Despite that the media might be making you sick of hearing about Michael Jackson, I still wanted to write up a post to share some of my memories. I wasn't a super fan, but enjoyed his music for most of my life. In fact, other than "Annie," who was just a character in a movie, I think he was my first celebrity hero. So, let me take you back to when I was in first grade. I had an older sister so my musical awareness starter younger than I think it would have if she weren't around. I specifically remember seeing the Billie Jean video and thinking it was so cool. It made such an impact that as a first grader that I drew Michael Jackson, Billie Jean style, in my free time (sometimes making drawing for friends).

It went a little beyond that. Sometimes I included his name on the back of my school work along with mine.

I remember sitting on a circular rug in the living room at a friends house listening to the Thriller album super loud. We were perplexed by the tendons poking out of Michael Jackson's wrist on the album.

We also found the panting in "PYT" a bit confusing, but still sang along at the top of our lungs.

The first time I remember running up to a lady in the store that I thought was my mom and wasn't is even Michael Jackson related. We were in Kmart an I was looking at the records. I was so excited to see one that came with the sparkly glove! I needed that record, even if just for the glove. I completely forgot about the record once I excitedly told some random lady with black hair about it. When I finally found my mom I was just glad to find her and didn't bother about the record.

As a kid I loved book orders! In kindergarten I was denied the Annie movie book, but sometimes in first or second grade, my parents OK'd this. One of the cool things about it were the pictures from the videos. Actually, the Thriller pictures were a bit scary, but not as nearly as scary as the video. I remember us checking out the making of and extended version of the video from the library. Very cool.

Christmas of 1984, when I was in second grade surprised me with this lot of toys. Each of us kids got a Michael Jackson doll, including my brother.

Mine was the Beat It style, and my siblings got 3 of the other versions. All but the Billie Jean version.

I still have my doll and it is in pretty good shape. It was nice to have the MJ doll around because with like 10 Barbies and only 2 Kens, another man doll was sort of needed for date night.

Just a month or so after that Christmas I wrote this journal entry. It was very important to us that we never miss the Grammys or Music Awards. I think the last time I watched either show was back in my New Kids fan days.

Among other items in my collection that I forgot about were my cards. I don't have these anymore, but snapped a picture of them before I got rid of them.

I also had some stickers of both MJ and the Jackson 5. One of the stickers was given to me along with the gift below.

Another important gift receiving session for me that year was my 8th birthday. I got some sweet roller skates that I would skate home from school in, a crocodile puppet that my kids are actually playing with as I type, and an awesome Michael Jackson/Billie Jean poster. I really, really did love that song/video. My friend Carrie gave me the poster and a MJ sticker. The poster promptly went up over my bed. I don't know how long it was up there before it tragically was ripped by my little sister. If an effort to console me, my mom and dad got me a new, but less desired, MJ poster.

Maybe as some form of subconscious payment, my sister sometimes let me wear her pin.

I had a pin too. I took a really low quality picture of it a few years ago before it got tossed out.

Disney World in 1987: My family visited both parks: Magic Kingdom and Epcot (at the time there were only 2). At the Epcot Center they were in their first year of a special 3-D presentation - Michael Jackson starring in a short movie called "Captian EO." It was awesome. It was the first 3-D movie I ever saw. I remember some evil looking claws come at my face and a soft puffy animal thing up in the air that I, like many others in the theatre, reached up to pet. And Michael was still handsome, not having gone under the knife too many times. That's the MJ I like to remember.

The last two memories I'm going to share are performance related. In sixth grade I believe I played Man in the Mirror for my piano recital. Sadly, it is a super easy version and was just finishing up my 5th year of lessons.

Fun times. And my final tribute, a recollection of last Halloween:

One final note - in case you were wondering, my favorite Michael Jackson song of all time is "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."

