In Which I Got Very Behind and Now Do a Catch Up Post

As it tends to go, I got a little overwhelmed with life.

It's been a harder semester with both math 1050 and Spanish, plus working full time, and also trying not to slack as a mother and a wife altogether.

Which didn't happen, but after a slap of reality I pulled it back together and realized where my priorities need to be, even while working and going to school.

No other success can make up for failure in the home.

I don't want to fail in my home.

As it is, the blog got set to the side for a few weeks.

And now I get to show all the incredibly random things that have kept us hopping.

Like Cali's birthday party at Hollywood Connections.

Where Grandma Julie gave Cali some ice cream cones for part of her birthday present, and we then used them to back the cupcakes in and top with ice cream on sundae toppings.  

Our local grocery store had a week where they invited schools to decorate check stands and come in and do...

Well...

This:





...all through the entire store.  Over and over.

The walking around behind the mascot, not the rapping.

Though the rapping was quite good.

A few months ago I saw a groupon for Harlem Globetrotters tickets, and as the Harlem Globetrotters have been on my bucket list since I was a kid, I jumped at the chance to go.

For "bring your parent to school day" we decided to just join the girls for lunch.  We showed up with Panda Express and Subway cookies and hung out with them at the Middle School for that part of their day.

It would have been helpful if they'd all have the same lunch, but what do you?  The Man helped me study Spanish flashcards in between lunches.

A random pic of the girls tromping into church on a windy day.

As it turns out, we have all six kids going to the orthodontist.

I'm not sure how this happened since none of their parents ever had the need for orthodontia, but *sigh* I guess that doesn't matter.

The orthodontist (who is awesome by the way, if you need one hit him up here and tell him we sent you) checked out these three, thought he was done, and then was shocked when he realized the rest of his chairs were also filled with our kids.

The orthodontist has become a family outing.

I think that brings me up to date on all the little goings on.

I have a really fun roadtrip post to do, and I still have the 10k run post to do, complete with a discount run.  It has inflatable jump houses in it!  The run, not the post.  We also need to plan our Very Merry Unbirthday Tea Party for our Disneyside Home Party ( a HUGE thanks to Disney for the fun swag for that one!).

But first, a Spanish test tonight.

Then we'll get on with the rest of it.

mini golf professionals... and a few things from the weekend

Grandpa Brent and Grandma Julie wanted some quality time with The Circus, and for some odd reason Grandma Julie felt that "put put" was the way to go.

All I can say is obviously she's never been to a mini golf course with our crew before (here and here).

We met up with them at Hollywood Connections and I think, after two times trying to golf there, I can say without a doubt that it's a terrible place to golf.

Even for professionals such as ourselves.  The ricochet factor is off the charts.

This is a picture of "all the kids" as Grandpa claimed. 

And in true Circus fashion, we couldn't keep our balls out of the water.  I blame it on the Hollywood Connections ricochet factor.

In Casidee's defense, she going after Jayme's ball :)

I loathe that orange octopus.  If you looked at the link for our other golfing at Hollywood Connection's adventure, you've seen the video of me vs. the octopus.  The octopus had more points on me, but I ultimately won.  After cheating.

A lot.

but here she's going after her own.

We, here at The Circus, are highly trained miniature golf professionals.  We smack our balls repeatedly until we get them to go in the direction we want, we (as The Man calls it) "walk the dog" (i.e. drag our ball along with our clubs), we use our feet to stop misbehaving balls, and we always use our hands to stop, roll, and drop our balls.  We never keep score.

Ever.

Grandma Julie fit right in.

Grandpa Brent got frustrated, but being the calm guy that he is, he tried not to show it much, except to tell the kids to just keep going.  I think he got tired of waiting :).  We ended up being strung out over two or three holes.

No matter our expertise, we had fun.  And it most definitely was quality time spent.

Thanks Grandpa and Grandma.

In other news our weekend went too fast.  I have no idea where it went.  But a few things happened that I want to take note of.

1. Our house is gleaming sparkling from top to bottom.  All three floors.  I plan on keeping it that way... though Cali about did me in this morning when she wet the bed.  Of all the nights to wet the bed, the night before the appraiser comes would not have been the night I would have chosen. I was frantically trying to get rid of the pee smell this morning.

Any bets on how long the house stays this clean? 

Appraisal is this afternoon and kids are at school.  It will last for as long as I needed it to at any rate.

2. Yoga with my Stacy friend was fantastic.  I'm sore.  Dear Yoga, it's been far too long. 

3.  I found a long lost friend.  A very dear friend that I'm never going to lose track of again.  I'll have to post on this later, I have some pictures I want to scan in and talk about time spent with my friend. 

4.  The dogs ate rat poison.

5. 

Okay, before I move on to five I should go back and elaborate on four.
The Man and I went to the bank and then to lunch on Saturday.  All about two hours of time.  When we got home we noticed something paperish was torn up in the hallway.  West sighs, "wonder what the dogs got this time."

I'm more inquisitive as to what they've torn up. It makes me so frustrated when they eat my stuff.  So I picked it up to see what I need to mourn the loss of this time, and found that it was a d-con mouse poison box.  We flipped into panic mode, grabbed the puppy boys and raced to the emergency vet clinic which is only five minutes from our house.  We had no way of knowing if both of them had eaten it or if only one had.

Apparently only Strider had.  The vet looks at Milo (after making both dogs vomit) and says, "it's okay boy, my brother gets me into trouble all of the time too."

Poor Milo.

Stupid Strider.

The dogs are fine.  It didn't even phase Strider, the dog apparently has an iron stomach.

In the end I ended up with a chocolate covered strawberry.  We had a half hour wait for the dogs so we walked to a chocolate shop nearby.  My man loves me and bought me a strawberry :).

Okay, back to number five.

5. The pink counters survived the weekend.  Argh I need more hours in a day.  Do you think we'll lose points or gain points in the appraisal for having a kitchen that resembles a Barbie house?

The Circus Takes Hollywood Connections

I'm going to preface the night with a few words, tell you to click on the song, and then you get to look at the long line of pictures (which isn't nearly as long as it usually is).

Daily deals (or was it City Deals? I can't remember now) had a deal we just couldn't pass up.  Our "brother-in-law" Sam sent me a text telling me about the $20 for 6 for unlimited access to everything.  Score? I should say so.  Since our family has eight he told me that he was only using four and our two extra could get in with him.  I can handle that. 

Let me just say that golf was not our finest hour.  And you'll see why (the video is of that is a must see).

But let this song play while you look on, because all six of the circus were singing it at one point and it was our perfect soundtrack for the night: