Wordless Wednesday

This water was NOT warm but my kids didn't seem to mind.



Tuesday Tidbits

~ My kids spent the weekend doing this...

And that pretty much translates to --- they spent the weekend camping with mamaw and papaw! It was a nice break for mom and dad. :) We went up to hang out with them (and of course pick the kids up) on Sunday.  I spent Sunday doing this...

And that means I spent my day relaxing (ignore the huge left arm...eww gross) because I ran 6 hilly miles that morning with my awesome hubby who happened to look handsome all day long. Proof?

It was a fun weekend for the kids and a relaxing one for us. I love weekends full of awesomeness. I just hate how quickly they are over.

~ Hubby's team played football Friday. I stayed home. It was nice having alone time. I do hate that I missed the game but the break alone was nice. I tanned, went to the gym and got in a decent workout, then I came home to eat dinner, shower and jump in my bed for the evening. I read my book and played on the computer a while.

~ My kids are on fall break next week. I wish I had the whole week off with them. I took the week off a couple years ago and we did lots of Halloween crafts, went to the mountains and just had a great time. I would love to have a week like that right about now. Not gonna happen though. Boo hiss. Maybe, just maybe I will take Monday as a vacation day since I am running a half marathon on Sunday.

~ 13.1 miles. That's what I have planned for Sunday. Just 5, or maybe it's 4 now, days away. I can hardly stand it. I'm excited. Hopefully I stay excited and don't get nervous like I did for my first half marathon. I hate nerves.

~ Crapola. It is 11 pm. How did I go all.day.long without posting this??? And how did I not know it was almost time for the nightly news and bed??  Days at work seem long and once I get home they fly on by. No fair!

Hey, you...have a great week! And if you're lucky you get to see more pics of some other fun stuff my kids did this weekend!

Got boogers?

Who thinks up stuff like this?? Really. I want to know.
And then I want to know WHO buys this stuff and eats it.

Gummy Boogers Candy Boxes: 12CT Case

The title alone was a turn off.
Then I read on the box "Looks and feels just like real boogers."
And just HOW would they know this?
Did someone sit in a factory picking his/her nose and play with it?
Ick. It's gross. That is all.

TTT

1. Oh Snap! Only the words I just said outloud in my office were not oh snap. More like crap, except an explicit...if I was in front of the kids. NOT that explicit though. The one starting with S. Anyway, it was all of a sudden raining buckets. BUCKETS. and then the sky cracked and thundered so loud. I jumped out of my chair..almost. We've had rain in the forecast all week but nothing ever came down. I guess it was being saved up there in that big sky for a real good downpour. My inlaws are taking the kids camping this weekend. Thankfully, for them, they won't be tent camping!

2. I wonder if my son (5yrs old) is the only boy on the planet who replies with, "I can't remember" or "I don't know," when asked about his school day. We ask what he eats, what he learned, who he played with, what his friends' names are... the answer is ALWAYS the same. "I can't remember." and "I don't know." Very frustrating. What's more frustrating is "studying" his letters, numbers and sight words with him. He can't remember or doesn't know that stuff either. Nice. I'm failing big time as a parent. So comforting.

3. I am skipping the football game tomorrow night. I suck at being a good wife, too. THe game is a couple hours away and would require me needing to leave work early to go. This normally wouldn't be an issue but since things at work have changed it becomes a challenge. Sometimes I like a good challenge, like when I run or workout...but work is not the type of challenge I like especially when it comes to "needing" time off.  I won't go into those details though. What this is about is not going to the football game tomorrow night. I will have a free night. So far I have made a plan.. gym, tan, swing by Hobby Lobby or Michaels. then I will come home to eat and hopefully finish a wreath I started working on over a month ago. You may already know but I procrastinate big time. haha I'll let ya know if I manage to make my plans stick!

Wordless Wednesday - almost

The high light of Peanut's field trip with Daddy.

Peanut stumbled upon this thing and was within a foot of it with his little magnifying glass. 

Shudder. I'd have screamed. Loudly.

Tuesday Tidbits

~ Peanut boy had his first field trip today. Obviously I am not there with him or I would not be blogging right now. Bummer. It's his first field trip with his kindergarten class. I'm rather bummed my job has changed so that I am not able to go with him. I went with Annabelle on all of her field trips up to this point and even went on the trips with Peanut and his preschool class (it was required anyway). So, this is really hard. Thankfully though Daddy went with him. They are in Cades Cove today. It's a fun field trip. The Smoky Mountains provide a great outdoor classrom! They learn how to use their 5 senses in the great outdoors. Fun. I sent my camera with hubby too and I know he will capture the day's best moments for me. :)

~ In 12 days I will be running my 2nd half marathon of the year. Craziness. I was never a runner until 2 years or so ago. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be able to say I could run 13.1 miles. But I've done it once and will be doing it again. This time I will be doing it in Atlanta, Ga. I can't wait to add another medal to my collection. Sure I only have one so far but I am looking forward to expanding it so that it becomes a collection. I like collecting things and race medals seems like a cool thing to collect!

