It’s one of those gorgeous cool summer days today and just a bit ago I decided that it would be fun to take the kids around the block to “Fischer Park”.  It’s a nice little park with a great play structure, soccer fields baseball diamonds and tennis courts.  It’s away from most of the town traffic and it’s generally very quiet there during the day.

It was quiet there today.  We were the only people there and if I didn’t know better I would say that was because the park ws just filthy!  Food wrappers strewn everywhere (there are plenty of garbage cans to put that stuff in), dirty diapers left to rot (how gross is that?), dog poop (we have a pooper scooper law). a whole dish of chocolate ice cream spilled into the tunnel of the play structure (making it unuseable) and various drink containers scattered all over the place.  This does not make a fun play place for someone with an itty bitty person who doesn’t understand that pciking up poop is gross and that crawling through melted and rotting ice cream is almost just as gross.

We left after 15 minutes because I just couldn’t handle it.  What a dissapointment.

It’s one of those summer mornings.  It’s barely past 6am and already it is hot and humid.  Yesterday was the same.  The air becomes more than just what we breathe, but something akin to a wet blanket which is heavy and has a distinct smell.  Yesterday the temperature suddenly changed late in the afternoon as a strange storm rolled in.  One minute it was nearly 90 degress and the next it seemed to drop right back into the 70’s.

Tim and I stood in the backyard watching the storm clouds roll in and marveled at the danger that they were telling of.  One level of clouds was moving in a north to south pattern where the level below was moving in (what seemed to me) a west to east pattern.  Tornado weather we both said.  But the sky here never turned green and we didn’t ever see any rotation in the clouds.  I read in the news this morning that a small tornado touched down in another county (not too too far from here) and that winds, at more than 70 miles an hour, caused some pretty hefty damage in the nexct county over.  For us though, the storm was nothing to write home about.  It was cooler though.

In the middle of the sccorching heat and high humidity yesterday I turned to Hunter and said, “I think we need to go and buy a pool.”  I don’t know that he even answered me.  I do know that I piled both of thek ids in the car and raced off to Target with hopes that everyone else wasn’t thinking the same thing that I was.  We did get a fun pool (and an air pump) and I was pleased to walk out of Target spending less than $100.

At home I inflated the pool (sans the slides which I’ll deal with today) and filled it with feeezing cold water from the hose.  The boys played for 2 hours before the storm began to roll in and I can be sure in saying that it was the most fun that Logan has had all summer.  Even I enjoyed the little inflatable pool.  My feet dangling in the freezing water cooled me off more than I would have thought and the occasional splash from a zealous kid was okay by me.  Perfect.  Just perfect.

I don’t know that today will be a hang out in the backyard day as the sky looks threatening already, but I suspect that if there’s a break in the weather I’ll slip out with the kids and watch them splash around the funny polka dotted pool for as long as I can.

I have pictures from yesterday which I am hoping turned out to be at least semi-decent.  I would really like to scrap Logan’s first “swim”.

There’s a storm rolling in as I type.  To the South the sky is the dusty blue of the evening when the sun has set. but all has not gone dark.  From the North there is a bank of dark clouds rolling in.  I can hear thunder in the distance and though it is not quite “howling” the wind is fierce.

The fireflies are frantic for some reason.  Not flying in their usual languid patterns, but rather skitting around and blinking a quicker sticamore rapidly than I remember ever noticing before.

There is a storm brewing.  The air has changed rapidly; no longer hot and humid as it has been all day,  but dry and charged with electricity.

I wonder what the storm will bring….

What is it about the smell of rain about to fall that is so comforting?  What about the smell of bread baking or chocolate chip cookies in the oven…

and that someone would be me…. trying to get used to this whole idea of using a laptop during the day so that I can try to get some work done while the kids are up and about. Right now I’m using Tim’s “old” laptop (which he has so kindly put a Hello Kitty wallpaper on and turned the LED lights pink) but later on today we’ll be ordering up a smaller and more compact (this one is ginormous) one for me.

I was really hoping to find something that would visually pack a bit of punch, but in the end that just seemed silly, so I’ll get getting a plain old generic black laptop and then will design a skin for it so that it can be cool and funky.

There’s nowhere to sit here in the kitchen as all of the counter stool had to be removed thanks to the wild climbing Logan, so I’m not really very comfortable, but once things are more settled and we get the new fence/gate built this week (I HOPE!) I’ll be able to sit out on the deck and compute while the kids play in the yard… that will make for a fun and productive summer I think.

And on that note, something in the kitchen is now smelly and I think that that would be the wee Logan, so I am going to cut out and change diapers. Here’s hoping that having a machiner right here out in the open will help me to be a bit more regular about the blogging. Happy Monday!

I have a bunch of fun things to announce today and wanted to try to get them all into one post. So please bear with me as I go through one thing after another. I have other things to talk about (especially the crazy weather that we’ve been having) but with time always at a premium I figured that at the very least I’d try to get the most important things down “on paper” first and then follow up with a more personal note later if I can.

