I Ain’t a Cat

Last night alone, my kids had my mind spinning trying to answer questions.
“Mom, why do we fight?” my son asked (referring to himself and his sister).
“Sometimes when we live with someone, we start to bother each other. So we’re all trying to learn to get along with each other. We have to try hard to love and learn…” my mind was searching for the right words.
“Mom, what’s this?” my daughter interrupted, pointing to her casserole.
“It’s a spice,” I said, not wanting to admit to her that it was a green pepper (something she HATES).
“What are SPICES, Mom?”
“Uh, spices are things that grow in the earth and we can use them to make our food taste better. Sometimes we use them to heal our bodies…” At this point, I realize she’s not listening at all.
Later that night, my husband and I had to field questions like:
“What is gravity?”
“What does it feel like to be shocked?”

Uh, uh, uhuhuh…

I always wanted curious children. I just didn’t expect the curiosity to come all in one big, fat dump truck load of “whys” and “whats.”

This clip is probably my favorite in the entire movie. Most of my favorite quotes are found here in.
“I ain’t a Cat.”
“You sing like a goat.”
“My Pap said I can’t talk to you enn ee mo’.”
“It’s only for the best.” ~Kathleen Hamilton

I Yelled

I spend a lot of time at home. Because I do, you would think my house would be in perfect working order, my children would be perfectly clean, and my hair would be impeccable. And when I say “you would think” I’m mostly talking about people who don’t spend most of their time at home because those who DO know how impossible it is to attain any (let alone ALL) of those things.
Before I became pregnant, I had a wonderful routine down. It fit perfectly with my lifestyle, and I was able to somewhat maintain my home, myself, my children, AND my personality. Then along came pregnancy, and I’m doing good to get a shower and two out of three meals on the table.
Well, yesterday I did something I’ve never done in my marriage.
I YELLED at my husband.

This pregnancy is making me FEEL everything so deeply. When I feel happiness, I’m over the moon with smiles and giggles. When I’m a little bit sad, I can’t stop gushing tears (the “who died?” kind of tears). And when I’m mad… well, I’m MAD.

Because I spend most all of my time at home, I have a lot of time to think about what makes me mad… so all day long as I went from the couch to the kitchen to the couch to the laundry room to the couch to the bathroom, I got more angry and more angry.
I described it to my husband like this, “Imagine the WORST part of your job… the part you hate the most, even though you LOVE your job, and think of having to do the WORST part of it all of the time! Except when you’re not doing it, you’re SICK! And SOMETIMES! SOMETIMES YOU GET SO SO SO SICK! OF DOING IT ALL THE TIME! THAT YOU THROW UP YOUR HANDS AND SAY I GIVE UP! AND THEN WHILE YOU’RE TRYING TO TAKE A BREAK FROM IT, IT GETS BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND IT LOOMS OVER AND TAUNTS YOU AND ON TOP OF FEELING OVERWHELMED YOU FEEL GUILTY!”
I stopped there to take a breath. Then I continued.
“IF YOU DON’T HIRE ME A HOUSEKEEPER I’M GOING TO… SCREEEEEEEEAM!”
And then I breathed. Heavily. Deeply. I had to, in fact, catch my breath. And do you know what that man did?
He smiled.
And then LAUGHED. HE LAUGHED at me! I yelled at him and he laughed at me!
“Honey,” he said, “Didn’t I get you the name of a housekeeper?”
“Well, yeah,” I shrugged.
“Did you need me to call her too? Do I need to do all the work here?”
“Oh,” I deflated, “I didn’t know I could call her. I guess I was waiting to have the cash in my hand.”
“Call her. Set it up. I will take care of it.”

I will take care of it.

It’s what every wife wants to hear.

I’m going to try not ever yelling at him again -he’s really a good egg. In other news, the kids and I heated up a bunch of rocks in the oven and then colored all over them while they were still hot. When you apply crayons to hot rocks, they melt beautifully.