~ It was suppose to be rainy today. Or at least when I checked the weather there was like a 60% chance of rain. So far it is just cloudy. I don't really want it to rain today. No reason though.

~ This post is being put up on Wednesday because apparently I suffer short term memory loss (hahahahaha) and thought I finished and hit publish on Tuesday. In fact, I thought more than once that i did this. Not so much. So, here ya go...Tuesday Tidbits on Wednesday morning. And hey, this week's random thoughts is pretty short. Lucky you!

Football Friday - week 4

NO photos this week from the football game. I am a horrible football wife, I know this. I did take my camera to the game. But I didn't sit in the stands. Instead I sat on the grassy hill on the far end of the field. The kids played and I sat in peace! Perfect football setting if you ask me.

 The good news is our team won though I cannot tell you a single solitary thing about the actual game. I did watch though. Sorta. What was I doing?? Even I don't remember. haha  I did see some of the game. I talked some too. I people watched a lot as well. I love to people watch especially at events like a football. Such interesting folk come out! ;)

Anyway, the score was 49-7 (I think). And while we have some injured kids and what not, us positive folk like to think that we can still pull off a few more wins this year and maybe make a repeat trip to the state championship game!

The most fun part of the night was that we had a sitter for the night so hubby and I got to go out to eat after the game with some of the other staff!

3 Things Thursday

1. Weekends are awesome!  I am ever so thankful tomorrow is Friday.  This week has gone by slow. Very slow. Today was even slower. Almost slower than I run and that's not sayin' much. ;) I did think this morning flew by and by the time I looked at the clock it was noon. After the lunch hour though the day just dragged on. I was thankful to get off work and finally be home.

2. Book fairs can be lame. I'm pretty sure I've griped here before about school book fairs. I love books. I love to read. I want my  kids to love books and reading. I hate book fairs. I can buy cheaper books elsewhere and yes, I realize the money goes to buying new books for the school library or a portion of it does, but book fairs are so expensive! And they sell the most lame junk. $4.99 posters, $.99 erasers... little finger pointy thingamajigs!?!? Why the junk Scholastic??? We walked away with a Lego Star Wars book, a trio of books about the Titanic and 2 of those darned erasers for a whopping $28. And you know what this mom of the year forgot?? The teacher's wish list. I've bought at least 2 books off the teacher's wish list each year since Belle was in K. OOps. I just forgot. I should totally weed back through the kids' bookshelves and donate some of the books from there.

3. I'm running another half marathon. In less than 3 weeks actually! Well to be really technical it's in 17 days. I started training again over the summer when an old high school friend registered and started talking about it. Of course I wanted to run another half marathon and add to my medal collection. My one lonely medal, that is! So, I registered for the 13.1 Atlanta race. The even is happening on October 2nd. I am ready. My run in Cades Cove was my last really l ong run before the race. I may run 8 miles this coming Saturday and then next Saturday 5-6 miles. It's crazy how quickly this training period flew by. I do most of my blogging about that stuff (running, races, weight loss, etc) HERE and I would be delighted to have you also follow me there. :)

Random Tuesday Tidbits

~ I only ran 23 miles total this week. I felt like a slacker about that but then reminded myself it was ok that I missed one 3 mile run because on Sunday I ran the loop at Cades Cove. It was 11 miles. Perhaps you locals have driven the loop at Cades Cove. Well, it may not seem like a big hairy deal to you if you are driving but let me tell you.. on legs on human legs (name the line that movie came from. it's only my fave movie).. it is tough! Hills, hills, and more hills. BUT we saw deer galore, birds, turkey and even baby bear cubs up in a tree.

~ And people are just crazy. Crazy. What ever do I mean? People were stopped on both sides of the one lane road through the Cove at the very point those baby bear cubs were way up high in a tree and they were taking pictures of those little cubs. I assume they were little but honestly my running partner and I just were too busy to stop because we were running. And no we are not among the crazy even if we were running on our own 2 legs through Cades Cove. It was a perfectly beautiful day and I could not think of a better way to travel through the Cove. Of course by the last mile I was tempted to ask the next car that drove by to take me back already. haha But seriously, the point...those people need to realize that mama bear is never far from her cubs.

