HI

I haven't been around these parts (for a real entry at least) in a while, huh? As usual, life has taken precedence. It happens on occasion.

I had three lia sophia shows this week (and yes, lia sophia is not capitalized on purpose...it's the way the company does it and it is most aggravating). They were on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. Two were okay, one was fabulous, and I manged to get one booking anyway.

The older two kids had Vacation Bible School all week which they LOVED. Our hairdresser's church sponsors VBS every year and the kids have loved it. I even sent Julia two of the five days this week and the teacher said that while she was a very "young three" she did well. Anyway, on Thursday night they had a rock climbing wall in which Emily climbed like a monkey to the top (no surprise here, of course). Although I wasn't there to see it, I heard a rumor that Katherine made it half way up, despite her fear which is just awesome. I have this whole entry planned in my head by the way about Katherine and confidence, which at some point will make it from my head to the computer. Friday during the regularly scheduled VBS time they had a water slide, bouncy house thing, petting zoo and sno cones. The VBS teachers took some great pictures of all three of my kids enjoying the day and one particularly cute one of Julia riding a pony.

Other than that, I have completely slacked off with the house work and laundry this week and need to get back on track, starting today. Emily and Katherine have two weeks of the town sponsored camp starting tomorrow (all day from 8:45-4:45) which they are very excited about. They will be doing sports and other games, swimming in the town pool and arts and crafts. When I went to register them I found out that it also includes lunch which is just so awesome I can't even tell you. I have to go out later today to buy them sunscreen and refillable water bottles, which I will do when I food shop.

My aunt is coming in from California this week too, which I am so excited about. She will be here for 10 days, which will take us right up to the day we leave for our summer vacation. We have found what looks to be a fantastic campground with all kinds of fun things including pools with water slides, a kiddie pool, fun family events, and of course, the Pemigewasset River which we will definitely be tubing on. We decided after our last camping trip to rent a cabin this time around. Our last trip up there was the summer before Miss. Julia arrived and it rained every single night. Despite Ryun's ultra secure tent set up, which included tarps both over and under the tent, the water still came in a little bit. That, culminated with the fact that it was too wet to cook outside meant that we had to eat breakfast and dinner out almost every day, which ended up costing a serious amount of money. The cabin is costing us about $200 more than it would have for a riverfront, water and electric included tent site (which we have gotten in years past at other campgrounds) but we figure if it rains, we can cook indoors (the cabin has a fully applianced kitchen and our own full bathroom which rocks even more than the kitchen). If it doesn't rain, we will probably cook outdoors anyway, because that is what camping is all about if you ask me. And, if we ended up spending an extra $200 and the weather holds, than I am going to use the excuse that we deserve to spoil ourselves a little and call it a day. Sound good? Anyway, I am really looking forward to it!