Wordless Wednesday: I Love My Mom

We're Home

We're home. We're sad. Well, I'm sad that I couldn't fit all my family and friends into my suitcases, and I had to leave them behind. The Man and the girls are overjoyed to be sleeping in their own beds. Whatever. Stupid comfortable bed.

We're still on California time, and our flight got in at midnight last night, so we rolled out of bed at 10:30am Texas time. We ate lunch at 3pm, and the kids made their own dinners (cold hot dogs, and YES, in fact, I AM that mom) at 8pm. They are currently taking a 37 hour shower/bath and are on track for a 11pm bedtime. All well and good because...

Tomorrow we go to a local entertainment center for New Year's Eve festivities. All the pizza, bowling, rock climbing, laser tag, glow in the dark golf and arcade games we can handle. It goes from 5-8pm because we're wild and crazy party animals. All plans point to being well and truly in bed by 10pm. How did I get this old and stodgy?

We had a wonderful, truly wonderful time in California. The only down side was how FAST time passed. Why is it the line at the DMV can drag. on. for. ever but really only be 30 minutes, yet days can pass by so quickly when you're surrounded by family and friends and love and laughter and tears? And music. And the spa. Oh, the spa. Thank you mamaDB for letting me twist your arm into using your birthday present while I was there.

I filled up the ENTIRE memory card in my camera (it's a 3 gig microdrive, so you KNOW I took a ton of photos), so once I download them, I'll share some highlights.

I hope you all had a wonderful, memorable Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus. Now go have a safe, Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

Linus says it pretty well:




Merry Christmas everyone.

Happy Birthday to The Man

The Man turned 40 today. I'm married to a man in his 40's. How did this happen?

We went out for a lovely dinner at an all the meat you can eat restaurant. It's a GOOD thing, I promise. It was a surprise from me to him, and he LOVED it. We ate and ate and ate, and then had a walnut brownie a la mode for dessert because we're INSANE.

Mini sidenote: the restaurant is in the downtown area. It's a nice place. We were waiting outside for our car to be sprung from valet, when a taxi pulled up and two decked out "ladies" got out, carrying plastic red cups. You know the ones. It says a lot about you when you're beginning your evening on the town by bringing your own alcohol with you to dinner.

After dinner, we strolled through the local Trail of Lights next to the lake. It was beautiful, albeit crowded. Fun way to ring in the 5th decade of The Man's life.

Tomorrow we leave in the wee hours of the morning for a 9 day trip to California. If I fail to post while I'm gone, here's wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukkah.

Wordless Wednesday: Missing Them So Much It's Hard To Breathe

Great Grandma Rachel









Grandpa Richard

But I'm DONE With Potty Training

So, my 6-year-old Loodle is still wearing pullups at night. She's completely incapable of making it through the night unless we wake her up at 11pm or so and walk her to the bathroom. Some would say we should go ahead with that plan, but I'm too many kinds of lazy and forgetful and loathe to do the resulting laundry when I do fail to take her.

Another deciding factor is that, insert big giant internet confession, I wet the bed until I was in 6th grade. MIDDLE school, and back then there were no pullups for big girls, so I had the shame sheets most mornings, and was terrified to go on sleepovers. I've read several times that this trait is hereditary, so I could be fighting a losing battle here. We've mostly been making no big deal out of it, but as she gets older and gets invited to sleepovers, it's turning into a "thing".

However, that is not my current issue. THIS is:

This step stool has been in Loodle's room for about 6 months now. Recently I've been noticing a distinct urine smell in her room, which usually derives from pullups being left on the floor (ew, and double ew). However, I found none in my search, and today after school, asked Loodle to help me figure it out. That's when Boodle piped up that it was coming from the stool. I said, oh, there's a pullup in the stool? And she said, no, there's PEE in the stool.

PEE. In the stool. Oh, Heavenly Father, give me strength to deal with a 6 year old who won't leave her bedroom to do her business, and more importantly, finds nothing wrong with relieving herself in a dinosaur step stool.

