I Betcha Didn't Know...

It's Friday and I thought you'd enjoy a round of "I betcha didn't know"...

• I drink orange juice straight out of the container. Unless I know you are coming over to enjoy some orange juice... and then I just don't offer you any. 
• It took all week to put the laundry away. From last week. 
• I used to lurk on "mommy message boards" but now I don't. Too much drama. Instead, I lurk on random blogs
• I found Spider Man in my kitchen last night. 

Scaling the cabinet that also hides the really old Halloween candy.

• I debated eating a lemon for a snack yesterday morning. I was feeling quite famished.
• I can't eat a peanut butter sandwich (No Jelly. Gross.) without potato chips on the side. I can't really explain this.
• Speaking of jelly... Jello is also on my Foods to Avoid list. It wiggles? Bounces? Jiggles? Food should not do these things. Especially while I'm trying to eat them. 

Jello

• I had to consult my friend Miss Google to figure out how to take a screen shot to show you the above "Original Wiggle"
• My posts might get way cooler now that I know how to do that. Don't actually count on it, though.

Will you have a fantastic weekend for me? Thanks ever so much,
Mama

I really should file this in drafts

I want to give you some fair warning that the blog may be a bit on the skimpy side next week. Blame my goddaughters. They are coming to stay all week while their parentals go on a much needed vacation. (Maybe this blog is also going on vacation?) Anyhow, unless I really do wake up at 5am next week I'm probably going to be swamped with opening extra cheese sticks, peeling an extra banana or two and praying that everyone is exhausted and naps all together around 1pm.

I may also being making extra coffee... it's an addiction, I know. Over the weekend I jokingly said that me drinking coffee is like some people smoking... it calms me. Everyone looked at me with a serious expression and agreed... "yes, it's called having an addiction." Ooohhh... perhaps that's why I have started needing it around 2 in the afternoon. I think about coffee a lot. I recently discovered the cheapest coffee ever. I bought it thinking since it was so cheap that if it was terrible it wouldn't be such a punch in the gut to throw it out. Then I opened it and it smelled heavenly... like chocolate.  A chocolate coffee heaven, yes. Anyhow, Folgers is twice as much for the same amount and I rather like having coffee with Don Pedro every morning. He's rich, smooth and aromatic. I always have liked a good smelling man. (I will never live this down once T reads this. Not only will there be my Top 5 celebrities I named after having a few too many... there's also Sancho. And now Don Pedro!) A particular man I know smells like Old Spice and sometimes Acqua Di Gio by Giorgio Armani. Oh. My. 

Can be habit forming.

Uh.. anyhow. The blog might be pretty random and or non existent next week. I might write about other things I like or seem to be addicted to. Wait, nothing tops my coffee addiction. Unless you count my obsession with a certain actor/director. Also, let's please not forget all things Lonesome Dove. Perhaps another time. I seem to be getting carried away.
Mama

P.S. If anyone works for any of the brands listed and wants to sponsor any of my addictions or this blog... email me. (it's under the contact tab)

8 hours

I got to sleep all night last night. After Sunday and Monday night's (and last week's) early morning parties (initiated by a very adorable 1 year old) this was almost a "Dear Rose, you are driving me crazy" post. Thankfully she decided to not wake up at 230am and fake cry until I brought her in my bed and hope that she would fall back asleep quickly so I could once again deposit her back to her bed. I've heard that being continuously slapped in the face while you are trying to sleep gets pretty irritating. And from personal experience having a small child doing cartwheels right next to you at 245am, 330am and 445am is just as pleasant. That little girl also has a severe aversion to any blankets or sheets covering her feet. So, when she rolled over on top of Daddy Monday night and he tried to hug her into being still he inadvertently put the covers over her legs. At this point I was clinging to the very edge of my side of the bed to prevent being kicked in the ribs when I hear her say, "No! Mommy, help!" And she starts crawling over to me insisting that I "Help" her. So I did. I helped her right back into her crib.
I bet that taught her. Or maybe she was just worn out because she didn't take a nap yesterday afternoon. Either way, I'm glad I didn't have a runaway circus acrobat pretending my bed was a small trampoline last night. When my alarm went off at 5am and I realized I had slept all night I totally celebrated by sleeping until 6:05am. That was over celebrating, but I am almost well rested this morning.
I hope you are doing just as well, if not better.
Mama

Wedding Weekend pt 2

When we arrived the groomsmen were walking over to the chapel and I got to see T in his suit. We were standing there chatting when the wedding coordinator drove over on her golf cart and order the men to get moving. So my gang of friends and I went inside... it was packed. Thankfully we found a row that wasn't taken and sat down. (This is when I had a little pep talk with myself to keep it together and not cry. I was successful.) The wedding was beautiful.

