When it got time for me to take pictures of them in front of the sign, Taylor informed us that “When I am thirteen you are NOT taking pictures of me”. At that point me and her mom, Shannon just laughed and said Good luck with that!

We are pretty excited that Taylor is in the G/T (gifted & talented) program full time this year. Last year, she was only in for science and went back and forth. She never really complained about it to us, but I know it sometimes got to her when she would miss something “cool” in her other class. And, she is SO excited about the 4th grade GT teacher. (Not to mention he is a hottie!) He seemed like a great guy when we met him for the 45 seconds we were there. Aaliyah’s teacher is younger than Mrs. Lewis, last year but seems to really like the kids.

Meet the teacher night is this week, so we will have much more to say after that.

Though, I am going to comment on it here today…

These companies out there that are “making a difference” and “going green” are full of crap.  Not that the one I am talking about today has actually said those in any advertisements, but pretty much all of the big ones out there do say that in some form or they will have all the Hippie freaks knocking down their doors.

Today I’m speaking about receipts.  Receipts that are five miles long.  Then, the additional coupons that print next to the receipts.  Receipts that have logo’s on them that are over an inch tall.  Receipts that want you to call into an automated system to learn if you won $5000.  (Let me save you the time, no one ever wins those)…..  WASTEFUL receipts.

Adam and I went to pick up a couple of things this weekend.  We needed new air filters for the a/c unit, so we stopped into Lowe’s.  We bought ONE pack of air filters.  The receipt for this ONE item we got???  OVER 14 inches!!!  It was actually one tick mark before the 1/4 mark point.  It was a 16 mark measuring tape and I really can’t figure out what that would be…  So, if you know how to read a measuring tape, let me know.  But, yeah…  14 and one tick mark before a quarter inches long!  WHY?  Why does Lowe’s have to print an almost 14 1/4 inch receipt for ONE item????  We also went to Walgreens.  We bought four things at Walgreens.  That receipt is 12 and one tick before 3/4.  Much better than Lowe’s considering it is shorter AND we got three more items there.  I guess Walgreens needs a big “Bravo!” for saving our environment in such a way.

So, to conclude…  I’m not an environmental nut, I love to recycle and American stores need to stop printing receipts that are 4 miles long.

Rant concluded!

Thursday we brought McDonald’s up when we picked them up and we played in the adjacent park for a while.  I had a lot of stale bread and buns so we fed the ducks and turtles too.  There were lots of baby turtles and four baby ducks.  Of course, I forgot the camera!

We took them yesterday to edfaHawaiian Falls and we all had a blast!  It is a great family park that really caters to kids and them having fun.  It is a little smaller than the big water parks but still didn’t have to wait in long lines.

The unfortunate thing came at the beginning (and carried over to the end and beyond).  We ran out of sunscreen.  I got everyone else sprayed down, but didn’t get all of my arms and back.  I am a LOBSTER today!  Well, more like a spotted lobster, because we tried to get more out of the bottle and it just spit out at me.  You can see the lovely saddest excuse for sunscreen application ever pictures here:[[Show as slideshow]]

In other news, Adam’s job is going great.  Granted, he worked from home all last week which was a treat.  He will be back to going to the office early and staying late for the next month to month and a half, at least.  Once they get the new product launched, we hope to go back to “regular” hours.

The kids are with their mom this week, then we only have the month of August before we go back to every other weekend.  We have loved having them here so much!!  It has been great for all of us to spend so much time together.  August will be clothes shopping (Taylor’s least favorite thing to do).  We already did supplies, so we are all good there!  They start school on the 24th.

So, until then……

For those on either of our Facebook pages, Adam got a new job.  Actually started today.  It is really exciting for him (and us).

He had been at his last job for four and a half years.  It is the place we met, so still has special meaning to us.  Remeber last year, when I decided to quit coincidentally he got an offer for another company.  He gave his notice and they countered with a raise and a new position.  He was really excited about the position.  It was as a Software Architect, which means he got to be the designer for how they wrote the software.  Which is what he really wanted to do.

