Feeling The Birthday Love

I had a great birthday #39 ❤️ Mike and the kids got me cards and flowers and we went to dinner at Whiskey Warehouse, which has a fun rooftop bar. 

Friday Night Out

Last night Mandy and I went for a by then much needed night out. We went to the mall where we did some early birthday shopping and then to the Wine Bar at Foxcroft for drinks and dinner. We didn't get much in the way of pictures while we were out, but here is me and Caroline before we left:

The Mystery Of The Stolen Bike Seat

(Or more accurately, the mystery of why someone would steal a bike seat?!)

When I left work yesterday afternoon and went to unlock my bike I discovered that someone had stolen my bike seat and helmet. Clearly this person had been riding their bike at the time and decided they liked my seat better because they left me with their bike seat. (Wtf?!) 

I called Mandy to come pick me up since while they had left me with their bike seat, they took the post and clamp off of my bike to attach the seat to theirs, so the seat they left me couldn't actually be attached to my bike, leaving it unrideable.  

Mandy picked me up and we threw the bike in the back of the car. We were driving down 51 and I was saying "there's some punk kid riding around town with my bike seat and helmet!" As we stopped at a red light, Mandy looked out the drivers' side window and said, "You mean like that one?"

I looked out her window and sure enough their was a teenaged boy on a little red bike with a big old white bike seat and wearing a silver bike helmet. 

He crossed right in front of us, giving me the opportunity to roll my window down and give him quite an earful ;-) ("Mom, what did you say?" Charlie asked. "I'll tell you when you turn 18, honey.") 

When he heard me the kid tore off, and since we had 5 kids who needed to be picked up at 3 different summer camps within the next 20 minutes there was no use following him. 

My bike is currently at the shop, where they had to order all the parts so it won't be ready till Thursday. Mercifully they felt sorry for me and only charged me $17.99, giving me the bike seat for free. 

And I guess now I'll be locking my bike up at work instead of across the street. 

50lbs of Puppy Love

Mod Design Camp

Ben & Charlie started off 2 weeks of camp at Charlotte Latin this morning: Mod Design and Game Design. This week they are building Minecraft mods (mod=modification, Minecraft allows users to alter its code to create, well, basically anything.) Charlie's mod involves exploding weapons of some sort and Ben's involves deadly animals. The boys came home talking about computer code and syntax errors and say camp is really fun and really hard work which I guess makes it worth the hefty price tag!

Here are the boys this morning, raring to go:

Thought I Had A Few More Years...

Until she started stealing my Lululemon headbands...

Friday Bike Ride

I finally gave in and let the kids ride their bikes with me to summer camp today.

:-) 

"Dumpster Diving"

It was "dumpster diving" week at camp this week, with the kids making, err, creations out of odds and ends. Here is Amelia with her trash to treasure pirate and Charlie with his, whatever that thing is...

Dirty Dog

I came home from work to a muddy dog!! Jasper rolled in mud at his Auntie's backyard and was a mud covered mess. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy his bath though!

And It's Charlie's Turn For A Haircut!

Friday Update

The kids finished week 3 of summer camp this week. Next week is camp as usual and then for 2 weeks after that Charlie is going to a computer programming camp at Charlotte Latin with Ben while Amelia continues at camp KC. 

In other news we spoke too soon in a previous post -- Mike didn't get the job at Coca-Cola after all, but remains in the running for a job with the Lash Group, which is a full time benefited job rather than the contract work he is doing now. 

This weekend brings the usual business -- a birthday party tomorrow morning and then hopefully a movie tomorrow night, with maybe a CostCo trip thrown in there somewhere? Bring on the weekend!

New Haircut

Amelia has been begging me to let her get her hair cut short, so I finally gave in. She is thrilled with the result and has been flipping her hair all night long ;-)

Boomerang Bay

We wrapped up the holiday weekend by taking the kids to Carowinds' water park today, Boomerang Bay. We weren't sure what to expect, but it turned out to be a great day to go. It wasn't crowded at all so we were able to do all the water slides at least once -- Charlie went on a few 2 and 3 times -- and we also enjoyed the wave pool, splash parks and lazy river, since Amelia was too short to go on most of the big water slides. As you can tell from the second picture, the kids were thoroughly tuckered out by the time we left!

More 4th Fun

With a BBQ and fireworks to round off the day we have some tired kids and tired parents!

Fourth of July Parade

Whiskey River

With Heather's parents in town for the holiday weekend we went uptown to the Epicenter last night. The epicenter is an area with bars, clubs, restaurants and hotels on 3 levels. We went to dinner at Whiskey River, a country bar owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr, and then walked around for a bit. 

That may or may not be me riding a mechanical bull... :-)

Congrats Mike!!!!

Mike got word on Thursday that Coca-Cola will be putting an offer letter together for him on Tuesday, when they come back from the holiday weekend!! That called for some celebration -- we are so excited!!