I hope they always remember to be like dough. Specifically bread dough.

When we left the chapel and went to the reception the groomsmen were lined up in front of the bride and groom (per the coordinators instructions) to prevent anyone from holding up the line trying to talk to them. We were provided with drinks and vittles to snack on while waiting a short time for the bridal party to finish pictures. I corralled some more friends and we all found a table to accommodate us. Luckily it was right next to the dance floor and near the cake. All pluses... except the drinks were on the other side of the room. But, I suppose I did get some exercise walking back and forth. We had BBQ for dinner (obviously... we're in Texas) and it was the worst kind ever. Rudy's. (If you don't know what I'm talking about... you aren't from here. Shame on you.)

Maybe I walked across the room one too many times to the drink table since many of my pictures ended up like this. The cool thing is they had rented a photo booth and had it set up so we could take some delightful photos of us in mid sentence saying, "Hurry, it's taking pictures" and "No! Wait! I'm not ready!" Goodness, we had ourselves a good time though.

T and I even danced! By accident but we kept going until we were booted off the floor. They lured us out with "all the married couples come on out" and we survived two cuts of the how long have you been married game. Over five but less than ten. Then we grabbed some cake. It was so good. I wish I had a piece right now. OH, the speeches... totally got me. I teared up during the maid of honor's speech and then even the best man's. It possibly had to do with the fact that it was their brother and sister and it made me think about my own relationship with my siblings... I'm almost positive it wasn't the drinks.
I think that about does it. They ended it with fireworks. It doesn't get much better than that. Also, Hawaii. Jealous.
I've got to go...
Mama

Wedding Weekend pt 1

Friday afternoon T and I headed out to Houston/Spring for the wedding of his long time friend K. T was a groomsman and we decided to be good and attend the rehearsal, thus leaving Friday afternoon and staying the night with some friends. The rehearsal was everything you could imagine it to be. I sat with one of our friends who is getting married in December and talked to her about planning a wedding. I told her to ignore the bossy woman up front who came with the venue as a coordinator because she would be directing everything herself. (We may or may not have come up with a terrible nick name for the lady.)

After we left the rehearsal dinner we drove to April Sound.... yeah. We totally made friends with all the right people. Saturday we woke up (T and I slept on bunk beds... not as awesome as you would think) and had breakfast tacos and thank-the-good-Lord, coffee.

 We then drove down to the marina and hopped on a boat and chillaxed until around noon on Lake Conroe. T and M (another friend) had to go to the wedding venue and get dressed and take pictures and nonsense like that, so I hung out at the house with Jess (M's fiancee) and got ready to go.
The rest of our crew finally came back from the lake and in record time we all headed to the wedding.

There was a cool island that we sank anchor at. Beautiful.

This is where I'll leave you hanging. More to come tomorrow. I've got to take care of some of some things that were neglected while we were having an awesome weekend.
Mama

Making it up

So... it's been busy around here for me the last couple of days. I totally slacked off in the blogging and I'll understand if any of you want to send some complaints my way. You may have been relieved to see me post almost nothing because maybe that's better than reading about my ongoing laundry battles.
In any case, I'm back.

This weekend T and I are off to our friend's wedding. T is a groomsman and totally rocks his new very black suit. I even got a new dress for the occasion. It's a maxi type dress (it even has pockets!) and it looks alright. I'm not sure if I'm rockin' it or not, although my mom, sister and the sweet man I married all say it looks great. Here are the reasons I bought the dress:

•  It was one of 3 longer dresses in the store (why is everything so short?)
• and I loved the idea of pockets on me rather than making my hubster (did I really just call him that? Sorry.) carry my camera, lipgloss and any other random junk I think I might need in his suit pockets.
• I tried it on and it fit! 
• In the process of trying it on a certain 3 year old tried to show a certain Mama's body off to the rest of the store's customers by flipping open the curtain of the changing room and I wasn't dealing with that again for any other dresses
• My mom said it looked really good (she was helping corral the kids)
• It was in my budget!
• I also had 25% off with a coupon
• I was sold

I'm sort of nervous. What if everyone else is wearing short dresses? At least all the other women, if there are any men sporting short or long dresses I have nothing to worry about. I know I don't need to worry since I'm not exactly the girl in the spotlight... still, you know what I mean, I want to fit in. Does that ever change? I never have been one to want to stand out in a crowd.

