Have you seen this movie? I've watched it three times now. I love this movie. It's a modern day fairy tale about a girl who was born with a pig's face. Her great great grandfather was cursed, causing her this deformity, and the only cure is to find a "blue blood" man to marry her and remove the curse. This movie is about loving yourself the way you are. It's a really good movie, not the normal woman needs man kind of thing.

I let DD watch even though some themes are not the best for kids. She's having issues with her arms since they are hairyer than most girls' arms. Some kids have asked her why she's so hairy, one said she looks like her dad. Yeah, that was at church, no less. The VBS teacher's daughter, hmm. Anyway, back on subject, she has talked about this subject with friends before. She told me her friend at school used a pink thing that she rubbed on her arms to remove unwanted hair. She actually said that. We've talked about what makes people special and their differences and how she's a beautiful person no matter what her arms look like. We talked about what makes a good friend and that we certainly don't have to continue to sit with someone when they make rude comments about our features even though she's the only person we know there. Guess what? She made a new friend after that who really liked her. As far as I know, she never noticed her arms. She also got the American Girl book "Real Beauty" which is helping her to appreciate everything about herself. One part had her pick the feature she likes the least about herself, her hairy arms of course, and write something positive about it.

My daughter really loved this film. I think she understood the idea of being beautiful even if you're different. She also learned to love yourself no matter what anyone else says or thinks of you. Girls need more shows like this that stand up for girls rather than making them stupid creatures who do whatever it takes to get the boy and must be very beautiful or be rejected. Seriously, who can live up to that, anyway?

{ Thankful in July }

31. paella.
30. the movie Penelope. Love it!
29. catching up with old friends.
28. sales at the mall.
27. DS's cute love of baseball.
26. tubing fun on the lake.
25. purple potatoes.
24. pool slides.
23. homemade chocolate fudge sauce.
22. mom's night out.
21. Gap backpacks on sale.
20. honest friends and chic fil a.
19. sandcastles and seals.
18. time for just hanging out with the family.
17. My brother. Happy Bday to you!
16. I got a skirt I've had my eye on at Kohl's for $8!
15. swimming lessons! The kids are doing great!
14. a very thorough allergy consultation. Maybe this one will help me?
13. VBS at church.
12. San Diego.
11. the pancake king is back in business.
10. the city parks and recs department and their cool, free balloon glow night.
9. play time at the park. It won't be long before the kids are too big for this.
8. Radio Shack had my lightweight cheap tripod that I broke on the glacier. So happy to have that puppy back!
7. we got in to see the doctor for DD who has an ear infection and bronchitis.
6. a day to rest and recover.
5. spending time in the white mountains with family. Short but sweet.
4. homemade ice cream, fireworks, family. What a great country we live in.
3. a call from DS's school friend today. He needed that.
2. my oversized washing machine.
1. a safe return from our Canada trip.

{ Wonderment in a Web }

After dinner tonight, my husband called the kids outside to see this really cool thing.

It was fascinating to watch her spin around spiraling toward the center to complete her web. I'll call her Charlotte. I can't wait to see if she catches any flies. She can totally stay if she eats the flies!

{ Friends }

These girls have known each other since preschool. We lose touch now and again. It was so good to get the girls together today to play with their American Girl dolls. They played with their dolls for a good three hours! I tried to get DS to bake some blueberry muffins with me. Didn't get much help, but the kids decided it would be fun to bake some doll sized (stuffed deer sized in DS's case) muffins for their doll restaurant. Too cute.

{ Heard Around the House }

DS: When clouds are mad, they thunderstorm; and when they are sad, they cry.

{ Tubing on the Lake }

We decided to get a tube for our boating trip to El Capitan Lake today. Guess who wanted on right away.

He's thinking about it while she squeals and screams with delight.

He's on! Will he stay?

After a false start, he decided to go for it and loved it. He kept telling us to go faster. He was really disappointed when we couldn't go fast in the no wake zone. On the other hand, I felt much better in the no wake zone. It's a little unnerving to see your babies on a tube at the end of a 60 foot line hoping they don't fall off.

{ The Bountiful Harvest }

All organic, all local, all delicious. What did you eat today?

{ Ants !!! }

It's our "favorite" time of year again. Invasion of the ants has begun! Ugh, it feels like they're crawling all over me, even though they're not. We just need to get them at the source and they'll be gone until next year. This seems to be a yearly thing here in southern California. The comforting news is that everyone else experiences this, too. It's just a fact of life here. These are not biting ants, so it's not all bad. Just really annoying.

Today was the last day of swimming lessons. DS's class played Marco Polo, and DD's class had a bunch of relay races. Then at the end they got to go down the water slide. DS's class didn't get to go on the slide, but next time he'll be in level 3 and will get his chance.

{ Swimming Summer }

The kids have been in swimming lessons the past two weeks. Oh yeah, my daughter's swimming with the big dogs in level 4/5 now. I still think she's little, but she's swimming 40 minutes each day, doing laps almost the entire time, and learning all the different strokes. Here's my son with his teacher.


DD doing the freestyle.

DD doing the backstroke.

Setting up for the dive.

Beautiful dive. No belly flops here.

These pictures are from yesterday. DD doing the butterfly stroke.