Well, as things go, it didn’t really work that way.  They gave him the title, the responsibility, the blame, but didn’t really allow him to make the changes he wanted or needed to make to make the software they were writing better.

So, we were going to wait till the kids go back to school for the summer and I was going to get a job.  He didn’t want to change jobs with me not having one, just in case it didn’t work out.  Well, as our luck has it, an opportunity fell into his lap.

It is risky though.  The company he is going to has a “reputation” out there in the developer world for not being managed all that great.  The owner has a propensity to go in and fire entire teams because they did something he didn’t like.

Well, about a month ago they hired a new CIO and Director of Development.  They got rid of the entire development team.  Which wasn’t hard because they were mostly contractors.  So, with that there was lots of inconsistencies in the software they were writing.

So, to make the LONG story short, the new CIO and DoD hired Adam to come in and they are going to completely rewrite the whole thing.  No re-working, re-writing, which is HUGE…  No fixing other people’s mistakes, just doing it right from the get go.  He is SO, SO, SO excited.  The only downside is the deadline to get it done is September 1st.  The CIO also seems to have tamed the owner too!

Anyway…  with all that going on, he has been working at night to get ready to start this job.  We have the kids in camp next week and they are really excited about that.  I’ll post next week and let you know how it goes!!

The absolute best part of the night was the fireworks show.  I love fireworks.  I would watch every 4th of July show out there, if I could!  But, I really have to say that this was one of the best shows I have ever seen.  They did it correagraphed to music, which is “normal” these days, but this was really well done.  It was amazing…

Laura was sitting close to me and she got a little scared as soon as the first two big booms happened.  I told her that the stuff floating down was Tinkerbell’s fairy dust.  She loved that and once she saw the purple ones, she was happy as a clam!

Laura spent the night with the kids and had a ball playing with Aaliyah.

Sunday we went to Babe’s Chicken House for Caleb’s 2nd birthday.  That is always fun and yummy.  We rounded out the weekend by going grocery shopping at Super Target.  Nothing better than that, right?

In other news, we got the girls new bedding.  I will take a picture and post it soon.  They loved it!!

Anyway, it is my neice, nephew and brother’s birthdays.  And, Adam’s nephew.  I think they all had a great birthday.

It is also my new future nephew-in-law’s birthday.  That’s right, one of my nieces, Kristi got engaged this month!!!  We are so excited for them.  Now we have to plan another trip to Minnesota!!

So, besides birthdays, we celebrated Father’s Day this month.  The girls bought Adam geeky t-shirts, which he actually picked out.  It made it much easier that way.

We have decided that after the kids go back to school I will for sure start looking for a job.  I really like staying home, but we want to get some of our bills knocked out.  Hopefully, when we get some of them taken care of I can convince Adam to let me quit again!  LOL

Today was a weird day.  Farrah Fawcett passed away.  Not surprising, really.  She had cancer for two years.  I was never a huge Charlie’s Angels fan, but she seemed nice enough.  Then, the shocker of all, Michael Jackson died.  Suddenly.  I don’t know why, but this really “freaked” me out.  “Freaked” isn’t the right word, but the only one I can think of right now.  I was so taken aback.  Not that I was a huge MJ fan or had all his albums or anything, it was just so unexpected.  Even though he was a freak, I think deep inside, he was still a scared little boy that didn’t really get to live a normal childhood and had to act out once he got the money to do so.  I wish them both peace in their restings.

It is funny…  I remember when my dad passed I was telling my mom that he was having a martini and playing cards.  Probably went to go check out Elvis or someone like that.  She chuckled.  Not that my dad liked MJ’s music…  He was more into elevator music, but I would think that he and mom are looking him up after he gets checked in at the pearly gates.  Such an innovator.  He did so much for music.  He will be missed.

Not much else going on…  Adam’s grandfather is having some health issues so Adam and I had some “serious” type conversions tonight.  We are going to Allen’s Fourth of July celebration, Allen USA Saturday.  Got the kids all access wrist bands to the kid’s zone.  Hopefully we won’t melt in the heat!!!

