June is CRAZINESS around here. TWO reasons for that is that TWO of my daughters birthdays are in late June.

This was Flower Child's 7th birthday, my she's growin like a weed! LOL, get it? Flower Child ... weed ... LOL ... I'm a little punchy today.

Last year we did a combination party for Flower Child and Lil Miss and it was fine, you know, if you don't mind 150* heat at an OUTDOOR party. But it was a way to save money, and sanity. So we gave it a shot while both girls were young enough to repress the memory and hopefully avoid telling their therapist how they never felt like an individual because they shared birthday parties.

Round these parts, we do big birthday bashes every OTHER year. Since all 4 kids have birthdays relatively close to each other and it begins to take it's tole quickly, we felt like this was a good decision for our family. Even when all the local moms I know give me the O.o look when I tell them we weren't having a budget smashing event like they were.

So on the off year we do a little dinner with cake at home with the family and a friend or two. Just something simple with just a few people. Then, the child gets a larger gift so as to sweeten the deal. This year, I gave Flower Child tickets to Marine World - just SHE & ME! It's a bigger gift and it comes alone with alone time with Mom :)

The party was fun, the kids had a great time eating pizza and ice cream cake. I found that the ice cream cakes, which they ALWAYS beg for, are actually not that much more expensive than the cakes I buy at S-Mart, and they are usually a more manageable size too.

She LOVED the ice cream cake :)

I invited a friend of mine over who has a daughter in Flower Child's & Lil Miss's age so they filled up the table and had a little party of their own. It was hoppin let me tell you.

Then we went through and opened gifts.

She's been REALLY interested in Littlest Pet Shop this year so she got A LOT of that.

Basically, it's like Polly Pocket without the Polly ... or the Pocket. But she loves them because of "their tiny little bodies and BIG OL EYES ... SOOO CUTE!" so what am I to do? Step on countless tiny animal bodies instead of half naked pollies, that's what.

I can't believe how much she's grown up this year. It's hard not to get her confused with her age sometimes. She acts A LOT older than her sister did at this age. Goes with the territory I guess, the younger one grows up watching what the older one does and copying it. It gets a little tough when the girls are 4 years apart though ... egh.

But she is turning into a beauty, a personality that's all her own. She knows just what she wants and has no problem telling you what that is.

She has the sweetest little dimples and knows JUST how far she can take them ;-)

She has the difficulty of being the middle girl with an extremely outgoing and goal oriented older sister and a younger sister who's ADHD can sometimes overshadow her. She tries so hard to be heard and I can only imagine how hard it must be to feel like your thoughts (many, MANY thoughts) are just not being heard over the accolades for your older sister and the dull ROAR that is your younger sister.

But bless her heart of gold, she still tries. She's becoming such a young lady and I look forward everyday to seeing the woman she'll become.

At the end of June it was Lil Miss's turn! She has been having some difficulty understanding birthdays and that they only happen on a certain day, once a year. So basically, she though everyday was someone's birthday and that the birthDAY lasted as many days as she wanted it to.

So for the two weeks after Flower Child's birthday, Lil Miss was convinced that it was either FC's birthday still or it was now HER birthday. And Lord help you if you try to tell this child that she is wrong.

So when it finally WAS her birthday, well, it truly was the BEST.DAY.EVER.

We started it off with donuts at the park for breakfast. This is one of my favorite things to do for birthdays, and the kids' too!

After they ate their weight in donuts they played and played while I sat in the shade :)

We did this a lot this summer actually. This park had tons of shade so I would take a sack of waters, granola bars, magazines & blanket and we would spend hours here. I do believe it saved my summer sanity.

After the playing was over we headed home and got ready for Lil Miss's party with the family. She was SO freakin excited that my heart just about exploded. She has changed a lot in the last year, she understands some things much more and she REALLY understood that all of THIS was for HER.

She loved the fact that the place was decorated just for her, and the presents on the table were just for HER, and Nana came down just for HER, and we were having a fun dinner with CAKE! just for her :)

And OH MY, she was just about the cutest thing that day. Sometimes it can be hard to get Lil Miss to smile, or to catch that smile I should say. And that day I think I got about 50 keeper pictures of her, happy.

I was able to find her an inexpensive ice cream cake with strawberries at the local grocery store and WOW was she in heaven

LOL, she loves her some cake!

Well, they all do really ;-)

When she started opening the presents I thought she would just about jump out of her skin she was so happy and excited!

When she got cards ...
and money ...
and more cards ...
and Littlest Pet Shop ...

and MORE Littlest Pet Shop! She was just so expressive and happy and that's not always something you can count on with her so this was one of MY best days ever too :)

She's a very different child than she was a year ago. So many things have changed for the better, and I thank God for those every.day. As for the not-so-better changes, well I just pray for strength and patience. She can be so loving and so thoughtful. She has so much energy and so much fun singing and dancing. She's always so concerned for others and runs to them if they are hurt or upset. She has such an amazing heart and I'm trying harder every day to understand it and to help her grow into the amazing woman she deserves to be.