Transition.

I bet y'all want to see some cute pictures of my kids. I just uploaded this weeks pictures so here we go.

Ry was so kind to help Rose with her tea party. The other two guys were busy building something. Can you see Ry's true enthusiasm here? He's a wonderful big brother.

That's just the cutest little girl ever. She was playing with my hair and then peeking around at me and squealing when I saw her. She's just sitting pretty here.

D was building something for his Daddy. Daddy wasn't allowed to play with it though. It was just to look at. (I think that has something to do with the musical cable car T's cousin brought back from San Fransisco that is technically his but we don't let him play with it.)

Some random things you may be interested in...

• If you need to order prints of pictures you can get 200 for $2 at Snapfish using the code JULY200PRINTS (good until 7/26/11) *4x6 prints only*

• Oh, I guess that's it. I thought I had more but turns out I lied. But I used Snapfish a week ago and got 129 prints for .99 +shipping. The prints turned out very nicely. You can also pick them up from Walgreens and Walmart and some other places.

• Here it is! Old Navy is having a 30% off sale (not on any kids stuff though) through 7/22/11 Just enter code: ONBIG30 during checkout. They have some great stuff on sale right now that I would buy up for next year (or the rest of this summer) if I were buying anything. But I'm not, because I did that last Friday.

Give me some feedback... Would y'all like to hear about the discounts and random offers that clog my inbox? Like the Snapfish and Old Navy offers? Cause I get them from more places and would like to share if you are interested. Comment if you want it.
Have a delightful weekend,
Mama

There's not much here

Can I take a break today? I have nothing to write about. At least nothing of super importance and my battery is dying on the laptop. However, here's a short list of things I'd like:

• RAIN
• More RAIN
• Rain for the grass to grow. 
• Grass to feed my horses, sheep and cows. 
• Rain to fill our stock tanks
• Rain to quench everyone's thirst
• Rain so I know what mud is again and have to mop.
• But really just some RAIN

The brief (not boxer) entry

Howdy. I didn't get any free time this morning since I sabotaged my 5:30am wake up by hitting snooze pretty continuously. I finally got up at 6 and started breakfast when Rose woke up. Followed shortly by D and Ry. What in the world? Don't they know they are supposed to sleep until 7am? Anyway, they all ate and then my niece showed up as I was logging in. (I am keeping her today and tomorrow.) She is busy playing tea party with Rose (right next to me, I AM paying attention to them). It's possible that my goddaughters will stop by today but I'm not totally sure.

You are going to have to take my word here, but it's been an hour since I started writing. That's how many interruptions I've had and also put some blueberry muffins in the oven. I guess I'm going to put up my surrender to the children flag today.

More tomorrow,
Mama

Picture Post

I was going through my pictures and thought I'd share some that I rather like. 

Sunrise in January

A certain 4 year old playing in the snow.

here he is again. 4 going on 16

Me and my baby at Christmas

My other baby.

Not exactly a baby anymore

I kind of like those kids. 

Mama

My "free time" Friday

I know y'all have been hanging on to the edge of your seats wondering what I did on Friday. After I got all the animals fed and watered I cleaned the car and washed the breakfast dishes. I decided then that I'd go ahead and travel an hour away to the city to visit some of my favorite stores. Target and Old Navy. I am happy to say everything I bought was on clearance so I got quite a bit for my budget. Last year I found the warmest pants ever from Old Navy and while browsing the clearance racks there they were! I only had one pair and longed for another pair during the winter. I found them! And I found T a pair (in the men's section). The boys unfortunately got left out of my shopping. I don't know why, but girl clothes were in abundance everywhere but the only clearance boy clothes I found were for infants. Rose got a pair of shorts for the rest of summer and a couple of things for next year. She almost never gets new clothes because my cousin passes down her kids' clothes to me and our goddaughter does the same.

The kids loved the zoo. D-Man was disappointed that they couldn't see the giraffes, but otherwise had a great time and loved telling us about it. Ry was happy he got to see a zebra and birds with red, scary eyes. Apparently they also saw a monkey grab something from a trainer and throw it on the ground. I think they were a bit astonished that a man was in with the monkeys.

