The longest day in history!

Have you ever had one of those days that just seems to go on forever? Well, I had one yesterday. Not that it was a bad day. Marty and Austin are out of town so that left me with only 3 kids at home. I had to work since it was Saturday morning. My 9:15 class was packed so a few weeks ago, I made this really dumb decision to add an 8:30am class. What was I thinking? Oh well. It just means I have to get up a little earlier. But since Marty is out of town, I had to take the kids with me to work. My alarm went off at 5:55am like it always does but I pushed the snooze button for almost an hour! Then I got ready, read my email and told the boys to get dressed. Then I had the unpleasant task of dragging Lauren out of bed. We were all ready and headed to work at 8:00. One of the kids snapped this picture on the highway.

The kids were really good while I taught my two classes so I took them to Chili's for lunch as a treat. Of course, they noticed right away that the 2 banks right next to Chili's were having a big grand opening celebration with bounce houses, firetrucks, balloon animals, a rock wall, etc. So I told them that we could go for a few minutes after we ate lunch. Lauren immediately found the face painting booth and got a pretty little flower on her cheek. I thought it was cute.

Right next to the face painting booth was the 24-Hour Fitness booth. I filled out an entry form to win something so that we could spin the wheel. Prizes were t-shirts, key chains, day passes to the gym, etc. The wheel must have had about 30 spots on it and the grand prize was a 6 month membership to 24-Hour Fitness. Well, I let Nick spin the wheel for me and what do you think it landed on? That's right! We won the grand prize! So, lucky for me, the gym isn't even built yet. But when it opens in November, I'm going to be really in shape! LOL! Actually, it's right on my way to work so there really won't be any reason for me not to go.

After the fun at the booths, all of the kids wanted to attempt the rock wall. They have tried them a few times in the past but none had ever made it to the top and rung the bell. Here is Lauren's attempt. You have to realize that Lauren has the patience of a gnat! She looked cute in all of the gear and went up a few rocks and then jumped off. She was done and wanted to go back to the face painting booth.

So while Nick and Mackenzie had their climbing turns, Lauren was doing this to her face! ROFL! I thought the flower was cute but this butterfly was just awful! However, those of you who know Lauren know that she does everything her way and doesn't care what other people think! I guess this is a good thing.

Back to the rock wall... Mackenzie's turn. He is a little guy with lots of determination. Up, up, up he went and rang the bell. He's a money-oriented guy like his daddy and asked if he could have a dollar for making it to the top. I said, "sure." And then he went up another time and is expecting 2 dollars now!

That was a lot of work so he had to get a big drink! That's some high quality H2O! (Has anyone else watched The Waterboy with Adam Sandler a million times? Cracks me up every time I see it.)

And now it's Nick's turn. Nick is my very cautious kid. He really, really wanted to get to the top. I think he tried about 10 times. But he got too hot and just didn't make it. However, he did get further than he has in other times he has tried. I give him the big heart award!

Obviously, the whole time the kids were climbing, I was standing at the base of the rock wall taking pictures. After all of the kids came down, the guys that were helping everyone with the gear told me it was my turn. Um ... I have never climbed a rock wall before but it seemed like fun. I was wearing flip flops so I went barefoot (I hate shoes anyway!). Surprisingly, it was pretty easy. So I thought I was done. But they made me go up again so they could time me and take my picture. I made it in 32 seconds.

After all of the fun at the grand openings, we finally went home. Lauren wanted to spend the night at a friend's house so I packed her up and drove her over there and that left just me, Nick and Mackenzie (my two!). I say that they are "my two" because Marty and I always joke about the kids. Lauren and Austin are just like him and Nick and Mackenzie are just like me. It's so true in so much that they do.

After we dropped Lauren off at her friend's house, we headed to the pool. We have had a couple of really nice days with no rain! It was in the upper 90's so it was good swimming weather. We stayed at the pool for a couple of hours and then went home and waited for Mom to come over. She came to babysit while I went scrapping with some friends.

I am NOT a paper scrapper so I mainly went to eat, drink and chat with my friends. I did manage to get one page scrapped in the 4 hours I was there but it is terrible! There were 6 of us and we laughed so much! Somehow we got to talking hot country music artists. And then they wouldn't shut up about Keith Anderson. I have heard his music before but had never seen a picture. (But I have now ... look to your left!) A couple of them had been to his concert recently and told me I had to go to KeithAnderson.com. Somehow this turned to talk of tattoos, belly rings, tan lines, and other unmentionable things. Don't you see the correlation here? I guess you had to be there.

I actually got home fairly early. I think it was only about 10:30. Then Mom and I talked for a little while. I went to bed a little after midnight after the longest day in history!

I will leave you with a Keith Anderson video: Picking Wildflowers.