First Day of School!

I will pretend that this guy,
is the reason I took so long to post first day of school pics...not that I've been too lazy to get it done.

Today my Aaron started preschool. He's SO. EXCITED. His backpack has been packed for several days and he has been packing lunches for 2 weeks straight. He faithfully gets up with the big kids, packs a lunch, sends them off to school, and eats his "lunch" around 9:00...he just can't wait any longer than that! A few friends from church have joined forces to do a home preschool with each Momma being the teacher for 2 weeks at a time. He was dressed and ready to go to Jack's house at 7:20 a.m. which is good because school starts at 9:30 and we didn't want to be late.
Can you tell how sad she is to be home all alone with just Mom? Rough life for this one.

Kyle is loving the 2nd grade so far. The new school was a bit of an adjustment the first day but he seems to be making friends and fitting in just fine. He misses some things about the old school but likes some things at the new school better...all in all he's doing great!

Miss K LOVES 4th grade. She has had no trouble at all with the transition and pops out of bed ready to go every morning. If she could change one thing about the new school it would be to have more days of art and music and less days of P.E.--ask her Daddy how he feels about that.

Here they are together on Day #1 of a new adventure. I was all set and ready to go take them to the school. AND THEY TOTALLY DIDN'T WANT ME TO! They insisted on riding the bus the first day!!! I took them to meet the teacher the week before school started and they figured that was good enough. It's not like they are kindergarten babies and need someone to walk them in, Geez Mom. When did they grow up?

Speaking of growing up...

Starting middle school is tough enough but when your parents up and move the family 5 whole miles down the road it pretty much ruins your entire life. Good thing this boy is resiliant. Here's Mr T ready to tackle intermediate school. Big time 6th grader. The move has been hardest on him, he really misses his friends from the other school and is taking longer to adjust but I think he's starting to warm up to the idea that we live here and we're not moving back. The good news is we have some church friends in the neighborhood so at least he knew a few people before school started. The first day was rough...they didn't give him P.E.!!! That would have been AWESOME for his sister, but was devastating for him. I got it fixed and he's much happier. He's getting involved in some groups at school and finding his niche. He's really looking forward to 7th grade when he can compete in sports but all in all is doing great. We love you T-Hop!

Disposable?

Certain things are okay to purchase at Wal-Mart...diapers, graham crackers, paper towels, etc. Certain things are, generally speaking, not okay to purchase at Wal-Mart. I'm pretty sure pets fall into the later category. We live on the edge. For $0.28 each we went crazy and bought one for each kid. The 'pet' guy at Wal-Mart accidentally gave us 6...I pointed out his mistake but he was too lazy to either remove one fish from the bag and/or rewrite the sales ticket so we scored a free fish (SWEET). Meet 'Popcorn', 'Captain Crunch', 'Nemo', 'Fred', 'Seafood', and 'Little Mikey'. I am also aware that 6 fish is too many for that little bowl, thank you for your concern. I am simply taking bets on how long until all 6 are floaters.

Palm Beach

So we decided to take advantage of another 'nothing going on day' and use our free coupons for Moody Gardens 'Palm Beach' area. FUN! They recently remodeled so there was more to do than we remembered. We didn't get a lot of pictures of the really fun stuff because I didn't want my camera to get wet, but it was a blast! They have added a 'lazy river', some water slides, and a wave pool since our last visit. Kyle was disappointed that the 'good' water slides required you to be 48 inches tall...he's almost there so it was very sad. He managed to have a great time on the 'baby' water slides and loved the wave pool. I have very few photos of Katherine because she spent almost the whole time on the big slide. Again, we got up and moving and beat the day care crowd to the park. We enjoyed over 2 hours of fun in the sun and then we finished off the day with a picnic next to one of their playgrounds. I consider this by far the best free day we've had yet! Woohoo!!!

Enough is enough!

What the heck is that picture? Let me explain.

Like every Mom I tend to say things when I'm upset and then never really follow through...i.e. "You're grounded until you're 30", etc. Well today I actually followed through. It was just 'one of those days' around here. Tons of fussing, fighting, whining, and crying. I was just about to farm them all out on playdates when I thought 'why should they get to play as a reward for being rude and drivng me nuts?' It certainly didn't help their case that I had a terrible headache and our landlord had just dropped off the amazingly long and detailed cleaning checkout sheet.

Yep. I rounded up my 4 oldest children, a stash of old toothbrushes, an extra large box of baking soda and we got to work. Cinderella style. They spent a good chunk of the afternoon cleaning the grout between the kitchen floor tile. I have to admit mopping floors is not my forte...and (don't judge me here) I have NEVER cleaned the grout. Not once. Part of me wishes I had taken a 'before' photo so you could see the difference...but part of me is glad I didn't because you would be judging me for sure! It was a huge change and now, I must say, we have a splendidly clean floor. It's glaring white. Bonus: my children worked together, discovered they don't actually hate each other, ended up having some fun, gained some appreciation for a hard day's work, tried really hard not to spill at dinner, got completely worn out, and are snuggled up together watching some TV before an early bedtime. Hard work is good for the soul...I should follow through more often!