I'm ready for some iced coffee before I start in on the weekend cleanup. Have a great Monday,
Mama

Free-time. What's that?

Today the kids are at the zoo with their Pappy G (grandpa). So, I have the option of several very fun things that I'd like to do with my free time.

• paint kitchen
• finish painting bathroom
• finish the floor in the bedroom
• sort through toys
• go shopping (but leave my dollars at home kind of shopping)
• get a hair cut/trim
• clean out the car
• sleep
• grocery shop. Alone. 
• have a lunch date with my husband (probably least likely to happen)

My sister in law came over yesterday with her daughter E.J. The kids played happily all day. We made pizza for lunch, relaxed while the little ones took a nap and just caught up with each other. It was a pretty nice, low key day. I get to babysit E.J next week while her mama is doing a teacher workshop.

I've decided if I do go "shopping" in the city I will start buying school supplies. I will probably croak when I see how much everything costs. (By the way, I noticed that the pre-k list is longer than the kindergarten list. What's up with that?) I'm pretty sure in five years the list will be shorter but more expensive.

• access to high speed Internet
• personal laptop with webcam for "virtual classroom"
• The End.

In other news... T texted me yesterday to tell me he dropped his phone in paint and will most likely need a new one. Hip hip to the hurray. He is thinking about getting a data plan also... for work stuff. So I may get to that joy today.

Until Monday-Funday,
Mama

It's Melting

I am a little sad about this. I am letting the garden go. It's free to go find a new home where it's about 25 degrees cooler and rains every once in a while. Unlike here where it's 99 or 100 every day (this isn't supposed to be happening yet!) and only drizzles once a month. All I had left were the tomato plants and peppers. The grasshoppers eventually did find my garden and, wouldn't you know it, they love the peppers this year. Last year they left the peppers and basil alone. This year... not so much. They aren't too bad on the tomatoes. However, the tomatoes are producing miniature red blobs (roma & early girl). The Roma's are like grape tomatoes and the early girls are about the size of golf balls. My brother gave us some tomatoes and they look normal. I'm a little depressed, but hopefully in September we will plant some different things that will actually do something. It's too dry and hot here. I'm tired of wasting water on them.

In other news, my sister in law is coming over with her little girl and we are going to hang out while it's only 89 outside this morning. I've got to go fill up the pool. I hear Rose waking up so I better get things going around here.

See ya Manana,
Mama

He Brought Home Dinner

Gather 'round ye peoples of the Internet for I've a got a little story.
Monday night T walked in while I was in the bedroom folding clothes (huge surprise!) and asked the kids why Mama doesn't answer her phone. I cringed. I walked into the kitchen and found T covered from head to toe in mud. I'm serious. I wasn't even sure this man was in the right house. He had his shirt bundled up, obviously holding a treasure. Luckily this was all a total surprise to me since I had abandoned my phone about 15 minutes before he came in. He only tried warning me five times. Oh, but what did he have in that shirt? It was not the heart of a grizzly bear. It wasn't a cute puppy. It wasn't even gold that he found buried under a ton of silt. It was seven bass. (Fish, not like bass guitars.) I scrambled around and found them a slightly better home than that blue plaid shirt (that may never come clean).

They all jumped in my stock pot and I tried to rinse them as best I could. They were covered in mud, too.

(Side note: I had shined up the sink, cleared the counters and mopped  swiffered the floors in the previous two hours. Then came the mud. And fish. Happy-happy-joy-joy!)

Then I got the question I dread. "Do you have a sharp knife?" Yeah.... No. I would actually love to have one but I'm incredibly cheap and refuse to purchase a really good knife. So I get out this gigantic knife that is a piece of crap and hand it to T. "No! I hate that knife. Anything but that one. Do you have a fillet knife?" Yeah.... sorta. Only this fillet knife is from the same set that the gigantic crap knife is from. Worthless. I suggest he try using his hunting knife that my Opa gave him. He tries, but it needs to be sharpened. I form a brilliant plan.

"How about I call L? He might have something we can borrow." L is my brother-in-law. He and my sister live about five minutes away. I give him a call and ask if he's busy. He answers no, but sort of hesitantly. I ask my questions. He says they'll be over in a few minutes. We don't usually call anyone on the spur of the moment to come over and really I was just asking "oh-my-gosh-there's-7-fish-in-my-sink! I-don't-have-a-knife-that's-worth-a-darn-What-do-I-do?" They offered. I accepted.

