A Place For Everything, Part 2

Kids are so funny. And by funny, I mean insane. And by insane, I mean they're God's way of teaching parents lessons, like the ones we've learned on misinterpretation.

 

 

Before you have a kid, you keep your house neat and tidy. After you have a kid, tidy is subject to interpretation. You don't clean up, you just tote your camera around because you never know what you'll come across.

 



 

Me: It's time to clean up! I don't want to see any toys left on this floor!

Them: Okay, Mom.

Well, I guess they showed me. :)

Seriously, you have to watch what you say.
Me: Lay out your clothes for school tomorrow.
Bo: Okay, Mom.

Me: Hang up these hangers, please.

Them: Okay, Mom.

Me: Have you put all the water guns up?
Them: Yes, Mom.

Me: Little Sister, where's your Bandaid?
LS: I taked it off in the tub.

Me: Go put up your toothbrush.
Them: Okay, Mom.

Everybody needs a kid. :)

(Disclaimer: These are *N*O*T* staged. My children are insane. And by insane, I mean very, very precious.)

If Pinterest Was A Boy, I'd Ask Him To Marry Me

Dub just remided me that I'm already married. So I'll ammend that title: If Pinterest was a boy and I wasn't already married, I'd ask him to marry me.

My baby turned three this week (THREE??)

Baby Sister at 1 month (August 2009)



Baby Sister at THREE!





This girly-girl is so much fun! She loves princesses and mermaids and everything pink and purple...which is great, because I do too! :)

Usually, I have birthdays planned for at least a month in advance. I usually work best under pressure, but I LOVE planning my kids' parties, especially the cakes. We invite the grandparents and any other in-town relatives, and our awesome neighbors, and that's about it. We keep it low-key.

But for Little Sister's party (notice the new name!) I just couldn't figure out what kind of cake to make. See, the boys - Dub and Bo - have chosen the SAME CAKE for the past, oh, ten birthdays or so. "Mom, can I have a monster truck cake?" Sure. (sigh)  I have worn out that idea - cakes in the shape of monster trucks, toy monster trucks driving on a mountain (that one was really cool), and even one with a toy monster truck on a football field.

So now that I get to plan parties for a GIRL, I kind of get lost in all the possibilities. I knew we were having our little party on Saturday, and even as late as Wednesday, I wasn't sure what kind of cake to make.

Enter Pinterest.

I LOVE PINTEREST!!! If you're unfamiliar with the site, it's like a bulletin board for all the greatest ideas on the Internet. So I searched for "Cakes" on Pinterest, and BOOM! A bazillion great ideas popped up. At first I thought I would make a mermaid cake for Little Sister. You know, a beach with cute little toy mermaids sitting on a rock in the middle.... Hey, did you know that all mermaids are practically nude?? Maybe it's the Mama in me, but I don't want half-naked chicks sitting on my kid's birthday cake!! So I started to search for something else. Something...but what?

Here's what I came up with:

Wait...what?

Don't let the blurry exterior fool you!!! As with so many things, it's what is inside that counts! When we sliced through the semi-sloppy "cloud," our eyes were treated to a little slice of heaven.

Yeah, it's still a little sloppy. But SO BEAUTIFUL!!! I love rainbows!

Pinterest had a blue million different versions of this cake, but I picked my favorite and went with it. And it was just as much fun to make as it was to look at!

In addition to the beautiful cake, I got tons of other ideas from Pinterest. We had rainbow fruit kabobs (watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, green grapes, blueberries, and purple grapes with a marshmallow at the bottom). There were bowls with Skittles and Rainbow Twizzlers. And one of my favorites - rainbow cakes in jars for the kids.

This is pre-baked. Apparently I forgot to take a picture of the completed cakes. They were really cute!!

I wish I had thought of the rainbow theme earlier! I could have decorated the entire house so beautifully (sorry, boys!!). But like I said, I work best under pressure. Oh, and I have declared that every cake from now on will be RAINBOW on the inside!! So...probably a monster truck on top of a rainbow. Sigh.

Here's a few more pictures of some of my FAVORITE people in the world!!!


My incredibly gorgeous niece with Little Sister

This box was the life of the party!

