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 . .

Orlando, here we come!

We leave for Orlando Saturday morning. Woo-hoo! I've been looking forward to this for a while.
As I mentioned before, all of this wasn't really well-planned, so hopefully it will go somewhat smoothly. I am repeating this mantra to myself . . 'I will stick to my vacation budget this year. It won't be like the past 10 years. I won't tell myself 'hey, this is our summer vacation, splurge, splurge, splurge . . ' So, I won't go overbudget, right? Say 'yes', even if you don't believe it.

So, here's to fun in the hot Florida sun, screaming on rides at Universal Studios, visiting family (Keithy and Em), and lots of good times!

Hope everyone has a great 4th! I'll be missing y'all . .

(I'll leave you with a few summer pics my mom took last week.)

1 a.m. Saturday

John M. woke up at about 12:30 a.m. Friday crying. Only, the crying soon turned into screaming. Lots of it. Nothing would calm him down. I walked him around, I popped the noopie in the screaming mouth multiple times, offered him juice, a bottle, food . . shoot, I would have offered him Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket if I had one.

30 minutes later, continuous screaming. Mark had taken his temperature, and we had checked every inch of his little bottle for the culprit. The sprinkling of the holy water hadn't worked (okay, not really). We had no clue what was wrong. He had never done this before.

30 minutes later, we just sat him on the bed and watched him scream. His little body was actually trembling, he was crying so hard. I thought about taking him to the emergency room, but I wasn't sure what to say. Um, 'my baby is screaming for no apparent reason and won't stop. Can you check him for something, anything? Maybe he needs his oil changed, or a new battery?'.

I finally scooped him up and told Mark I was going to take him for a ride in the car to maybe put him to sleep. I didn't care if that ride was a long one, even to northern Maine, as long as he stopped screaming. Mark gave him some ibuprofen for good measure and I brought him outside to put him in the van. In about 2.1 seconds, the screaming (which had gone on for over an hour) stopped. Just like that. We could hear the crickets chirping outside. John M. just looked at me with his little tiny mouth finally closed, and I asked him 'hear the crickets?' and he says 'ya' and grins. Followed by 'dada'. I hand him to Mark, he pats him on the back for a few minutes, carried him inside, put him in bed and that was the end of that.

I have no idea what happened. All I know is I've never seen a child like being outside like my boy does. I think I'm going to pitch a little John-tent in my backyard and let him live out there. He'd love it.

Bad ears but good days . .

John M. started with a cold last weekend, which turned into a slight fever, which got me worried, because my children don't get fevers at all unless there's something amiss.

Went to the doctor today (look how long he looks over there on the left; about 6 foot 2? How did this child get so huge??)and turns out he has two ear infections. First good thing of the day, the pediatrician gave me free samples of the antibiotic that he prescribed! Woo f'in hoo to that one! That made my day, bright and early at about 8:30 a.m.

I decided to take the rest of the day off to spoil my bad-eared-boy. I thought he may be calm due to being sick. Wrong on that one. He was a little hurricane most of the day, especially after a teeny-tiny cup-ette of Coca-Cola. Anyway, I lived the life of SAHM today, which I don't get to do often. And I must say I enjoyed it. The kids and I ran some errands, including a stop at Home Depot for some flowers. They all helped pick out some Vinca and we so cute doing it, I had to snap a few pictures. (I know Home Depot shoppers were thinking, 'this poor woman does NOT get out much'). We stopped for some Wendy's and then headed home for a day of swimming for the girls and some baby-pool action for John. We tried not to get the ears wet, but I'm not sure if we succeeded once John got a hold of the hose.

It was a nice day. And just what I needed. Makes me sad in a way, to realize what I miss every day while I'm at work.
But I try to snap out of it and just soak in the good feelings of having my 3 sweet 'babies'. They sure made me happy today.

Okay, so I changed the Date/Time stamp . .

so it wouldn't look like I had posted this 'Happy Father's Day' post the day AFTER the actual event.

I know I don't say it nearly often enough, but thanks for being a great father to our children, Mark.

Thanks for being Anna's softball coach and taking every spare minute when you're not at work to practice
with 14 nine and ten-year-olds. And enjoying it more than they do a lot of the time. Thanks for showing that
you're so proud of them, even when you don't mean to.

Thanks for sharing your farm-life love with Emma. I never would have guessed that she would be the
country girl of the family. Thanks for taking her to do the cow-chores and not having any reason for her to say
"Daddy, you left me out" with a big pouty lip, like she used to. Remember that? ;^)

Thanks for joining me in just enjoying 'the boy' and laughing at his every move. I know that he'll be a great
father one day, from your example.

