Just because I think they're really cute . .

Thoughts on a Tuesday

Not a whole lot of news-worthy items to post about today, so I'll just share a few of my thoughts that have been jogging through my brain today:

thought 1. (a.m.)It's been a year since Katrina. I've become one of those people who have too quickly forgotten the impact that's it's had on our state, and the nation as a whole. I forget all of the work that has yet to be done to rebuild. But I try to remind myself and keep the people of New Orleans in my thoughts and prayers.

thought 2. (a.m.) Will gas prices ever go down lower than 2 bucks a gallon? I just filled up my tank yesterday and it's already lower than 3/4 of a tank. Where the hell did my gas go? How can I make it the rest of the week, with a 66 mile roundtrip, and not use the rest of my gas. Perhaps, I can travel at a rate of 10 miles/hour. That would make my daily commute 12 hours long. Perhaps not.

thought 3. (lunchtime) Could this fried okra be any tastier?!

thought 4: (p.m.) I wish John M. would be in a more gleeful mood when I drop him off at the sitter's in the morning. Lately, he's been down in the dumps in the mornings and doesn't want me to leave. I try not to let it bother me, but I prefer my kid pushing me out of the door in the mornings, and that way the guilt is less during the day. Will I ever get over the guilt? After almost 11 years, I guess the answer to that is 'no'.

thought 5: (p.m.) I need to invest in some Nice N Easy, so I can improve on this Granny Fotbaum look I have going.

thought 6: (p.m.) I need to update my blog . . and here I am.

Peace out.

Big Hat

Yep, it's this big! What . . it's not on right? Sure it is.

John M's 23 month old meme

One little month from the big two-year-old mark. Already.

Here you are washing your grandmother's car. You love the water, that's for sure. Wa-la, as you say. You love it so much that you fell into the pool earlier this month (with nothing to keep you afloat) and scared the ever-living-shit out of me. Don't do that to your mama; she's old and anxiety-stricken as it is. Anyway, you decided you were going to swing on the railing for the steps going into the pool and your hands slipped and next thing I knew, you were under water flailing about. I jumped in, clothes and all, and scooped you up and you just looked at me as if to say, 'What'd you do that for? I was trying to teach myself to swim'. In fact, that's what your sisters said, that it looked like you were trying to swim. You never cried, coughed, anything. Maw-Maw and I were having nervous breakdowns and it looked like you were ready for an ice cream or something. No fear, I tell you.

On the flip side, Anna decided to paint your fingernails and toenails last weekend. Blue. Because otherwise, it would be too girly, right? You loved it. Daddy didn't so much. You went for your first boat ride this summer the day the painting took place, and I looked at you at one point to see what you were thinking of the rough, bumpy ride. You were sitting up straight in the 'co-pilot' seat of the boat with your little hands in the air, nails toward you, just admiring your nice freshly-painted blue nails. You love them. I need to get a picture, huh?

I love the way you jumble up your words into little JohnM-sentences, something like this.
'I ride Daddy tows', translated to mean 'I want to ride with Daddy to see the cows'. I try to make you string together big, long sentences just to see how you will phrase things. One of my favorites is 'I wan hold Mama'. I dread the day I don't hear that anymore.

I love you Mr. John M., with your almost-two-year-old self.

P.S. Does anyone else watch Flavor of Love 2?

Don't ask me why I'm addicted to that stupid show, but I am.

Do you wonder how on earth these women could want to plant a kiss on Flav's nasty grill?

Can you believe Somethin' took a dump on the floor during the first show?
(now there's a sentence you don't expect to blog).

Anyway, I just realized I'm missing this quality piece of entertainment. So, I'll have to
leave you now to join Flav.

My nickname's going to be 'Gassy'.

Peace out.

How Dave Ramsey changed my life (future prediction)

I've been reading Dave's budget book all weekend. I was hoping I'd find the Easy-Mac version of becoming a millionaire, but damn, I guess there's not one. Short of winning the lotto, which I'm to cheap to play.

Seems that we need to jump on the debt snowball. Only our snowball is bigger than our house. Mark and I have decided that we need to do something about the debt. Restructure the debt, because it ain't going away. After reading through most of Dave's book, I decided we'll probably do what we intended to do originally. Refinance our house, for about 3 years extra. I'm looking for advice; tell me what you think. We have two car notes, that when added together, almost total our monthly mortgage payments. These notes are never-ending because Mark and I put so many miles on our cars that we trade them in fairly quickly. Our goal is to stop doing that. Roll these into our mortgage, along with other small debt that we have (a couple of credit cards), and finance for 15 years (on our original 15 year mortgage that was down to about 12 years). I hate to add the three years, but it would free up about 900 bucks a month, which we desperately need for GAS! and to start saving. Our savings is basically non-existent. Dave isn't real clear cut on whether or not he agrees with this. Basically, we'll have equity in everything and still some in our house, but not as much as we currently do.

The most important thing, as Dave stresses in the book, is to change our spending habits, to
prevent incurring further debt. And that is what I'm determined to do.
No more ordering clothes and deferring payment hoping the deferment fairy will leave a shit-load of money on my doorstep.
No more overdoing kids' birthdays and Christmas.
No more vacations we didn't budget for (like this year's!)
No more eating out every single work day (I ate in 3 times last week!)
No more living like we're well off when we're barely scraping by.

