Just Breathe

So. Freaking. Tired. But I'm not complaining. Not that much anyway. This was easily the busiest 5 months evvvvver. And that includes that one time I took 3 graduate-level classes in a single summer semester....one of which required reading 4 novels each WEEK. Yeesh. But I can honestly say that I haven't felt quite this alive in a long time. I hadn't realized what a deep rut I'd fallen into until the massive changes of the last few months yanked me right out of it. You know how when you're scooping out the cat box you hold your breath because you don't want to breathe in cat litter dust and it's taking a bit longer than you'd like because cats poop a lot apparently, and you finally run out of the room and suck in a chestful of fresh air before you pass out? Um, maybe that's just me. But THAT'S what I feel like! The fresh air part that is....and it is so nice to breathe.

The busiest part of the busy-ness has been the house. As it turns out, selling and buying a new house (mostly by yourself because your sweet husband is working insane 18 hour days and w/ 2 little boys underfoot) is no easy task. That's the sugar coated version of course. But suffice it to say, I intend to live here for at least 65 more years because I am never doing THAT again. Whew. And for the record, I can whine all I want about such things. It's my blog darnit. Kyndra, my bestest bud ever, who has sold, packed, bought, and unpacked houses all over the world following an army captain husband would roll her eyes in a major way if she read this post. But she won't read this. Because she's doing all of the aforementioned things in a move from VA to AL. By herself. With 2 little boys underfoot.

Anyway, settling into our new house has been the BEST part of the craziness! It's kinda slow going, but who cares?! I've got another 65 years to get settled! My first settling project was this:

If you're wondering, that's the tile. Um, ick? And there's a fair amount of tile in the house. But aside from filthy grout, we are LOVING this place....the space, the location, even the beautiful dark wood floors that show every blooming white cat hair. There may have been a *slight* lack of forethought when adopting those little boogers. Oh well.

But, when we weren't moving, working in town, working out of town, getting a new job, or sweeping up cat fur, we were out and about doing regular ol' summery kinds of things. Grant's a pretty good little ball player...

Nate, Grant, and the cutest trophies ever...

Jaden turned 8 with a beach party at Seahorse.

Invitations...

Lemonade cupcakes...

Grant took his first ride on an airplane...

My nephew came to visit...

Jaden practiced doing his "butterknife" off the diving board...

We couldn't talk Dad into getting wet...

Grant learned to do a front-flip...

The boys met Tommy Tuberville...

iPhones!!! ...

Oh! And I LOVE my new job! But more on that later because it's way past my bedtime...zzzzzzz

Why yes! I WOULD like a refill!

Have you ever noticed how your tolerance level for little kid shenanigans is greatly increased after the waiter delivers your schooner sized margarita? No? Liar. Well let me enlighten you. My patience tank always occasionally reads -492 by the time we reach dinner in the evenings. This generally means I become a total Nazi when we finally sit down to eat..."STOP kicking the table! Don't thump crumbs at your brother! You are NOT a dog, you are a little BOY. Now use your FORK!" So, here's the scene at dinner the other night:

Me: STOP kicking the table! Don't thump crumbs at your brother!

Matt: (staring off in the distance, lost in his own little happy place)

Me: You are NOT a dog, you are a little BOY. Now use your FORK!

Waiter: And here's your margarita!

Me: *glug glug glug* Oh Jaden! What are you building over there? Is that food art?

Jaden: No, Mom. It's a catapult! (visualize a french fry base, tortilla chip launcher, and edamame projectile) I'm trying to fling this bean into that cup of ranch over there. Watch!!

Me: *glug glug* Sweet!! Scoot the chip a little this way and it'll go farther...try it!

And the moral of the story is??

--Sometimes you just need a little splash of tequila to help you appreciate the sweet things in life.

Here's another sweet thing: Swim lessons at the Seahorse...

He graduated!! I love these diving board/diploma pics. I've got the same pic of J when he graduated about 4 years ago, and my mom has the same pic of ME when I graduated thirty, er, a few years back.

Quick family vacays are also pretty sweet things...

Here are the chickens, acting like flamingos, at the Ft. Worth Zoo

Check out my bookworm...

I was having one of those Gestapo kind of days from about the moment I woke up that morning...

Me: NO! You do NOT need to bring that book into the zoo! We're here to have FUN, not study!