Thankfully, I have a pretty awesome brother-in-law and my sister's not too bad either. They brought over their electric knife (I know, it's not how the old folks taught us) and it was so easy. Looking. I didn't attempt anything, but they sure made it look easy! 
      
Apparently we need an electric knife, larger cutting board, a decent set of knives and L on speed dial. He always shows up when we need assistance in "wild life cleaning". Like when T shot a deer, then a hog and now the fish. (L has all the awesome cleaning stuff.) Some day I will be prepared with a sharp knife, super-sized pans, zippered bags and, of course, food. Because all that work makes for a hungry crew.
So, now I have three zippered bags of fish in my freezer. I fed my guests some enchiladas for their help. They had just finished a two mile bike ride before I called them (are they crazy? It's hot out there). I also served up some ice cold lemonade. (Thrilling details.)

Another side note: T caught the bass with his bare hands. His friend was draining his stock tank to clean it up (he's doing lot's of clearing/cleaning) and a bunch of fish were just waiting to live in my freezer. I have a celebratory photo (currently my desktop background) of him standing in the middle of the tank, a fish in each hand doing sort of a double fist pump. It's pretty cool. Believe me. 

That was Monday night. Tuesday night... not nearly as eventful.
Mama

A New Baby

This weekend one of our cows had her first baby. 

My goodness, isn't he adorable?

Here they are resting in the shade.

I think I'll go find some shade, too.
Mama

Monday

The weekend is over. I've held back on all kinds of cleaning and now it's an ugly Monday. So, I have 347 loads of laundry to do (that's a rough estimate). I guess I'm used to that though. Saturday we had our pictures done. We drove over to my family's land (a whole 6 minutes away) and put on our smiles. The kids did great (we totally bribed them with promises of ice cream) until about half way through. Ry decided he was done taking orders about where to stand or who to look at. So while the rest of us sat on a rusty old wagon wheel thing he stood five feet in front of us, crossed his arms and glared at Jason. He and his wife were amused. (Thank goodness!) We worked through it and got a few more good pictures. In Ry's defense, it was 100 degrees, Mama forgot to bring any water to drink and we kept walking in circles. Luckily, my brother came down with his daughter (who is the same age as Rose) and he had a drink! The kids smiles morphed from huge exaggerated grins to barely turning the corners of their lips up. Rose constantly had her thumb in her mouth and I kept pulling it out and tickling her. My hair was everywhere! At some point I just threw it into a ponytail and said to heck with it. We had a really good time. I felt like we had a personal paparazzi entourage following us around. Jason is a great guy, very nice and very patient!

our first photo shoot, 2 years ago

If you are in Texas (specifically central Texas) I would highly suggest him. The great thing about using Jason is he gives you a CD of all the pictures so you can do whatever you want with them. He will even print packages for you. I really love the fact that we get to choose where we get our pictures done. No studio with a fake background. We literally had cows in the background in some of our shots. I'll post some pictures when I get the CD in the mail. I'm so excited to see how they turned out.

Me and D. 2 years ago.

Let's all have an awesome Monday,
Mama

Friday Randomness

Our family portraits are tomorrow evening. I am still unsure of what I am wearing, although I do have something in mind. I have no clue as to what I'm going to dress Rose in, D and Ry have what they need. I would have like to find Ry a new shirt, but with my stinginess on paying shipping and the fact I didn't find anything in town means he'll end up wearing the shirt he wore for Easter. Who knows, I might be able to squeak into the other town tomorrow and see if I can find anything. (I just hope the clearance racks cooperate with me.) Most likely I will end up freaking out and T will say that everything's fine. OH! I just remembered I have to get the boys' hair trimmed. Which means T will need a trim too. Who trims their hair? Me. Cause we are "thrifty" like that. I do a good job sometimes, too.

I got a new book in the mail yesterday. It's certainly not something I would usually read, but it was recommended to me (after I asked for a book suggestion) and I'm going to give it a shot.

My veggie garden is fading away. I'm down to just tomatoes and peppers. The peppers are being stingy and not really doing anything. This fall I'm going to plant some other things. And we are moving the garden (or some chickens) to combat the bugs. Hopefully our fall garden (which we've never done before) will produce better than the spring/summer garden. Maybe I can get my roses planted this weekend. I think I'm just going to move them to larger pots. They don't like the soil out here.