Needless to say, the stool is toast, as it is made of wood, and did I mention EWWWWWWWW? And is it necessary to have the full screaming fit discussion after the fact? I merely stated the obvious, that we don't pee in step stools, and went about hosing the thing off before tossing it in the garbage.

This is parenthood, folks. You would think you'd be overstating the obvious when telling your kids not to pee in furniture, but you would most decidedly be wrong.

Winter? Fall? There's No Need to Decide.

Yesterday's high: 79 degrees
Yesterday's outfit: capri jeans and a short sleeved cotton shirt

Today's high: 39 degrees
Today's outfit: Camisole bra, long sleeved thermal shirt, heavy winter sweater, thick tights, jeans, gloves, scarf, and I'll be adding a knit hat if I go outside again this afternoon

That's a 40 degree drop and a two clothing-layer increase in less than 12 hours.

I miss California.

What's In My Purse? What's NOT In My Purse????

I was tagged by my Sister in Law Tiffany last week for a meme about what was in my purse.

I want to lodge a formal protest, because a) I was not prepared for this kind of pressure, and b) I do not yet have the funds for a wide angle lens which is required to capture an image of ALL that's in there.

It's hard to believe it all came out of one bag, and she can attest to the fact that my bag is not that big. Apparently, my purse is where paper goes to die.

Here's part 1 of the contents:

1. Apparently I require an excessive amount of mouth products. Four lip gloss/balms might be over the top. And I NEVER floss, so how this got in here is beyond me.
2. Clockwise: first aid kit, gymnastics class schedule for the spring, TWO pads of paper, Sunday crossword half finished, flyer from The Alamo from our recent trip, spreadsheet for Christmas shopping (I used to do accounting, sue me), and a claim check for photos at Walgreens. That I've already picked up.
3. Bribes for kids who can't wait in line for one. more. second., more personal hygiene products, expired Kohl's card, triangular crayons
4. Bible
5. Random stuff the kids shoved in my bag: hair clip, smashed candy, Tinkerbell necklace
6. Rental car paperwork and airline stubs from my trip to California. In October.

Here's the second half of the stuff in my bag, more easily listed.

Clockwise around the edge, starting from my wallet:
-My wallet, Best Buy awards program info, camcorder disk, cd sleeve, trash, program from church from 3 weeks ago, stack of receipts to be entered into Quicken (hahahahaha), random mail, blurred out business cards for myself and The Man, photos of the girls, hand wipes, a $20 bill that was just hanging around the bottom of my purse, a drawing from this week's lesson at Bible Study (that's my stick figure interpretation of me at the feet of Jesus, sans long hair and perfume unfortunately).
- Notable things on the middle of the table are candles from Loodle's birthday in November.

So, I pride myself on being organized, but my purse clearly is not a reflection of that. If nothing else, this meme forced me to go through and purge, and surprisingly, my bag is a TON lighter.

Hey Meg! Look! It's Winter!

Well, we survived the great slush storm of 2008 here in Texas. It was touch and go there for a while. You can see the gross accumulation on our house and car here were more than a soul can bear. It took us SECONDS to dig out of this. My blog friend Meg bemoans my kids wearing shorts in November, but now she knows: Detroit? Central Texas? EXACTLY the same.

Wordless Wednesday: Word Up From Da Peace Out Gang

The most peaceful baddest gang west of the Mississippi.



Also, the baddest gang to break into back yards and beat the crap out of EACH OTHER in pink flowered pants and kicky boots.

The Cookie Exchange Debacle

This past weekend I was invited to a cookie exchange party. I've never attended one before, but considering the hostesses, I thought it would be a fun way to pass a Sunday afternoon.

The way it works is you bake 6 dozen cookies, set out a few dozen for folks to sample, and then you all go around and pick out several dozen to take with you. My grand plan was to distribute them as Christmas gifts, because I'm that cheap generous.

