SUMMER DAY 38 Monday July 6

Before I post about today, can I have a moment to express some frustration? A few weeks ago, my mom told me she had seen an article in the paper about a new carseat law for Texas (where we live). She usually saves her newspaper's comics for Savannah, so she said she'd throw the article into the bag of those papers. I never got a chance to look at the article. She told me that it basically said kids 8 & under would have to be a booster seat. I was OK with that. That just meant that Sarah would have to be a booster from Jan 1st (2010) til her 9th birthday which is only about 6 weeks later. I figured we'd just borrow a booster from someone because it didn't make sense to buy a booster seat for her to use such a short time. We've been talking to Sarah about it these past couple of weeks and she's gotten to the point that she's OK with it, although she's not thrilled. She keeps asking us about her friends' birthdays & whether they would have to be in a booster seat, too.

WELL, tonight I went a-googling (yes, I just made up that word) to find the actual wording of the new law. It says that as of Sept. 1st, 2009 (about 8 or 9 weeks from now) the law goes into effect. However, rather than the 8 year old cut off, it also includes that children must be in a booster until they're 4'9". In other words, my 9 year old son who already has a complex about being "little"...the same child who's been OUT of a car seat since he was 5 years old (because that was previously the law) will suddenly have to go back into one as well. And his little sister will likely grow out of hers before he does. She's only a few inches away from hitting that 57" mark (4'9" = 57"). Samuel, however, is quite a bit further away. Unless he hits a massive growth spurt all the sudden (please, Lord!), he will take a huge blow to his ego when his LITTLE sister gets to come out of her booster seat before him.

Oh boy....I can't wait to share the news about this law with them in the morning.

On Friday morning when I go buy groceries, I'm going to take Samuel & Sarah with me to pick out their new seats. Looks like we'll be buying some since they'll have to use them for quite a while. My plan is to get this variety. It seems the least umm.... "invasive"....for two kids who've been out of any kind of carseat for several years now.

And to top it all off, my eldest child who will turn 13 in less than a month is only 56". Or she was the last time we measured her. I will NOT put her back into a booster seat. Sorry cops. I refuse to make my JUNIOR HIGH daughter climb in & out of a carseat when she goes to an out of town football game to play with the band. Good grief. I'll lie or pay the fine.

Ok, now..........moving on!

Today was great! Larry had the day off (for 4th of July) so we took a "vacation" day. Since he doesn't have vacation time yet, we're not having an official vacation this summer, so we figure on his 1 or 2 days off, we're going to make a special day of it. So today was our Vacation!!

Savannah had an orthodontist appointment at 10:00 this morning.


When we left, Larry realized that he hadn't ever eaten breakfast. It was only 10:30 and our next event (I'll get to that) didn't start til 11:50. While we would need to arrive by 11:30-ish, it just didn't seem right to go a full hour early, so we stopped at a little place with a breakfast buffet & watched him eat their last dried up biscuit & greasy strip of bacon (they were already taking the breakfast stuff out & putting in lunch stuff). We left there & headed to the next event. We took the kids to see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. It was really cute!!




When that was over, we came home to clean up a few things & take a break before leaving again. You see, the exterminator was coming to spray the house (inside & out) so we had to get out of the house for a couple hours while the poison settled. We had planned to go try out a new seafood restaurant in town but it's been closed for about 3 days now. I'm not sure what's up with that. Since they were closed, we went to an Asian place instead. It was a whole new experience for our kids because the only Chinese food they've ever had came from the grocery store deli. This place was sort of quiet & refined, so giggling & talking in their usual loud voices wasn't allowed.

The weirdest thing happened during dinner. Savannah nearly had an anxiety attack over the crab in her rangoon. She wasn't upset about the presence of the crab, but she panicked about whether or not she could be allergic to crab. We assured her that she's eaten shellfish before without any problems, but she was still too freaked out to eat her food. I don't know if she's recently heard of someone being allergic or if she saw it on TV or what, but she started crying & freaked out and wouldn't eat it because she was terrified that she'd be allergic & might have to go to the hospital. I have no idea where that came from....but once we got out of the restaurant, she was fine. Between these teen hormones & her anxiety troubles, she may do me in before it's all over. When we left there, we went to check on our friends' house (the ones who are moving that we've been taking care of things for) before we came home.

Oh....and I forgot that we made a trip to the library before supper! Indeed it's been a great "vacation" day!! Time for bed!