The kids had a blast, and I felt a sort of pang of sympathy for rock lovers ’round the world because my kids had simply hauled in rocks from my yard to color on and approximately 50% of those rocks were petrified wood. And we were heating it up and defacing it. Most of the people who live in Geology Wonderland just don’t appreciate like they should.

This rock was my favorite. The boy calls it his “Green Lantern” rock. It gives me power, you know.

Maybe having that rock around is what got me all… worked up and mad. If the ROCK has that much power, surely it can’t be ALL my fault.
The rock must be destroyed…

Two Mules for Sister Sara

I once watched a western on television with my Dad. We happened upon it in the middle of the flick, but my Dad recognized it right away.
“Two Mules for Sister Sara,” he said, and contently rested the ol’ clicker on the arm of his big leather recliner. We watched it together, and even as a little kid it had me laughing. I guess I sort of forgot about it until one day in college. I was hit with my first round of homesickness, and I drove myself to Wal-Mart to wander through the movies in hopes of finding an old Western to remind me of home. I found a DVD of  about 10 Bonanza episodes, so I tucked that under my arm. And then I saw it.

I immediately tucked it under my arm as well and headed for check out. Once home, I gobbled snacks (what? Food CAN BE love) and relished my old Clint Eastwood Western. Going through Netflix the other day, I noticed it was available to watch instantly.

Don’t mind the language… it isn’t bad if it comes out of a nun’s mouth, right?

I’m only posting today to say one thing: you should watch this movie.
On and another thing: my husband left a dead mouse on my kitchen floor. I know I shouldn’t have told you, but just had to get it out. Please pray for me to have the strength, YEA the courage to remove it.

Getting In Over My Head

I have to start this post off by making you turn green with envy: I just slept for nine hours straight… and my kids are both still sleeping. I don’t know how it happened exactly since I don’t remember falling asleep. I guess I crashed somewhere around midnight, and I woke up just after 9 am wearing the clothes I wore yesterday. I will admit that I wore myself out emotionally yesterday. I have to add “emotionally” after “wore myself out” because I sat on the couch all day and there was no chance of physically wearing myself out.
Here’s the deal: I was sewing, and I have been sewing since Friday. I took a break on Sunday (ressssst) and was forced to take a “break” Monday so I could go into the city for two doctor appointments and one fat shopping trip that ended up costing me so much money I should have liked to land on my own harpoon.
Luckily for my family, I don’t have a harpoon and am still kicking around to make them meals and stuff.
Last week, my husband worked an insane amount of hours -so much that he was able to take Friday off and I burst into tears because I knew I would have to spend the day “wehind” my sewing machine (have I ever told you that my son pronounces the “be” syllable as “we”. It gives us lots of glee wecause it’s so cute). And, according to the custom of the Pregnants, I cried against his PJ shirt.
I hadn’t seen him ALL week, and I finally had him ALL to myself and for what? It was my own fault. I’d given my word to have some sewing projects completed, and I’d tried and tried to complete them, and now that my husband was home he promised to take care of the kids and house while I stitched, stitched, stitched.
Despite his best efforts, the house sorta did crumble. It’s not his fault. He did the best he could, and after all: it was his day OFF.
Saturday was more sewing, but I ran out of bias tape. I loaded the kids and husband in the car, and we drove 30 minutes to the nearest Wal-Mart. Unbeknownst to me, they are in the middle of redoing their craft department and had NO bais tape. At all.
I shrugged. My husband muttered something under his breath. I was overcome with sudden, intense nausea and my daughter tugged on my hand.
“Mom, mom, mommmmm,” she sang, dancing around and putting pressure on my side -the side that ached because the baby is sitting on a nerve.
And once again, according to the custom of the Pregnants, I cried. In the middle of Wal-Mart. My husband timidly asked if I had plans for dinner.
“I can’t think about food right now. I’m so sick,” I blubbered out.
“Okay, okay,” he gently said. He guided his little family over the the food section and bought everything so he could make dinner that night (his specialty: baked chicken, potatoes, and canned green beans).
Saturday night and Sunday day, our house continued to be neglected. I did my best to pick up here and there and wipe up this and that… but it was akin to shoveling snow in a snow storm.

