Is it really summer vacation???

I feel just as busy as I did during the school year! What's going on?!

As most of you know, I'm in the process of auctioning off the remainder of my Ebay store inventory. My goal was to finish by the end of the summer (which I still think is plausible), but in all honesty, I hadn't been prepared for how much STUFF I still had. I have about 90 auctions listed for next week (you can't see the Wednesday box behind all this!).

This economy really is a downer... but I know I should still consider myself lucky to have any buyers. My end goal is to earn enough money for one of our September California estimated tax payments... (we are doing our part to help California by sending them money every quarter!). But in all honesty - I will be SO GLAD when I can shut everything down. Not only will I have more time (which will be filled up with other activities, I know that!) but we can throw away ALL of the cardboard hoarded in our study and RECLAIM an upstairs closet. Whew!

So in a nutshell, we've been busy! Here are some scenes from an excellent Fourth of July gathering... with delicious food and wonderful company... (thanks!) =)

After storytime at the library this morning, the girls opted for a quick picnic lunch before we headed off to the dentist - again. Marika was told she had EIGHT (yes, eight!) cavities so we've been going once a week for the past FOUR weeks to the dentist (two treated at a time). She's been such an incredible trooper - she willingly skipped the laughing gas and brought Geoffrey the Polar Bear instead (we forgot Geoffrey last week and that was NOT a good appointment). Geoffrey made his final appearance at the dentist today and did a great job keeping the patient calm. He only got bounced on the floor once, but his companion Berk was not so lucky - and had his paw dipped into my cup of coffee! Good thing he was already brown but... ick!

And for those of you who still don't believe that my side of the family has a gene allowing for sleep anywhere in almost any position... apparently she got tired playing Clifford computer games and decided to take a rest... and yes, she is totally asleep!

And finally, here are my little (noisy) troublemakers. We have been trying to enforce the "one toy at a time" rule and this is what my little rugrats have been up to while I was working to update the blog!!! I sure hope they've cleaned it up by now... ;)

Isn't it wonderful when hard work pays off?

As school winds down, it's time for the final awards assembly. Today, they gave out awards for Jogger's Club. There are different prizes for different tiers (how many laps you ran and how you are, with four laps = 1 mile). The top tier was a medal for those who ran a certain amount (for kindergarteners, it was 12 miles, or 48 laps). Mika ran 73 laps this spring semester - which was also enough to win her the top runner award for kindergarten girls! Not bad, especially considering that she missed a whole week (2 days of running) for vacation! She could have run even more! Her prize was a certificate and a T-shirt that said "TOP RUNNER SPRING 2009".

I was really proud of her, because I was trying to teach Mika that if you work hard for something over a period of time, you can reap the rewards. There were some kids who ran just a little bit each day, trying to make the bare minimum to qualify for a certain tier. Mika ran her little heart out every day, doing the best she could.

If all goes well, in a few years... I think I'll have a great running partner! :) Maybe then, she'll be the one telling ME to hurry up! Hee hee... I'm so proud of you, baby! I knew you could do it! I just knew it!

Later in the day, it was time for the school's annual "family picnic". Grandma came to visit (the girls haven't seen her in several weeks, since she'd been traveling in Japan) and lucky for me, she prepared a whole smorgasbord of yummy food! We had pork cutlets, chicken cutlets, spaghetti, strawberries, home-grown tomatoes, and celery - plus the good company of our friends. After finishing lunch, the girls insisted on having Grandma play ring-around-the-rosy and asking her to swing them in a circle.

Personally - I was amazed that nobody hurled afterwards! ;)

Making lemonade out of lemons

It ended up being one of those Mondays, where one errand ends up taking much longer than anticipated. Yup, we spent about 1.5 hours at the bank today. Poor Marika - she had really wanted to go to her favorite grocery store (the one with kid carts) but there was very little time before we picked up Mika from school. So... we ended up buying lunch there and having a picnic at Mika's school. Best of all? Lunch for two only cost us $3.25!