Finding Krissi

My creativity juices have taken a back seat. Due mainly with the fact that I will be participating in the Little Red Century ride. Thankfully it is next weekend. Which may be the only time in my life that I ride a bike 100 miles. Of course the question remains will I ride the bike a 100 miles? Do any of you have any idea how far 100 miles is? Let me tell you after yesterday's 80 I'm thinking 100 is very, very, far away. My very good friend (who I will not refer to as the Exercise Nazi in this post) went out with me yesterday. I'm sure if it wasn't for her somewhere around mile 74 I would have died. Well maybe that is a tiny bit of an exaggeration. However, by mile 74 I was pretty much dying. For about 10 miles before that I had the chills, I kept shivering, and according to my bikes thermostat it was 98 degrees. So the shivering had me a bit freaked out. Okay, well a lot freaked out. Any one who knows me well knows I don't handle physical discomfort. I am a huge bab...

Last night S. played her last soccer game. She has played on the Thunder team for the past two years. They have been through a lot together and ended this season undefeated. Not a bad way to end things wouldn't you say? At the beginning of the game the coach broke out a brand new ball. They used that ball the entire game and at the end everybody signed the ball and gave it to S. Needless to say my girl came home with great big alligator tears. Which made me want to say you can do it all, you don't have to give up anything, we will find the extra time. I hear they are getting close to cloning maybe we can clone a third parent and a second S. It is very sad to watch your kid struggle through a decision. However, I have to say I am very grateful for the experiences that she has had the last couple of years. I have seen her grow up right in front of my eyes and I am thankful that she was with such a great group of girls, parents and coach. We had the best of everything with her ...

The best part of a bike ride is going downhill. The wind whips around you and you fly down the hill faster and faster and faster. Until just a little tiny bit of fear grips you and you think you might be going to fast. However, just about the time you think I should probably slow down the road evens out. If your like me the whole time down that hill a stupid grin is plastered on your face and little giggles surface. I love flying down hill it makes me feel like I am a kid again. Makes me feel young like anything is possible. Of course before you fly down that hill you had to climb up another. Which is a lot of work. Sometimes looking up at that hill all you can think is, "There is no way I am going to make it to the top of that sucker." Then of course you put your head down and you start to climb. You pedal and pedal and your heart beats faster and faster and your breath gets heavier and heavier. In your brain the child hood story that everyone read. "I think I...

Friday was a good day. The kind of day where you feel like there is a slight possibility that you are not failing at everything. Not that I feel like I am failing at everything. Who me? Why would I feel that way? I mean besides having way to much on my plate and not quite catching all the pieces that keep falling off. That doesn't make me feel like I'm failing. Nope, not at all. Okay, well yah it makes me feel like I am missing a beat or two or three or.... Well you get the picture. Anyway back to Friday. Friday started off with an assembly at the kid's school. An assembly that I was in charge of. Which fortunately I have very good friends that helped pull it off. Well all right technically they took care of it and I just had to show up. :) They did a great job. I tell you it is nice to have good friends. After my portion of the assembly was over the school's reading specialist took over. All year the kids at the school have been reading and every time they read so ...

This time of the year there never seems to be enough hours in the day. Which is really ironic considering there are more daylight hours. The sun comes up around 6 and sets somewhere around 9. Soccer is almost wrapped up. The boys finished on Saturday. Before their games they were at the father and son camp out. They had a blast and love to go camping with all the men. S. has a couple games left and she is officially done with soccer. She is very sad to leave her team. However, she decided that she had to much going on and she was missing to many days of swim. She participated in her first long course meet on Friday. We all love long course because it means being outside and enjoying the summer. (Long Course = 50meter pool (usually outdoors), Short Course =25yard pool (usually indoors)) We have finally completed planting. To tell the honest truth I was getting a little sick of it. This year we added two more planting beds, added a planted hedge to the yard and expanded a third bed...

Bearded iris, Iris germanica. Two years ago a friend thinned out her Irises and asked if I would like the bulbs. At the time we had just added 300sq feet of planting beds and had nothing to plant in them. I took her up on the bulbs and this spring had the most beautiful display of Irises. Ironically, I now need to thin out the Irises and will be handing several of them off to a neighbor. Lesson learned: Gardening is a neighbor hood sport! Share the blooms. I also wanted to mention my growing resentment towards the bugs in my garden. They are certainly a good news bad news bug. Good news, the bug that is eating all my little flowers are the same ones that cultivate the dirt and give you nice loose soil. Also, they stop eating the flowers once they become established. Their taste runs towards the baby plants. Bad news, THEY ARE EATING MY PLANTS AND THEY AREN'T STOPPING!!! GRRRRR......

Yesterday after work I went on a little bike ride. Wait a minute let me try that again.... Yesterday after work I went on a BIKE RIDE!! Hummm, no still not quite right.... Yesterday after work I did this!!! Right here there was wind, enough wind to make me hate wind. Here more wind. I really don't like wind. However, right here was the elementary school I went to. At recess we use to play Charlies Angels. :) We were so cool! But then again here was more wind! Wind+Bike=NOT GOOD! Here is where I saw two teenagers, not in school, doing things their parents would not like. Moving on . . . . Here is where I thought about quitting going home and never riding a bike EVER again. Humm... Okay, well it was more like this. The light blue arrow is where I decided that I had already gone to far to quit. Here is where I started to think about crying. Okay, well it was more like this. Here is where I thought I was going to throw up. Then Brent would have to come get me because I was sick. Finall...