Bo-in-a-Box

Amazing neighbor...11 years old, and she MADE that skirt for Little Sister!!!! Incredible!



Treat of the day...Hay #2 and her mama came to see us!

Little Sister telling Hay #2 all about her new princess

Grammaw & Grampaw (somehow I always manage to take food pictures of these guys!! Sorry!)

We had a great time with SOME of our favorite people. Of course, the people made the party beautiful. But thanks to Pinterest, the food looked amazing too! :)

So...if anything happens to Jason... I'm totally asking Pinterest to marry me!

We love you, Little Sister! Happy 3rd birthday, baby!



It Happened to Me

For all the moms out there who have lost a kid in a store and I've rolled my eyes or shaken my head in disapproval...I apologize. And for all the family members who read this and want to lash out in anger...I am fully prepared for Jason to take all the responsibility for this almost-catastrophe.

Friday is our grocery day. We pack up the entire family (fun, fun) and head to the store. And our routine is to buy the $1 sweet teas (or Diet Cokes) from the McDonald's inside Walmart. It keeps the kids quiet while we're shopping (never mind the caffeine highs afterward, but it's our routine anyway).

We went inside the store and loaded Little Lady in the seat of the buggy. Jason said he was going to buy the drinks, and, in an effort to get out of there quicker I said I would go ahead start shopping, and we'd meet up after they were done. We parted ways and that was that.

I didn't have the buggy, so I told Jason I would just go get my nail polish from the cosmetics section just outside the McDonald's, and that I would wait for them there. I waited and waited...and finally my phone rang.

Me: "Hello?"
Jason: "Where y'all at?" Yes, we're Southern rednecks. Well, Jason is, anyway. :)
Me: "I'm right here where I said I would be. Where are y'all?"
Turns out, Jason and the boys were in the jewelry section right next to the cosmetics. I found him before he found me, and I went to set my nail polish in the buggy.
Me: "Where's the buggy?"

This is the point where all the blood drained from my face. Jason said he thought I had the buggy, I said I thought he had the buggy, and there was Dub, bouncing up and down between us, "I tried to tell ya, Dad! I tried to tell ya Mom didn't have the buggy!"

Me, I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry. We ran as fast as two grown ups could run inside a store without attracting too much more attention to ourselves. Dub and Bo kept up, with Dub calling out the whole time, "I tried to tell ya, Dad!"

The greeter pointed us to Customer Service, where we (THANK YOU, GOD!!!!!!) found Little Lady still sitting in her buggy, surrounded by surly looking women who clucked their tongues at us as we approached.

"We didn't know what to do with her! Don called us over there and said y'all had just walked off, and we didn't know what to do!"

Were you thinking of slapping a Rollback sticker on her behind and sticking her on the shelf??? Or putting her to work to earn her keep? Gracious, lady, give a grieving Mama a break!!!

I tell ya, I held Little Lady for the rest of our shopping trip. She talked about how she cried and how the police man scared her (WHAT IN THE WORLD?????), and then she politely asked me not to leave her again.

So there you go. Now I get it. It can happen to the most kid-conscious Mamas out there (like me, you know). I will never, never, let that happen again, no matter how much she kicks and screams not to sit in that goofy seat on the buggy. Seventeen years old and she'll still be sitting in that seat....  Nah, by that time I'll claim disability and ride on one of those motor carts. Then she'll be the one to run off and leave me!

It's only fair, really.

Baby #4!!!

After much prayer, and seeing everybody around us popping out babies one right after the other, Jason and I had to reexamine our plan for our family.

We've already been blessed with the most wonderful kids - two fun, happy, extremely intelligent boys, and one very precious, beautiful, and also extremely intelligent girl.  But most of you know that I come from a big family - six biological kids (I'm the only girl), and four additional adopted siblings (TEN altogether, in case you couldn't connect those dots), and I always wanted a large family of my own.  Jason was content at two...then three....