~ My husband is relatively awesome. I came home to a clean (ish) house. The living room was spotless which is rarely the case because my kids seem to think it's a dumping ground for all their junk. I was and still am grateful of his hard work. He even put away some laundry.

~ I bought a book last week. I didn't pick it up to start reading until this weekend. I am almost finished. I stayed in bed almost all day Sunday and read. Yes, I was lazy but I did get up and 5am to go run 11 miles so I felt like I was entitled to lay in bed all day, alone and read. It was heaven. But then I stayed up until almost 1am reading. Yesterday was NOT heaven for me. I was tired and grumpy.

~ I should be in bed now actually. But because I have been a blog slacker I decided to start typing at 11:39pm for fun. Are you having fun? Yeah, me either. My eyelids feel heavy. Sleeping is fun. One of these days I am going to really go to bed early and get the correct amount of sleep.

~ The hubby had to take our baby girl pup, Sadie Belle to the vet today. She had a little wound and it had gotten infected. He consulted with the ever so handy and knowledgable internet vet..Dr. Google,..last night and decided a visit to the real vet would be smart. She's all fine and healing. Just one little squeeze of the bump and oooze came out. She's on antibiotics. She's a hoss though. It's hard to belive that she was only about 7 lbs when we brought her home at the end of June. She weighed in at 32 lbs today. The vet says he expects her to weigh about 50 lbs in about 6 weeks or so. I guess the puppy is going to make up for the lack of food my 5 year old son eats.

~ Everyone (well moms of boys) tells me that Peanut will one day eat me out of house and home because that's what boys do. I'm still waiting for the day. He is the pickiest eater here lately. Today's lunch consisted of a string cheese, a Lunchable (so, it's junk...don't judge I just want him to eat before the dog outweighs him!!), 2 boiled egg whites and a fruit cup. His lunch box was almost empty today which is a plus because most days (or at least those when he takes a sandwich) his lunch box comes back home with pretty much everything still in it.

~ 3rd grade homework still sucks but at least my Annabelle was in bed by 9pm tonight. Much better than the 10:30pm like one day last week. I'm not even kidding people. I can't tell if it's the amount of homework or the redundancy of it. Or it could be that the girl is just that lazy. Or maybe she  just can't concentrate? who knows, but bottom line... we are not loving homework around here.

Ok. Goodnight. My eyelids are finally too heavy to keep going. I bet you're glad. ;)

Wordless Wednesday

Football Friday - Week 3

Not a very exciting game to report about this week. Our Tornadoes were totally off their game. My nephew played a great game though, as did many of his fellow teammates but something was off and our boys couldn't pull off a win. It was a cool night which was nice after all the heat and humidity we've had lately. The kids had a great area to play in and once the sun went down I ended up moving from the stands to the grass to watch them a little better. I snapped a few pics....

kickoff

where the hubby got to hang

go tornadoes

and the kids!

7-24

Better luck this week, Tornadoes!

Let's go!!!

Wordless Wednesday

This is the same pup that just 4 months ago looked like a tiny rat.

This is the same pup that because she looked like a tiny rat my heart had a hard time finding love for her.

This is the same pup that I was able to hold in my lap with room to spare when we first brougth her home.

Pups grow way faster than kids do. I swear. 

Tuesday Randoms

~ We got massive amounts of rain here in E. Tn yesterday. I think the total when I last watched the news was around 4 inches. We needed the rain. I am not complaining. Other areas of the country have been hit with worse...tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires. I am grateful that we only got the amount of rain we did and our only damage was the pee puddles I've had to clean off the wood floor from my silly puppy who refuses to go out in the rain and the front 1/4 portion of our Bradford pear tree breaking off. It could have been worse.

~ These long, holiday weekends are great and not great at the same time. It makes sense I know... if you work. I enjoy the extra day off. I rarely accomplish much at home with the extra day though. Yesterday was no different. I got some laundry done but that's about it. It was great for extra rest though I suppose. Coming back to a short work week would be fun if there wasn't so much work to cram into the 4 days instead of 5. I'm still grateful for the extra day off though.

~ 3rd grade math is still very trying for at least 3 members of the Emert family.  This too shall pass.

~ It was hard to shower tonight. It was even harder to get my shirt off and over my head. Pain is weakness leaving the body??

~ I like that it gets dark earlier now. I probably won't be saying that for very long but for the last few nights it has been pretty nice. Last night I was able to convince the kids to go to bed at 8pm. Tonight was a different story but I would ask you to refer to the 3rd grade math issue for the reasoning behind that. Sigh.

