After a day like today, what I want to do most is sit down and write about it.  It feels so good to just sit.  and write.  and tell you about it.  I get the same satisfaction out of typing that one might get out of doing crossword puzzles, which I’m hair-pulling awful at.  I cheat every time.  Cheating makes me feel yucky inside.  Therefore, I don’t DO crosswords.

I blog instead.

Now that we’ve got that settled…
I bounded out of bed today. Our little town celebrated The 4th of July by gathering at the park for festivities. The blazing heat put a damper on things, but my mood refused to be tampered with.
Bliss! Joy! The 4th of July has always, ALWAYS been my all-time favorite holiday. You can’t go wrong with a holiday that wreaks of hot dogs, oreos, lemonade, root beet, gun powder, sun, and water.

Once I got to the park, a friend mentioned that she dresses her kids on The 4th of July. As in: SHE chooses their clothes. “There’s only a few days out of the year that I dress them, and today is one of them.”
Smart woman, that.
I dressed my kids this morning.
She wanted a long-sleeved red shirt to go over her hot pink short-sleeved shirt.
He wanted cowboy boots with his shorts and that blasted purple flower in his hair.
I ruled with an iron fist! Sort of!

Right before leaving the house, my husband downloaded a song and played it. and played it. and played it. AND played it.
“I like it.” He said, when I asked why we were listening to it over and over (I asked nice, just so you know), “It reminds me of you.”

Ahhhh…. no amount of make-up or hair products can make me feel as beautiful as when he talks to me like that.

The first of the attractions at the park was, naturally, Jens.

I held that baby and smelled that baby and SOAKED him in. Then the REBS invaded.

And I surrendered. With my whole heart. Holy Moses, the things a man with a baby in his arms can DO to a woman’s heart.
We retired to a shaded area next to the volleyball tourney which my buddy Lindsay and her team took by STORM. I was proud. After the tournament, my kids took the court.

And then we hit the bake sale. Cookies for 10 cents? Cupcakes for 25 cents? Yes, please!

It really was blazing hot. SO hot that after I finished off my water bottle that came with my hot dog lunch, this guy drove to the store and bought me a big, fat water bottle.

I rike him.

When Grandpa showed up on scene, I lost almost all control of my children:

And my sister got yet MORE experience learning about life with children.

“I want that drink, JuJu!”

I love my small town. Have I ever told you that?

I guess it would be more appropriate to ask if I ever HADN’T told you that.
I tried to slip a couple pictures of me in for posterity.  Apparently in this one, I’m pretending to be a brunette Jessica Rabbit.

In this picture, I kicked my foot up and my husband teased me for 5 minutes afterward.

Someone remind me to stay BEHIND the camera. Thanks.

We came home without children (see above: when grandpa comes, the kids are lost on him), and proceeded to finish watching an episode of “Sherlock.”
I highly recommend “Sherlock.”

It’s available on Netflix instant streaming right now. Aside from being British, it’s witty and fast-paced and mysterious.
Win! Win! Win! Win!

Once the episode finished, we went to pick up our kids, but there were three calves in our yard.
Hello.

We put them back in like good country bumpkins should.

Behind bars!

And then we got our kids.
And then my husband and daughter laid sod while I sat on my rumpus and my son slept.

Lacy put the scraps on some dirt, insisting that the rocks needed a home. She also named the rocks. “Dace, Jace, Jace, Dace, and Ace. A boy and a girl and a boy and a girl and they are just pregnant!”

So now we know where rocks come from.
We stopped off at the grocery store on the way home to buy pasta salad fixin’s. And then we went to my little cousin’s birthday party.

The Birthday Girl is the one wearing the hat. She ordered a chocolate birthday cake with strawberry filling. And she asked if they might please put some banana slices in it. They did. Anything for The Birthday Girl!

Please note the tiny grill in the corner of the picture -it’s filled with fresh flowers.  I nearly died of cuteness when I saw it.  The local (well, nearly local) flower shop arranged a fresh bouquet of flowers in a tiny grill.  What woman could resist?!  I ask you!!