I'm sure you're not having any trouble identifying which part of that rant was my lightbulb moment for the day. Jeez. It's hard to tell from the pic, but the book is just full of quick facts and info about animals, most of which we actually saw at the zoo. I think I may have some control issues. But that's babble for another post & another day.

All G really wanted to do was "smile at a crocodile." Here he's waiting patiently. We did finally find one. Only it was an alligator. Apparently when you're 5 though, the distinction is irrelevant. He was pleased as punch for the rest of the day that he managed to "smile at a crocodile" without getting eaten.

Somewhere in the last few months, something has happened to my big kid. On this day he was simultaneously too young to resist riding the carousel and too old/cool to climb onto one of the horses and let anyone know he was having fun. Seriously? He's only eight.

You can see here that J is back to himself...climbing on the fake termite mounds, sucking on jelly beans. But really, it's the bag of jelly beans that are important in this story. Shortly after snapping this picture, a fat, fuzzy bumble bee flew into the candy bag for a little snack of his own. Now, Jaden is terrified of stinging insects after an incident involving an aggressive wasp a few years back. So he freezes statue still, tells me what's happened, and, being the excellent mom I sometimes am (who, incidentally is also terrified of said insects), calmly took the bag from his statue hand and headed for the trash can. WHAT possessed me to want to peek into the bag and see the bee trying to eat jelly beans is beyond me, but of course I did. As you can imagine, the bee seized this opportunity to escape and came zinging out at full throttle. Straight at my FACE. Thus causing me to shriek like a banshee whilst wildly flapping my arms and hopping about, because this is clearly the most intelligent way to rid oneself of a pesky bee. I must've looked like the idiot I clearly was on this day as the nearby mothers herded their children away from the crazy shrieking lady. I regained my composure, the children stopped cackling with laughter, Matt rolled his eyes, and we moved on the the giraffes.

Just another day in the life of the Potts fam.

Call him George...

My boys have long complained that they are the ONLY kids on the WHOLE planet that didn't have any pets. Whatever. Well, we finally bit the bullet and adopted two 4 month old kitties last week. I have SO missed the feel of a purring little furball curled up in my lap. It also turns out that I have NOT missed the fragrance a litter box adds to my home.

Meet Pax....

and Picasso...

The boys are thrilled beyond reason to finally have pets, even if they are as mundane as cats...on our way to Petsmart the other day:

J: Mom, let's get our pets from Walter's World of Pets!

Me: What kind of pets would we get there?

J: Scorpions!

Me: No.

J: Tarantulas!

Me: No!

G: Capuchin monkeys!!

Me: Oh Lord...

It turns out that Jaden is a natural with small animals. He's kind and sweet and lets them run and hide when they've had enough.

Grant? Well, watch the first minute of this video and you'll get a sense of how Grant interacts with the kitties...

He was holding Picasso in the kitchen yesterday. Now, by "holding" I mostly mean "clutching the cat in a death grip while vigorously hopping up and down". But of course he's not paying any attention to the poor cat while he hops and is therefore bonking Picasso's head on the bar stool with every bounce.

G: hop bonk hop bonk hop bonk

Me: Grant! Stop! You're hurting him!

G: No I'm not. See, look at him. He's fine!

Picasso: **bushed out tail and eyes wide with terror**

Me: Grant, if you break the kitty's body, he could die.

G: Well, what if I just broke his leg?

I have required more than one bottle of wine to survive this week.

But nonetheless, we are enjoying them and our summer AND the rain.

Here's one of our home-run sluggers...

Go Astros!

I'll post pics of the other home-run slugger as soon as it quits raining and he gets to play another game :(

Here's a random pic of some pretty flowers growing in the flower beds at our new house. The beds are ridiculously overgrown but with some creative cropping, you don't even notice the chaos going on underneath. I am trying to tame the chaos, really. Well, actually, I'm trying to pay someone else to come tame the chaos, but you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to get the landscaper/yard people of this city to call you back! If you are one of these people, call me! I want to pay you money! Sheesh.

I can only imagine what the beds are going to look like after all this rain. Oh my. At least the rain is, for once, not accompanied by thunder, lightning, and gale force winds. That makes for some good playing in the backyard...

Happy Independence Day!

Soopa-doopa Summa-time

I really didn't think summer was EVER going to get here this year.  It seems like every time we sneezed around here it would start snowing again.  But the 100 degree weather has arrived and we are in full out summer mode at last!  We started the season with...

Notice the gap in that sweet smile?  I can't believe my baby is losing teeth!!  Sniff sniff.

