Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Wow - it's been a while. Let's try to catch up! We had a great summer - and now fall is in full swing!

Maia and Matthew went to visit my parents last time I blogged, and although I missed them terribly, that week went so quickly. Then August flew by. That's when we went on our vacation for a week to visit my parents all together. It was awesome to have a week off from work. It took me about 3 full days to really, truly relax. But, when I did - I DID. It was great! Matthew and I even went out one night while my parents watched Maia and we had an awesome dinner at our favorite retaurant and a close game of Putt-Putt. It was a great time. It was the first time I've had any kind of tan in years (but compared to Maia's DARK tan, I look like Elmer's glue.) Anyhow - it was a good time had by all and I'm glad we had the opportunity for a whole week to unwind. I needed it!

August also brought Matthew's birthday... now he's 14. Geez, I must be OLD. Here he is at age 12....

Age 13.....

Age 14...

I love to see the changes... it's obvious at age 12... but between 13 and 14 the changes are less obvious. I can tell though by looking at the endo of his sleeve compared with the piano... I know the angle is slightly different, and the shirt is different, but it gives an idea. The obvious change is his desire to let his hair grow at this point rather than keeping it buzzed.

As always, I take a first day of school picture. That was at 6:30. It literally was a pitch black picture, so I re-took it that night when I realized it didn't work out that morning. Here is my boy, on the first day of high school, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 09.

I can not believe he has started high school. Our whole schedule has changed... my alarm now goes off at 4:45 a.m.. Matthew has to leave the house to catch the bus at 6:30 a.m. I figure I might as well be ready too so all I have left to do is get Maia ready to roll after Matthew has left. So far, so good. But we're only 4 days in...

Going back a little bit now - last weekend we went to Matthew's aunt and uncle's house (my sister-in-law) for Labor Day. It is actually the third time we went and visited in a month! They have a pool and we enjoyed keeping cool. Maia is a dare devil and loved jumping in and dunking under the water and seemed to get more and more excited each time we went. Here are pictures of Matthew, with Maia, and Matthew's brother, Evan, and Evan's Mom, Stephanie. You can see, Evan and Maia are a little more timid as Matthew and Stephanie are trying to coax them to jump off the raft here.... As the pictures progress - look at the JOY on their faces as they fall, jump, splash and dunk more and more each time. This went on for some time and it was awesome to watch and take pictures of it all!!

Winding down....

Here is a picture of the birthday boy - up close.

So, today, Maia was a big girl and went potty on the potty... When she was done, I realized the potty wasn't really flushing... so I asked Matthew is he had noticed that it wasn't 100%. He said, yeah, maybe.... So, he went and got the plunger and I started plunging. (This usually works wonders...) I started plunging - and it started overflowing. (Without details, I will just say, gross...) So, I plunged and plunged and plunged, and it kept spilling and spilling... *gross*. At this point, I wasn't happy and realized my Saturday would be spent waiting for a plumber and not having a fun girl day with Maia. Happy, I was not.

I was telling Matthew that next time he thought it might be backing up to tell me BEFORE anyone else used it so maybe the less in there, the better chance of fixing it myself. I told him I'd have to call a plumber and have it snaked out and he asked what that meant. I explained it to him and he said, Does the stuff go further IN or does the snake pull it back out?.... Knowing Matthew as I do, I KNEW RIGHT AWAY he wasn't worried about 'gross stuff' but something that had OBVIOUSLY gone down the toilet that wasn't SUPPOSED to. I said, "WHY? What went in there that wasn't supposed to??" He responded... "A plastic cup... " "A PLASTIC CUP????!?!?!??!" When I asked him why he didn't reach in and get it out before flushing, he said he didn't want to get dirty. I explained that since HE stayed 'clean'... the bathroom FLOOR, etc. was now NOT clean, and it was going to cost me a good bit of money to get it working.. not to mention time on a gorgeous fall day. He was apologetic, and I believe learned a lesson, but, Mamma was NOT happy. (BTW, $263.84....)

As it turned out... the plumber (who is featured in a post last November...) was able to get here in less than an hour. He said he's seen worse - an iPod, cell phones, and the worst DENTURES (that the woman insisted was her best set, and she wanted back... in fact, the snake didn't work, so they REMOVED HER TOILET and she bought a new toilet, etc. to save the dentures.) I won't say another word... but *gross*.

So, now, Mom, Dad and Matthew are in Baltimore until tomorrow... so after that morning, I needed to go do something FUN! What did we do with only and hour before nap time??? We went SHOE SHOPPING. Yup, Maia got some new fall shoes. Buying shoes always makes me feel better - and I just love these for her. I must say, I was tired of pink shoes, so she got these instead:

Her new sneakers... I love the BLUE for a change, but still girly looking...

And her boots - These have sneaker like treads so she can wear them to school and still go outside with them - but give her something other than athletic shoes to wear to school. Spending money, especially on shoes, always makes things better, at least a little bit!!

I wanted to post some pictures since it's been so long and catch up in general. I will post more soon - now that I have a new router that actually ALLOWS me to load pictures without crashing my internet. :) Maia will be up any minute though so I will have to do more soon. I'm sure I have some Maia stories to tell - she does something new and crazy almost every day. :)

In the past three days... Matthew has lost his cell phone, lost his house key, and flushed a plastic cup down the toilet, which resulted in money spent and messes made, as you are well aware.

I love my boy, but I'm glad he's gone with my parents until tomorrow night... :) Gives me a chance (and I mean, CHANCE) to calm down a little. :)

FYI - we did find the cell phone at least... he knows I'm not buying him a new one.