On the (block long) drive home from the par-tay, Lacy’s balloon flew out of the car window. Because it didn’t have helium, her Dad stopped the car and scoured the ditch bank for it.

A daughter’s tears have a way of moving a father into action. In the end, I blew up a spare balloon and gave it to her. We never found the other balloon. It’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

We ate a late dinner of grilled tilapia (recipe to be posted soon, it’s a Steve Specialty), pasta salad, steamed zucchini (thanks, Lisa and Rial!) and fresh corn on the cob.

“I need to take off the corn!”

When dinner was over, I cleared the table and asked my husband to please put away his shoes while I got the kids in the tub.
He walked 500 miles and then he walked 500 more.

O it is wonderful. Wonderful to me!

Just as I finished up the dishes (before bed. I hardly know myself!), I was thinking how great it would be to just sit and WRITE for a bit when the news came to me.

Before I go on, I must say that I mentioned to my friend Lisa (the sod owner, not the zucchini-giver) how much I cringe when people post their children’s potty training triumphs in DETAIL on facebook.
Karma heard, and now I’m going to proceed to eat crow.
Mira:
My son pooped in the tub. Just when I thought all excitement from my busy was winding down into one pleasant evening with a freshly vacuumed floor…

I knew we were fresh out of disposable latex gloves, but desperation urged me to the cleaning bin anyway -in vain hopes of finding a stray glove. Do you know what I found?
A fresh, brand new package of 10 pair. Placed there by God himself. Angels sang!
While I cleaned, my husband put the kids in the OTHER tub. I went to check on them and found this:

My husband putting my son under oath.
“I, Twenton, pommise to never poop da tub again.”

I rubbed the kids down after their baths with a little extra virgin olive oil scented with lavender essential oils, and then we had our scripture time. Tonight we switched things up a bit and watched this youtube video:

A GREAT video with an even greater message.

After prayers, the kids went to bed and I sat down to write. I’d like to say it was a perfect ending to a perfect day, but that isn’t true.
I logged on and saw that I had a comment on my blog from my friend Laurie. She suggested, after seeing that I had posted a Julian Smith video, that I watch a particular one. I hadn’t seen this one, and I laughed my little buns off.

… and THAT, friends, is the perfect ending to a perfect day.

One of my best friends from High School and his wonderful wife are visiting.  When I got a text from Lisa on Thursday letting me know they’d be here Friday, it made my day!  We get along so well with Rial and Lisa, and it’s nice to have such an effortless friendship.  No extra planning goes into our time together.

They came bearing gifts, and it feels like Christmas in our home.

All of these gifts are smoking amazing, and I couldn’t even fit the zucchini they gave us in! Zucchini is my favorite garden treat, and my zucchini plant was killed by the wind. I planted another one, and it’s growing nicely. Maybe in a few weeks we’ll have some of our own, but for now… I’m excited about having one on the table!
There’s some Mary Kay Mineral Foundation.
PS: I can’t seem to say, type, write, or hear the words “Mary Kay” without busting out into this song.

“My grandma is awesome.”

There’s some doTerra oils that I’ve had my heart set on forEVER, and now here some are… in my lap… just like that! The joy is too much. TOO MUCH! I keep smelling them and smelling them and smelling them. Wonderful, beautiful! Perfection!

They brought back a fan and some candy from their trip to Japan -isn’t that amazing? Rial served his mission in Japan, and he recently took his wife and parents back to visit with him. That fan is going up on the wall soon, and that candy isn’t going to last past 3 pm today. I can already tell. Also, every time I look at that fan, I’m tempted to do my best June Carter impression, “…behind my Jay-pan fan.”

 

 

 

While they were here, we were able to go see my mom’s newest baby. I’m not talking about my big nephew. I’m talking about a little baby calf. I didn’t snag a picture -that’ll have to come later. My mom is the queen of orphaned calves. She nurses them up, and we all treat them like our family pet. They love us back clear up until Branding Day. Then they see our true colors.
After petting the new calf affectionately named “Didder,” we headed inside where my Mom busted out a bag full of old Santa letters. She saved all the letters we’d written over the years.
Here’s one of my first:

A “TT,” it must be mentioned was what I called Tiny Teddy Bears. My brother had one and I wanted one for myself in the worst possible way. And I got one. Santa always made my dreams come true.
This one was written by my brother, Steve.