I think I have done really well not boring you with every detail of our garden. I haven't said one word about the two additional planting beds Brent has made. I haven't said one word about the many, many flats of flowers I planted. I have not bored you with every new leaf that formed on our little plants. I have not given you a list of every vegetable planted. I didn't even tell you about the Chocolate pepper we planted. In fact I think I have been a Saint. Stop laughing! :) Humph... I have however have decided to start boring you with pictures. Yes, this feature on my blog is called, "What is Blooming!" Giving me an excuse to take pictures, play with pictures in photo shop and justify the shrinking space on our hard drive. win... Win... WIN!!!

I'm not really sure how this works but I think it works like this. All of the local high school and Jr. high orchestra teachers divide the local elementary schools up. Each teacher goes to and teaches their elementary schools the same music that all of the other teachers are teaching. At the end of the year they hold a concert. A MONSTER CONCERT. Why is it called a MONSTER CONCERT? Because at the end of the day when all of the teachers have divided and conquered all of the elementary schools there is approximately 400 sixth graders participating in orchestra. How they arrange this program and how they hold it together is beyond me. It was further beyond me when I walked into the auditorium and saw this. Im pretty sure they are breaking one, two oh heck all of the fire marshall rules. Did you see S. she is right there. She is one of the kids with a cello. Does this help? Anyway, it was a fun concert and at the end of the concert I have to honestly say that it was the best 6th grad...

Happy Mother's Day! My complete inability to stay in the house has driven me outdoors with the laptop. Ancient as this laptop may be I am thrilled to be able to sit on the porch, enjoy listening to the children play, soak up some sun, and type a way. I feel as if I am neglecting my little blog. Which I'm sure annoys no one but myself but I'm still annoyed that I can't spend 20 minutes at the computer. That is I can't spend 20 minuets at the computer without feeling like I need to be outside. So I go outside and accomplish the ever important task of counting how many seedlings are popping up. I assure you it is a very important task. If I don't do it then Brent will do it and he may not give me a full report. I can sense your jealousy. School is wrapping up and we have been busy and I have a whole bunch of pictures to share, from soccer, to school musicals, to an orchestra concert. Oh wait, I have video of that one. I'm sure you can't wait to liste...

Okay, so I have not forgotten about this here blog. I have not forgotten that I put a contest up. I have not forgotten that at least 7 of you are waiting for an answer. What I have forgotten is how delicious and wonderful the sun is. Every time I sit down to post the sun calls me. I think about how I should start. I type a word or two or three. Then the sun gets louder. "It's warm come and play, come and play." I then give up go outside and enjoy the beautiful, wonderful, awesome, sun. Have I mentioned how much I love the sun? I have one friend knowing how much I love the sun made a blinkie for me. What do you think? She has a ton of cute templates and blinkies if you are interested. Anyway on to the winner. On the day the contest was posted the play count on Bella's Lullaby was 430! Meaning, Miss Willow was the closest with her guess of 547. I should mention it has been awhile since S. updated her IPOD so I would not be surprised to see some of the other higher gues...

In this house there are 3 Ipods. I have one which is one of the first generations of IPODS. In fact when the kids I work with see my IPOD they laugh and grab it and go around the whole pool saying, "Look at Krissi's IPOD look at how huge it is!" "Have you ever seen anything this big?" Then they gleefully dig through my play list to see what kind of music old people listen to. I could be insulted. Except for the fact that every now and then they like my music and then I feel young. Totally worth the ridicule. The second IPOD belongs to S. and the third belongs to A. All of the IPODS are updated on one computer all of the music is pulled from one library. One of the features of ITunes is keeping track of how many times each song is played. When I was the only one updating my IPOD I never really payed much attention to this feature. Until lately I had completely forgot about this particular statistic. Then the other day I accidentally clicked on play count and it l...

With five weeks of school left and four kids in school I can not tell you how busy the days are right now. It is busy enough to make a sane person crazy. If I were a sane person. I look at the calendar with just the teensy bit of dread. Why is life so busy? There are probably some of you out there that think we just need to cut back. The sad truth is that we have. For the first time in over nine years not a single child is playing baseball. I would be sad if I had time to be sad. Added to all this insanity is the need to carve a 5 hour chunk of time a week out of the schedule in order to ride a bike. Oh, just in case your wondering how many miles you can ride a mountain bike on the road instead of a road bike before your body rebels. It is 60! Just in case you ever have need for that kind of information. For the first time I'm having actual fantasies of what if will be like when my life does not revolve around kids. That is sad right? They grow up so fast and here I am fantasisi...

It turns out that A.'s reading list was the easiest reading list to put together. Mainly because he had an opinion and filled up half of the list with request. Beginning with the Lord of the Rings trilogy which he has been harassing me all year to read. I said that he could read it this summer and he can hardly wait. I'm raising a geek what can I tell you. The fun part is that I am geek and we get to talk about books. Mine is an exciting home. Here is his list I found a website that lets you know what the AR level of the book is so I am including it on this list. The Fellowship of the Ring JRR Tolkien AR 6.1 The Two Towers JRR Tolkien AR 6.3 The Return of the King JRR Tolkien AR 6.2 I Know What You Did Last Summer Lois Duncan AR 4.7 Charley Skedaddle Patricia Beatty AR 5.2 From the Mixed up Files of Mrs, Basil E. Frankweiler EL Konigsburg AR 4.7 The City of Ember Jeanne DuPrau AR 5.0 The Westing Game Ellen Rasking AR 5.3 Artemis Fowl Eoin C...