I've recently been toying with an oatmeal cookie recipe, replacing the raisins with Heath toffee bits. Um, I'm NOT a chef, but these cookies are awesome. They're a bit temperamental, wanting to break in half if you don't wait long enough for them to cook and cool down before removing from the cookie sheet, but oh. my. goodness.

I was pretty pleased with the results, even if they were a bit large, flat and uneven, so I packed them up and toted them over to my friend's house. Where I was greeted with an array of finely baked cookie craftsmanship. I was slightly ill, looking at the perfectly formed cookies, the cookies with sprinkles, the cookies wrapped in festive gift bags, the cookies that were small, round bits of culinary perfection.

Imagine that you are going to a potluck, and everyone brings something out of a Martha Stewart entertaining book, and you bring spam casserole. That's how I felt. I assumed we were baking our grandma's favorite recipes to share.

Here's a visual for you:

Their cookies -

(I'm going to assume the foot cookies represent the foot of baby Jesus, because otherwise, that's just weird)


My cookies -
I should have taken a photo of my cookies along side theirs, because I don't think you fully appreciate that my cookies were easily three times the diameter of theirs. Easily.

Of course, instead of just gamely going in with confidence and setting out my cookies, I make a big deal out of how my cookies aren't as pretty as theirs, and they pooh pooh all that nonsense, and I basically act like a simpering ass. I ended up having a fun time meeting some new neighbors anyway, one of whom has 2 year old triplets. *gulp*

I brought home the cookies and proceeded to whine to The Man about how dumb I felt about my lame cookies compared to theirs. He, selflessly to be sure, tried all the cookies and pronounced mine the best of all of them, earning him a spot in the husband hall of fame.

This morning, declaring that I was in fact NOT getting the cookies out of his damn house, he took them all in to work (he works for a computer game company) to make his coworkers fat. He sent me an email he received from a coworker, who attached this:


That baby's going up on the mantle.

How NOT to Lose Your First Tooth

By opening a Z Bar wrapper (kid's energy bar) with your teeth.

At least, how not to lose your first tooth if,

a) it wasn't even particularly wobbly yet, even though the dentist assured you the root was almost gone.

b) you didn't even WANT to lose any of your teeth. Ever.

c) and I can't stress this one enough: you're 6 and you hate the sight of blood with the heat of a thousand suns.

d) that is the tooth you use to scratch your tongue. (many tears were shed over this traumatic realization, and I'm not even remotely joking)

Luckily, the tooth fairy, who has already been exposed as a fraud in our household, will make his/her appearance tonight bearing much $$ and maybe a toy. This fact finally brought about this:



(No, I don't want to talk about the bizarre lip gloss situation)

Wordless Wednesday: What Are They Trying To Say About the Police Force?

We're Back, and Ready for Christmas

We had a great 4 day holiday in San Antonio. Let me tell you, Thanksgiving day is one of the best days of the year to go to Sea World. No lines, no sun, no annoying people. Well, except for my husband.

I kid! He was perfectly lovely, even though Sea World and it's ilk are really not up his alley. The girls had tons of fun. Even got them on the water rides, soaking Boodle especially. Or so we thought. Turns out, after 30 minutes and us teasing her about "wetting her pants", she admitted she actually HAD lost control of her bladder on the first big drop of the Texas Splashdown. Uh, sorry about putting you in front and then making you feel 4 inches tall Boodle.

We spent 3 nights at a hotel that was, according to the hotel's website, just FOURTEEN STEPS from The Alamo. Fourteen man-sized steps? Fourteen drunken sailor steps? Fourteen extra tall 6-year-old steps? Who knows, but we were damn close. They also had a hot tub, and that's pretty much all I need to say about that.

It was great to walk down to the Riverwalk, explore the area and find fun places to eat. Nothing says Thanksgiving dinner like the Lone Star Cafe, chicken fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I didn't get pumpkin pie this year, and I'm a little bitter. I think I'll get one all to myself at Christmas.

All in all, a great new tradition we've got for ourselves. Mexico cruise last year, San Antonio this year. Next year, who knows? Four wild nights in Waco.