So I Was Just Thinking

I used to love watching Bill Cosby's " Kids Say the Darndest Things " since I am not old enough to have seen the original show hosted by Art Linkletter . That's not say I didn't see reruns and clips of the show on cable. Nevertheless, I got a kick out of hearing what these kids would say about things like love and the Easter Bunny. That was before I had kids. Now I cringe when I hear some of things that come out of my son's mouth. Most of them are things that my husband or I have let slip out of our mouths. (I have taught my kids at school that actions made in anger have unintended consequences, but I haven't mastered that concept myself yet.) The strangest things my son has ever said have come from his daycare. Glad to know my $350 a month is paying off. The first thing he came home saying was, "I'm going to tell my daddy on your butt" followed by his dialing a pretend cell phone and saying, "Hello, Daddy?" (Who says that?) He fin...

Many of you out in the world of Christmas toys might have had quite an evening with the "some assembly required." I didn't have any of that to worry about, but did have to wrap presents by myself since my husband is still away. It was all I could do to get the youngest to go to bed. I ended up going to bed with him and then debated with myself whether the presents really NEEDED to be wrapped in order for it to be Christmas. Rational heads prevailed and I dragged myself out of bed at 12 something in the morning worried the dog would wake up everyone. The next morning I woke up with the oldest and realized that Santa's goodies were still sitting by the fireplace. I tried to feed them to the dog who on any other occasion would have stolen them off the plate but, instead, snubbed her nose up at them as if to say, "I am not your garbage can." The oldest ended up running them out to the dumpster since my mother's words were echoing in my head, "You are no...

We had fun last night turning ice cream cones into Christmas trees. James probably put more frosting in his tummy than on the cone. Caitlin was very meticulous where she wanted here colored sugar. The results can be seen below: These are the two that went to Santa with bottled water. We always have to do things a little different around here. Especially when mommy forgot to buy milk. Christmas Day we opened presents at home and then went to Nanny's for a late lunch. After lunch, James passed out in the arm chair watching Sponge Bob Squarepants. Gramma gave Cait a new iPod Shuffle to replace the one that was stolen on the school bus. Cait was ecstatic! (Don't ask what she was doing bringing her iPod AND Nintendo DS (also stolen) on the bus. We still don't know. Gramma was a softy and replaced both of them! Gramma was excited to receive her Scrapblog book and calendar. Nanny (Aunt Rose) is looking spiffy in her favorite rose decorated outfit. We enjoyed our time together. I ...

How many of you out there have a favorite set of sheets? I do. They were a gift from my mother, and whenever I put them on my bed, I feel so comfortable and cozy. Around the same time, she also gave me one of those really squishy things you slip over the mattress to make it last longer and feel comfier. Well, I hadn't used them in a while because it seems since my husband has been away that whenever I do use them, my son causes some catastrophe to occur that I must immediately remove them. Yesterday, I finally decided that my son had been catastrophe free (no throwing up, no wetting the bed or spilling drinks.) So, I decided that, since it was so cold out, that I should put my favorite sheets and squishy thing on the bed. Man, it really made all the difference in the world. I slept until 7:45. Who would have thought something as simple as sheets and a mattress pad would change your sleep pattern? Even my son slept until 8:15. That, however, turned out to be a problem. 8:15 - "...

Yesterday, I opened up my front door to find a box of fudge, a box of expensive chocolates and this.... Isn't that cool? I had to hide it from my kids. Some of these are candies my friend Renee and I would get at the 7-Eleven when we were in junior high school. It was a weekly ritual. I have been trying to get her on the phone, but she has been mysteriously unavailable. If it's not her, I can't imagine who it could be. NOTE: I spoke to Renee, it wasn't her...that left my neighbor who has seen me chasing after my son as he ran away down the street. She knew how much I as in need of chocolate. Thanks "Neighbor."

Outside of my town I saw this sunset while leaving the babysitters house. There is a big issue about the deer population in our town. Personally, I don't mind them. Yes, I have lost a flat of flowers to a deer, but I figure we have built our houses on their homes. The least we can do is put up with a few chewed plants. There are people in town who encourage deer by feeding them (this is illegal). There is a plan in place to allow bow hunting of deer in town to limit the deer population. I disagree with this. Where else can you just be driving through your neighborhood and be able to see a family of deer hanging out in someone's front yard?

Click here to create your own video Well, I figured if we can't all be in the same place in real life, I would create a virtual family get together. The funny thing is James keeps saying, "Play it again." Then he waves at his daddy and laughs at how silly we are. He doesn't seem to tire of seeing it. So here's to James...Play it again.

