOL. I should probably blog more than once a week. Heck, once a week is probably good for how often I've been blogging lately... LOL. For now, though, I'm gonna shoot for once a week and hope to do more.

Now... what to blog about tonight. Caleb just got back from a month long deployment to JRTC. Today was his birthday, so we celebrated by doing absolutely nothing except hanging out around the house and playing with the girls. He gave Taylor the choice as to what kind of cake to make, so she chose a blue cake with blue icing and blueberries in it. Can you guess her favorite color?

Hannah just got back from Florida yesterday, so we are finally a whole family again. She spends most of the summer with her dad, for those of you who don't know. It's hard to be without her for that long, but I'm learning to adjust.. There's always the phone and email, right? We played scrabble tonight. She loves that game, although she hates it that I don't let her win. Maybe that's wrong, but I want her to know that life isn't always perfect, and you don't always get to win. Do I always do my best when I play against her... probably not... but I'm not going to just flat out play horrible just so she can win. Anyhoo... it's always fun when Caleb plays. We get words on the board like "unwarned" and "zens." He's the master at trying to make up words that sound like they might be words.

Why do adults have to ruin all the fun in things for children? My two middle girls are Cars fanatics. I swear we watch that movie at least once a day. Every day. We have the soundtrack, and Taylor can tell you exactly what part of the movie is going on during each musical score. I used to pride myself that my children weren't big TV watchers. Now they just watch the same movie over and over and over. Anyhoo... I digress. My point in all this is that because they ADORE that movie, we have started getting them the little die cast characters from the movies. They are basically glorified Matchbox cars. But our girls LOVE them. So we start looking around online to find the ones that we don't ever seem to find at WalMart or Target. And guess what??? They are "collectibles." That means adults are ruining it for kids, and unless you want to shell out upwards of $20 per car, your kids aren't gonna have some of the fun ones. How sad. The only reason we want them is so the girls can roll them around on the floor and crash them into each other and squeal with delight. We're not gonna keep them in their original packaging and resell them later on for a higher price. I just think that's completely lame. Toys are for kids to PLAY with. They are not for adults to collect. If you are a collector of toys, I'm sorry to offend you, but seriously... are you kidding me? I'll stop ranting for now. I'm just sad that I have had to draw the line and tell Caleb, "No... we are NOT going to spend $35 for Guido and Luigi and the tractor." Even though I know my girls would love them.

I'm going to bed now. I'm sure the baby will wake up as soon as I fall asleep. She has impeccable timing like that. =)