I'm so blessed to have both of these amazing little June Babies in my life and to be their mother :)

Today's not too bad a day. Of course, it IS only 9am. But I'll take that over yesterday.

Yesterday was one of THOSE days. The kind where you're SURE the children are plotting your demise, you feel completely invisible like you're screaming in the middle of a room and no one looks up, and the crumbs on the floor seem to multiply when you turn your back.

But TODAY is NOT one of those days. Thank God.

I went to bed feeling sad and alone and distant from everyone, but woke up with a resolve that TODAY was going to be WONDERFUL!

Okay, maybe I wasn't THAT enthoused, but I did think 'HEY, it can't POSSIBLY be as bad as yesterday' ... and that, my friends, is progress.

So I got up, even though Lil Miss was playing quietly and not disturbing the 3 other sleeping children. THAT in itself is enough to make me happy on a normal morning. I decided to get up and just get it goin, so I made the bed, opened all the windows, gathered the laundry and headed down stairs. I got the laundry separated and started and realized we had no cereal bowls clean so I would have to make some kind of REAL food.

Lately I have been baking ... A LOT. I've been experimenting with cheap ways to make healthy snacks and stretch the last of the good summer fruits and veggies. Today I decided I would FINALLY make the strawberry bread I've been promising the girls for weeks now. Tween was already up and wandering around complaining that her stomach was digesting itself, so I decided to put her to work.

I've been thinking a lot about my role as a mother lately. And I feel like I've been slacking for AWHILE. I feel like I've been doing things myself, like dusting laundry & cooking, so that it's done RIGHT (aka my OCD way) and doesn't have to done again. Instead I should be teaching my children how to do these things so they can do them for themselves one day.

So today I did just that. I asked Tween if she would like strawberry muffins for breakfast and she shrieked and said YAY! So I told her to get out the strawberries, clean them, and (GASP) cut them up. I decided it was about time she got her hands dirty.

So I continued with the laundry and by the time she was done cutting Flower Child was up. Flower Child has decided that she would like to be a "Cake Artist" (lol) and so of course she begged to help as well. So I got out all the ingredients and let them help. The whole time I was teaching them things like fractions, adding and subtracting fractions, the in's & out's of baking, and healthy eating.

I can not tell you the satisfaction I felt when I saw the look of understanding on Flower Child's face when she figured out what a 1/2 cup was and that 1/4 + 1/4 = 1/2. It felt so good when I saw that they were paying attention when I explained why I've been baking so much lately and how eating healthy is so important.

I think the fact that I still had their attention AFTER I said "this is a HEALTHY strawberry muffin recipe" is what shocked me the most.

I also loved the look of satisfaction on THEIR faces as they ate the food they created. Now, I'm not saying that I never let them help in the kitchen, but it HAS been awhile. And like I said, I feel badly about that. I'm thinking I might let them start helping with dinner too. When I left my mother's house at 18 as a WIFE, the first thing I cooked for my husband was sloppy joe's ... and I didn't drain the fat. And that was the FIRST thing I had EVER made. It took me a LONG time to really start to COOK, and even now, it's really hard for me to get into it. Mostly, because I feel like I SUCK at it.

I want them to have the confidence that comes along with having done it before. I want them to grow to love cooking and to feel good about experimenting and having fun with it! I want them to be able to take care of their families and make good nutritious meals for them so they are healthy from the get go. Hopefully, not at at 18.

I lot of other simple things have gone right today. I'm a firm believer that it's the little things that count. Today just feels good, and I like that. I needed that. I pray that all of you ALSO have a wonderful, WONDERFUL day! I'm going off to enjoy my yummy warm strawberry muffins now, and here's where you can find the recipe if you're interested!

So WOW, I was looking back through pictures and realized I had barely blogged ANY stories from this summer! Sure I whined and vented a little, but that doesn't really represent what was going round here.

Just her and daddy! I stayed home and minded the Boy since he was grounded. Not much fun for me, but we were trying to get the point across, it SUCKS to be grounded so stop messin up!

My little early riser was SOOO excited the night before the trip to get up early and go fishin, just her and daddy! They caught a few fish but it sounded like it was a little tougher on daddy than he thought it would be LOL, imagine that.

But eventhough he was getting frustrated and she was being less than cooperative and BEGGING to go home within an hour, he still remembered pictures! This was the first one SHE took LOL because he knew I would want a picture of him and I would LOVE that she took it :) He was right!

She actually did a GREAT job on picture like 11 LOL

I think this is one of my favorite pics of all time :) It was a really tough day but we were able to get some coupley time.

