Grateful Friday

1.) Carousels (and 'little' girls who are not too big for them yet).

2.) Friday night high-school football games with my family.

3.) Playing the Wii with my boy.

4.) Small town life.

5.) Bananas for breakfast.

6.) Cheaper electricity bills!

That last way may just be due to the fact that we were without power for a quarter of the month, but I'm going to take what I can get.
We're having great cooler weather down here. It's been really nice. Anyone wanna come down and visit?

Four!

My baby is four years old today.
In celebration, here's a list of four reasons why I love John M. being 4:

1.) John, you love to prove to me that you're a big kid and can do things. Example: "Mom, I'm big so I can sweep that up for you!". Go for it, boy!

2.) You're starting to learn all of your letters and love to spell things for
me, although you always do it from right to left. When you see a stop sign, you
say 'P-O-T-S' and I say right, 'Pots!'. We'll clear that up one day.

3.) You're big enough to want to pour your own drink, but not yet too big for
me to scoop you up and hug you for a good long while.

4.) You make me things now; cards, signs, all sorts of artwork and I want to
keep all of it to remind me of how perfectly sweet you are at this age.

I was planning on doing a list of four reasons why four is probably going to
be a pain in the butt, but let's just end it on a positive note, why don't we?

I love you, my boy, for four million reasons.

Love,

Mom (even from right to left, it's still me)

Not the Diary I want it to be

This blogging thing lately has not been what I set out for it to be. It's supposed to be a diary of sorts, something for my children to read one day and remember what we were doing at any given point and time. I haven't been doing that. Everything gets in the way.

As I sat here and finally downloaded the pictures from the past month or so from my camera, I realized all that I've been missing out on 'writing in my diary'. And telling my kids in the future. And telling YOU.

For starters, we did a semi-remodel of our house over the summer. We had all of the rooms painted, enclosed our garage to make a family room, added a carport on the back of the house and replaced all of our carpet with wood floors. I took some pictures. Here's a couple. I really love the way it turned out; it's pretty boring now because most of the pictures aren't hung on the walls, so there's much bareness.
Is that a word? Oh yeah, and while we were on vacation in June, Mark built John M. a loft over his bed. Yep, he just threw this together one week. I knew there was a reason I married that man!

We took the kids fishing before the hurricanes set in. We caught the most fish I've ever caught on a fishing trip. Not saying much, but hey. All in all, I think there were over 30 of them. Guess who caught the biggest?

Anna's cheering is in full swing. It's definitely keeping us all busy, but when I see her out there doing her thing, I love it. She has a smile that can't be beat. I may not see it enough in these 'tween' years, but when I do, it melts my heart.


Emma got her ears pierced 3 weeks ago, something that's she's been deathly afraid of doing for years. She was very nervous, but after the first 'gunshot', she looked at all of us like, 'So, what was the big deal?'. She's anxiously awaiting the day when she can wear a new pair of earrings.


I'm going to try and keep this posting up more frequently. Please help me to keep it going! If you're on Facebook, write on my wall and give me a nudge in the right direction. Or just email me and tell me to get it in gear.

Whew, now I feel better!

Post-Gustav Musings

Hurricane Gustav has come and gone and hopefully Ike will stay away. I think the last hurricane that affected me personally this much was Andrew back when I was fresh out of college and living in Baton Rouge. Katrina and Rita were huge for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but not horrible for me.

Gustav made sure we would never forget him. It sounded like the wind was going to blow the house down, John M's swingset collapsed, my mom's pool looked like a swamp and our yards looked like doomsday had struck. It took A LOT of cleanup and it was baking hot, we were without power for 8 days, and groceries were hard to come by. Oh yeah, and Mark's barn blew away. In the end, our house had no major damage and everyone was safe.

The funny thing is, most of our time after the storm (we were off of work for a week) was good. Why? I'll make a short list.

1.) We spent it together, with my mom, and my sister and her family. The kids played in the puddles, made lots of play dough art, and laughed a lot.

2.) We got back to basics. I cooked 3 meals a day (well, for a while, until McDonald's reopened!) We hung clothes out on the line to dry. I think I'm gonna leave my clothesline up; I found that I loved having one.

3.) The storm brought a little cool weather for a couple of days. There was a nice breeze blowing off the lake and for 2 nights, we slept with the windows open and had to cover up with 2 blankets. Amazing, when the usual September weather is in the 90s.

4.) When things started to get back to normal we appreciated things we usually take for granted. Mostly air conditioning!

Now, let's all cross our fingers that Gustav's friends leave us alone and I can use my clothesline because I want to, not out of necessity. I'm off to buy some clothespins . . .