I think this concludes the blogging for this week. I've some kids to entertain, some towels to wash and some chicken fried steak to make. If I'm lucky I'll even get to vacuum and put the boys' clothes in their closets! How exciting!! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.
Mama

What I Read

I usually stay away from popular books. Lately, popular books are about vampires, wizards and other things I find ridiculous. I am picky. I finished reading Streets of Laredo (Larry McMurtry) over the weekend. It was long and wonderful. I found the answers I was looking for and by the time it was over I was ready to let it go.
You know how some books you read you don't want to stop, don't want to even put it down to eat or start some laundry? I just finished one of those kinds of books. It seems like a popular-ish book (it's being made into a movie) and there was buzz about how good it was. It was about the South. I sort of had to read it. And so I ordered it. Months ago. It waited for me while I read a super long book that I already knew the ending to. (Because I had to know why Lorena and Pea Eye got married!) So... I had read some snippets of what other people of the Internet were saying about this popular book and I took a chance on it.

I bet you are just on the edge of your seat waiting for me to tell you the title. Well, wait no longer... The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. Oh my. I started it either Monday night or Tuesday and Wednesday around 5pm I was finished with it. When I noticed I didn't have much further to go in the book, as each page turned, I began to (so dramatic here) mourn coming to the end. I wanted this book to go on. I want to know what happens after it ends. It was so very good. I really hope the movie follows the book closely, even though I may never watch it. I find it incredibly disappointing when such a good book is a let down as a movie.

 I only put it down long enough to tend to everyone and thing yesterday. I didn't really slack off, I just didn't do any more than I had to. I will try to tell you a little about it.

A young 23 year old (Skeeter) starts wondering what the Negro housekeepers think about their jobs, families they have worked for and how they feel about practically raising their children. It starts out when her friend Hilly starts a initiative to have all houses add a separate bathroom for the help (because they carry different diseases than the white people). Skeeter looks up to see the black housekeeper and wonders how she feels about this. This all leads to her secretly writing a book with 13 of the black maids telling their stories and risking their jobs and lives so that people will know what they go through and how it makes them feel. It's all about these invisible lines that we draw up and feel we can't cross. Back then it was the maids and their bosses. They couldn't tell them how they really felt because they were sure they'd be fired. The point of their book is "For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought." It's just one woman helping another. It doesn't matter their color or race, religion or lack thereof, how much money they have or don't have. Just because they were hired help didn't make them less of a person.

If you're interested in the book you can read more about it here. I definitely recommend reading this book. Just make sure you have nothing of importance to do when you start reading it, cause you won't be able to put it down.
Mama

Our Day Trip. Round 2 (the end)

When I left off yesterday we had just done a lot of walking around trying not to melt from the heat... It was finally time to sit down and eat.

They had a delicious meal of Cheetos, cookies and yogurt. (It was a special day, who am I to force them to eat a sandwich and watermelon?)

After the park we found a museum downtown and strolled around in the air conditioning for a while.

Ry sporting a KoolAid mustache and observing oil well construction

Then... we went to the park. The kids ran off all the energy they could muster since the humidity and heat were sucking it out pretty fast anyway. It was finally time for one last push on the swings and one last slide...

Some one was having a great time on those swings. (As for the condition of the swing set... I was totally not worried at all about lead paint. I also thanked the heavens that my child couldn't reach over and scrape some into her mouth.)
We ended our day with Sonic's Cherry Limeades. The kids slept all the way home and I tried not to nod off too. It was very nice to get away from home for a few hours to play. 

Can you believe it's already Wednesday? Me either.
Mama

Our Day Trip. Round 1

We went on a little day trip and had our picnic. Our first stop was the old cotton and corn mill. They now host shindigs like weddings and fancy parties (we saw someone coming in when we left; I think it was for a Quinceañera).

1-Row Cotton Picker (1949)

 

 

 

We walked around the place and didn't learn much of anything. Instead of putting up educational posters under plexiglass there was a phone number listed on all the buildings and a number to push associated with each. I was kind of like...What!? Not only is this a self guided, at-your-own-risk sort of place, now I have to call and sit on the phone to find out anything! I didn't. Instead I totally made up stories for the kids.

I was pretty sure this old wagon hauled in the cotton or corn. The boys were fascinated with all the "old rusty houses".

