Friday! Friday! Friday!

• My dad is taking my mom and I out for breakfast. I suspect in appreciation of not making him an accessory to murder while we were camping.

• The kids have completed their first week of school. They love their teachers and are adjusting really well to being the new kids. I'm so proud of them. They just jumped right in and didn't even want me to hang around.

• I love Californication. That show is hilarious. It is pretty risque' so if you're easily offended, it's probably not for you. But my sense of humor is pretty sick and twisted, so I like it.

• My nephews go back to their moms this afternoon for the next week. They were here for TEN days. Ten very long days.

• Tuesday was my 9 year anniversary of the day I completely lost my mind and got married. H and I exchanged high fives and told each other "good game!"

• Said about the chicken we were having for dinner by my nephew, "it tastes like beaver!" Not surprisingly my brother thought that was hysterical.

Advice please!

What would you do if someone was letting their children swim in the pool naked and you knew the kids were urinating in it constantly? The pool is a kiddie pool, not a built in and definately not chlorinated. It really grosses me out and I hate having to tell my kids that they can't go swimming because it would be like swimming in a toilet. Not that they aren't peeing in the pool when they have swimsuits on, but I'm just saying. It's gross. I'm pretty sure my kids aren't peeing in the pool. At least I hope not, they're 7 and 5. They should know better. Also, these other kids have been told it's ok to pee outside and now the baby is using my mother's flower pots as toilets. Lord have mercy! It is just pure craziness around here.

We went camping last weekend. I will say this, 5 children in a trailer can be a really rough and loud weekend. Extremely close quarters and no idea that jumping off the top bunk is really, really bad can make things a little tense. When we were out and about though, the kids had a blast. We rode the Yosemite Sugar Pine Railroad on Friday and it was really cool. I think my dad got a bigger kick out of it than the kids. Hopefully I can get the pictures downloaded off the camera soon and see if I got any really good ones. Saturday we spent the day at Bass Lake and the kids were swimming all day long. It was really nice to sit there by the water and watch the kids play and visit with my parents. That was probably the best part of the trip. I love the water. Either the ocean or a lake. I find it very relaxing. We're still catching up on our rest. Even though we went to bed every night around 9pm and woke up around 7am, we're still completely exhausted.

TGIF

One of my nephews made his own fountain in the pool the other day. Well, he was the fountain. Ewwwww!

The boys go back to their mom's this evening and my parents are going out, so the house will be relatively quiet tonight. H mentioned possibily going out to dinner. That would be nice. Even though I only have to cook maybe two or three times a week. That's one of the nice things about so many people being in the house. There's lots of people to share the cooking duties with, and the cleaning. I haven't been responsible for just keeping my room clean since I was a teenager. It's awesome!

I'm waiting to hear back about a job I applied for with the Superior Court here in town. They get all the holidays off don't they?

I have a headache, a HUGE headache

You know it's hard living with a whole other family. It's really hard when the other kids aren't being raised the same way that you are raising yours and you're trying to keep your kids from running wild. Unfortunately because of where we lived before I haven't really been around my nephews much so they definately don't want to listen to me. AT ALL. I understand it's been pretty rough for them. My brother and his wife are divorced and I'm sure everyone knows the impact divorce has on young children. Plus the boys spend one week with their mother and then one week here with my brother. All the back and forth isn't helping. It's caused a lot of confusion and makes things really hard for the boys and my parents. My parents are doing most of the work. My brother has his own set of problems, but that's a whole other post. I came home from taking Mikel and La Katie to the zoo and my brother was asleep on the floor and the older two boys were outside in the pool swimming. Naked. The pool is just a little kiddie pool, but still accidents can happen. The baby was asleep. The middle boy came in shortly after I came home and told me he was hungry. Now policy is, according to my mother, that I tell the boys to ask their dad to get them something to eat. Because really if we do it every time they ask, my brother would just live his life footloose and fancy free and wouldn't ever do anything for them. So I told him to ask his dad, who really shouldn't have been asleep any way and of course my brother told him no and didn't even attempt to get his son anything to eat. Then the baby woke up and he was hungry too! Seriously, I can barely handle my own kids. No way is having three more going to help. Plus I'm hoping that at some point my brother will get his own place and raise his kids on his own. I don't intend to live here forever either. I love my parents, I just don't want to live with them. I'd like to have my own house again. I'd LOVE to have some privacy. But I digress, it's driving me nuts. I feel bad for my nephews. To have all this crap thrust upon them. The constant change and upheaval. I have to wonder what sort of damage if any that it's doing. How must it feel to have two parents that aren't taking care of you the way they should?