She is AMAZING.

Tonight I had to go help set up for Relay For Life and Ellery came with me. She could have easily run off with her friend Asjha, but instead those two girls helped with everything, it really wouldn't have gone as well as it did if they hadn't been there to help.

Tonight she absolutely amazed me. She is growing up way too fast and she is becoming more and more independent. I hope she continues to be a kind, generous, spunky little girl. I love her more than she will ever know.

Show me the money.

I want to make sure that Ellery is reading through the summer, so i came up with a plan that will encourage her to read. She wants to shop at the store Justice for her back to school clothes, so I told her for every chapter book she reads I would give her a dollar to spend at Justice. I made a sheet with 50 lines to write each book she reads. I was thinking $50 bucks to Justice is perfect, I would end up spending the money anway (don't tell her that) and she is reading through the summer. So she immediately starts reading a book and 45 minutes later she has a book finished, $1 dollar to spend. Then she heads upstairs for a while and comes back down, book number 2 finished. She asked if I could print out 3 more sheets because she is going to read 200 books = $200 dollars to Justice. She is an ambitious girl so we shall see where we end up come August! I secretly hope she does it!! It would be worth every penny to see her read that many books!

Lance Armstrong in the making....

On Saturday Brian played softball in Atwater. The kids and I had big plans that day too, okay not really, so we lounged around, watched some TV and then Ellery my little gardener asked me to call Grandma Shirley to see if she could go out to her house and help dig up and plant flowers. As luck would have it G-ma Shirl was just heading out to work in her gardens. So Ellery changed her clothes and Calvin and I loaded our bikes up in the yukon and we headed out. While Ellery was 'helping' grandma, Cal and I were going to bike around the lake. He decided that we needed to stop at everyone park along the way and play on each and every piece of playground equipment.

As we were rounding the corner to head on back, he all of a sudden veered to the left into road, I told him to stay on the right side of the road so he didn't get hit, then he did it again. So I decided to just bike right along side him, and then next thing you know he has run into the front tire of my bike. He goes flying off his bike. Before I can even say anything to him, he immediately turns around and says to me with his eyes wide open 'I wasn't biking with my eyes closed.' I asked him if he was lying and he then confessed that yes he had been biking with his eyes closed, but just a little bit.

So that explained the swerving into the wrong side of the road and running into me.

Fishing for Compliments.

My boy started T-Ball a few days ago. He was very excited to get started, almost nightly he would ask if that was the night it started and each time I had to disappoint him and tell him no. So FINALLY that night came. He made sure he had his ball pants, his Twins jersey, cleats, Twins hat and glove. He even packed his ball bag..you know just in case they didn't have bats there.



So Ellery and I watched him for the allotted one hour and head home for supper. We had just started eating when he says to me:

'Well, don't you have something to say to me.'

I am pretty sure I gave him a look like what the heck are you talking about, so I say to him, 'use your napkin'.

He says 'No, you are supposed to tell me I did a good job at T-ball tonight.'

So I told him, 'I did tell you that at T-ball tonight but you must have been too busy chatting with your T-ball friends to hear me'.

To which he replies 'oh'.

Yep, it starts at a very young age. Boys, who will grow up into men who aren't good listeners.

Cats and Dogs.

These two have been fighting like cats and dogs. It is RIDICULOUS. There is screaming, lots of yelling 'mooooommmmmm', and sometimes even a bit of slapping. I am pretty sure that I never fought like this with my brothers and sister. I NEVER tied my brother to a chair in the basement and made him play school or eat cherrios and water (my mom wouldn't let me bring milk downstairs, so it is partly her fault). My brother (Zack) NEVER constantly would walk around with a finger inches from my face and say 'I'm not touching you'. My sister NEVER needed to sleep in my room every night on the floor. Nope we got along PERFECTLY. Right mom (if you are reading this)?

I guess it's just part of having a sibling, there are very very good times and then there are very very very, did I mention very, bad times.

But at the end of the day, they do love each other...just don't ask them if they do, that would gross them out.