So my mom gave us the movie Flicka a while back. We haven’t really watched it, cause all my boys thought it was a sissy girl movie. And they sure weren’t gonna sit and watch it…..until yesterday.

Girl loves horse, girl can’t have horse, horse gets really hurt and girl gets really sick . With a happy ending, of course! So we are at the part where the horse got hurt really bad and the girl is really sick, like she might die. Little G says, “this is really sad!”. I look over at him and there are little tears in his eyes. I turn around to where my 3 big, macho boys are sitting. Each one looks sadder than the other.  Depression and despair all over their faces.

Nothing like a girly horse movie to bring some smack talkin’ boys down!

Ahhhh yes, my friends, I am done with kids birthdays for the year!!!!! Its so nice, that its Monday and I know that this weekend I just threw my last birthday shindig for the year……

And there is the birthday girl herself. She turned 11 and had the girliest tea party!

Cucumber sandwiches, little teeny finger foods……it was girl hog heaven. Except for the fact that all these little girls, in their delicate dresses, found the boy’s guns and went outside and had a war! A war!! As my husband was leaving with the boys they were so jealous of this mysterious ‘tea party’. I told the boys that they would hate being at a tea party. Girls sitting around and talking about their dresses, rainbows, and puppies. But no, the boys apparently would have done great in the war that the dainty little girls had!

So now I get to sit back, put my feet up until next April (when my kids start having birthdays again)…….

How about that for the title of a movie? It totally caught my attention. It’s a documentary about the women of Liberia, that got together to demand peace for their country, for their children.

www.praythedevilbacktohell.com

We are home from Boise. (Did you know that Boise is very….deserty? I totally didn’t!)

So here we are after 5 hours of driving. At a lovely rest stop somewhere in Oregon. The excitement of the illusive Idaho was making all my kids giddy with happiness.

On our first day in Boise we went to this great park, right in the downtown of Boise.

This bridge took us to this way cool monument called the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial. I gotta tell ya’, it was so beautiful. With the weird aryan nation stuff, this memorial was too great.

Miss P looking at the Anne Frank statue.

And what trip to the park would be complete without a little brotherly fighting????

Please notice the “twin” shirts. Remember that I packed up my boys, so I packed all their twin clothes…hehehehe…….

The whole reason we were even in the barren, desert city was for good ole’ soccer. Out team…well, let’s just say we didn’t do so hot this tournament(even though my hubby totally thinks all the refs were paid off. Yeah, I bet, all the refs were paid off. )

Yes, that is my hubby with his hands on his head. And he was probably yelling at the “paid off” ref.

Probably one of the funnest things we did was visit the old Idaho State Penitentiary. My boys LOVED it!! They even had an arms exhibit. Like guns and swords through the years. My boys (hubby included) just about pooped their pants. Yay…guns. Ooohhh…. more guns……wow, a sword.(yeah….seriously, it was lame).

We really had a great time in Boise. Although, folks in Boise are very…comfortable with their bodies. People just kinda walked around in their bikini’s and swimming trunks. Like they went to the water, and just walked back home in their bikini’s. On our first day in Boise we are at a major intersection about to turn into our hotel, and there walking across the crosswalk was about 6 people, in bikini’s and trunks. Just chillin’ headed to Starbucks. Every time we would leave the hotel my kids would count the naked people.

So Boise thanks for having us and helping my children in math with the “counting naked people in Boise” game.  I’m sure my kids will be much better counters now!

I’m sitting here enjoying my coffee, totally procrastinating the job before me. You see tomorrow morning we head to Boise, Idaho for another soccer tournament. Originally we were to go to some big soccer tournament in California, close to Disneyland. So we were gonna make a big family vacation out of it. Go to Hollywood, Disneyland, and all things California. Then came the word that our coach decided not to go to California, but to Idaho.

“Hey kids, we aren’t going to California anymore. It would have been a really long car ride anyways. That would have been horrible, right? Instead we are going to……Idaho!!”

Of course the next question from my kids is what is there to do in Idaho (they were kinda hoping for a Disneyland in Idaho). So I paused to conjure up some great, fun Idaho knowledge. And all I came up with was potatoes and arayan nation. Then I kinda became a little worried about those nutty skinheads. Would they just stroll around Boise, with their shaved heads, like taking in the sights of Boise? Then would they see my clan and shoot us dirty looks and throw Nazi flags at us? My mind has been eased though since several very knowledgeable people have told me that as long as we don’t go up north we probably won’t see any aryan nation folks. BUT if I do see one, I’m gonna totally be like of those tourist that go into Amish country. I will soooo take pictures!

