I AM NOT DEAD!

I know many of you think I am dead. Had it not been for my facebook updates you'd really be worried. Just to confirm......I am alive!

We always get extremely busy at this time of year. We are overloaded with plans for summer and thoughts of swimming pools, hiking, camping and now BEACHES!! It's no different this year, except that we live in a vacation hot spot and are witnessing all kinds of tourists on vacations that we so desperately are grasping at taking ourselves. Our weekends are filled with last minute school projects and honestly everything takes us about twice the amount of time to complete just because we are in the "lazy days of summer" mode. I am one of those crazy moms who loves her kids being at home. I look forward to school breaks and days off with as much anticipation as I look forward to Christmas.

This is also the time of year when all the sports seem to overlap. Right now the only one not participating in some form of activity is Kayela. That leaves Emma in soccer, Kaidon in tennis, Mihya in guitar, Graysie and Mikael on swim team, little time for mommy to breath, and the gas budget going up immensely! I love that they have their "thing" and I get to slow down and watch them excel. It helps me point out their uniqueness and focus on them individually, so I can't complain. Plus, they sleep really good which is always a bonus.

In the past couple of weeks we've had out of town guests (again!). Amanda, Graysie's birth mom, and her husband and kids came to visit for a week. We went to the strawberry festival, made strawberry jam, made more bows for our girls, dropped the ball on our blog, shopped, walked the Ravenel bridge and pretty much just hung out and visited. I will only speak for myself when saying that I stayed up way too late most nights and got up early so I was wiped out by the end of their visit. I hated that they had to go and the week seemed to go by too fast, always does when we have guests.

Kaidon has gotten spoiled by our new neighbors. He has adopted them as his second home and family. He loves their son, Ryan, and would be perfectly content to stay with them for eternity if we'd let him. He has been boating with them several times and comes home with some great stories. Actually, one day we were all in a depression because Kaidon was on their boat watching the blue angels! We were not! We thought about grounding him just because we were mad, but then we realized that would not help our pleas for him to spend time with us. Glad he has made friends, even more glad that they are great people!

Yesterday we all went boating with some friends. We had such a blast. Ironically, we drove to the boat ramp where we piled our giant family into the boat with coolers, towels, and anything else we'd need to survive the day and then proceeded to boat right past the front of our house. We don't have a dock so it's the only way to do it, but it just seemed a little strange when technically we should be able to be picked up at our front door. Maybe our neighbors across the street will let us hitch a ride from a friend every once in awhile at their boat dock? Wonder what it would take to work out that deal? I'll look into it and get back with all of you on that one. We had a blast on the tube and boat and to prove I am going to have another birthday and am not getting any younger, I am very sore. Josh however is not because he wouldn't dare be out of control on a tube.

Next up for us? My parents are coming to stay the week next Tuesday. It just happens to be my birthday (even at age 30-something my parents can't miss my birthday). It will be my dads first time to see the house and our surroundings. I'm thrilled to be "tour guide Ambyr" for the week again. The kids will still be in school so we will have plenty of time to do adult-exploring-touristy stuff before they come home and take all the attention away from me...Oh...I mean...get to spend time with their grandparents.

I'm planning to get the heck outta dodge in August. I've heard it's close to the temperature in hell here at that time so I am not wanting to subject myself to that one. I'll be spending as much of the month in Colorado as we can before school and sports start back up. I'm hoping to see everyone and taxi the kids all over town to get in as much friend time as possible. I say that now, but I'm not sure how long I'll survive without Josh so I'm leaving it an open-ended trip. It's one of the few benefits of taking the 27 hour drive across country with 6 kids.....we have the freedom to come and go as we please, no deadlines or flights to catch.