Free!

Okay friends I have to tell you that I have become a little crazy with the coupons lately. It has gotten so bad that anytime Aaron wants something he comes over and says "I was just wondering...do you have a coupon for ____?" When we were looking at houses he even asked if I had a coupon for 'the one with the stairs'. Oh, I wish!

Anyway, this blog is not exactly about my coupons...even though I do save a lot at the grocery store (I'm not Extreme Couponing material, but sometimes I'm close). This blog is about how we are doing really fun things this summer FOR FREE.

We are in that terrible waiting phase of buying a house. All our ducks are in a row, we're just waiting to close. If you've ever been here you know that spending any money during this phase is horrible! You don't want to risk messing up your loan, you don't want to waste precious remodeling/decorating money, you know you will order a lot of pizza very soon...spending money will have to wait. Sooooo, you find free things to do.

Free Thing #1

One day Dan came home from work and unloaded two very large Rubbermaid containers into the garage. I said "what the heck are those?" He said "a water slide" and walked into the house. ???!!!

Yep, someone from Dan's school just gave us this water slide. So. Random. She bought it for her kids a while back and they had outgrown it, so we win! We have loaned it out for two parties, had one surprise party of our own, and invited many friends to 'come on over, the water slide is up'. I do not actually recommend this slide and would be bitter if I had spent upwards of $250 on it because it is dying. The older kids are very rough on it and every time we put it up it leaks a little more...the next time we use it could be the last. But who cares. It got me through a very rough June and I am grateful. Tons of fun. TOTALLY FREE!

Free Thing #2

Okay, so this one isn't as cool but I found a whole bunch of balloons on clearance...I think I paid 75 cents for 8 packages...not free but close enough. Anyway, when we blew them up they were HUGE. Even Tyler had fun with these monsters. It occupied an entire afternoon while Dan was out of town. Tons of fun. BASICALLY FREE!

Free Thing #3

Our local library has a great summer reading program (if you are in the area you seriously need to sign your kids up at the Friendswood library, now). For reading a mere 10 books they got an awesome package of coupons with tons of FREE THINGS in it. I do not have photos of the free ice cream or hamburgers...but really, did you want to see that? One of the coupons is for Jump N Jungle. I hate that place, but the kids love it. I only go when it's free. It was actually a lot of fun (thanks G family for joining us). The beauty of the summer reading program is that ALL your children may participate, even those that don't read--as long as someone reads to them, they get to sign up! Sooooo, even though Elizabeth is too young to use most of the coupons, she has them. SCORE! I 'helped' her use her food coupons and we are saving the extra Jump N Jungle coupon for a day when the big kids are back in school...Aaron will 'help' her use it then ;-) We will be using the Moody Gardens and Astros tickets very soon...we'll post more then. (FYI, the prizes for summer reading do not keep pace...for reading 20 books we got bubbles, 30 was a rubber duckie, and 40 was a pinwheel...not very motivating). Tons of fun. TOTALLY FREE!

Free Thing #4

Obviously (see previous paragraph) we go to the library. A lot. It's air conditioned and it's free. They have coloring pages, puzzles, toys, movies...oh, and books! We go every Wednesday. EVERY WEDNESDAY. It's not optional. Tons of fun (unless you are a grumpy kid who just wants to stay home and play Wii). TOTALLY FREE!

Free Thing #5

Okay so a while back Dan decided he wanted bowling shoes. Random, I know, but let me explain his theory. You can always find a coupon for a free or deeply discounted game...which 'does not include shoe rental', if you own your shoes you beat the system. I mocked him, who owns bowling shoes? Fools mock (and wear other people's shoes). His shoes are really sweet and were a gift from my mother...she even made him a bag, but that's a whole different blog post right there. After that it snowballed. Every time we are in a sporting goods store someone is scanning the clearance rack for bowling shoes. We buy them all--the most we've ever paid is $10, the least was $3.50. Dan's goal is to have at least one pair in every size so that when we are grandparents (yes, I know our oldest child is 11) we can take our grandkids bowling whenever they visit. Yep. That's his master plan...when we die our grandchildren will all sit around and reminisce about bowling with Grandma and Grandpa Hoppie and their endless supply of bowling shoes. But let's get back to the point. Free stuff. If you go to http://www.amf.com/ you will see a 'summer unplugged' program link. Click on it...sign your kids up. Every child gets 2 free games of bowling EVERY DAY THE WHOLE SUMMER! Seriously. Of course it 'does not include shoe rental.' Tons of fun. TOTALLY FREE! (for us...for those of you who have to rent Vinny's shoes it's almost free).