The one thing people could say about me is that I have never met a stranger. I could immediately strike up a conversation with someone in an airport, queue, or conference without hesitation. My experience on the internet, by sheer nature of the beast, has had to be a little more conservative in my meeting of people. Nevertheless, I have "met" some interesting people through my interactions at Scrapblog and SIStv . Both places are positive sites designed to foster creativity and camaraderie among a diverse group of people. I enjoy going to these sites for inspiration but also for the interaction with people from all over the world. One of these people is Chimene whom I met on SIStv . Chimene's eye for detail, photographic style and creativity has led her to be one of my favorite scrapbook artists. She recently started a blog to display her work which can be seen at the Art of Dutch Vink . I only wish I had the time to try some of the many interesting techniques she uses ...

There have been several versions of The 12 Days of Christmas out there, but this one is my new favorite. It is a 1998 performance of an a capella group called "Straight No Chaser" (SNC) from Indiana University. I heard it on the radio yesterday and promised myself to look it up when I got home...I actually remembered, so here it is. (You might need to pause the Playlist in the sidebar.) Coincidentally, the kids and I went on our annual journey to Belton Lake where they have a display called Nature in Lights. Enjoy the pictures while you listen to SNC sing this untraditional version of an old Christmas standard. A Partridge in a Pear Tree Two Turtle Doves Three French Hens Four Calling Birds Five Golden Rings!!! Six Geese A-Laying Seven Swans A-SwimmingFive Golden Rings Eleven Maids A-Milking Nine Ladies Dancing 10 Lords A-Leaping Eleven Pipers Piping (Sorry for the blurry pic) Twelve Drummers Drumming It was worth the hour's traffic on a country road to listen to James o...

My favorite Christmas show came on today-"Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown." There are so many reasons why I love this show. It's hard to pinpoint the main one. Growing up, we used to watch all of the holiday movies including the original "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer," "Frosty the Snowman," and "Santa Claus is coming to Town." The problem with all those movies is they scared me for some strange reason. The puppets in these movies and Grinch were just a little too creepy. "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown," however actually shared the true Christmas story of the birth Christ. I felt that this was one of the few times people actually heard the true meaning of Christmas outside of all of the commercial hype. Another reason I love this holiday special is the music. Lucy & Linus theme song featuring everyone dancing on stage hopping back and forth from left to right bobbing their heads accord...

Every now and then I write about those kind of days when you would should have stayed in bed. Thursday was one of those days. It was a typical Thursday where I had to pick up Caitlin from school and run her over to the dance studio. I called my mother to see if she could pick my son up so I didn't have to run back and forth between the studio, house and daycare. Unfortunately, she had made plans and couldn't do that for me, so I had to take James with me. After Caitlin's class, I went to dinner with the kids to pass the time until my dance class. Upon returning to the dance studio, Caitlin said that James was asleep. Not wanting to disturb him, I asked Caitlin to stay in the car with him until he woke up (usually only takes about 5 minutes.) Caitlin had a novel and the car radio to keep her company. I kept leaving the studio to check on them and James stayed asleep through the entire class. After my class, I went outside only to find I had run down the battery. You sh...

This may seem petty, but yesterday I went to get tea from my favorite restaurant...You know the one with the big giant billboard on the highway that says, "Tea, 46 cents!" Never mind that that the sign is falsely advertising cheap tea, since you can only get that price between the hours of 2:00 and 5:00. Nevertheless, I went to get my tea and not knowing whether they would be honoring their proclaimed price. The carhop said, "50 cents, please." I handed the him a dollar, and he quickly returned with my beverage but no change. I looked at him questioningly but said nothing, to which his reply was, "Oh, did you want your change?" I said, "Yes," and quickly took my 50 cents and left. Now, I know in the big scheme of things 50 cents is a mere pittance, and this young man probably only makes minimum wage. But isn't it rude to assume that I am going to give you a 100% tip for bringing out a glass of sugar water? Furthermore, what would be an ap...

It's been a week since my last post and not much has happened since then unless you count having a 5 day holiday, something. :-) We had Thanksgiving at my Aunt Rose's house. My son somewhere along the line decided that she should be called Nanny, so when I refer to "Nanny" I neither 1) become independently wealthy and suddenly can afford an au pair, nor 2) found a long lost grandmother - that would be a wonderful miracle. Nanny loves entertaining. Everything I ever learned about entertaining I learned from her. I remember that she had wonderful parties for no reason in her house where the kids were to be seen and not heard, and we would sneak crackers off of the hors d'ouerves table when no adults were looking. As I got older, I was the only kid out of the four cousins and me who enjoyed helping her set up for parties. My favorite party being Fourth of July where we would make baskets out of watermelons and fill them with all sorts of summer fruits - most of which...