My plan was to not work until the kids were in school. That plan failed and I found myself looking for a job. As I mentioned awhile back, I actually applied for several jobs and was eventually awarded one at JetBlue. Life has been a LOT different since then. I had 2 full daytime days of orientation and then I began a 40 hr/week training for three weeks. I would drop the kids off at a kind neighbor's house for 2 hours and would head into work around 4 and not return until after midnight, long after the boys were in bed. They had a rough time the first week with me being gone so much and not tucking them in each night. They were mean to me and very naughty during the day. Sadly, it actually mad me excited to leave the house to go to work. Things were different then next week and have continually gotten much better. They are back to normal, and often show unexpected bursts of massive love for me. It was hard not seeing much of Nate during that time. Like I mentioned, I missed his birthday and actually missed most of Father's day too (which is a future post). I am all done with my training now. Here is our class:

Training was sort of like having a girls night out every night. There were no men in our class (apparently a first) and I made a new friend. Sure, we'd sit there and learn all about the ins and outs of making a reservation and practice making phone calls to each other, but there was still plenty of time to chat and even have 2 potlucks! Now that we are all working our regular shifts, I don't see most of them anymore. And in less than 2 weeks I won't see any of them because I will be working at my house.

Whew! I am done with my 40 hr/week work training and on to normal shifts (24 hrs/week). So, I feel like I can sit and waste the time to do this. Let's go back almost a month in time to Memorial Day weekend.

(All pics should be able to click to enlarge)

We did our annual camping thing. I use the term camping very loosely this time because for one, we slept in the pop-up again and even more so, because we were just on some farm property of my grandpa's. There literally were houses all down the road. It was still very fun though. To prep for it all and to get the boys excited, I made sure they were both equipped with new water bottles, a backpack for each, and new sleeping bags!

They are both too big for the playpen routine, so it was very fun for them (and me too) for them to have their own bags to sleep in. They looked so sweet to me.

Another item in their camping kits were cheap magnifying glasses. They didn't magnify much, but were still used happily to spy on bugs (and burn a few things too...by Nate).

No camping trip is complete with the mandatory foil dinners and s'mores.

Zeke was a very clean eater with his - which is hard for even me to do with a s'more.

Alexander was so happy to have chocolate AND marshmallows on something!

While I'm writing about food, I will mention that we totally cheated most of the days (we were there Thursday-Monday) and went into town for shakes. That's just part of how it goes when you go "camping" instead of camping.

All of our food was delicious. It is important to Nate to not be jealous of our fellow campers' food. He made us semi-gourmet meals every day. (Thanks, Nathan!) He even made a little BBQ kit for camping.

Many, many games were played. The MEN like to have competitions and challenged each other at a new board game, croquet, bocce, and frisbee golf. One of the frisbees got caught in a tree, so my nephew Josh climbed up high to try and get it out. There was also a new yard game brought by Ryan. He seems to always have a new fun game for playing outside. It was called Viking Chess (lower right corner) and just simply involved knocking down wooden blocks. It was super fun. I played some horseshoes with my dad and score like 1 point in two games.

The kids had their own version of yard games, thanks to my dad. I think they called this the dog game, and you should be able to see why. My dad would throw out rings for them to fetch and they would return with them, carrying them in their mouths.

My grandparents came up a couple of times. They played some games with us.

My grandpa wanted to take us all on a tractor drawn buggy ride.

He had made a cute little trailer full of seats that bounce a little (if you asked my mom and grandma who rode in the back seat, they might tell you it bounced too much!)

Apparently Memorial Day is one of his favorite holidays. He took us just up the road to an old pioneer cemetery where some of my ancestors are buried. (We camped in the red circled area.)

My grandpa's farm is land that has been in his family since the 1800s. He doesn't live up there, but raises some sheep and goats there. There was one goat in particular that was NOT interested in staying in his specified fenced in area.

Goats are really good for eating dandelions. As you can see, this goat could eat for weeks with all the dandelions here!

I thought they were so pretty and we were there just at the right time to get some nice pictures before the fluffiness of them went away.

One nice thing about not going to a campsite was that we had the area all to ourselves. We also had better water access than normal - a hose. This was very helpful with Zeke's still not quite mastered potty training. As you can see, I had some laundry duties while there.