Time to face reality, dig in and change our ways. Wish me luck.

I'll need it.

Catching Up

I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like. I feel like I'm missing little moments I should capture on disk space. I try to remember cute and funny things the kids say and do, but most times, when it comes time for me to post, my old brain fails me.

Let's see. School is in full swing. Homework has started and I'm just counting the days until I'm stumped on how to help them with an assignment. I had a bad 'predicate' scene a couple of years ago, when, for the life of me, I couldn't think of what the hell a predicate was. I did get stumped on how to do a capital 'Y' in cursive yesterday. Emma outright rejected my version of the big 'Y', erased it and penciled in her own little goal-post-looking Y, with a bit of an attitude.

Along with school comes extra-curricular activities and we're trying to decide on those now. The girls will do art again this year and it looks like Emma will do soccer in the fall and Anna will try out for the middle-school basketball team. For now, I'm enjoying the fact that we're activity-free for the next couple of weeks.

John M. has a little bit of a cough lately, because many of the kids at the babysitters are sick and the germs are making the rounds. He's been loving watching 'Madagascar' and gets really peeved if I sing to any of the songs or God forbid, try to dance to them. He's saying so many new things now, I can't keep up. This morning, he pointed at my car keys and said 'keys' and I didn't even know he knew that word. He also likes to tell me 'I weady!' when he's ready to go somewhere. His buddies are back at daycare and he's happy about that. (Their moms are teachers and had the summer off).

And last, but certainly not least (and y'all are sworn to secrecy on this one), Aunt Flo is at my house again, and it's not me she's here to see.

Someone help me . . please ;)

Back to school . . already

Thursday, the girls returned to school, looking and acting way more grown-up than I would like.

This is the first year where I haven't pulled their clothes out for them and helped them get ready. Other than about 2 minutes helping Emma with her hair, I did nothing. You're probably thinking 'That's great!' and half of me is too, but the other half misses my 'babies' and wants them to need me.

I still think of them as 'little kids' in so many ways though, even Anna, who is by far, one of the 'bigger' kids of the elementary school. For instance, I kept waiting to have to fill out a form at orientation for her transportation schedule. Every year, we have to fill out a bus or carpool form to make sure they get to where they need to be. I asked the teacher and another parent about this and they pretty much said 'They're old enough to know where to go at this age. We don't need the form anymore'. It took me by surprise for a minute but then I realized that they were right, and that I had to let go of the mentality that Anna is a 'little girl'. It makes me want to cry to write that but hey, I have to face the fact. She did great her first 2 days; she's usually my worrier that has more separation anxiety. So far, she's been fine and I hope it keeps up.

Here's to a great 5th and 3rd grade year!

Happy Birthday Mark!

Mark turned the big 3-7 last week.
Tell me he didn't love these t-shirts the girls wore to celebrate his big day!













Geez, I'm glad I'm not that old!
(well, not for another 2 1/2 months, that is.)

Kelli

Today is my sister's birthday. She's 38. Only 15 months older than I am. You may be thinking my mom was crazy to have two children so close in age. The truth is, she wasn't nuts, I was just an accident. An 'oh, shit!', if you will.

Kelli and I were super-close growing up. We did everything together, my mom even used to dress us alike when we were little. We never lived in a 'neighborhood' where we had plenty of friends nearby to play with, so we mostly played with each other. We played Barbies, Fisher Price people, and Weebles for hours on end. I can never once remember Kelli making me feel like a pesky 'little sister'. Even in our older years, as teens, she always treated me more like a best friend. I didn't realize back then how rare and admirable that was, but I do now. Her friends were my friends, and mine were hers. She was always the popular one with dates, and she would often set me up with her dates' friends. She always made me feel welcome and not only that, she seemed to actually prefer me over her friends. We argued very rarely and when we did, we made up quickly.

Our lives took totally different directions after having children. She's a stay-at-home mom of four, and I'm a full-time working mom. She's very detail-0riented and her kids' birthday parties are perfectly coordinated. Mine are well, uhh, let's just say 'thrown-together'. We have different approaches to things, but at the same time, for the most part, we jive.

We've had more disagreements and feuds in the past 10 years since having kids, than we did in the 25 years previous. Most of them having to do with our children and our ways of raising them. There was a time when I didn't think that we'd be able to get past our differences in this respect and I feared that our relationship would never be the same.

Well, I was right, it wasn't the same. But that doesn't mean that it's not still special.
It's taken me a while to accept the fact that we don't have to see eye to eye all the time, that it's okay to disagree and argue and move on. That, in doing this, our relationship continues to grow and change. She will always be my 'big' sister. Our relationship is like no other that I've ever had or ever will have. I have shared more experiences with her than probably any one other person in my life. Through childhood, and teenage years, and college and still today. So many parts of my personality have been shaped through my interaction with her. And for that, I feel lucky.

Thanks, Kelli (even though I'm pretty sure you don't keep up with this blog) for being a special person in my life. Though I rarely say it, I love you more than you know.

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 . .