Friday: Picnic at school, complete with a maze for the kids that I got lost in. Hmm.

Saturday: Heather and I went to pick up our race packets for the half-marathon on the 12th. And then we went to Costco! The new one! It was terribly exciting. Gas was under $3 a gallon! And I was ridiculously excited about the giant boxes of Oatmeal Squares cereal for $5.

I did some product photography for a catalog, and while I had my backdrop set up, the boys had a little photoshoot, at George’s request. That’s his shirt and toy (and I’ll freely admit I photoshopped them together in this picture.)

More fun with backdrops!

Okay, that last one is a little disturbing.

Sunday:
The fire hydrants on our street were open (yay for no water pressure) so George went to show the boys, and they all basically ended up soaked. Woo hoo, free bath! Regretfully, I didn’t have my camera with me.

After that, I went to the gym and ran 10 miles on the treadmill. Two hours on a treadmill is more about mental stamina than physical, I think. Glad I did it, but I just pray it’s cool on Saturday morning for the race.

Later, I took the boys to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. I have a friend who worked on the first one, so I feel kind of disloyal saying this, but we loved it! Of course it wasn’t as good as the first, but it was definitely entertaining. We decided if Oliver was a foodimal, he’d be, um, and olive, and Miles would be Marshmiles, but we haven’t figured out Linus. Something with limes? Not sure. Any ideas?

This morning was a bit nuts with Linus being sick (he had weird croupy cough Saturday night, but no other symptoms, and still doesn’t, but we thought it best if he stayed home today) and therefore that made me forget the other boys’ lunches, so today they’re getting a ridiculously expensive lunch from Whole Foods that they’re probably not even going to eat. Sigh.

At least this time the controvery is limited to my Southern readers. I’m guessing everyone else will wonder why it’s a big deal at all. Ha!

IMG_5935.jpg, a photo by pyjammy on Flickr.

…for asking my kids to just, you know, stand by the pretty ivy wall and let me take a picture with the fancy lens I rented, if you want to go play laser tag after this, dangit!

Linus is the only one who deserved to play laser tag.

Warning: This is really friggin’ cute.

The other night, Miles was, for once, really excited about going to school the next day. In English class, with Mr. Rob, they were going to be writing books! But when he came home yesterday, he was down in the dumps because for whatever reason, it didn’t happen. So I said, “then let’s write books tonight!”

And now I am the proud Mama of three published authors. It’s a small in-house publisher, very very exclusive. (Your DNA has to be just so in order to be published by this publishing house.) I am the editor-in-chief, the bookmaker (see that binding? that’s craftsmanship for ya), the typesetter (I chose a very unique handwriting font), and marketing director.

May I present our first three titles?

The Bunnies that Play Soccer, by Linus Kocke
The Lost Magic, by Miles Kocke
The Bunny that was Trying to Find a Treasure, by Oliver Kocke

Just like Amazon, I have a “look inside” feature.

I’ll let you know the release date on these titles. I expect it’ll be available for Kindle, Nook, and as an audiobook read by the authors.

Publicity photos of the authors with their works can be found here:

Mr. M. Kocke, author

Mr. O. Kocke, author

Mr. L. Kocke, author

I have been informed by the authors that these titles will kick of three series about bunny pirates, bunnies playing sports, and a boy named Jacob. Stay tuned!

Sorry I haven’t posted lately, just have been crazy busy. Life, ya know. We went to Baton Rouge this weekend to spend some time with Grandee and Larry, which was nice. But I gotta share this funny from my mom…

Mom: I’m sad.Me: Why?
Mom: Two weeks from tomorrow, we’ll be packing to leave St. Lucia to come home.

Sniff, sniff. Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard? In two weeks, it will almost be time for my poor Mom to leave a tropical paradise after a ten-day vacation. I get choked up just thinking of it.

Ha ha, Mom! Love you! Bring us back some t-shirts!

Now, some totally random pictures from the weekend…

Be warned. This is a topic that makes tempers flare. Passions run high on this one. You might get angry reading this post. You’re either going to be FOR or AGAINST this, and I really hope our friendship doesn’t suffer.

It’s Gogurt.

So here’s how Gogurt-gate 2013 got started.

So innocently. I was at the grocery store after work on Tuesday, and as always, was on the lookout for things to put in the boys’ lunchboxes that are at least mildly healthy, not too expensive, and that they might actually eat. I spied a pack of 8 Simply Gogurts (Strawberry flavored) and put them in my cart. The boys love “pink” yogurt (Yoplait Strawberry, only in the big container, as the small containers have chunks of strawberries, and chunks are unacceptable) and these tubes looked like a good bet. When I got home, I put them in the freezer, as I’d heard others do, so they would stay cold until lunchtime.

When the boys got home from school, I was pleased to see that the Gogurts were not in their lunchboxes anymore. I quizzed them on whether or not they’d eaten them, and I got yeses across the board. Success!

And then one of them mumbled that his assistant teacher said that Gogurts weren’t allowed because they were too sticky. I thought this was weird (I mean, aren’t kindergartners sticky all the time anyway?) so I went on Facebook and polled my friends list to see if Gogurt was allowed at their school. I guess I should have specified that I put the Simply Gogurts in their lunchboxes, but really, the point wasn’t that I sent the kind without artificial colors and HFCS. The point was that they were too sticky for lunch.

80+ comments later, the only thing I can say for sure is that Gogurt is a very polarizing subject.

PS I emailed the school principal, and I will abide by what he says. I certainly don’t want to get on the bad side of any of their teachers.

PSS I just had a good idea. I bought a pack of four of these to put applesauce in for Linus, so maybe I’ll get some more and fill them with pink yogurt myself. Should be neater.