Rudy Family Rukus~Parenting tips and humor meet in one big "rukus"

You know you're a mom when.... You let your 3 year old clean the windows with a baby wipe in hopes that one day she will learn to do it the right way.   You let your 6 year old paint your 3 year olds toe nails and try to take a picture and the battery is DEAD in your camera because you left it on while downloading all your other pictures. You look at your pictures and see things in an entirely different perspective and hope that you can be a better mom today. Joining up with Arizona Mamma over at Our Daze in the Desert .

As I mentioned on Sunday I am a challenger in the Budget Boot Camp .  I am joining up with some of my favorite twitter and blogfrog friends and meeting some new ladies as well along this journey.  I am very excited to make new blogging friends and get my budget in shape! The first challenge is to make a menu and stick to it.  Since I have been working on this anyway I am very excited to continue meal planning as a way to help me save money.  I printed out the menu template from Beth at In Good Cents .  Wish me luck as I am trying to do three weeks worth of menus. If you would like to join me in this challenge please feel free!  Each week I will be posting the challenge and then a wrap up post on how the challenge went.  I will also be discussing it in my BlogFrog community so if you want to decrease your spending and get your budget in shape jump in NOW! Click the button and it will take you to our facebook fanpage.  Go ahead and like us and follow along on twitter too us

I am joining up with some real budget savvy ladies over the next 90 days to get my budget in shape.  We will be doing challenges each week to help us take charge of our budgets and save money for our families.  I can't wait to share more of it with you all. I figured while I am getting my budget in shape I might as well work out while I am at it.  I am starting Jillian's 30 Day Shred again.  This time I am posting about it here so I will feel a little more accountable and will get through the full 30 days this time!  Wish me luck!

We have spent a lot of time the past few weeks going to flag football games and baseball games and trying to finish up the school year.  These are some shots from this week. Baseball usually looks a lot like this, a lot of standing around and waiting and very little action.  It is not different in the pros!  The only thing missing here was the food! The next is my favorite because he is already giving me THIS look.  Can't wait for the teen years! Another classic baseball pose.  I love that boys automatically know how to play baseball.  No coaching needed! My sister was in town and joined us for one of the games this week.  She and the girls were much more cooperative with the picture taking!  This is the last one I promise!!! This is in the dug-out and the chatter is quite entertaining!                                             Hosted by Cecily

The neighbors invited us over for some water fun.  I took my camera to practice shooting this is a little dark but I found it hysterical.  I love that I caught the stream of water from her squirt gun. She just got sprayed with a huge squirt gun she started yelling after and said "STOP getting me wet"  as she proceeded to spray her sister with water.   They had put bubbles in the water (environmentally friendly of course!)  My girls were so fascinated with the idea of bubbles in the pool they didn't want to get out even though the water was FREEZING!  I also thought the colors were amazing the bright pin and the beautiful purple flowers in the background ahhhh summer! They had so much fun thanks Jane for the invite we slept so great last night.  Just one more reason I LOVE summer. Linking up with Angie over at Seven Clown Circus for Wordful Wednesday.

I am joining up with Julia from Work, Wife, Mom...Life and Beth from Me As A Mommy.  I was feeling uninspired and tweeted about it and Julia said I should join up and I thought that was a fabulous idea because I have about 10,000 must have items!  The problem is narrowing it down to just one. So for today my must have item is Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. Reasons I love these.  They work great for wiping down my kitchen table, quickly cleaning up my 1/2 bathroom when I know company is coming and I don't have time for a deep cleaning, and my favorite use for them. Drumroll please......  I hand one to each of my kiddos and they run around the house cleaning doorknobs, light switches and getting those dirty hand prints off doors, walls, etc.  My kids love using them and they love helping me.  I set a timer and we all get busy.  The house is cleaner, disinfected, and smells better in minutes.   If you have a must have item head on over and link up too. I was not compensated in any

Joining up with Janae over at Pink Moss for some Flashback Friday fun.  This is my dad and his two oldest grand kids.  They will both be 8 this year!  He is a little like my Mom in that his favorite job is being a grandpa to 9 (soon to be 11) grandchildren.  You can see the joy in his smile.  Don't mind the children they didn't know they were supposed to be having fun too! Hope you all have a fabulous weekend.  I am going to enjoy the nice weather! 