A “Trdle.” It’s seeping with cuteness.
This is my oldest brother’s Santa letter. I love it for so many reasons, one of which is that is has both my mother’s and my father’s handwriting.

Also, I love that he asks for a Smurf workhouse and Care Bear playdough AND then he asks for a machine gun. JC’s letters were some of the finest.
JC, it should be mentioned, is the father of my nephew who I haven’t been able to visit on account of my kids having slightly runny noses and I’m afraid of infecting The Big Baby.

Anyway, my mom saved the best Santa letter for last. It’s so angelic -so perfectly angelic.

My sister accused me of aggravated brown nosing.
I asked my mom if he brought me a halo polisher.

Now I’m off to celebrate the 4th in Smalltown, USA. There will be pictures and hot dogs and maybe a few face paintings.
Enjoy your weekend, Patriots!

I go to a monthly Ladies Night Out game night.  Usually we play BUNCO, but occasionally we opt to play “Burn Down the House.”  When we play BUNCO, we all generally bring a gift and a food item.  When we play Burn Down the House, we bring a bag with 3 useful items from around our house and three useless items from around our house.  When it’s time to go home, we all leave with 6 items.  Some we throw away.  Some we keep.

I scored big time last night:

Lotion, lip balm, teensy fire crackers, cute home decor rack that matches my bathroom… lovely!

HOWEVER, there were a few guests we were lucky enough to “win” a cricket in a ziploc, a small tray of chewed gum (gag!), a roll of toilet paper, an empty bottle of hairspray… the list goes on.
Anyone who didn’t win anything nice is always given a nice prize by the hostess.
Anyone who is a niece of the hostess gets to wear a flower bra.

That would be me.
Yes, it was a luau theme.

It is SO nice to meet with the ladies from our town once a month. We have so many great women in these parts, and I enjoy every minute with them. They’re hilarious and refreshing and nicer than nice.
Usually my husband keeps the kids while I play, but he was called into work in the middle of our game. Since we were playing in my Grandma’s backyard, I told him to just drop the kids off and they could play around the yard where I could see them.
He left them (and our car) in such a hurry that he closed part of a tree in the driver’s side door.

Which made me laugh.

And this also made me laugh:

He thought it looked great with his new haircut, which he’s been telling everyone about.
Thanks, Ladies, for yet another wonderful night!
Thanks, Great JuJu, for hosting and feeding us the most DELICIOUS FOOD EVER!
Thanks, Cat, for being born so we could celebrate you!

*I love living in a small town for many reasons.  One of those reasons is that I can take the 30 minute drive to Wal-Mart and end up seeing about 10 people from my little town.  We always greet each other like old friends we haven’t seen in ages.

*I submit that the only thing better than Sonic itself is HAPPY HOUR at Sonic. Because their slushy machine was slow yesterday, not only did I get my drinks for 1/2 price, but I got

which I wasted no time in using. Yum.

*It rained ever-so-slightly for about 1 whole minute yesterday. The parched earth soaked it in a matter of about 30 seconds.

*I love summer. It’s my favorite season on account of the warmth and the LONG days. And the lemonade. And the flip-flops. And the shade.

And the 4th of July!

And monsoon season and the flowers and the greenness that is so precious to Arizona. Ahhhhhh… summer is what gets me through winter.

*Someone knocked on my door while I was in the middle of straightening my hair. Let me paint a picture: while I’m straightening my hair, I thrown half of it up in a terrible pony tail on top of my head and work with the other half. I ignore my children and they, in turn, ignore all of the house rules. When the knock came at the door, I answered it hoping it would be my sister. or my dad.
It was a neighbor from down the road that I have never before met. And there I stood with my cock-eyed hair and my crazy yelling kids (one of which was dressed in a Christmas shirt and the bottom half of a tiger costume)… he pointed to a horse trotting down the road.
“Does that belong to you?”
“Oh, I think that’s my Daddy’s horse, Junior.”

