Today I was stuck in a waiting room at the Children’s hospital and I got bored, so I decided to go poke around the gift shop. I was actually just intending to see what paperbacks they had, but on my way in I spotted a little stuffed Orca (later I discovered it was a Beanie Baby, and please don’t let either of my kids become obsessed with them).

Hayley recently fell in love with Free Willy and it’s one of her favorite movies. It’s to the point where, if she splashes too wildly in the tub and I ask her to settle down, she will look me in the eye and with a totally straight face say, “It’s not me, Mom. It’s Willy. He’s a big killer whale you know.”

There’s nothing in any parenting book that addresses gigantic imaginary Orcas splashing water all over your bathroom, so I usually tell her, “Fine, but if Willy splashes like that again, he’s going to have to mop the floor and go home.”

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Yes, I have also had days like this. But honestly, I have to apologize because no amount of empathy can stop me from laughing hysterically at that picture.

Have I mentioned that I love soccer? Seriously, I’m really hoping that Hayley enjoys this season enough to want to do it again next year, because I refuse to force her to do a sport that she isn’t interested in, but I enjoy it enough that I’d be bummed about it. I love everything about it. I love the chaos of 4-6-year-old girls running all over the place after a ball, I love laughing as they run towards the wrong goal and they scream and cheer while we all yell for them to go the other way! I love sitting with other moms, getting to know them. I love helping out at practices. I really want to be back there next year.

Right now her games are on Monday evenings, and we’ve had one practice. I really enjoyed helping out. We had them do drills like running to the middle of the field and then dribbling the ball back to the side, pairing them up to practice kicking it back and forth, and then trying to teach them control by having them run up and down the field and stopping the ball when the coach blew the whistle. At one point, I told the coach it was like a hilarious circus and he laughed and agreed, saying that his goal is to try to have everyone able to control the ball to a certain extent and to be able to pass to each other by the end of the season.

Even though Sunday is Father’s Day, we’ll be at the soccer field bright and early because they’re doing photos. I think it’s a photo of each girl plus a team photo. That will be nice and will have to be framed and hung on the wall. The coach also said we’d do a practice since we’ll all be there anyway. We have to be there by 10:30 am but I’ve found that I don’t mind getting somewhere early (ish) if it’s for something fun, and soccer is fun indeed.

I never thought I’d enjoy it this much. It’s a shame I wasn’t able to dribble and kick as well as I do now back in high school!

Hayley on the left; shortly after this she actually made an assist on a goal and came very close to scoring a goal herself. Woo!

A nifty video montage of the 100 greatest movie quotes.

I just found the coolest craft ever, how to make a mini flower box magnet out of an old credit card.

We hadn’t gotten around to getting our air conditioners set up yet, and the past several days have been pretty damn hot. In fact, last night I was so tired from not sleeping well for several nights due to the heat, that I just slept like a rock anyway, despite the stuffiness in the bedroom.

First George put the a/c in the window of the bedroom and then he was going to get Hayley to hold the duct tape that he used to make the plexiglass air tight.

He said, “Here Hayley, come hold the duct tape.”

And then Breanna spent ten minutes standing on the bed, stretching to peer out the window, and constantly asking, “Where duck? Where duck?”

I tried explaining there was no duck, that it was DUCT tape but it was lost on her. I finally got her to stop asking for the duck by telling her the duck went night-night, at which point she waved to the window and said, “Bye bye!”

This site has an amazing amount of free stuff for kids, including things to download, things you can make to eat, craft ideas, and things you can order online. I’m bookmarking it for future reference for those crappy rainy days.

Head on over to IzzyMom’s caption contest. Hilarious! You can win a prize if your caption makes her pee her pants.

It’s not too late to try to win a Rolling Stones 4-disc set from 5 Minutes for Mom – go enter!

The last time we bought dish soap, Hayley actually picked out which one she wanted George to get, based on the fruity label. It was Ultra Palmolive’s new scent called Crisp Cucumber Melon. It was a nice little scent, I suppose.

For some reason I read the label on the back the other day. It said:

Clean, fresh scent makes doing the dishes a more pleasant experience.

That dish soap lasted me about a month and I must say, not once did I have a pleasant experience while washing my damn dishes. I want my money back.