Did I mention I met CJane at the Casual Blogger Conference ?  I am certain I did. If not I totally did and she is just as amazing in real life as she is on her blog.  I also got to chat with her Chup and see her new baby although formerlyphread was totally hogging her!  I know this picture is really crazy of all of us, but we were laughing because there were about 600 people with cameras standing around us and CJane said I don't know where to look and started shaking her head back and forth.  I found that obviously hilarious and laughed out loud as you can see.  The picture Lolli got is even more hilarious I am almost bent over laughing. I laughed a lot at the CBC it was very therapeutic!   Linked to Angie over at Seven Clown Circus for Wordful Wednesday. Just FYI over at MMB they are having a give-away of all the left-over swag from the Casual Blogger Conference.  You might want to check that out.

Repeat as necessary to ensure proper drowsy effect by bedtime! I found two hours was adequate.  You may need to adjust times to your particular situation.

I have no idea how to do this.  I did my best but I think I fell a little short.  All the presents were opened before 9 a.m. and by noon we had picnicked at a very cool local shopping village.  And by that I mean we ate our food as fast as we could so that the ducks and cats did not attack us.  My children are painfully frightened by any animal but especially those they are unfamiliar with. Really they are kind of intimidating right? We quickly came home to put together the cake masterpiece so that friends could come on over and help to devour it. It is a pattern cake NOT trifle when you are six you don't know what trifle is but you do know way more about patterns than you will ever need! Regardless of my inability to distract I was able to get a few great shots of the birthday girl.  Hope you had a great day!  We love you!

One of the keynote speakers at CBC 2010 was Matt Townsend .  I like to call him a relationship comedian.  And I just name people what ever I want because I am cool like that.  He spoke about his program Feeding the Starved Marriage .  I thought he was amazing.  He made me laugh about things that get in the way of having a GREAT marriage.  He calls them smoke.  He said that generally marriage satisfaction goes down 20% per child.  So basically I am 60% less satisfied with my marriage because of something I grew.  There is really nothing I can do about that except make the best of it, one reason I pay an exorbitant amount of money for very  qualified babysitters.  He also talked about a lot of things that get in the way and I was so happy that of the long list he mentioned only one or two were on my list.  Which made me realize that I have a great marriage.  Okay I actually already thought that but it is always nice to have someone validate that.  Someone that is an "expert"

I love the warmer weather we have enjoyed it all week.  These are shots from Memorial Day.  I am a little behind.  I am trying to get more organized around here so I can be better at blogging.  It is just taking some time.  I have been playing with my camera a lot this week hoping to take better pictures. Linking up with Lolli over at Better in Bulk for Give Me Your Best Shot.

1.  Meeting your online friends in real life is amazing! 2.  You can talk about blogging and not be worried that others won't know what your talking about. (or that they will think you are crazy) 3.  Vendors, vendors everywhere! 4.  Free goodies from awesome businesses! 5.  Networking After attending the Casual Bloggers Conference I feel like I can conquer the world.  Well not really but here a few highlights. My favorite class was on organization.  It was taught by Marie Ricks from  House Of Order and Sarah Kimmel from Organized Mom (dot) net and Tech4Mommies (dot) com .  They gave me some really great tips and ideas.  More to come on this one!! I was also privileged to meet the wonderful founders of The BlogFrog Holly and Rustin .  You all know that I LOVE them already but it was amazing to meet them in real life.  We all went to dinner on Friday night and it was like we were old friends! I was also so excited to meet my friend Lolli from Better In Bulk .  She is