Shame on me...

I don't know how mommy bloggers do it. I can't keep up this blog for the life of me!
I love that I still have daily visits to this blog, even if I haven't updated in a few months. Shame shame on me!
To my dedicated visitors - thank you!

Now, moving on my from guilt trip and onto other things...

Soccer season and school has sucked the time right out of my days. Yeah, I do have time to check Facebook. Sorry. However, there is a difference between checking Facebook from my iPad, while lunch is cooking on the stove, while I keep one eye on the baby, one eye on the 4 yr old pestering the dog, and another eye on the screen. Wait... Anyway, my point is that Facebook updates do not take any certain level of skill or brain activity really. I can check Facebook in my sleep. Literally.  Blogging, however, takes a quiet house, kids all in bed, hubby too, and a spark of energy to ignite my brain waves again.

In other updates,
Boys' soccer season is over for now. yay.  Owen and Brayden had a good time and Alex enjoyed his first year of reffing games for money. (First job, yeah!) Its been a pretty good year, and I think public school is suiting them well. They are all excited to start their summer break!

Abby has started walking finally - my latest of the kids at 17 months. She still is often carried around and passed from brother to brother, however, so that may have something to do with it. She also finally started to say some words - mostly "eye", "hi" (they sound the same but the context is different, this is important), and "this", Everything else is "ooooh!" The world is fascinating to her right now. Every color, every sound, every object is super cool to her.

Now the school year is almost over and the boys are looking forward to summer. I have great things lined up for us this year. No laying around wasting the days away. We have trips planned to grandparents' and aunt's houses, zoos, amusement parks, scouting camps and hikes, free bowling (Sign up for Kids Bowl Free if you haven't already!) and summer reading contests. My goal is to keep them as busy as possible. This will hopefully lessen the odds of a cranky, stressed out mom. Bored kids find other ways to entertain themselves, which may or may not be a good thing.

My article this month in the Kid's Connect magazine is on creative toys kids can make. My boys LOVE to scrounge up random junk and tape them together to make something from their imagination. They don't get to do it often enough, however. I was inspired while watching the Youtube video on Caine's Arcade to get the boys' imagination churning this summer again. Here are the links to Caine's Arcade (make sure to watch part 2 as well!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faIFNkdq96U
Kids NEED to use their imagination more. Too much focus is spent on toys that do everything for you these days. How will our future generations ever learn to invent, create, and imagine if they are never given the chance?