Let's not forget also to thank you...
-for killing and removing large insects from our house (oh, and the couple
of snakes too)
- for removing splinters from every appendage of each of our kids on a regular basis mostly because,
like their mom, they forget what it means to wear shoes
-for making pancakes in the shape of our initials (a skill I'll never acquire).

As John would say, 'Da-dee, YOU!
(translation . . I love you, Daddy).

Well, me too.

Cattle Annie and her cohort Cattle Emmie

My girls at horse camp last week:

Is it time for vacation yet?

It's been almost a week since I posted. Already. The time has been flying by for me. I can't believe the kids are already almost 3 weeks into summer vacation. I'll be shopping for uniforms and school supplies before you know it. I actually bought the first of their school supplies today; I'm trying to break up the expense by getting a few things here and there. Aren't I the planner?

Anna's softball team won the championship for their league and she's now on the All-Star team. Mark's the coach for that team too so he and Anna will be busy for a little while longer. Emma started playing ball last week and her team participated in a tournament and won first place! We're on a roll here. (I took first place in baking in the hot Louisiana sun and sweating like a sow.
You should see my medal.)

I have lots of pictures to post (and even a video of John grooving!) but I can't get my damn camera to upload the photos. I'll work on it more tonight, if I get the chance.

And Father's Day so snuck up on me. Shouldn't that be pushed back 'til July? Who do we talk to about that?

Oh, one last thing. I have a new best friend. Her name is Chick FilA. She satisfies me so.

Thankful Thursday

Things I Am Thankful for This Thursday Thune Theighth, Two Thousand and Thix:

1.) The girls being finished with horse camp, as of yesterday. Yes, they had a great time, but it was an hour and a half trip one way! I've seen way too much of the inside of my van this week.

2.) Our Orlando vacation only being 3 weeks away!

3.) John hugging me so tight around my neck that I can barely breathe.

4.) Greasy Pizza from the Pastime Lounge with good friends.

5.) My good pal, Jolie, being in from N.Y. for the whole summer. Gosh, I miss that girl when she's gone.

6.) Watching my girls play ball.

7.) 'Paw-Paw' pictured above being a part of Anna, Emma, and John's lives and showing them what country life is all about. It reminds me a lot of my grandfather, on my mom's side, showing my sister and I the same thing.

I am truly blessed in so many ways, and very thankful.

Catching you up a little . .

I've about given up on ever getting Blogger to allow me to import the rest of my Tennessee pictures. It just keeps spitting them back at me. Little F'er.

So, I thought I'd do a picture-less post. Which is not the norm for me. I've been a busy one lately. School's out, summer activities have started and I'm running around like a total nut. The girls have horse camp this week, way out in Chiquapin Parish (okay, that's not the real name of the parish, but I think that was the made-up parish name in Steel Magnolias, so I thought I'd steal it). Anyway, this camp is about an hour and a half away from my house, which makes for a looong driving day. And today was just the first day. Shit. The girls did love the camp though. Emma's on a horse named Dusty Rose and Anna's on a dude named Reno. They learned to saddle up the horses, brush them, put the bridle on, and do a little trotting and cantering too. They know more now, at the ages of 10 and 8, than I've ever known about horses in all of my 36 years. I'm still not over the 'ring on the calf's penis' thing. Yikes!

Anna's wrapping up her softball season and Emma's just getting started with coache's pitch. Her team is named the Tigers and they're purple and gold, so I know my dad will be sending good vibes her way. He was the biggest LSU Tiger fan I've ever known. Combine that with his Emma and I know he'll be smiling down on every game.

John M. has been hanging with his sisters and now calls the ballpark his home. He's started saying actual small sentences and sometimes he talks so much, I pop his 'noopie' in his tiny piehole just to get some peace and quiet. Bad Mother Award number 103,677 for me.

I'm starting to gear up for vacation in less than 4 weeks. Did I mention I have no idea how we're going to fund this trip? I guess Mr. Master Card will be paying for it. Don't you love him? Right up until he mails you his bill.

I bought a flat iron on Ebay today. I was a flat-iron virgin until my trip to the hair salon last weekend. I loved the flat iron look! Who'd have thunk it? My hair is pretty stick straight anyway, but this made it straighter and silkier. Do any of you ladies use one of these? If so, do you have any tips for me?

Okay, now that I've jumped topics about 10 times, I'm going to bed. And prepare to hightail it to Guam (Chiquapin Parish horse camp) tomorrow morning at 7:00 am. Jealous, aren't you?