Sunday night I was up in the middle of the night full of nausea and worry -I knew I would have to make a trip to the city alone, and I didn’t know how on earth I was going to do it. I finally resolved on calling my parents at 7 in the morning to ask for a last-minute favor in the form of some BODY to accompany me to help with my kids and keep me awake on the drive home.
At 6:30 am, my phone rang. It was Dear Ol’ Dad who had had the same worry himself and was nice enough to send my little brother with me. My little brother was supposed to help Dad all day Monday, so I know it was a big sacrifice on Dad’s part. But I could not have made the trip without my brother. The entire drive over, he quoted Napoleon Dynamite and Kid History, and he had me laughing so hard.
His favorite Kid History:

I quoted Debbie Downer to him, and we laughed some more.

Then we went to my doctor appointment where I was able to hear the baby’s strong, strong heartbeat.
We jumped quickly over to the boy’s heart appointment:

“Mom,” he asked after his EKG was done, “Why do I need all these gooey bandaids all over me?”
And then I made him say “gooey bandaids” over and over and over because it sounded so cute. It turns out that he has not one but TWO heart murmurs, but both are completely innocent (*whew*).
We got home much later than expected, but just in time for a birthday party which we left early to eat dinner at my grandma’s house. What a blessing that was! After a long day, it was nice to come back to a ready-made dinner… and to have it be Grandma’s beans, chips, and cheese? Holy Hallelujah.
Tuesday I woke up and started sewing again, only to find that my machine had decided to quit working. And then I ran out of thread.
I called Mommy who brought me more thread, and a small part of my sewing project that should have taken 30 minutes took me 2 hours. I should have been done with the project by 1 at the latest, and I finally finished it somewhere around 11 pm. I’ll leave the amount of tears I shed up to your imagination.
My house? I’ll leave that up to your imagination as well.

My Dad came over yesterday and saw the mess.  My kids had built a fort in the middle of the room, and when my Dad saw it he said, “Did you build a fort?”

“No Grandpa,” my daughter explained, “It’s a PIG PEN.”  I told him she hit the nail on the head.

 

As my husband did the dishes last night, I said “Oh tomorrow after I mail these projects off, I’m going to bake some cookies and some bread…”
“It might be a good idea to get the house in order first.”
He also softly asked me to please not get the kitchen TOO dirty, which made me mad (custom of the Pregnants) because how many times have I CLEANED that kitchen only to have to clean and clean and clean? How many times have I CLEANED my house? How many times?!?!
I told him so, and then I told him that I’d do what I thought was most important the next day.
Personally, I think baking IS more important. We have guests coming this weekend, and I know from personal experience that cleaning my rear (which incidentally has pain shooting through it, thanks Baby Bundle) off today will make no difference come the weekend. BUT it will be nice to have food in the freezer when the guests arrive. I’ll clean today, sure.
But “get the house in order” completely? I know it shan’t be done. It SHALL be done on Friday. Today is laundry and baking which sounds like a big, warm hug in comparison to my broken sewing machine. It’s breaking is almost a blessing in disguise: if it didn’t break, I might get it into my head that I should sew something else… incidentally, when I ran out of the bias tape I needed, I decided to finish a dress I was making for my daughter. I had the bias tape for THAT, so I whipped it out while I waited for my husband to be ready to go to the store. The end result?