DS had to sit on the wall because he kept swimming away from the teacher when she was working with other kids. Before you read too much into this, it happens with a lot of other kids, too. Don't think it's DS being just horrible.

DS is one of the few in level 2 who can swim to the rope and back.

I just thought this was a cool shot with all the splashes everywhere.

DD's teacher giving her some pointers.

DD was not happy the day she had to swim backstroke and these flags were not up. She kept stopping to look behind her to make sure she wasn't going to hit the wall.

DS watching DD while she finishes up her class which is ten minutes longer than his. Good times.

{ Trust: A Work in Progress }

The kids did the dishes this afternoon for me. What a relief to finally let them at it without feeling the need to stand over them the entire time. Some dishes end up on the wrong shelf. Some are upside down. These things are alright. I just quietly sneak in and right them.

Today a wine glass was broken. I heard the tinker of falling glass from the laundry room where I was getting some cleaning supplies. I followed my first instinct to run in there and grab the kids away from the shards. My daughter immediately started to cry. It wasn't the broken glass, nor a cut from the shards, but my reaction that caused the crying. My lack of trust was thick in the air. I didn't want the kids to get hurt, but I managed to do so just the same.

The kids have broken enough glass in their lifetimes to know to be careful of the shards. Neither of them was cut today. But by running in to save them, I indicated to them that they were not capable of handling the situation. Oh what a tangled web a mother can weave when she tries to keep her kids out of harm's way. I want to rewrite this episode. Here's how it should have gone.

I am in the laundry room getting some cleaning supplies. The kids are chattering away, organizing their dishwashing efforts. Suddenly, a crash of glass and the tinker of broken glass flying. Silence. I walk around the corner to appraise the situation. She looks at me for reassurance. Nobody makes a move. I ask calmly, "Is everyone ok?" Yes, they say, a glass fell and broke. I ask, "What should we do?" she says we should carefully leave the kitchen to get some shoes on and a broom. "Ok, let's do it," I reply. The kids work with my help to clean up the broken glass. They are very careful not to cut themselves. When the glass is all picked up, everyone is happy and a valuable lesson has been learned. The kids are proud of how they handled the broken glass crisis. Trust is increasing with every word and every action.

I vow that next time I will keep my cool. I will act casual and smile. I will allow the children to think for themselves. I will not lecture or yell or remove them from the situation. I will trust that everything will be ok.

{ Sandcastles and Such }

A little sand castle competition started off our day today. We had to park at the high school and walk a ways to the beach. The heat and the crowds were kind of crazy. There was no shade unless you brought your own, which we didn't since we were planning on walking around to see the castles.



A sand castle artist's tools. Just add water.

Mom, I want to go home now.

An interesting take on today's castle.

Cool octopus thingy.

A couple more traditional castles.

We had hot dogs and nachos for lunch, then headed over to La Jolla. We found a parking spot near the cove, and headed to the beach.

Sweet life guard station.

We headed to the children's beach, complete with potty. When we were finished, we headed down to the beach and saw this cute little guy hanging out on the beach.

This kids spotted some of his breathren going for a swim.

Then we headed back for the rocky shore where we started. The tide was coming in!


My son found this kelp and held onto it like a lifeline. Good thing he didn't really need it. It wouldn't have stood up to the job.

It's so much fun to get splashed by the incoming tide!

{ Vacation Bible School }

The kids finished up a week of VBS today. They learned about the parts of the mass this year. Today they ended in a mass and then a little show where the different grades sang songs they had practiced all week. It was really cute. The kids enjoyed it, and I'm glad it's over since we've been running all week with VBS, swim lessons and piano lessons.

{ San Diego }

Today we went to San Diego to try to escape the heat. It was supposed to be 76 degrees. It was definitely hotter, at 83 degrees and muggy it felt more like 100 degrees. We ate lunch at Anthony's and stopped to say "hi" to the tin man out front.

Then, we visited the Maritime museum. It was a lot of fun to go on all of those old ships. Here's the canon on the pirate ship, HMS Surprise.

One of the pirates was stalking the kids with her water gun. Argh. The kids were delighted to play that game.


My son loves to stalk pirates. This one caught on pretty fast.

We took the bay cruise around San Diego Bay on the Pilot, the museum's smallest craft.

We toured on two different submarines. One of them was a russian submarine, the B-39, that was comissioned to keep watch on the Midway, which is an American air craft carrier now it's own museum just a few yards away. Ironic.


We looked at the surrounding scenery in the USS Dolphin, a smaller submarine.

We loved the Star of India, which still sets sail once per year.

We finished up with the Maritime around 3:00, so, we decided to pop by the New Children's Museum before it closed. What we didn't realize was that it was Target free day, all admission was free so tons of kids were there and no parking to be found. When we finally did score a parking spot and head into the museum we only had 20 minutes before they closed. Yup, they close at 4:00 on Sundays. The kids played the entire time and then we had to leave.

We weren't ready to call it a day, so we headed to the zoo to see the new Elephant Oddessey. It was really cool. This big guy doused his entire body in the fountain. We can't wait to go back when it's cooler with less people, so we can linger and learn more about the amazing creatures on exhibit here, as well as their prehistoric american ancestors. What a great exhibit!