It started off as the sentencing day for my best friend's mom's killer. It had been a really emotional trial and I was able to go several times to be there for my best friend and her sister, whom I've know almost all their lives.

This was the last day. There were letters from the girls to be read, very EMOTIONAL letters, and my best friend could not be there to read hers and her sister wasn't able to read hers, so I read them both.

I know that it's NOTHING compared to the grief that they felt or deal with, but it was REALLY emotional for me too. She was like a second mother to me. And since I didn't write a letter of my own, I didn't think I could, I was honored to be able to read theirs. It was VERY hard to read them and not break down, but I couldn't because their letters deserved to be heard and to needed to convey just how horrible this man was and what he stole from their family.

Since my sweet sweet man knew how difficult this would be for me, he took the day off work and had his mom come watch the kids so he could go with me :) It meant SO MUCH to be able to have him there. After the sentence of 40 years to life (WOOOOHOOOO!) was read we were able to get the @#$% out of there and go blow off some steam.

Our first stop was our favorite brewery, the Blue Frog, for lunch. We decided that since we didn't have the kids we would go spend a day doing something we always say "WOW, this would be fun if we were alone ;-)"

So we went to Muir Beach! It wasn't the best beachy kind of day to most, but to us, ANYDAY is a beachy kinda day. This beach isn't the best for kids because it's really steep and has high waves, so we thought what better place to go when we have NO kids!

DH brought our beach umbrella thing and we sat and enjoyed the waves, the smell of the ocean, and being together, alone.

We also enjoyed some cheese & crackers, and a bottle of Barbera ;-) We stayed there until late into the evening. We just relaxed and enjoyed every minute, and wished we could stay like that forever.

After hanging out for a few hours in our little spot ;) we climbed up a nearby hill and sat on a bench over looking the cove. It was SO beautiful and romantical ;-) it was the perfect way to relax :)

Later on in June DH developed a case of amnesia and took Lil Miss fishing again LOL

This time, I got a day to myself! I was able to do WHATEVER I wanted with NO KIDS!! AAAAAALL ALONE!!! So I ran away :) I actually did that a LOT this summer. I ran away to be alone ... with other people :)

One of my favorite things about my man is that he never acts like he's "babysitting" his kids. Even if he's watching mine. He knows and understands how important it is to the very fragile thing that is MY SANITY that I have time AWAY from everyone, including him ;-)

So whenever he goes fishing or hunting he makes sure that I have time to myself. This had been a particularly tough time with Lil Miss, so he decided to try fishing with her again, just to get her outta the house for me!

They went to a beautiful spot up somewhereIhaveNOidea and daddy had his worms, and so did she.

She again tried her hand at picture taking, but as you can see from the look on DHs face, they were having a rough day LOL

And to add insult to injury, this was their big catch of the day LOL But as he says, it wasn't just about them doing something together, it was about me not having to LOL

Next up in June was Father's Day! LOL you can tell by the look on Brandon's face that he LOVES the paper hat his son made him LOL

We all woke up early and the kids were excited to give their dad the gifts they'd made.

They were so cute. This was the first year that Lil Miss really understood and got into the idea of Mother's/Father's Day so it was fun helping her make a gift and card for her daddy :)

Daddy and his babies :)

For Father's Day, DH wanted to fish. LOL, I know. I offered to keep the kids and he could go by himself but since we had gone up here before with these two, he figured it would be fine! So up to Lake Alpine we went!

It's SO beautiful up there! While DH and I set up chairs and fishin stuffs the kids ran around and did their best to fall in the lake.

This was our little spot on the lake, it was a little (or HELLA) cold but it LOOKED nice.

The kids had a good time trying to get frostbite. They also had a good time wearing on our LAST.DAMN.NERVE. I tell you, I have NEVER been so close to just giving up than I was that day. THAT was one of the days that really showed me that there is just something different about these too. You parents of kids with ADHD can sympathize I'm sure. It was just beyond draining.

But we did our best to enjoy the surroundings, in between yelling "get OFF of there, I just TOLD you that" and "NO, you CAN'T go swimming, it's 2* above FREEZING, I JUST told you that!" and "GET OUT OF THAT WATER!" lol, oh boy, it was a day.

But daddy wanted to fish ;-)

Too bad it was just this ONE itty bitty fishy, that did NOT make things any better :-/

At least I was able to get this awesome picture :) I was happy. There's not much that a well cropped picture won't fix for me LOL

Once we reached our (patience) limit we headed up to the lodge and got something to eat ... and drink ;)

It's a great little place up there with a full restaurant (and bar ;), and cabins to rent, that would be fun to do one day ... when the kids are much MUCH older lol

It was a LONG long day but in the end we love our babies :) most of the time ;-)