Daddy’s? What am I? 5? I haven’t said “Daddy” in over 20 years! But things like that slip out when I’m embarrassed.

*Even in summer, my brother’s chili is a welcome dinner.

*While shopping, I bought two hair products. I don’t usually buy hair products beyond gel, hairspray, shampoo, and conditioner. But yesterday I did. Want to know why? They smell good. When my hair smells good, I’m roughly 50% happier. Will someone please invent hair perfume?

*I love women. I love talking with them and bonding with them and pulling strength from them which is why I’m spades of excited about the paperwork placed in my hands yesterday.

My “Mommy” (hey, if Dad is Daddy…) and I are soon to be on our way to a retreat for women! Held here:

And we’re going to be getting our hair and make-up professionally done. I’m so excited! I’ve been growing my hair out for nine months! It’s so nasty and it won’t curl at all. To be honest, I’m getting impatient for the make-up/hair thing.
Thank goodness for TAAZ.

This is me before.  I left myself unspeakably naked where cosmetics are concerned.  I applied some foundation and mascara, but you can’t really tell.

This is me as Selena Gomez. I think it’s my favorite so far.

This is me as some other celebrity I’ve never, ever heard of in my life.

And, just for fun… here I am as CLEOPATRA!!

The thought of greeting my husband like that when he walks through the door tonight made me laugh so hard I cried.
“Well, hello…”

I’ve always wondered what I’d look like if I was blonde. I’ve also always wanted to wear bright red lipstick, but I can’t. At least, not in real life. But TAAZ isn’t real life at all! Wheeeeee!

I even changed my eye color. Snicker.

One of the great things about TAAZ is that they tell you where you can buy products that match the colors you use. Even the eye color! If you change it, they’ll recommend a contact brand and color to you. Pretty sweet!
I started playing with TAAZ years ago -before I evah evah had kids. They’ve come a long way since then, and they’re a BALL to play with.
Click here: TAAZ
Upload a picture of yourself and have some fun.

Remember that one time I blogged and then dropped off the face of the Internet? Because really. I do. It all started on Wednesday morning. My phone rang. It was my mother-in-law. The first words out of her mouth were, “I have news.”

Something Austen inside me wanted to take on a British accent and start saying things like, “Such news! Most vital news indeed!” But I didn’t. I held my absurdities and just listened.

“Dusty’s coming home tomorrow.”
“What the HECK?!” I said, which I think sounded MUCH more smooth that anything Austenish. Agree?

Dusty, my brother-in-law, has been on a mission for the last two years. He was scheduled to come home in a couple of weeks but due to some missionary mixing ups, he was sent home a couple weeks early. The airport he was flying into was roughly 4 hours away, and my husband had just been called to work an emergency graveyard shift. He was devastated. Having served a mission himself some years ago (ten), he was really looking forward to meeting his brother at the airport. That’s when something Divine intervened, and my husband was able to get off work.
It must here be mentioned that by Wednesday, my husband had already worked his 40 hours for the week. He’s my little worker ant.

We woke up early Thursday morning and drove to the airport.
Blogging, dears, was far from my mind. Whilst pulling into the airport, I got on the phone with a nearby resort and made us some reservations. The entire family was spending the weekend at a resort, and I’d been calling the resort for a couple of days trying to eek in a suite, but they were entirely booked.
Again something Diving intervened, and we were given a King-sized suite.

And then we were given our brother back.

I hardly took any pictures this weekend. I really was unplugged. It cost $12 a day to use the internet at the resort, so I opted out. Instead, I went on the lazy river 8 times. Not consecutively.
But while it seems the rest of the state is on fire, the resort can almost make you forget.

Fire? What fire? Drought? What Drought?

At the end of the first day, my son completely crashed.

My daughter, on the other hand, did not. She stayed up until midnight. And then she woke up at 5. And then she woke me up.
“Mom, I just need a movie!”
“Mom, I just need a cookie!”
“Mom, here’s Santa’s cookies and a letter so may know what to give me.”