I would love to finish this trip but I am still at the beginning. We have picnic, museum and park left. It would be the world's longest post ever so I'll break it up to keep us all sane. Since the kids just woke up and are now climbing all over me... I've gots to go. (Yes I did mean to say gots) They are hungry and I need the rest of my coffee.
See you tomorrow for Round 2- the picnic
Mama

Weekend Recap

Friday I packed up the kids and took off with my mom, aunt and cousin to a small town about an hour away to have a picnic. (Yeah, we drove an hour with three kids to have a picnic.) It sounds a little crazy, but my mom lived in that town a few years when she was growing up, so it's got family history. We went to the an old mill by the river and had our picnic. It was beautiful (even though we were all melting from the heat and humidity). After that we went downtown and walked through a museum, some shops, and took the kids to a local park to run off their energy. Before we headed home we stopped at Sonic and got cherry limeades... cause that's what you do.

Saturday. We headed out (once again) for a lengthy drive to a welcome home party for CLB. We ate lots of barbeque and cake and then headed over to his mom's house to continue catching up. While we were there the boys got to take their god-sister's Barbie Jeep for a drive and hand feed deer. We had a great time.

K was still in control of the Jeep for the most part (even when she wasn't driving). For some reason they are all fascinated with looking at the back tires while driving so there were a lot of "Look where you're going!!" moments. (Mainly from me.)

Sunday. We loaded up again and went to Small Town East where we picked up really awesome stuff like chicken feed, water hoses and (vital for our mornings) coffee. Then we ate at a small restaurant/deli and discovered they made some really darn good pizza. After that we met up with my sister and bro-in-law at my mom's, dropped Rose off there, packed into her SUV and drove another hour away to see Cars 2. We got there 20 minutes late and I decided to wait for the next showing...If only I had known that kids movies had an hour of pointless crap before the movie! Anyhow we drove around and got some DD coffee, browsed around R.E.I and laughed at wine glasses for camping and $400 kayak paddles. It was finally time to watch the movie. The boys were super excited and loved it.

We had a long (good) weekend. Tomorrow I'll elaborate on the picnic and have lots of pictures. I hope you all have a great 4th of July. Happy Independence Day!
Mama

Definition: Without Aim

Answer: Random (I have problems)
One of my children put his stuffed animal-cat in my printer. Closed it up in the paper tray/ink cartridge area and everything. And also turned it on. This is one reason we need to install/build a door to that particular room called the "den". Otherwise known as the room I don't know what to do with. In the short time we have lived in this house it has been a den, living room (I mean really, what's the difference), play room, music room and now... reading and block room. I seriously have every book shelf (save one) in that room and ONE chair, my keyboard, an amp, a piano and the kids tiny red table and mega blocks.

However, ever since I cleaned out our room last week (or was that this week, I can't remember) it has been a toy-free zone. (Virtual high five!) I have kept the dining room table cleared off, the clothes are not running/ruining my life, the bathroom is nice again... What does this all mean. Are the stars aligning or something? Is the world about to end? Why am I suddenly able to be somewhat organized?

This weekend is bound to be awesome. Lots of celebrating on Saturday with T's best friend and his wonderful family. I don't know what else we are doing but perhaps watching some fireworks could be arranged. I don't know what day the Small Town is having them so I should find that out.

This week we drank four (4!) gallons of milk. Where is that milk cow we've been asking for? Would that add to my farming chores? Could we get an ice cream maker if we got a milk cow? Would I need to start churning my own butter, making cheese and those sorts of things? I would totally whip out my baby name book and name that cow something awesome. On that note, why is it a Baby name book? Don't we have these names for a lifetime? I am still walking around with my Baby Name... how lame of me. 

Are you thinking after all these Random posts that I should rename my blog "Mama's Gone Random"? If it helps, sometimes I use my Country Voice when I'm reading this in my head. Oh, you can't hear it... I could podcast it. That would be so hilarious. Seriously, T suggested I do a podcast yesterday (while he was putting Tabasco Sauce all over the scrambled eggs) and I laughed. Laughed because we both know I can't carry a conversation with REAL people, let alone virtual people. By virtual I mean... we wouldn't be talking face-to-face. You and I are obviously real people. "Hi, nice to meet you." Virtual handshake. "I'm so glad you stopped by."

See you Monday (virtually speaking, of course)
Mama