Free Thing #6

Chuck E Cheese is right up there with Jump N Jungle in my book...I guess I have a thing against places that use initials in place of words. Anyway, I have all our kids signed up to get birthday email coupons from Chuck E Cheese. Randomly we have started getting 'half birthday' coupons as well, score! Fun that June is Kyle's birthday month and Aaron's half birthday month. Two sets of free coupons, woohoo! Today we decided it was as good a day as any to use some free tokens so we got up and moving and were at Chuck E Cheese by 9:00 a.m. Did you know it's open at 9:00 a.m.? Neither does anyone else. That's the way I like it. Seriously, if you have to go, go right when it opens. I'm pretty sure we beat most of the staff to work today and because of that we had a great time! First of all we were literally the only people there who were not employed by Master Chuck. Free run of the place means I didn't have to spend the entire time counting five heads over and over and over. Aaah. Extra bonus tip: they are open at 9:00 a.m. but are not really ready for customers that early...who goes that early? We do. My children's eyes just about popped out of their heads when they saw the teenage employee 'priming' the ticket containers on the games. He must be hard up for fans so he let them follow him around and collect all the tickets that spit out of the machines while he prepared them for the day. All of the machines. Yep. Over 700 tickets just spitting out randomly all over the place. Add in the other tickets we 'won' with our free tokens and we scored 90 minutes of family fun, a giant koosh ball, and some smarties for zero dollars. Tons of fun. TOTALLY FREE!

Okey dokey, I have to run. We're off to the park (free) and then to the pool (free) before we settle in for a little movie from Netflix (still in our 'first month free' trial period). Happy day!

Hot Momma

So to follow up on last post we finally managed to get an inspection done on our possible home purchase. Everything looks good except for the fact the neither AC unit is functional. Seriously? I spent yesterday going back and forth from a really hot car to an even hotter house (at least the car cools down a little when I drive...fast...) This may be a deal breaker. I'm bummed but at least the units went bad before the closing, not 2 weeks after or something terrible like that. Okay, I'm off to try and negotiate with HUD...ha!

Still here!

So I'm still alive. I just never make time to post anymore. I have trouble justifying computer time when I still have a messy house. But since I'm pretty sure I will have a messy house for a couple more decades I decided to go ahead and check in!

I will get my act together with some photos soon but we're basically super excited for summer around here! We have lots and lots and lots of fun things planned. Trips to the library, the local pool, Sonic, etc. Okay, so this summer is really boring compared with last summer. It's been bitter sweet to look back and think where we were a year ago. As school ended we talked about how a year ago we were packing up our house. A few days ago we talked about how fun the first few days of vacation were...driving through Georgia and eating peaches, the silly car games, etc., getting to SC and visiting cousins (wish we could see them again), fun times! I didn't realize how much I would miss that vacation but right now I have the itch to travel.

This summer will be an adventure all it's own. And maybe one day we'll abandon everything and travel again...but not this year! This year our dear, dear KIA is not going much more than 10 miles from home. I have yet to fix the A/C, which wasn't so bad up through May. Things were pretty mild (for Houston). And then June happened. Have you watched the weather channel? Holy hot! It's been over 100 degrees several times this month. I know I'm getting really thin blood when I get in the van and think "it's kind of a nice day today, a little cool even" and then I see the thermometer is at 89...at 8:30 in the morning...awesome. When I drive Dan's car I turn the A/C down super low and when we're in there together I have to close my vents because it's FREEZING (and by freezing I mean "below 80"). We debated back and forth about whether it was worth fixing and by the time I decided that yes, it is worth it, it's kind of too late.

We're in the process (hopefully) of buying a new (to us) home. It's not actually new at all...it's a HUD foreclosure and so it needs some 'TLC'. How much TLC we don't really know yet...that's why we're still not sure it will be ours. Long story short (and oh, what a LONG story it is turning out to be) we don't really have 'extra' cash for frivolous things like vehicular A/C when we might need it to buy a bathtub faucet or build a new wall or pay some random fee that might pop up unexpectedly (that seems to happen a lot). Basically we're on the fence right now about some things so it may or may not end up being our house...we'll be sure to let everyone know. BUT, I've decided it's just not worth it to fix the car right now. If we go somewhere more than 5 miles from home I pack a cooler full of ice packs. We pass them out and tell the kids to stick them in their shirts for portable A/C units. So, so sad (and rather embarrassing if we happen to have a guest in the car). I just tell myself that one day they will look back fondly on this memory...or at least they will have a good story to tell their children...it's the Houston version of walking barefoot in the snow, right?

Okay, it's late. I'll have to play catch-up later. My goal is to finally upload all the photos from my camera to the computer before we move again. I have sad goals. Have a 'Hoppie Day'!