Finally, after falling back asleep about 5 times and being woken up six… I got up. I went into the room where the kids were sleeping to find my daughter fast asleep.
I cursed my luck and ate an Oatmeal Cream Pie. For breakfast. Yahoo for vacation!
I tried to sneak a picture of my husband in:

He caught me.
“You better not be takin’ a picture of me,” he said.

I told him I wasn’t. I told him that I already HAD. And then I told him I couldn’t help but take pictures of something so lovely.
Anyway, I HAD to take pictures of him whenever he was nearby. For the better part of the vacation weekend, he wasn’t nearby at all!
“Where’s Danny?” was the question of the weekend.
“It’s my single mom vacation,” I’d say.

Truth: Danny was busy visiting with his family.

And that was as it should have been.

(I’m pretty sure she shouldn’t have been putting her feet in that fountain…)

One night, after my sister-in-law had helped me out with the kids (we went on the lazy river twice), we thought we might stop off at the restaurant overlooking the pools and see if they were still open.
It was 9:30 PM, so my hopes weren’t high, but since I’d had such amazing luck all weekend… they were open!
We ordered up some s’more making goodness and indulged.

The kids were thrilled. Fire!

And MMmmmmmm…

My daughter was bothered that Daddy wasn’t there. She’s such a good girl. I love my husband just as much as the next girl, but when they plopped all of that s’more goodness in front of me the LAST thing on my mind was sharing!
“Daddy needs one!” My daughter said, “I will make one for him.”
And so… she did.

It was cute. And messy.

And he loved it. I should have thought of it, you know. But I was too busy cramming graham crackers together.

Okay now. Okay. Now I have some confessing to do.

Have you ever spent an entire day sleeping? or watching movies? or eating junk? You know how those days make you feel? Grimy, cruddy, loathsome…
Well, I learned over the weekend that you can effectively over indulge in vanity and end up feeling incredibly grimy. And foolish.
Vanity has always been a fault of mine that I’ve fought for years. I hate it, and keeping it in check has been a personal war.
As lucky as I was this weekend, I wasn’t lucky enough to remember to pack something to GO OVER my bathing suit on account of our packing up in such a rush.
I don’t have a fit body.
I don’t have a tan body.
I have rolls on my belly -ever present reminders of the babies I birthed (as if the children themselves weren’t enough).

Anyway, I had to swim in a bathing suit.

Do you know how disconcerting that can be?! Do you?!
I stood in front of a full-length mirror and sighed heavily before walking over to the water park. I felt a lot like Anne Hathaway in the beginning of “The Princess Diaries.”
“As always, this is as good as it’s gonna get.”

And then I mentally slapped myself for caring so much. Because, really. Does it matter? Is anyone looking? Does anyone care?! What’s the worst that could happen? Someone might look at me and think, “She really should cover-up more.”
Well, shoot. I think I can take that.
My inner voice swelled within me as I continued to pep talk myself out the door.
AM I GOING TO LET MY PHYSICAL IMPERFECTIONS KEEP ME FROM FULLY ENJOYING MY LIFE?! NO!!!  WILL SHALLOW THINKING BE THE RULER OF THE DAY?  NO!!!!

And then I spent the weekend facing my fears. Like the man afraid of heights at the edge of the Empire State Building, so I walked around a water park in my bathing suit.

(Lacy took that picture, and I can tell you that just before the shutter went off, I felt my husband suck in.  Hee, hee.)

And you know what? I lived. I’m sitting here, typing, and telling you all about it.

As we drove home yesterday, I told my husband about how I’d spent the weekend worrying too much about how I looked.
He misunderstood what I was saying and ended up saying, “Don’t look at other women and feel bad about what you don’t have. Just look at them and use them as motivation… like that’s your goal.”
Umm, shut up.

That’s NOT what I was saying. At all. Stop.

When I explained myself a little better, he understood a little better and I made sure to explain to him that I wasn’t worried about what OTHER women looked like. Just me.
Because I’m vain.

