Free Photobook from Shutterfly

I got this off my friend Miranda's blog. I haven't tried it out yet, but I plan to. The code is SUMMERBOOK and it is for an 8x8 photobook. Expires Aug 26 so hurry.

End of Summer

Yesterday was back to school night and Karate camp for Jonathan. It was the perfect end to summer vacation.

Jonathan met his teacher, Miss Chappell. Her classroom is so cute. I loved the little green benches.

After meeting his teacher and seeing his classroom, it was off to Karate camp for the rest of the night. Jonathan got to break a board (using his foot) and was promoted to a Blue belt. They played war games, which Jonathan loved. When they got hit (with marshmallow guns) the person who hit them got to put blood (red marker) on the spot they hit. Jonathan did pretty good, only getting hit twice. Some kids were covered in red marker. Jonathan had a blast. I didn't think he'd want to stay the whole time, but he did.

Some Jonathan funnies from the last couple days:

1. Jonathan informed us that he did not want to get his hair cut right before school started because then people would always expect him to look like that.

2. Yesterday, Dollie was trying to reach something on the computer desk and Jonathan said, "You can play the computer when you have opposable thumbs."

What do you do without the internet?

Can you even remember life before the internet? I think I can vaguely recall it. What did we do all day? Especially in the summer. I'm getting blurry images of green grass and fresh air. I think we spent a LOT of time at the pool. Recently I found myself trying to explain life before the world wide web to my seven year old. You're not officially a parent until you've given the "When I was a kid" speech. When I was a kid we didn't have internet, or satellite TV or iPods or Wii's and we had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow. This works right up until he remembers that I spent the last part of my childhood in Tucson.

Why did I feel the need to explain life without the net? I could say that I voluntarily turned off our internet access for two weeks so my family could learn how to have fun without technology or to force us to spend time together. Sure, let's go with that.

Okay, the truth is there was nothing voluntary about it, and we still had our TV and video games and we did play them. But it's amazing how much you miss something once it is gone. When was the last time you called the theater or bought a newspaper for movie times? All of a sudden we were thrown back into the 1980's. Well, not completely, but I couldn't use MapQuest and I had to dust off the phone book and I felt completely out of the loop without Facebook.

Jonathan took the loss of the internet particularly hard, which was strange since he is the one who uses it the least. You always want what you can't have though. I felt sorry for him, sorry enough to try and find ways to entertain him. Now that we have the internet back, my brain is once again fried and I cannot recall everything we did, but I do have a couple pictures that were taken during this time to refresh my memory.

We went to DI and got some new books to read. One of those was a doggy treat recipe book that came with a bone shaped cookie cutter. We made treats for our dogs and sent some to our favorite dogs in AZ.

Before we lost our internet access I had seen this lab coat idea on my friend Kelly's blog. She made lab coats out of mens' shirts for her son's birthday party. I was able to go online at the library and get her instructions. I made this cute lab coat for Jonathan. It's full of mistakes because I'm still not very good at sewing, but Jonathan loves it. We picked up a kids chemistry set at the store and did some experiments. We learned the difference between an acid, a base and a neutral and what happens when you mix baking soda with vinegar. Now that I have the internet back, I've found more fun stuff we can try.

Jonathan also lost his 4th tooth when he took an accidental elbow to the mouth in karate class. I think the other kid felt bad, but Jonathan was so excited and even thanked him for knocking out the tooth.

This has nothing to do with entertaining Jonathan, but we had our house painted inside. The kitchen is a pretty light green color that I really like. You can't see it too well in the pictures, though.

I would like to say we learned something from this experience and we're all better people for it, but I really don't think so. We definitely had some fun times, but for the most part we would have done that stuff anyway and it was a big pain dealing with the company that caused this problem in the first place. I like my modern conveniences thank you very much.

Our Guard Dog

At 3:30 am one of our smoke alarms started beeping. Not because there was a fire, but to tell us the battery needed to be changed. Russ and I woke up and he began searching for the offending alarm while I let our dogs outside to do their business. After Russ got the beeping stopped I went to let the dogs in. Pumpkin came trotting right in, but Dollie is always a little slow so I waited a few minutes. Still no Dollie. I walk outside and there she is sitting in the middle of the lawn, refusing to come in the house no matter how many times I call her. The big wimp was so scared of the little beeping noise that she refused to come back inside. Fortunately, she responds to bribes in the form of lunch meat. So much for our big scary guard dog. If there really was danger, she would be cowering in a closet somewhere.