So yeah, AT&T has been really sucking lately. So bad that Adam and I have started keeping track of our outages so when we do move to another company we can tell them we want money back for the time we had no internet.

Oh, and did I mention that since we only have one router coming to our house that feeds both internet and cable TV that when the internet is out, cable is out too??? That is how much we are not liking AT&T right now. I now know what cave people went through with no TV or internet. Sure, they didn’t have electricity as a whole, but TV and internet??? That has to be more important than lights, refrigerators, and running water, right??? No? Just me thinking that, huh? Gee, thanks for backing me up on that!

So, I have started the painful task of moving my email to GMail. Yes, my friends Koree & Eric were right YEARS ago to not have an email address tied to an internet provider. I know. You were right. You may gloat in your awesomeness now. Are you done now? Good, I’ll continue my rantings…

I say it is a painful task only because I am newsletter, mailing list, coupon site Queen. Adam gets such a kick out of going to a restaurant or somewhere that says “sign up for our mailing list today!” Because he knows I will sign up. So, that means I get about 40 “Hey! We are having a sale or some other crap to tell you so you will buy our stuff” emails a day. And, I love it! I like seeing new products. I like getting the email that says “Only 1000 people will get a sample of our new product, don’t you want to give all your personal data to get it??”!

So, it usually takes me at least two months to fully move all my emails over. Because some of these places aren’t hustling themselves out every other day, it might take a month or two to get all of them in so I can go to the website and either say I changed addresses or, for other bad sites, unsubscribe as this email address and subscribe again with that email address. Those websites are dumb. Just thought I would say it, cause I know you were all thinking it anyway.

SOOOOOOO>>>>> What this all means is, my new email address is manello410@gmail.com. I will be sending an email too so those that aren’t cool like you reading this first will be on the band wagon of my awesomeness. I mean, will be able to get in touch with me too.

When I was first out on my own I lived with some people that had a house infested with roaches. My roommate and his buddies thought it was funny as all get out to throw them at me. I did not think it was so humorous. I put boric acid all over the place. I actually could hear them scurrying when I sprayed it down the back of the counters. EW!

So, we have seen some roaches / water bugs. We also had a bout of tiny black ants for about a week too. So, as chance would have it we had a door to door pest control company salesman come by Saturday. Adam thought it was a good time to go ahead and do it.

Before I finish this story, I have to say that Adam is always getting onto me because I can’t tell sales people no. I will tell a sales person this isn’t a good time to talk, have them call me tomorrow and then not answer the phone. I just hate telling people no. So, for Adam to tell this guy yes, I was surprised. But, happy he did it.

The guy came yesterday. Today I have picked up 7 dead bugs inside, saw another one I haven’t gotten yet and several outside on the porches. So, I guess it is all working. Hope it keeps up.

We had really bad storms come through tonight. I love storms. I love the thunder and lightening and black clouds. I love watching the radar on the news and seeing all the dark colors. I don’t however like tornados. We had one about 10 miles from us tonight (according to the news). That is really not that close in the grand scheme of things, but close enough. This, of all nights, Adam worked late. So, he got home JUST as the sky opened up above us and started pouring. I was worried the whole time he was on his way home because he was on the highway the strongest part of the storm seemed to be going through. So, I was happy when he got home.

About 5 minutes after he got home the power went out. We ate in the dark and opened the blinds to get a little light in the living room. We sat there as it got darker and darker. And, hotter and hotter. So, around an hour and a half of sitting in the dark we packed up and came to a hotel. Picked the right one too, the girl who checked us in said four other hotels have called her asking if they have power because they are out and want to send customers over here. So, we probably got here just in time before they sold out! Lucky us!!!

So, I am not a sleeper-inner. I have always wanted to be. When I was a teenager and all my friends were sleeping till noon in the summer, I was never that kid. Now, I am a GREAT napper. I nap like there has no one napped in the history of the world. But, I just can’t sleep in.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t make that habit die!!!