There are lots of new and exciting things going on for me right now at SBG and I am having such a wonderful time designing. If you’ve missed any of the neat goodies that I have released since the beginning of April, be sure to head over there and check out my store. You can find something for everyone there. From the pinkest pink to the most manly alphas and papers and back again.

And if you haven’t quite decided that Studio Anna is your kind of place, I’m offering a very special sale structure on new products over the next month (or possibly 2).

During the month of June (and possibly July) I will be offering all new products from Studio Anna at a deeply discounted “getting to know you”/introductory price for a very limited amount of time. These sale prices will be active for no less than 24 hours but no more than 48 hours after the release of a product and will give you the perfect opportunity to try something from Studio Anna on for size.

This “getting to know you” pricing on new products starts today with the release of my “Madame Butterfly” collections. 2 different packs of elements, full to the brim with gorgeous photorealistic butterflies at a starting discount of 50% off.

I think these butterflies are beautiful and fun and I think that you will too.

If you’d like to stay on top of new releases from Studio Anna be sure to sign up for the new newsletter which will be sent out with announcements of new releases, sales, special offers and occasional exclusive freebies. (be assured that your information (name and email address) will not ever be shared with anyone).

AND now I have a freebie for you. C is for Cookie is a spin off of the sugar cookie alpha that I offered up last year. This time the cookies are more delicious and come in 4 “flavors”. Plain, sugar sprinkled, blue polka dotted frosting and pink frosting. I love this alpha and I hope that you will too. (click on the image to download)

C is for Cookie was offered on NSD during my chat at SBG so if you think you might have gotten it then, you probably did… but if you missed it now is your chance to pick it up.

Thanks for sticking with me all the way to the end of this post. I hope that Friday the 13th goes well and quietly for everyone!

Hunter-isims

Though many of Hunter’s “Hunter-isims” have gone the way of the DoDo now that he is about to finish kindergarten there are a couple that have reared their head this week that crack both Tim and me up.

Hairocopter - heliocopter

I have amonia - I have pneumonia

There is another one, but if I use the word I know that I will be spammed to death with all kinds of things that I don’t want, so I’m going to turn it into a kind of puzzle here

I want the little (here’s the puzzle part) thing like what Madonna sings about in her 1980somthing hit “Like a V—–” - I want the little version (of an action figure)

Ahh… the things that kids say.

It has been “one of those” weeks.  Hunter has been sick for the last two weeks (with a combo of ear infections, strep and pneumonia) and then just hours after returning from the pediatrician with him on Tuesday Logan began to run a pretty high temperature.  So, yesterday morning we were back at the doctor and now Logan is going through the same junk that Hunter was.  Our doctor (who I just adore) said, while looking into Logan’s ear, “This is the worst ear infection that I have ever seen.”  Just great!  Logan is mad about all of the meds that he’s having to take and prefers to spit them at me.  I’m going to have to figure that out today so that I can actually get him well.

In other (and much more fun) news I am planning a “girl’s night out” with my friend Carrie in July.  I will be away from the husband unit and the kids for 24 hours!  I haven’t gone and done something just for me like this since before Tim left for Iraq in 2005, so it’s long overdue.

Of course, you’re all going to think that I’m cheesy, but Carrie and I are going to be going to see George Michael in concert in Chicago.  Yes, you read right… George Michael.  Carrie hooked me on him in college and when my friend Kiera told me that she was going to the concert in VA I knew that I had to find a way to see him around here.

Of course the tickets are priced OUTRAGEOUSLY!  Seats on the floor are running at nearly $2000 (yes, two thousand) dollars, so Carrie and I will be sitting about 800 miles away from the stage with our noses bleeding… but I know we’ll have fun anyway.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print this morning, but keep your eyes out because I have an announcement, a treat and some other stuff waiting in the wings.  Happy Thursday!

I love Etsy… for so many reasons.  The newest of these the ability to design your own “treasury”.  I’m waiting for a spot to open up so that I can slide one in, but in the meantime I am just going to have fun making “mosaics” of great handmade items.

I’ve been slacking the the blog department over the past several months… I know.  So I thought that from here on, when I have tiny moments of time, I’d just pop in with some random topic for the day/hour/week and blab for a bit.  This morning I have a sick child and I thought that that would be the subject for today’s “randomness”.

Since the end of February it seems I have had one kid or another ill or hurt or otherwise impaired.  I was making a “laundry list” of the things that have been going on here and it is staggering… especially when in the long run everyone really is fine.  I’m hoping the the “Spring Icky” which Hunter has right now (includes ear infections, strep and possibly (we’re going back to the doctor this morning) pneumonia) is our last thing for quite some time.

I love our pediatrician, but I must say that I could go a week without seeing her right now.

Kids are now wanting breakfast, so I am going to end this random segment here, but there are more “topics of discussion” waiting and if I have time I’ll come back with part 2 this afternoon.  Happy Saturday!