What is up with this blog?  As soon as I take my eye off of it it goes silent!  Can't it do anything for itself??? I knew that once I started getting the "are you alive" e-mails that I had to intervene.

When it comes to balancing the three major things in life...  family, work and myself, "myself" always gets the leftovers and the only scraps I can find lately are meat and potatoes.  Did that make any sense?  Probably not... just know that we've been busy and the DVR has been just as neglected as the blog.

This is what you should have been reading about:

-  Braden completed his BlastBall season and actually kinda enjoyed it by the end.  He wanted a trophy more than anything and JJ made that happen. He also completed his session of KinderMusik which he absolutely loved and looked forward to every week... I don't get the appeal but the kid loves it.

-  Marshall's soccer season ended with a great party and awesome pictures.  He got pretty good by the end of the season and typically scored every game.

-  Both boys are obsessed with fishing.  Our DVR is filled with fishing shows.  We spent a day with our neighbor-friends on their camping trip and went fishing.  The boys were in heaven and they now search the internet for travel trailers so we can go "all the time".  Strange that a 4 & 6 year old use craigslist??

Marshall wants to fish in South Africa and Canada.  He wants to catch Muskees??  Notice all the question marks that I use to describe life right now?

-  Braden is off his meds.  He was put on antibiotics for his strep infection and came off the bad stuff.  Neurologist says that Braden's official diagnoses will be in retrospect because PANDAS isn't something they ever see (or at least realize).  There is some lingering blinking and such but nothing that could ever be considered Tourettes.  Yipee!

-  Marshall has a new medical issue.  His molars have been eaten away by reflux that we never knew he had.  He's got a lot of dental work in his future.  We're hoping that our July visit to National Jewish will help diagnose the nature of it since it takes months to see a pediatric gastro doctor.

-  Marshall had his 6th birthday- yes 6!  We celebrated with a "Basketball Swim" party.  I'm so over the "growing up" thing and am ready for it to stop.

-  Marshall also got "Knighted" at school which is a special program which recognizes children based on their character. Marshall's teacher wrote:

"Marshall is always thinking of others! He considers their feelings before acting or speaking. He always has a kind word and helping hand ready to share with others. He speaks up for others in need."

-  Trace and I had our 10th wedding anniversary!  Our plans were always to have a big celebration but when we started to realize what a busy wedding & baby season it was going to be this year we decided to go out to eat instead ;-)  Maybe next year??

-  Trace has spent the last month watching the Spurs and text messaging with his boyfriends...  and a couple of other things like putting in a pond which was a birthday present to Marshall from Dingo and building a deck... and letting go of his big luxury cruise ship of a car and buying a smarter cross-over Saturn Outlook!

-  Sharon has been busy planning parties and delivering the telecommunications network that none of you can live without.  I also went one step greener and stopped using antipersprant so that everyone can see me sweat while doing it all.  So when you see me drinking out of a stainless steel water bottle and sporting pit stains, don't be nervous... I don't smell... yet. 

Well, here you have it.  Trace's gene pool has dominated.  I cry foul.  I want to know if I'm really the mother!

I will admit that this was fun even if I would have prefered a slighty different outcome.  Of course I had to dig back to find pics of Trace & I with the least amount of facial fat so that the "system" could get a better understanding of our "bone structure".... yah, that's it!

The most interesting part about it is the meter that measures resemblence.  Marshall has moderate resemblence to both of us whereas Braden... not so much.  I think Braden's genes were from past generations because I saw him come out and he's definitely ours.

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celeb - Collage - Morph

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

This was the most fun...

Whoaaaa! Is that some fine lookin' spicy red pepper hummus I see there?

My oh my... it surely is.  Boy, would I like to get a scoop of that!

Oh baby- look at that! Come to daddy...

A slice of heaven!

Are you lookin' at me?

Back off!

The hummus summons and I come a runnin'...

Excuse me ladies.  I'll only be a minute...

Don't mind me.  Just go about your business.

Oh yah... nothing comes between me and my hummus.

I'm nuts about the chick peas and they are crazy about me...

They can't resist my smile...

Hey Braden!  Come take a look down heres...

Be right there Bro!

You are a fine lookin' ball of rice, babe...

Outside of a few campaigns during my adolescent and teenage years when I refused to let McDonalds serve my hamburger in a styrofoam container or my personal ban on tuna, I haven't been very environment focused.  If the movie Happy Feet didn't change that for me, I'm not sure what could. 

Granted, the boys are refining their ability to recognize foods with chemicals by sight (Braden schooled Trace on the menu of chemicals at Sonic), but I haven't explained "saving the environment" very well yet.  But, there was a contest at school which we find pretty motivating so it was a good place to start.  We enter everything.

I'll admit that Kindergartners need guidance planning their contest submissions.  They aren't great with the concept of "concepts" quite yet.  I have to resist my urge to take over and make it "fabulous".  We do our best to probe and extract it from Marshall's head... typically the simplicity of what he says is perfect.

A couple of months ago there was an environmental awareness contest with the theme "What Can I Do".  The entry form was two sided.  One side had the directions and the other had the entry form.  We extracted, we probed but Marshall's environmental consciousness had not yet been programmed.  The only thing he knew anything about was recycling paper... and that's only because we use it as an excuse to convince them to draw on the paper that the printer spews out during its jibberish spasms.  So, that's what he did with the application.  He simply wrote "I can re-use paper" and drew all over it.  It was a winner!.

According to Marshall the announcement was made over the loud speaker at school and he was told that he won.  His teacher gave him the trophy and his classmates thought he was a rockstar.  Unfortunately all I have to go by is what Marshall told me because I guess they are trying to save paper and no note came home.

If I ever get his entry back I'll scan in his masterpiece!