So I Was Just Thinking

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.