Just so one child doesn't get more air time than the other.... Here is Cait's performance at Night of Giving at the local mall tonight - a school night. (Who thinks of these things?.) She is in the back row all the way to the right, or as she would say, "Stage Left, MOM!" So dance lessons are paying off, Daddy. Now you know that it has been money well spent! :-) Just thought you would like to be able to take part in some of the fun. For all of you counting, today was a "garden hose free day." Although I did have to chase a naked three year old from the back yard back into the house. At least the weather was not 45F. It was a balmy 70F today. That's Texas for you. If you don't like the weather, just wait 5 minutes. It will change. Additionally, it got really quiet while I was waiting for this video to post...Why? Wait for it...here it comes...... Yes, Daddy. Your son is officially Emo, black eyeliner and all.

So It has been five weeks going on six since the kids have seen Daddy. He tries to call everyday, but sometimes forgets the time difference and calls me at 4:30 in the morning. He is always apologetic, but it doesn't negate the fact that I will now be up until 10 p.m. at night without sleep, making me a very cranky mommy. Today was no different. 4:30 a.m. the phone is ringing and I can't find it. My morning workout routine that I usually forgo on the weekends began with the requisite hurdles. Fortunately, my son stayed asleep so I didn't have to worry about getting him back to sleep or him playing his other favorite activity: Mommy's Stomach Makes an Awesome Trampoline. Daddy finally called at 6:00 p.m. today and the following video is how the conversation went. (Please excuse my very deep voice...I lost it a week ago and it has not come back properly.) After having his daddy explain to him why you don't go outside with a cold and turn the garden hose on and soak y...

I heard that laughter....I really do have a routine that I go through every morning. You, too, can follow these not-so-simple steps of the Mother of a Toddler Fitness Program. Step One: Pectoral Butterfly : When the alarm goes off in the morning, lay on your back and reach out to the side with the arm closest to the nightstand and hit the snooze button. Squeeze chest muscle as you return your arm to the bed. Repeat every nine minutes as the alarm returns until you can't stand to hear the buzzing. Step Two: Sit ups - Reps (1) Step Three: Hurdles - Jump over laundry baskets of clean clothes on the way to the bathroom. Step Four: Overhead Tricep Extensions : Blowdry back of hair from the top to tip. Step Five: (Warning this is for only the strongest of people) Dress the Fighting Toddler Bent Over Row -Repeatedly reach for the arms and legs of your toddler while trying to dress them for daycare when they don't want to go. It usually will require several repetitions of putting his...

This week at Color Combos Galore , they challenged us to use a combination that included purple and of all the colors in the combo (purple, green, white and gray,) purple was the one that most people felt the least comfortable using or said that they hardly ever use. I love purple. I have ever since I was old enough to have a favorite color. My first bicycle was purple. I pledged a purple sorority. Even my first truck was purple. (I miss that truck.) I am even reminded at this moment of a time when I dyed my hair eggplant. My mother then introduced me as "almost her daughter."** Does that mean I wear it all the time? No. In fact I hardly ever do wear it only because it reminds me of a Paula Danziger book The Cat Ate My Gym Suit where the girl was overweight in junior high school, and she wore a purple pants suit (the 70s) to a school dance feeling like a grape. Purple is a hard color to wear, paint houses with or even scrapbook with because of the strong feelings the color...

I was on Color Combos Galore and they had my favorite color...purple as part of the challenge. I decided to participate, but couldn't decide what to design a page about. Then it hit me. Combine my penchant for purple with my voraciousness for vocabulary (sorry couldn't help myself.) The result is the following page. Lewis Carroll coined the term portmanteau in Through the Looking Glass including the word galumph which was a combination of gallop and triumph. So what were the original words that formed these portmanteaux? Play along, just for fun of course by posting what you think the origins of these words are. Also, think of other portmanteaux that I couldn't fit into this page. Even better, coin your own. Happy wordsmithing .