And as I discussed it with him and reminded myself that vain thinking is unhealthy thinking and that I’ll never fully enjoy my life until I get over my unhealthy thinking… I reached under my slightly burned leg (we ran out of sunscreen on the last day) and found an entire PATCH of long, black leg hair.

My entire speech flew out the car window.
“HONEY!!!” I said, “DID YOU SEE THIS!?!?!”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “I saw it yesterday. I was going to say something, but I didn’t want to embarrass you. Then I forgot.”

Well, yuck.
And can someone please explain to my why it is impossible to ever completely shave your legs? I always miss patches. And my legs are white and my hair is black.
And I burn and don’t tan.

Diddle-diddle dumpling.


(She wouldn’t smile. Minutes before, she had been teasing her brother. I got after her, and then had the AUDACITY to ask her to smile. “No,” she said. I snapped the picture just as she said, “I’m just in trouvle.”)

Today I’ll work harder to have better thoughts.  I’ll do my make-up and then forget about it.  I won’t spend the rest of the day wondering if my eye liner smudged or if my hair fell out of place.  I’ll abandon those adolescent thoughts for better, higher thoughts.
I’ll do whatever I can to keep myself from shaving my head and wearing a flour sack for clothes since that’s what I felt like doing after this weekend.
And most of all, I’ll keep this t-shirt in mind. My brother-in-law brought it back from his mission in Alabama for my husband:

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a brand new nephew to meet.
Don’t worry, you’ll meet him too. Probably tomorrow. Same time, same place.

I once had a professor tell me that if I was interested in a wide variety of subjects, that I should be a geologist. He was right, I suppose, and I might have taken him up on it EXCEPT that while my interests include a ridiculously WIDE variety, science is not included. Can’t you see it, pouting in the sidelines? Like the last kid picked for teams?

I don’t hate science. I just hate getting tested on it. I don’t mind sitting in class and learning about it, just please don’t ask me to answer questions and then GRADE me on them. Ouch.

That said: I love everything. I have a long list of dreams. Ready?

I want to write books.
I want to open up a library.
I want to open a family restaurant.
I want to go into reflexology.
I want to learn how to cut hair.
I want to learn how to build things out of wood.
I want to learn how to reupholster furniture.
I want to be a motivation speaker (think John Bytheway and NOT Chris Farley) for youth.
I want to manage a small farm.
I want to get the point where I can sew all of my own clothes and have them be unique and stylish.
I want to have 5 kids and spend all my time with them.
I want to become the Queen of Organization.
I want to maser photoshop. Right after I buy it. And a new camera.
I want to foster my love of family and history and channel it into family history.
I want to act in local theatricals.
I want to be a teacher.
Okay, okay. OKAY. I’ll stop.

Let me just make one thing clear: I don’t want to DO it all. I simply want to LEARN it all.
I was thinking about this a couple days ago as I was doing the dishes, and it’s downright unsettling and yards of frustrating to be thinking about EVERYTHING you WANT to do while all you can do… really… is the dishes.

As I thought about everything I wanted to learn/accomplish, I thought of my professor. I still didn’t really have a hankering for science, but something else dawned on me.

I have two kids, right? Some days I want five. But some days I just want two.
No matter the number, THEY fulfill all of my dreams.

They sit at my feet and listen to my stories, written or unwritten. They’re my audience, always captive. They are my restaurant patrons who eat for free, my children in my home library. They’re my reflexology patients and the messes who fuel my hunger for organization. They make for models who sport my homemade clothing. They are my indoor farm, and at any given moment I can have chickens, geese, horses, puppies, rabbits, cows! All I have to do is ask and my children… transform! I teach all the time, constantly. I answer the “why’s” and “how comes.” I spend my time motivating them with my words and actions. Yes, friends, they are exactly what I want.
They are my dreams.

So to answer the unanswered questions that float around stay-at-home mothers, what do I do all day?

I fulfill my dreams full-time and then some. Am I paid? Not monetarily, but you can’t put a price on happiness. Besides, the truly rich don’t need money. They are not wanting.

I speak from experience.