Why I'm broker than my average brokeness in August

August 1st - Mark's parents' anniversary
August 2nd - my one and only sister's birthday
August 3rd - my one and only husband's birthday (also the birthday of 3 friends!)
August 4th - my nephew's birthday (he's turning 7 and would like mucho presents pronto)
August 6th - our Anniversary (a wedding in the dead heat of the La. summer, I know I'm a little off) (13 years! WOW.)
August 12th - my parents Anniversary
August 26th - my niece's birthday (she's turning 10 and dittos her brother's sentiments above)

I think those are all of the big ones, but isn't that weird how many 'big' people in my life have August birthdays and anniversaries? Do you have a full month like this? If so, what month is it and what's going on when?

'Feeling Blessed' Friday

Blessings count for today:

- Today finally being Friday and the weekend being just around the corner. Here's to sleeping past 6 a.m.

- My mom picking up the girls from camp for me the entire week.

- A fun day at the waterpark with all 3 kids one day this week.

- A tasty sandwich for lunch today with a good friend (although it was a lot pricey!)

- One of my best friends (you know who you are) returning to work Monday!

- John M.'s open-mouth kisses

- The way Mark sticks out his booty when he bats and cracks me up.

- This blog, which reminds me to appreciate, appreciate, appreciate . .

22 months

(I wish I'd remember to do one of these monthly updates for John, Dooce-stlye, but sometimes it slips my mind. I wanted John to be able to read these one day and learn a little about his baby-life way back in 2005 and 2006. But just the fact that I forget every now and then is a testimony to my personality and my life's circumstances now, so see he's learning something through my forgetfulness. Did that make any sense? I didn't think so.)

So, you are the big 2-2 today, just 2 months before you are 2 years old. Wow. Time flies, baby. I have one word to describe you lately. Sweetie. You astound me with your sweetness most days. I wonder how you even know how to do just the right things to make me want to kiss you non-stop from dawn 'til dusk. Take yesterday morning, for instance. You were just waking up and you opened your little green eyes and looked at me all sleepily. I smiled at you and you got up on your little knees, leaned in very slowly, opened your little mouth (as you've learned to do this month when you do 'on-the-mouth-kisses) and planted a kiss right on my cheek). Very gently though. And then you went right back to laying next to me so I could wonder how in the world I got so lucky. Things like this touch me and make me want to cry on a regular basis. I wish I had some way to convey to you happy you make me every day.

You know what else? You crack me up, my boy. We were watching the Miss America pageant on TV Saturday night and you kept asking 'Mama?' when they would show the girls because that's just something you do, when you see women, you ask 'Mama?' and men, 'Daddy?' as if everyone
has to be someone's mama or daddy. So, for each contestant, you would say 'Mama?' and I'd say 'no, she's not a mama', but you'd still say really positively, 'Mama!', and then when it was time for the evening gowns, the camera would pan up from feet to face. And when it got just about to breast-level on the first contestant, you said 'Ma-mah!!', as if you were having a little mini-lust going on. A couple of contestants later, at the same point you said 'hot?'. I said 'no, I don't think she's hot', and you followed that with 'Hot Ma-mah!!'. Not sure where you got that from, but I can tell you your Daddy was proud. That was one of those 'That's my boy' moments. So, you're funny, yes.

A few of your most favorite things:

chocolate (see photo above)
pancakes (can-canks)
hot dogs (hot dawwwgs)
any kind of truck
horses (you call them 'Mani's', because of our horse, Amani)
holes
shoes
outside (as always)

Thanks for keeping us all laughing and being the sweetheart that you are. Don't think we aren't thankful every minute of the day.

Somewhere in a tub in Central Florida . . .

I'll eat him up anywhere, even soaking wet. I'll take the eyebrows first, please. Then, the cheeks.

What's 'in my' stuff?

I have been tagged by my favorite fellow Kenny-lover, Chesney, for this 'In My' list. I can't 'dis' my girl, Chesney, and I also find it hard to pass up a good list, so here goes:

In my purse/wallet:
--good gosh, a lot of shit . . let's start with a first aid kit, courtesy of Wal-Mart, 99 cents.
--my favorite wallet ever, with a cute little chic shopping girl embroidered on it.
--a coin purse that never contains much moolah, but usually a pony-tail holder or two
--my cell phone
--a big wad of keys

In my Refrigerator:
~A slew of juice bags (for the kids) and Cokes (for Mark), both addicted to each.
~bag of baby carrots (Chesney and I are twins on this one)
~neverending supply of hot dogs (hot dawwwgs, as John M. would say)
~Hungry Jack Butter-Flavored biscuits, I love 'em, love 'em, love 'em
~homemade jellies, courtesy of Mrs. Sam, the babysitter

In my Closet:
~Too many clothes (ditto for me here, Ches)
~wrapping paper/gift bags
~Christmas decorations
~a laundry bin full of purses
~dust bunnies

In my Car:
~Kenny Chesney CDs (Duh) (okay one more ditto here for me)
~Very, very, very ancient McDonald's french fries
~an assortment of balls that roll every which way when I'm driving
~my glasses, that I only wear when driving. I'm blind the rest of the time
~usually, 3 very loud kids!

Does anyone else want to share?
...Mary?
...Krisco?
...Krystal?
...Cindy?
...Holli?

1 year

One year ago today, I started this blog. I honestly didn't think I'd keep it up, but here I am. Thanks, Beki, for putting the idea in my head.

I try to use this blog as a 'memory book' for this period of my life. My intention is to capture snippets of things my kids do and say so that I can reflect on them in years to come, and also share with them when they're older. Sometimes, I feel like I've stayed true to this original intent, and other times, not. I often feel like I'm worrying too much about my audience (as small as it may be) and forgetting the real purpose. My goal, in the next year, will be to stay on course and not sweat the small stuff.

