It's over

The heat wave is officially over. We've dropped something like 25 degrees in 2 days! It was high 90's a couple days ago, mid 80's yesterday, and today is supposed to be low 70's! The one nice thing about Washington is that the dreadful heat never lasts too long!

I'd love to post pictures of my kids in the cute little pool we got, but I still haven't figured out why it's not loading my pictures!

Fizzy joys: sunblock, lemonade, ice water, popsicles, and ceiling fans!

Heat Wave!

In case you hadn't heard, we're in the middle of a heat wave! In fact, the National Weather service has issued a heat advisory for the area in effect until tonight. We had record high temperatures yesterday, though I never did hear what that ended up to be, and I think today may have been even hotter. My neighbor said it got up to 97 today! Our temperatures may not be as hot as yours, but for an area that isn't used to the heat and has no air conditioning, it's pretty miserable.

Tyler's birthday

Yesterday was Tyler's 5th birthday! I can't believe he's 5 years old already. He was so funny. He would walk around the house singing Happy Birthday to himself, and everywhere we went he invited people to his birthday party.
We went to Safeway to let him pick out a birthday cake, and to our surprise, they had a Spiderman birthday cake right there in their cooler! He was so excited. But then we went to get balloons, and they were out of the Spiderman birthday balloon. :( But he was happy enough with the Spongebob Squarepants balloon, so it all worked out.
For his birthday party, we went to Chuck E. Cheese's. We must be crazy, right? On a Tuesday night, it was surprisingly empty. He didn't get to invite tons of friends like we usually do for birthday parties at home, and it turned out the ones he did invite weren't able to come anyway, but we still had a great time. Our neighbor Nathan came with us, and Grammy and Grampy met us there. We gave each kid a little cup of tokens and just let them run crazy! The pizza was better than normal (not that the kids care) and they never had to wait to play a game they wanted. I think Tyler's favorite part was taking tickets to the machine that counted them. He did it every time he got some! I think he ended up with about 9 ticket receipts, and that was only because I started collecting his tickets from him as he played. Otherwise he would have had about 20!
There was one very particular toy he wanted for his birthday. It's called Phlat Ball. It's a ball that will smoosh down into sort of a disc, held flat by a suction cup inside it that will pop loose and turn it back into a ball while you're playing with it. He loves how it "pops." I looked for it, but was unable to find one, so we sent Grampy in search of one. He found it! Tyler was so excited to get it! It made his day. He even went to sleep with it under his pillow!
Overall it was a very fun day for him. He felt special and loved. But mostly he had the time of his life turning 5 years old!

I attempted to post pictures, but I've still been unable to get them to load.

My fizzy joy for today is that I'm lucky enough to have Tyler as my son!

The winds of change

I've had a few things change in my life over the past week, and it's time to document them!

First of all, I am no longer watching extra kids. I won't pretend to miss the obnoxiously early mornings, but I will miss the extra money it brought in. Mostly I'm relieved to be done though. By the end, it was getting tedious. It's possible I'll do it again next school year, but not definite. Right now I'm looking forward to a summer with just my own kids! It's also nice to be able to go to they gym at night, not having to worry about the lack of sleep that will cause because I have to get up so early. I may actually go once in a while now!

Tyler and Rebecca finished their gymnastics sessions yesterday and Rachel finishes hers tonight. We have not yet decided if we're continuing for the summer, and it's possible Rachel will want to do soccer instead in the fall, so this is possibly the end of this particular stage. I hope not, because all three of my kids LOVE gymnastics, but one never knows. I'm adding in a couple pictures of some of the wonderful instructors my kids love so well.

The next big change in my life happened at church. Remember my blog a few weeks ago about nursery? I'd finally gotten myself to a point where I was resigned to spending my year in there, and was starting to actually make plans on how to make it better for the kids when things changed. I've been released! This has to be the shortest stint in nursery EVER! I was in there all of 4 times! So now I have a new calling. I am the secretary in the Primary Presidency. I've never been in the presidency of any organization, so this will be something totally new for me. But I have to say, I'm excited about it. I am really looking forward to this opportunity.

So those are the major changes in my life right now. Oh, and I'm tan! A local tanning salon offered 10 free tans to new members, and since we've had just about NO sun over the last few weeks and the bit of a base I'd managed to build up was fading, I took advantage of this offer and went tanning! Now I'll hopefully be able to spend time outside with my kids this summer without worrying so much about getting burned after 10 minutes! Of course that assumes the sun ever makes a repeat appearance, which is never guaranteed in Washington.

My fizzy joy for today:

My thoughtful husband brought me flowers yesterday just because I was having a rough day!

(I attempted to add in several pictures to go along with this blog, but it wasn't allowing me to add them! I'll try again later to get the pictures on.)

Eating healthy

I have a frustration that I could use some advice on, if anyone has it.

We're trying to make an effort to eat better food. The way I cook tends to be high in fat, and with Scott and I both trying to lose weight, I'm trying to change that.
The problem is that healthier foods cost a lot more money! My budget is pretty tight, and I already feel like I spend too much on food. So how do I incorporate healthier foods without breaking my budget?
Scott loves fish, but how do I justify spending $8.99 a pound for good fish when I can get 5 pounds of hamburger that will do several meals for the same price?
Let's not even start on the price of fresh produce. Even here in Washington, I'm lucky to find apples for less than $1.29 a pound! For apples! And that's not even the good kinds of apples, that's for boring old red delicious. And y'all aren't the only ones with grocery stores charging $3.99 for a half pint of blackberries. How do they justify charging that much for what is basically a weed?!?
Even things like low fat versions of some of the foods we eat tend to be significantly more expensive than the regular versions. I want to cook healthier foods for my family, but I don't know how to do it without destroying my food budget. So if anyone has any ideas on how to do this, I'd love to know!
Also, if anyone can help me cook lower fat versions of the foods my family loves, that's information I'd love to know as well. Any good tips out there?

Fizzy Joy: I colored my hair again, and I am LOVING the lighter shade!

Crush

Rachel has her very first crush. She was so cute about it, I just had to share. Her crush is on her computer teacher, Mr. Lamas. She has computers every Thursday, and last night she couldn't stop talking about it. She asked me if we could do her hair pretty today so she could look good for him. Apparently last week there was a student absent, so she got to sit up at the front of the class. She said she liked it a lot because she could look up at Mr. Lamas. She demonstrated this by doing one of those hand clasped dreamy looks used to show love. I laughed so hard it hurt! My little girl has a crush, and I think it's adorable.