Memorial day and birthday (mine) fun at Grandma and Grandpa's...

My birthday present from my fam, parents, and in-laws was a new spectacularly freakin' awesome lens for my camera.  LOVE this pic my dad shot...

And this year it's swim lessons for the small child.  He is NOT impressed that his "really really mean" mommy is *forcing* him to do this.  Someday he'll understand that his really really mean mommy simply doesn't want him to drown when he falls in the lake.  Right?

The big kid is happy as a clam that the little brother has to take swim lessons because this means he just gets to swim and play while G is being tortured.

Hopefully an endless supply of cotton candy will be enough to bribe this boy to finish the lessons without any major resistance.

Yeah, well, I can dream can't I?

Stress? What stress?

Ah, the winds of change. They sound all breezy and poetic, which, I suppose they are for some. But alas, I live on the TX plains where mostly the winds of change resemble tornadic activity. They come roaring through, plucking you right out of your comfortable little place in life, then spit you out in some foreign technicolor dreamland. So, here's where our little breeze turned mesocyclone....

We put our house on the market in early April and SHAZAM! It sold 2 weeks later. Excellent! But then came the search for a new house. Apparently we are just a *wee* bit picky. We drug our realtor through every house in the city that was in our price range, but to no avail. We were nearing the closing date on our house and were going to be homeless if something didn't pop up soon. We were actually getting ready to sign a lease on an apartment when I sat down one night to look through aaaaalllllll the listings in the city again, this time through more compromising eyes. I even upped the pricing parameters hoping we could maybe find a suitable house and then work the sellers down into our price range. Sure enough, a listing we hadn't seen before popped up and it looked really promising house-wise. Not so promising price-wise....it was almost $20k above the absolute maximum on our budget. We decided to go see it anyway, and guess what?? Matt and I actually agreed on a house!! This was the one...and it was vacant so we wouldn't have to move into a rental until the sellers could move out! Trying not to get our hopes up, we made an offer a few thousand below our budget ceiling, leaving us at least a few dollars-worth of wiggle room knowing we'd have to negotiate up. Not an hour later, they accepted our first offer. Whaaaat? Really? Apparently they'd listed it last year, taken it off the market after 5 months, re-listed it this spring at a reduced price, and then moved out (empty nesters as best I can tell). The offer we made happened to be their bottom dollar and they were so ready to be done with it, they just accepted!

Now, as if the house saga wasn't enough, I managed to get a job in the middle of everything. I didn't actually mean to. Seriously. I didn't. I knew I wanted to go back to work in the fall when G went off to kindergarten because frankly, I've been getting a little bonkers at home recently. Bonk. Ers. So an old colleague of mine in LISD advised that I get my file updated in the system so when a part-time job opened up in the fall, all my paperwork would be in order. So I did as she suggested. However, being a secondary math teacher, I started getting hammered with calls almost immediately. I took the interviews, but they were all for full-time positions, and I turned down the jobs when they were offered. During all this, I had decided to get paperwork in place for LCISD also, thinking something out there might become available in the fall. Less than 20 minutes after I'd hit the submit button on the application site I got a call from the HS principal requesting an interview. Weird. But I went. The interview was great...I was pretty hooked right from the start, even though the position available was full time. About half-way through, the principal asked if I'd been through Human Resources yet. Um, nope. Apparently all apps go straight to HR where they're screened, then they'll call you for a general interview, then recommend you to interview with the principals if you make it through all of that. Hmmmm. My app must have had a mind of it's own because it didn't go where it was supposed to go.

So I finished the interview and the principal sent me over to HR so the process would be complete, albeit backwards. Before I left, I stopped to say hello to my high school English teacher who has been working out there for some time now. While I waited to see her, the HR guy comes walking though and stops to chat, and says, "You need to probably be thinking about whether or not you're going to come back full time or not. Like, you need to probably decide today." Gack!! Today?? Sure enough, the call came later that day offering me the job. I knew I wanted it, but I asked for another day to think it over before I decided. I can't say what made this offer different from the others, but I really felt at peace with it, whereas with the others, I really did not. So I accepted and now I am a Pirate. Aaargh!

This decision also means the boys can come with me and be Pirates too! So, in addition to scouring the city for a house, I have also been scouring the schools trying to make a decision on where to send the boys.

I think we've got it all figured out. And almost all worked out. New house, new job, new school. Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.