She’s not shy about how much she hates it. I had to wait until she stopped bawling her brains out wefore I could take the picture.
“It’s UGGGLLLYYYYY,” she cried. Oh, daughter.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I dropped and crashed like I did last night. My son happened to do the same thing… right in the middle of playing his Boy Game (Game Boy):

As Much As I Loathe To Admit…

I’m going through relapses. Did you ever see that somewhat awful movie starring the somewhat brilliant Sandra Bullock (whose picture I used to stare at in hopes that her beauty would somehow morph THROUGH the magazine and onto my own face via science fiction osmosis)? She is an addict, and when her drug of choice is taken away, she buys a sack FULL of sugar candy and eats it. It sort of salves everything for her.
Well, gorsh it all if I’m not finding my own sacks full of sugar candy to salve my distance from the social networking world.
Sure, it’s only facebook.
Sure, it’s not like I’m marooned on an island with nothing but a Wilson volleyball to keep me company.
Oh yeah, and I’m not dead.

But my poor friends. My poor family. My phone calling and picture texting has increased 1000% since I deactivated my account. I walk outside and see my son trying to pull his NON-BOOT CUT (read: somewhat skinny but not totally because mummy won’t allow it) jeans over his cowboy boots. He’s fussing in frustration, and immediately I compose 3 different facebook statuses to go along with the situation, and then -and ONLY then -do I tell him he ought to pick different shoes or a different pair of pants.
Oh wait. I DID take a picture first. I did text it out to my brother.
And then I helped him.
I also made a phone call last night that started like this, “Since I don’t have facebook, can you tell me if the pool is open?”
I’m utterly dependent on facebook’s stupidly shallow WEALTH of useless knowledge! It’s crippled me! No longer do I have to EARN information by looking at bulletins or reading the paper… NO! Gone are the days of normalcy! Usher in the Facebook Age where we can all sit hidden behind a computer screen and gaze into each other’s lives like nosy (albeit CARING) maiden aunts!!
Did you hear about…?
Did you see that…?
Can you believe that…?

And here I sit, disconnected (yet connected all the same… sugar sack, see) my brain fairly begging for more.

Do you SEE how sick I am??? Someone, please! Chant methodical and philosophical mumbo-jumbo into my ear to keep me from hitting rock bottom!
Speaking of Sandra Bullock and her beauty, did you happen to see “America’s Sweethearts”? It’s a dandy of a movie -one that I shouldn’t recommend on account of morals and one pointless (aren’t they all though?) F*bomb. It has an amazing cast, including (but not limited to) Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, and John Cusack.
We see more of John Cuscak, but Stanley Tucci MUST be mentioned first because he is, after all, Stanley Tucci. Somewhere in the beginning of the movie, we see our very own John Cusack “cracked up” and living in a “center.” Apparently he became enraged when he found out his wife was cheating on him and he tried to kill her and THE lover. with his motorcycle as her drove it through the window of The Crumpled Duck.
“She took him there,” *shudder * “She took him to OUR Crumpled Duck.”
He spends over 6 months in a center that has a two week program. He chants, “I’m grateful for the sun. I’m grateful for the moon…” and he has a mentor that feeds him all kinds of meaningless what nots like, “Mecka-lecka-sala-bad. Beem sala beem.”
“What does that mean?” John asks his mentor.
“I do not know, it’s very old,” the mentor replies and offers no further explanation. As John leaves the center on account of Billy Crystal paying the mentor off, the mentor leaves John with one further tip for his uncertain mentally unhinged future.
“Life is a cookie,” he says.

And I guess that’s what I need. I need some mentoring from an old man who has no idea what in the world he’s talking about. Then again, maybe what I need is for someone to tell me to stop replacing social networking with texting.
And movies, apparently.


And oh yeah: Hank Azaria is in it, and he has a lithp that will just delight your scales off.
PPS: text me. please. preferably mumbo-jumbo philosophical intrigues. Given Sandra’s success, I should be much better in roughly 28 days…

Night Swimming


…worth every penny!

How.

