The last three days

We had a rousing 4th of July celebration at our house Wednesday which included watching bad TV (there was nothing good on) as well as barbecue sandwiches, potato salad and homemade chocolate ice cream. YUM. Carlie joined us for eating purposes, and then we shook things up with a ride around town, girls only, and then Carlie made her exit to her humble abode. We ended the night with the movie Fever Pitch. The founding fathers would have been proud....or disgusted. Not sure which.

Thursday was a work day for everyone except Owen and me and that evening another ride was needed in search of the perfect car for three girls with limited budgets. We found many to choose from at the Jeep place. And even found 2 unlocked cars! It was quite shocking, but we took nothing from any unlocked vehicles.


Then early this afternoon the son boy went to hang with some peeps for many hours, and it's always amusing when he leaves because his sisters ask the following questions. Where is he? Who is he with? When will he be home? Mom! Why don't you know more information about what the boy is doing?!?! And since the boy was gone, and Caitlin had a going away party this evening, we took the remaining female children to supper. Carlie was invited but declined.

Since we never go out to eat on Friday night, imagine my surprise when we saw multi people I may or may not have wanted to see and did or didn't successfully avoid. Names will be withheld for obvious reasons. While we were eating, a plan was hatched when Emma and Olivia announced they wanted to go to Academy Sports in search of flotation devices for our upcoming beach trip. Surprisingly John, who's been working in the super heated paper mill this week, was on board for the excursion since he blew a hole in his old work pants and therefore needed new ones. So after supper, off we went in search of stuff desperately needed. When we pulled into Academy's parking lot I continued my streak of seeing people I didn't want to see when I noticed a grown up version of my high school crush walking into the store with his wife. As I pointed him out to my daughters, it felt so icky.

At the front of the store we saw a display of suntan lotions and came across this one. Really? 110?

We thought an SPF of 110 was a bit of overkill and John said, "SPF 110? That's a t-shirt!" It made me laugh out loud, as well as glad I'm married to him and not the crush. Sidebar:more times than not, it's really great when you don't get what you think you want in high school.

Anyway right after the SPF find, Emma immediately became distracted by a purple golf bag, which is ridiculous since she's never even picked up a golf club. So my job quickly became herding the three peeps into the directions we needed to go. Academy is like candy land for the three of them. Me? Not so much. Well after John found his new pants, and I did another dodge of the crush in the men's department, the girls found their floaty for the beach and then those three had to go visit the kayaks and other stuff that makes my eyes roll back in my head. Sometime after they'd looked at all the shiny new boats and paddle boards, we remembered Olivia needed a new bedside flashlight, so we went in search and found this one.

But for some reason, she decided against it.

Then we rounded the corner and found something fabulous!

A $9 hat that makes me look fabulous. Can anyone say glamour shots?

I look freaking fabulous! I did buy the hat even though when I asked Emma and Olivia if they thought I looked fabulous both unconvincingly, with a little lilt in their voices said, "Yeah it looks fabulous." I feel it wasn't sincere.

Then we dropped John off at the house, and the girls and I continued on to Target where we purchased two of these four swim suits for Owen. After picture texting, he ixnayed two of the four.


This one didn't make the cut., but his sisters loved it.

When we got home and took inventory of the swim suits he owned, one as Olivia described, "looked like scotch tape" which sounds about right since John owns a shirt that looks like scotch tape. The "Owen apple" really didn't fall far from the John tree.

And since I forgot to tell this story on myself from last Friday night, now I'm gonna. This really happened and I'm not kidding. Melanie and I had a couple of errands to run and we set off to do them in the evening last Friday night. She finished her errand at Sam's first, and then she was gonna drop me off at Target to take something back. In Target, it was one of those rare moments in the universe when there wasn't a line at the return desk and I walked up, finished my business and left in less than 5 minutes. As I was leaving I was looking at the ground and I saw her white car right outside and thought to myself, "She sure turned around super quick." Then I rounded the front of the car, opened the passenger door, had one butt cheek ON THE SEAT as I looked over and saw a shocked and stunned lady looking at me like she was about to LOSE IT!! Her mouth was open. Her eyes were freaked. She thought I was crazy. What had happened was, I got in a stranger's car. It WAS a white car, it just wasn't Melanie's car! And I'm saying the lady was so freaked. I never opened my mouth to say a word. I remember making some sort of sound like an expelling of air or a puff or something. I dropped my head, laughing, closed the door and walked away from the frightened freaked female. And as I looked down the way, I saw Melanie turning the corner. I got in the right white car and as we passed the lady still sitting in the same spot, she was laughing uncontrollably. She waved as we passed. Unbefreaking. I haven't grounded myself yet for getting in a stranger's car. But I'm not sure what to do with myself.

BUT, this week I DID permanently ground Caitlin (literally) from skydiving. Two days ago she informed me it's something she wants to do. I told her no freaking way. She hasn't (skydiven?) in the last 48 hours, which means the grounding is working so far.

The end to crazy for today.

No telling about tomorrow.