~I started making a wreath a few weeks ago. I found the idea on Pinterest. So far I only have half the foam wreath covered in twine. I hope I have enough twine to finish the rest. Then I have to figure out the placement of the "E" I bought to go on it and decide if I should hang the "E" with ribbon. Should I add fall flowers? I can't decide at all. I want to be crafty. I use to be pretty crafty but since those talents haven't been used as much over the last year or so I think I have lost them.

~With the temperatures changing a little bit and the mornings and evenings being a bit cooler, we realized we would need to sort through last year's fall clothes for the kids. Um, yeah...they each have one pair of jeans they can fit. They both wore said jeans to school today. Crap, looks like shorts tomorrow. AND a shopping trip after work. Have you ever shopped with kids? Have you ever shopped with an overly dramatic 8 year old girl? Shoot me.

~ My hubby is awesome. I sent him a text saying, "I almost stopped for coffee," as I was on my way home from the gym/dinner tonight. Yes, gym then dinner. LOL Anyway, I was showering when he got home. After my shower I came into the kitchen to help get Annabelle set up for homework when he walks in holding the most lovely white cup with a green logo and carboard sleeve. hmmmm... nonfat, no whip, no foam Pumpkin Spice Latte!!! Come.to.mama. :)

~ I bought a new book this weekend. I started reading it last night. I almost couldn't put it down because it's one of those emotional reads that really puts life into perspective for you (or me). You know the ones. It's written by Nicholas Sparks so that may  not require me saying much to some of you. I'm looking forward to bedtime tonight so I can read some more. It sure beats the same ol' Runner's World magazine.

~ I sure hope that coffee/espresso doesn't keep me up all night. I am so not a morning person.

I labored all day.

Be jealous.

I took a rest day yesterday (from working out/running) because I ran 12 miles on Saturday. That's the part you should be jealous of. ;) Just kidding.
But I DID run 12 miles.

Anyway, so yesterday didn't turn out as planned and because I had a fire lit under my tail I decided to come home alone after church and tackle Annabelle's bedroom. 3 trashbags later and that room was clean.

1 - trashbag of just trash. I'm mean and if it was in the floor and wasn't a book or clothes or American Girl stuff it got tossed. She probably doesn't even miss anything because she hasn't mentioned so.

2 - trashbags were of clothes she's outgrown that I will send to my sister for her 3 girls to wear. I don't have the patience to consign or Ebay that stuff like I use to so my sister gets extra lucky. She's got 3 girls though and they own a swimming pool business so it isn't like the pennies are overflowing with this economy. :)

Today though all I did was run a short 3.2 miles and had my butt kicked by my hubby and some kettlebells.  I used that as an excuse to make myself comfy in my chair all.day.long. I bought a new book and was going to read it but as far as I got was opening it up to the prologue. What?? That's a start.

I did do laundry today. And I had kids to manage. And did I mention that it rained a bazillion inches? It seriously poured down rain all.day.long and my dogs refused to go out. We have a 12 year old boxer and 3-4 month old (too lazy to check her exact age, sorry folks!) boxer puppy. One of the two cannot hold her bladder. One of the two decided she was going to quit being stubborn and go outside to at least releive herself. I am thankful for her. The cute, little one better say her prayers before bed because this mama isn't to happy about all the puddles she stepped in today.

Anyway...
hubby had football practice but kindly came home and put some steaks on...the grill pan! It was raining too hard out still to fire up the grill. Dinner was delicious.

I'm still sitting in my chair. Laboring away on this Labor Day! I hope you enjoyed yours as much as I did mine! Have a great week folks!!

Football Week - 2

I can't believe how quickly football season is going by. We have played 3 games already! Last night's game was rather boring. I even contemplated taking my lastest copy of Runner's World to read, "just in case." But being the good Coach's wife that I am decided last minute to leave it in the car. The score was 53-6 at the end of the game. I really wished I had taken my magazine in with me by half time. I don't have a lot of details for you about the game. My kids were playing on  a little playground equipment that was sitting on top of the dustiest, dirtiest pile of DIRT.. lol and of course both kids were covered in it..head to toe!! School shoes and all... covered in dirt. Nice. I sat near a woman who had to criticize the FEMALE announcer at the school we were playing the entire game because of how she pronounced a lot of our player's names. That happens at most away games, just get over it. No need in bashing the announcers repeatedly, right!?

Anyway, the kids and I were late making it to the game. I say late because we got there just about 2 minutes before kick off. Usually we are much earlier. I didn't get my camera out the entire game though. But I did snap a few pics post game.

Great job Tornadoes!!!!