I made face paint yesterday morning. We had some visitors come around just in time, and I had the kids line up.
“What would you like to be?” I asked my girl’s best friend, “A butterfly? A kitty?”
“POCAHONTAS!” She said.
I didn’t exactly have Pocahontas in my short file of Things I Can Paint on Faces, but I did my best. I have a darkish shade of mineral foundation on hand, so I brushed her face with that, added some stripes and dots and cat-eyeliner and glitter aaaand:

My daughter wanted the same fix.

As I worked on the girl, Pocahontas leaned in and whispered, “Now we will be sisters.”

And what would two beautiful Indian Princesses be without a fierce warrior to protect them? (Yes, this is his “mad” face):

Scary, right?

We took our three little Indians to the school cafeteria for the summer’s free lunch program, and what to our wondering eyes should appear but a Native American woman, serving the food. When she asked about the paint on their faces, I couldn’t lie.
“Well, they’re Indians. Couldn’t you tell?” I asked, jokingly. And -lucky for me -she giggled and giggled and giggled. Imagine if she’d been offended… but really. Could you be offended?

Some things in life are too cute to be offending.

A Full and Lazy Day/12 Weeks

I don’t know if you’re like me, but when I get overwhelmed, I tend to do nothing. Being overwhelmed exhausts me, and instead of tacking the tasks at hand, I’ll escape for a while. Yesterday I woke up to a very filthy house, and I had about 11 million other projects that needed doing otherwise.
The reason I had struck The Hired Housekeeper Deal with my husband BEFORE ever getting pregnant was to avoid days like yesterday. While I appreciate my pregnancy, I KNEW that without hired help my pregnancy would read something like: be sick, be tired, eat, feel a little better, clean.
There’s nothing much worse than battling nausea and watching helplessly from the couch as the work you’ve just done on your Well Time get unraveled.
Well, The Hired Housekeeping Deal has not panned out. I’m getting angry about the whole thing because, if you don’t mind my being dramatic, I’m losing my identity in my laundry.
Yesterday was the worst of it. My house keeps getting worse and worse, and I feel like I’m throwing marbles at a battleship.
“Take that,” I’m saying as I pitch the innocent little shiny marbles at the metal battleship, and then I flinch as they pop off the battleship and fly right back at my face.
Hope gave up the ghost yesterday. Instead of going with my usual routine of “chores before fun” I had fun first because I knew if I did the chores first, the fun would not happen, and my kid are in dire need of a little fun with a mother who isn’t harping on them to PUT this away and THROW that out and STOP FIGHTING!
So we made deviled egg boats.

The kids ate those babies up in 5 minutes, and no foolin’.
After making boats, we watched “Tangled.” I can’t seem to get sick of that movie, and it felt good to stretch out on the couch.
“Mom?” my daughter asked, “Do horses really eat apples like that?”
“Yeah,” I said, “Do you want to go feed the horses some apples?”
“SURE!” The kids were both in agreement.
I’m determined to be the teacher this summer. I’ve mentioned this before, I know. But you don’t know what’s been going on in our house lately.
“Mom,” my daughter said to me one day, “Our plants need some compost if they’re going to grow bigger and bigger.”
“Compost?” I echoed.
“We just make it like: food we don’t eat, dirt, water, mix together… make sure to give it air aaaaaand COMPOST!”
“Where did you learn THAT?” I asked.
“Curious George.”
She’s told me all about fruit bats that see at night and how helicopters always call out “May day! May day!” while going down.
I fear someday she’ll roam the streets saying things like, “Everything I know, I learned from Nick Jr.”
So I’m taking over. It isn’t her fault she remembers so much of what she watches. She inherits that quality from me. Just ask my aunt… the one I followed around as a little kid and quoted Bonanza episodes to.
Anyway, we chopped up some tart apples and drove to the horses… our two hosses that usually sit next to our house have been moved. We paid a visit to the younger one (Giselle) yesterday.
There’s nothing sweeter than feeding apples to horses and taking pictures that make your daughter look like she only has one arm…