I woke up this morning to the strangest thing...a phone call from my father. Yes, I was dreaming. The realness of the voice that came through that dream state phone, however, woke me out of my sleep. It was a series of strange events that can barely be remembered involving a Mary Kay conference, children running up and down the conference center aisles, my daredevil cousin driving us through culverts trying to outrun who-knows-what, a ship crashing into the overpass and Leonard Nimoy reaching for his Star Trek action figure before our vehicle disintegrated into pieces. How did those happenings bring me to my Mary Kay director's office making notes on sticky Post-Its where the phone rang? One would think that anyone of those bizarre things would have woken me, but it was that phone call that did the trick. The phone call was a simple one..."Hi, it's Dad," and then he was gone. A day doesn't go by that I don't think of him out of either necessity or out of nosta...

When I get home from work in the evenings, I spend it cleaning up the usual mess that I find that the elves forgot to dispose of while I was out. Lately it consists of medicine droppers, granola wrappers and the like all left behind in the whirlwind known as the Mommy Exodus. Yesterday I came home to a glass of water sitting on the lamp table by the couch. As I was about to dump it in the sink and place the glass in the dishwasher, I stopped to notice that the water looked kind of orange. This left me feeling perplexed. What beverage had I given my son that was orange tinted? I returned to the kitchen to find another glass that my daughter had kindly left on the counter for me to dispose of, and it too was tinted orange. Now, I am really confused. I set it down and started gathering the different medications that the pediatrician had prescribed to help my son get over the creeping crud that had overcome him this past week, and oddly enough, one was orange. Then it hit me....This three ...

James was so fascinated by "mountains" when we drove out West, that he made drive toward them. I pulled over to take pictures, and I guess people don't stop to admire the wonder of where they live, because an old man stopped to ask if I was okay. (Actually, that's not a bad thing since there is NO cell phone signal out there if one truly needed one.) I just decided to enjoy the scenic view that my son found so amazing. (PS - This is based on Pencil Lines Sketch #109 over here. My SIStv SISter SassySasha is the guest designer over there this week.

I have an uncanny knack for hearing songs in other songs. My daughter has inherited that quirk too. When she was little, she would hear a song on a movie theme and be able to tell you another movie theme that it was just like. I would be sitting in a restaurant that had a dinger for the door to let workers know that someone had walked in. I knew exactly that it was the first note for Oran Juice Jones' song "The Rain." Weird...I know. Anyway, so, I was driving down the highway when Kid Rock's newest song "All Summer Long"** starts playing on the radio and think, "Why is this Top 40 station playing 'Werewolves of London' ?" Then the words to "Sweet Home Alabama" come belting out of the speakers but in Kid Rock's Voice. Now I am really confused, so I had to go try it out for myself. You can hear the different songs on the playlist (if it is working) above and see if I am correct in my thinking. The big question of the day is, ...

I just got this from my cyber friend AVT Coach whom I "met" through another cyberbuddy and blogging guru, Octamom . Imagine my surprise when I turned on my computer because I woke up at 4 something in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep and was greeted with this gem. Here are the rules of the game. 1. Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends. 2. Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award. 3. Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post , which explains The Award. 4. Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit This Post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor! 5. Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog. And without further ado ('cuz you know I am all about the Ado)....

When I began this blog , the hardest part was coming up with a name that would accurately convey what the purpose of this endeavor was. I sat for a while trying to decide why I would want to blog in the first place and realized, as I have mentioned before, that I have so much “stuff” (a word I don’t allow my students to use) floating around in my head that occasionally I needed an outlet. Anyone who knows me in real life has seen me just walk up and begin a conversation as if the other person had been inside my head listening to my internal dialogue. It usually begins with the word, “so.” I even do this on the phone with my brother, mother and cousin. It often sounds like this: So I was going down the street the other day, when out of the blue a man runs across the road behind the car carrying a backpack dressed like a Ninja sans mask, stopping along the side of the road as he traveled, periodically pretending to check an imaginary watch, crouching and spinning around Ninja-s...

This weekend I decided to be adventurous and travel with a three year old and an eleven year old without the assistance of their father to get me out the door in one piece and help maintain my sanity. What made me think I could travel 2 1/2 hours and stay away from home for 3 days without completely losing it? Who can say? The usual Annemarie Antics began when I was ready to get on the road and realized I hadn't hired a dog sitter nor reserved a kennel. I then began examining my resources - both fiscal and personal. A kennel was going to be pricey. There was no room in the car, and my hostess already has two dogs in her dog run. The weather was going to possibly be cold this weekend so leaving Zoey outside with an automatic feeder and waterer was out of the question. Asking my aunt or mom to come let the dog in and out was not only unreasonable, but also asking for trouble because the house was a mess. What to do....Suddenly it hit me. My next door neighbor loves dogs and is very ...