Alexander had some troubles of his own too. He got stung by a bee when he was laid down for a nap. This isn't when it happened, but he looked a lot like this when it did. Poor sad little guy. :(

I shot a gun for the first time. I don't like guns. At all. But, my dad had a pellet gun there and my mom had a bee-bee gun. They were letting my nephews (with parental approval of course) shoot some cans, so I though - what the heck and did too. It was sort of fun, but I still prefer a good old bow and arrow!

One of the evenings, our little family went for a walk and collected leaves, sticks, etc. A few of the other items I had for the boys in their kits were some little books (that eventually I will put on the heaps of laundry site) for collecting nature goods and a jar to collect bugs. They LOVED the bug collecting (as did the other cousins once we got back to camp).

The last exciting thing in the kids' bags were flashlights. I let them each pick one out. Alexander went for Cars and Zeke went for Wall-E.

The cousins had fun playing with them in the dark.

And it turns out Zeke's either got dropped or was dud because it stopped working. He was BUMMED about it!

Just like you close the day at camp with a fire, I'll end my post with the same. We had a great time and I wish we camped more. Unfortunately for this summer, I work all weekend every weekend, so we'll probably just be sleeping on our beds.

So, here's what Alexander looked like before his transformation.

He looked Joker-ish enough eating his sandwich at this point that I knew I had to take it a step or two further.

So, here's another semi-brief visit by me. I only have one more week of my training for work and then my evening time will be a little bit back to normal, making me feel like stopping to blog is not a waste of my minutes. These first two pictures are just my boys being silly like kids are.

I remember putting my parents' shoes on when I was a kid - more so my mom's than dad's. I love seeing the tiny kid bodies with those massive feet. And once they start walking it's even more entertaining.

Cool kids. Really, though, I can't get them to wear their sunglasses all that often when we are outside.

As a way to try and get more exercise in my life I thought I'd try Rollerblading at the park. Our jogging stroller is on the fritz, so I had to use the regular stroller. Not super bad, but man those kids are heavy! I plan to try to do this once a week. It was a pretty good workout and I thought it was fun - a rarity with me and exercise. After I was done with my exercise portion, we had a little picnic by the pond in the park. My feet felt so much better once I put my flip flops back on the phone. We then looked around a bit at the park and watched the geese and their cute goslings.

About 3 weeks ago their was a neighborhood carnival that I thought would be fun to go to (and free too!) My little sis normally has a birthday party on that day, but opted not to this year. Since I was doing my work orientation on her actual birthday, I thought it might be fun to have lunch and go to the carnival together. Lunch at OG was yummy. It is one of, if not her favorite place to eat.

Once we got to the carnival the kids waited in line to go in the bounce house first thing. Alexander decided to skip it, Zeke had tons of fun, and my niece had even more fun, NOT wanting to leave at all when their time was up.

A carnival wouldn't be complete without snowcones. We didn't stay long because the kids were having a hard time waiting in lines and just seemed to not really be in the mood to be there.

They were able to get a few treats playing a couple of games before we headed out.

Alexander's sweet Michael Cooper style socks, courtesy of Nathan.

Coming soon: camping, 6 years, sick kids, bad birds, spider updates, injuries, car problems, life as a working mom.

I have been a bit busier than normal with my new job training. I've got 2 more weeks to go, and then I start my normal part-time schedule vs. the full time training.
Anyway, I do have a lot I want to post about, but my other "to do" list is getting longer by the minute. So, I thought I'd stop by to introduce our new pets.
As named by Zeke: Jock

Do you ever have those times when you are just so happy? Maybe it is just a moment in every day life or seeing an old friend? I love that feeling. Tonight I had one of those very happy nights. Nathan and I just got back from the Flight of the Conchords show. It was so much fun! Walking from our car to the venue I was just so excited. I felt like I could relate to a kid who just gets unbearable excited, but at least I have reasoning to go with it so I don't break down. I do get really nervous for some reason though.
We met my sister and her husband there and our seats didn't turn out to be so bad. The opening act was Arj Barker, who plays Dave on the show. He was pretty funny.