We made it home just in time for me to teach two piano lessons, and after they left I had a twenty minute break to restore some semblance of order to my home before my next lesson arrived.
My next lesson never arrived, so the kids and I just kept on keeping on. The end result was a vacuumed living room -thanks to my daughter -and a spot-mopped kitchen floor -thanks to my son. The dishes got almost all the way done which is a FAR improvement from the state they were in before, and my son even took out the bathroom trashes. I suddenly wasn’t nearly so overwhelmed, and I just pushed the whole “in the very near future, all your work will be for nothing” to the backest back of my mind.
And the kids and I made chocolate chip cookies.

I visited over the fence with our neighbor while my daughter, still apron clad, pulled weeds.

and my son practiced riding his wee bike.

We came in to find a snake on the porch. We leaned over it and pleaded with it to please eat the mice lurking around our trailer. My daughter prodded it with a stick, and it slithered under our house… to hunt for mice, we presume.

Once inside, I made some homemade garden scrub and took a ridiculous amount of time designing a little label for it.

It turned out pretty good. I’ll have to make another batch for my husband who loves to spend his off time in the mud and the muck.

After the scrub was packaged up nicely, I baked a tomato pie (recipe coming soon, and it’s WELL worth making) and then devoured two slices while the kids and I watched the 1950’s version of “Cheaper By the Dozen” which was really funny and surprisingly depressing all at the same time.
Readers, I honestly can’t believe how much more time I have simply by dumping facebook. It’s embarrassing. I may never put it back on my phone. I mean, I spent a HUGE chunk of yesterday lounging around feeling very tired and overwhelmed. I watched two full-length movies with my kids! And I still managed to get quite a lot done.
The best thing I got done? (Aside from soaking up my Dad saying, “Are these cookies your mother’s recipe? They taste just like hers!” My mission in life has officially been accomplished. I can now die a happy woman) Made it through the wilderness of the first trimester! My belly growth has slowed way down, which it did with my son as well… I’m glad. If I had kept growing at the intense rate I was going, I was in for a RIDE of a pregnancy. As it is, I’m experiencing weird symptoms like a metallic taste in my mouth and I’m cold all the time. My house was 85 degrees the other day, and it felt downright perfect.
My husband is about to go out of his mind living with The Sweater Lady.
I ended my day yesterday by finding my very first EVER spider vein.
In the words of my son who I just clobbered with a kiss, “Guh-woss.”
(I took, edited, and posted a picture of my 12 week belly here… and then I noticed the bra hanging in the background. Whoopsie. I promptly removed it. You’re very welcome.)

Kick Start

My husband asked me to run an errand yesterday. The “errand” would take me just over 2 hours driving time, round trip. I said, “sure, I don’t have anything going in the morning.”
I don’t know how it happens, but the days when I don’t have anything going actually seem to fill up like CRAZY the second I embark on a last minute project.
The errand itself, which should have taken all of 15 minutes took over an hour because someone misplaced paperwork. Have you ever entertained two small children in a waiting room for over an hour?
Yes, they were standing up and singing Primary songs complete with actions at full voice. It was better than the alternative: standing up and fighting over who was big and who was little in full voice.

In any case, none of us got lunch until 2 in the afternoon which did not bode well with my body OR the wee ones. After lunch, we rushed home (missing the chance to see my friend’s newborn baby girl) and made it JUST in time to teach piano lessons, in the middle of which I remembered I was supposed to have cookies baked for the church activity that night.
“Go ahead and play the first song,” I told the second of the three sisters I taught yesterday, “I’m just going to measure the shortening…”
According to the clock, I’d have the first batch baked JUST in time for me to make it to the church.
Of course I didn’t count on the first batch being burnt.
Which OF COURSE it was.
The second batch came out exactly two minutes after I should have been at the church.

All I can say is that it is a downright miracle that I made it to the church that night. If I’d have thrown in the towel, I wouldn’t have blamed me. I would have blamed the durrned paperwork loss on my monumental errand of the day.