So back to today…… I am packing for our big trip to ……Boise!!! Now you might be wondering why aren’t I letting my kids pack themselves. I mean they are all big kids, very capable of putting clothes into a bag. Well, because my boys would choose outfits to wear in public, in another state, that would totally embarrass me. Like weird football jerseys(ya know, the ones with those tiny little holes all in them) with matching color soccer short. Here is an example, we have a maroon 49r’s jerseys, which always gets matched with bright red soccer shorts. They boys think that they look oh so cool, but they don’t. So I spend extra time packing up my fashion senseless boys and they don’t look like goobers walking beside me in Boise.

Ok, so off to pack……

The other night I caught Frontline on PBS. My best bud turned me onto Frontline a while ago, and its not kinda a good show, its a fabulous show. Imagine Dateline….but interesting. So the show had two separate topics, one was titled Jesus in China. It was all about Christianity in China today. They had interviews with government officials, church officials, and house church preachers. It’s only about 30 minutes long, so click here and watch.

The second part of the show was about this organization called Architecture for Humanity. Here is part of who they are (from their website),

“By tapping a network of professionals willing to lend their time and their talents to helping those who would not otherwise be able to afford their services, we support community development, help communities rebuild after disaster and provide pro bono design services to community partners around the world.

Through the power of professional design, we build safer, more sustainable and highly innovative structures–structures that become assets to their communities and ongoing symbols of the ability of people to come together to envision a better future.

Our vision is one of a world where designers innovate globally to build housing, schools, clinics and other essential infrastructure locally. We believe that this can be achieved not by replicating a design that was successful in one situation in another, but by encouraging locally-inspired designs and by enabling these solutions to be shared and freely adapted by all.”

Happy Monday to you guys!

Here in Seattle our summer is slow in coming. Its kinda like Seattle just can’t decide if it wants to be in fall or summer. So just when all us Seattlins give up on that glorious summer ever coming, it kinda just shows up. Well…its shows up, but Seattle style- 70 degrees and sunshine.

For the children of this strange weathered city, even a glimmer of sun is reason to go running outside. So yesterday I hear the hoot and hollers of my kiddos along with the best neighbor kids on the planet. They had rigged this makeshift ’shower’ outside. Cold water +barely 70 degree weather equals coldness to me, but as you will see, not to children.

Then poor Mr. O gets home from soccer practice just to be ran down like a dog ,by a pile a kids and dragged into the freezing cold shower…

As a mom of 4 boys, my boys love a show called Man vs. Wild. If anyone has never, ever seen this lovely totally boy show, its all about this guy that gets dropped in these super unfun places and has to survive. He usually only has a knife and a flint with him. All of my boys think the dude (whose real name is Bear, of all great adventure names!) is just about the coolest guy on the planet.

About 2 weeks ago an idea was planted for an all boy camping trip. My hubby and his best bud plus a couple of nephews. A total of 11 boy campers on their own. The adult men wanted an man vs. wild camping trip. They wanted to bring no food, just pocket knifes and fishing poles. They said they would hunt for their meals. *grunt, grunt*

Luckily for the husbands they have fabulously smart, intelligent, helpful wives that thought bringing food would actually be a good idea. They could look at that food as a plan B, just in case no squirrels were able to be hunted.

Yesterday the boys returned from this testosterone filled camping trip. There were so many stories, I’m not even sure which ones to share. But here are some of my favorites…

• Pooing in the middle of the bush, because sweet boy did not want to walk to the bathroom. He cleaned with sticks…..
• Breakfast consisted of eggs, bacon, sausage, hamburgers, and hot dogs.
• 36 sodas were drank in a couple of hours.
• And I know this one is a given, but there was no hygiene of any kind. No baths, deodorant, or tooth brushing. Just a whole lot of boys al naturale.

Truly, though, they had such a good time its crazy. And my best bud and I are pretty sure that the dads had an even better time than all of the kids put together! I am so thrilled that there are great men in the lives of all the these boys that they truly enjoy spending time with the kids. I know that my boys, will be better men with these strong men to look up to.

So here are some pictures of the stankiest camping trip ever!! All pictures are courtesy of Mr. O.

(this last picture I stuck in, cause my hubby said this is the picture of their campsite after they had “cleaned up a little”. Hummmm……yeah…I wonder how nasty that bad boy was before the picture?)

“I will show you how to waste your life.  Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who “took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51.  Now they live Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball, and collect shells.” At first when I read this I thought it might be a joke.  A spoof on the American Dream.  But it wasn’t.  Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life-your one and only precious, God-given life- and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: “Look, Lord. See my shells.” That is a tragedy.  And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream.  Over against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life.”

-John Piper from Don’t Waste Your Life

So I just found out that tomorrow on Father’s Day, for every frosty bought at Wendy’s, Wendy’s will donate 50 cents to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. So its Father’s Day, go treat your special man to a yummy frosty.

uuuummmmm…..can’t you already taste the yummy frostiness???