But after so much prayer, we are very proud to announce -
That Jason has decided not to have that vasectomy reversal after all.  It's just not something he ever intends to do.
*Sigh.*  Happy April Fool's Day, everybody! :)

Ah, Dandelions

It's that time of year.  Most of our dandelions are still yellow, but you can find a nice, puffy white one if you look hard enough.  Our neighbors spray weed killer...but we haven't gotten around to that yet....  One of our little white dandelions can ruin it for the whole street!  Especially when your kids know that blowing all those seeds off in a single breath can, in fact, grant you a WISH!

Bo was teaching his little sister about the wish thing, and actually managed to get all the seeds off in one breath.  He was very proud of that.

Bo:  "Mom!! I got a wish!"
Me:  "Oh, that's great, honey!"
Bo:  "Yeah, I blew them all off, all at once!"
Me:  "Cool!"
Bo:  "Do you want to know what I wished for?"
Bo doesn't know that if you tell a wish, it might not come true.  He motioned for me to lean my head down, which I did.
Me:  "What did you wish for?"
Bo (whispering):  "I wished for you to be pretty!"

Ah, well.  There ya go.  And since he told me...well, I guess it won't come true now!
I'm staying up late  tonight, hoping for a shooting star.  :)

The Hay-Hays and Other Cousins

This past weekend was so much fun, y'all.  It's one of those times when I have to thank God that I came from a big family.  Because whenever we get together (as many of us as we can), we all have so much fun!
*(Maybe someday the rest of y'all will move back to this side of the world!  I'm just sayin'!)*

The highlight, at least for most of us, was meeting the Hay-Hays.  They are just one week apart in age (they're 21 and 20 weeks old now).

Rocky with the Hay-Hays

(The nickname is because their real names are so similar - which I'm not going to put on this site, but if you know Rocky & Arrow you can look them up on Facebook.  Or you can message me on FB and I'll tell you...if I trust you...!)
I love babies!!!  Look at those cheeks!  Those legs!  That hair (or lack of it on Hay #2!)!!!  Those SWEET FEET!!!!!!!  I got in some major baby-time, not that it's ever enough.  Sigh.  My baby days are over.  :(

We also got to play with some other cousins and aunts and uncles....

Dub blowing bubbles for Aunt Katie and Hay #2

Big Guy!!!!! (He's alright, he really is...!)

If you can't tell whose kid this is...he's Rocky's.  Now it's so obvious!

Bubble wands and whoopie cushions...Thanks, Aunt Cary! :)

Arrow, etc.

It's peanut butter jelly time!!!  Living room picnic :)

Uncle Kenny's and Aunt Cary's awesome trampoline, full of crazy cousins

At first I thought about how sad it was that I didn't take more pictures, but then again, we were having too much fun to think about cameras.  That's how you know it was fun!!!

We miss them all so much!  Hopefully they'll come again S*O*O*N!!!

Hay #2, overwhelmed with attention

Dub and Rocky

"I need Arrow" (she's been wearing us out with that since everybody left!)

We love you, Hay-Hays!  And ALL our cousins EVERYWHERE!

A Place for Everything

I know I'm not the first Mama to wake up and find a half-eaten Pop-Tart in her shoe.

And I know kids will leave things wherever they want to, just because that's what they do.

Truck ON the trailer

Our new little brother, Pablo

That's a milk cup.  On the back of the couch.

Close-up of the milk cup

Another random milk cup

 And obviously the world is their playground....

The picnic table is ON the trampoline

An art show, using the hooks for our Christmas stockings

That same hook has been used many times.

Bo's cars can drive anywhere - the top of the flag...

...on the handrail....

But then there's other times when I happen upon something that somebody has put somewhere...and I have to wonder what their thought processes were that led them to their decision.

A princess in the louvered doors

A bear on the stairs...with a flashlight

A bottle of water on the narrow ledge

Tricycles...in the truck

A crayon in the flower vase

A back-scratcher...under the cutting board

An upright sandwich

But then I realize who I'm dealing with.  Dub, Bo, and Little Lady have limitless imaginations.

Dub's hat on the lamp

Bo needed a place to set his banana for a minute

Those hooks weren't busy...might as well hang my shoes there

 And last but not least...can you imagine going into a cell phone store and seeing YOUR DAUGHTER'S picture as the phone's wallpaper???  This is Little Lady, NO JOKE!!!  What's up with that?!

 Creepy...!