But I DID make it. The activity that night got off to a late start, and I was lucky enough to spend a couple of hours learning that I need to refocus my mothering method. Really, it was the perfect start to my summer -I plan to spend more time with my kids, and the night was all about teaching our children. I’m not doing as good of a job as I should. I need to improve -teaching my children is one area of my life that should absolutely take precedence over anything outside of my home. Last night, I got a BUNCH of ideas and I’m excited to start implementing them. This morning as I got out of bed, I walked past the kids’ room and was a little bummed that they weren’t up. Don’t they know they’re supposed to be up and excited about summer? Well, they WILL know!

I was able to take a couple of goodies home with me, one being a very small Family Fun Cookbook that the kids went bonkers over when I showed it to them. Today we’ll be making deviled eggs that look like boats which will be miles more fun than what went on right before bedtime last night.
Rag curls, readers, are akin to torture.

Summer Lovin’

I deactivated my facebook account for the summer. I generally use facebook from my phone, so I’m not spending oodles of hours on my computer. I check updates frequently, and it only takes me a few seconds each time.
But I gotta be honest: the other night as I was lying in bed “next” to my husband (how close can you really get when you’ve got a giant pillow between you? Pregnancy, you rule the day), I kept imaging the people who wrote the status updates snuggled between us in bed.
“Jogged four miles today,” one said. Then they disappeared and another on reappeared.
“Ugh, is it possible to be any more annoyed than I am right now?” they said.

And the cycle went on and on. Every time I laid down in bed next to my husband and opened my facebook account, I was inviting friends, family, and general acquaintances into bed with us! And it wasn’t just that: it was lunchtimes and break times as well. When I should have been spending time visiting with my kids over lunch, I was scrolling through updates. Facebook friends were there again: sitting at the table with the kids and I.
“Hate the new time line,” they were saying.
“Happy Anniversary to my husband,” they were saying.

On Sunday, I had a heartfelt conversation with my husband about love. In the past year and a half, I’ve learned a lot about love (the hard way). And I think the most important thing I’ve learned about love is that LOVE is WHY we’re here… a big part of why we’re here, anyway.
Humans have so many irritating limitations: we can only run so far, read so much, laugh so long… but love? Our capacity to love is limitless.
Are we perfect at loving? Of course not. We’re here learning how to love each other the same way our Father in Heaven loves us. Some people are naturally more loving -some are having to learn the hard way (me!). But in the end: love is what it’s all about.
Love your neighbor.
Love your friends.
Love your family.
Love yourself.

This summer, I’m going to focus on my family: no more facebook in bed. No more facebook at my kitchen table. No more facebook… for the entire summer. Once the summer is over, a small kind of era in our family will also be over. This is our LAST summer before the school system infiltrates our personal schedules.
This is also our LAST summer with just the four of us. Next summer, we’ll have one more person in our family: while I’m mounds of excited, I’m also aware that I need to bond the CRAP out of what we’ve got now while I still have the chance.
I want to focus on my kids.

Yesterday we spent and hour and a half at the pool, and then we went for Dilly Bars. That night, as Daddy got called into work, my kids snuggled up with my and My Big Fat Pillow and we watched “The Cutting Edge” through Netflix on my phone. We had to get REALLY close to see on the tiny screen, and it was glorious.
That was how my husband found us when he got home: all three together in one gigantic bed. No separation anxiety for us last night.
May the rest of the summer be just as grand… it’s all I’ve got before our lives change for good. Facebook does NOT need an invite to this party. After all, it will still be there come August.
But I will be honest: I’m going to miss posting status updates. I love composing them.
Here’s the one I thought of this morning but couldn’t post: I love being up in the morning… it’s the GETTING up that tans my hide.

On that note: I didn’t wake up until sinfully late this morning and I’m running behind.
Until tomorrow, then.