Thank you for reading though. I didn't imagine that you would. And the comments, oh, did I mention how I love those? (guess I did, huh?)

Last Vacation Post

I have to mention what a good time we had with Mark's brother, Keith (or Keithy, as we all call him now) and his wife, Emily. They treated us to a great dinner the night before we left and also let the kids tear up their house. The girls had a fun time with their MacBooks and distorting images of their faces every which way. There's absolutley no convincing them now that the same thing can't be done on every laptop computer in the universe.

Keith and Emily also treated the girls to opening their own oyster and finding beautiful pearls. They even let them each pick out their own setting (Anna chose a turtle and Emma, a crab) for their pearls. This was way too expensive, but Emily insisted. Sorry there, Keithy, but you know women and shopping . .
We're just trying to get them well trained.

We also went to Downtown Disney (which was the only Disney thing we did the entire vacation) and had a great time. John M. loved the little Legoland playground.

We don't get to see Keith and Emily nearly enough and all of the kids are in love with them. I've never had this experience with all 3 of them at once, but they all started crying when we drove away from Keith's house, even John M., as he repeated 'Cheez' (his way of saying Keith) over and over again. He kept asking for him the remainder of the trip. :(

Hopefully, in the near future, we'll see them again.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging program....

Walt Disney Who?! (vacation, part 3)

So, I had mentioned before the great, cheap deal that I got from Universal Orlando. I got 5-day tickets for my whole family for $200 bucks total. I thought that was unbelievable, especially because a single day at Disney would cost more than that. I figured there was a catch or I would find out that I misunderstood something. Or the worst, that we wouldn't enjoy Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure.

I was wrong. There was no catch and the parks were great! I found that one of the best things about these parks is that they cater towards 'beating the heat'. Almost every line for a ride is shaded and there are misters everywhere. There is also a good amount of shade from trees in the parks, in general, especially Islands of Adventure. It's beautifully landscaped and the structures there are pretty too.

John M. was entertained by the Barney show and also liked the Dr. Seuss part of IOA. There are a few really little-kid-friendly areas in both parks which was great. The girls loved the E.T. ride, and Shrek 4-D, as well as the water rides at IOA. We didn't get to ride everything we wanted because we were only there 2 days. The rest of our time was spent doing other things. I'd like to go back and do everything we were interested in.

Here are a few pictures from Universal/IOA:

We interrupt the vacation posts for this short announcement..

About 5 years ago, we had bought some seashells from one of those cheesy souvenir shops in Biloxi. We also bought a little dried starfish; it's kind of delicate and sweet looking. I have it next to the girls bathroom sink. And so .... the point of this post.

Emma yelling(in the tub last night): Mommmmm?!

Me yelling (from the next room): Yeah?

Emma: Can I please put that starfish on the counter in the tub with me?

Me: Sure, I guess.

Emma (after a few seconds of silent contemplation): Mom?

Me: Uh-uh?

Emma: It won't come back alive or anything, huh?

Me: (chuckle) No, you're good.

just when you think they're too grown up for you, they lay something like this on you and you're so happy that a little piece of them is still so innocent-

Shuttle-less and wet

We spent our first night in Tallahassee, to break up the drive (it's about 12 hours total). Sunday, we headed to Orlando, which is only about 4 hours from Tallahassee. Mark decided he wanted us to see the space shuttle launch, because Cape Canaveral is only another hour or so out of Orlando, and Cocoa Beach is out that way too.

We were professionals at throwing change into the toll booth collector thingys by the time we got to Cape Canaveral. Geez, what IS the deal with all of the tolls out that way?! We get there just in time to hear that the shuttle has been delayed because of bad weather. And before we knew it, the bad weather was all around us. So, no beach, no shuttle, just surf shops. Where John M. got to enjoy the 'whee' (as he calls it). A 'whee' can be a variety of things, so far, hills, escalators, slides, and those little straight escalator people-mover deals. Anything that causes his mom to say 'Wheeeee' while he's experiencing it. The surf shop had 'whees' and we 'wheed' about 20 times on them. Up and down, up and down, wheeeee.

We bought some surf shop goods that we didn't need, and took off back to Orlando in the rain. About .01211111 miles out of Cape Canaverel, the rain stopped. Go figure. We headed to Uncle Keithy's house to visit. He and Auntie Em took us out to 'American Pie', which was the coolest pizza place where you can play video games the entire time you dine! The girls couldn't have imagined anything better. As you can see from the pictures, we had to pry the little controllers out of their hands to leave. They loved it and the pizza was good too. More tomorrow . .

Did I mention how good this child was in the car?

I'll put it this way, he was as well-behaved as he is cute in the picture!

Yep, that good.

Sometimes, his sisters could take lessons from him.

We're finally home!

Yep, we're back from Orlando. We had a great time and I'm going to share slowly.
We left Saturday and ran into traffic, on the interstate, in a number of places. Going into Mobile, Alabama, and Lake City, Florida and one other spot I don't even recall. It took us about 12 hours to get to Tallahassee, when it should have taken 8. It was one long day.

We drove through Biloxi and Gulfport to see the damage from Katrina. I haven't been through there since the hurricane. It was unreal to see the destruction. We used to vacation there every year when the girls were babies and I had great memories of times there together. It was hard to see it the way it is now, but hopefully hurricanes will stay away for a while and it will be rebuilt.

We took the kids for a short walk on the beach. John didn't remember the beach in Galveston last year, so this was all new to him. It took him a little while to enjoy the tide coming in and covering his little chunky toes, but he came around.

More tomorrow . .