Happy *Yawn* Halloween

After a long day that included trick or treating our sweet Gwen (of "Gwen Papers" fame for those of you who know Lucy's name for Post-it Notes) and lunching with Aunt Kristy and Grandma Sisi, we came home and collapsed.

Well, Ella and I collapsed. Apparently the other children have not napped.

This will be a VERY interesting evening.





Do under eye bags match an Alice in Wonderland costume?

NaBloPoMo-ing!

Okay, so I haven't been around much the last few days. But I will be now...At least for this month-ha!

Know what? YOU SHOULD TOO!!

It's a whole lot of fun and if you blog, it is a great challenge to write something every day for 30 days!

Please join me? Go here: http://www.nablopomo.com/

And you could win something! I did 2 years ago.

Yeah, it was something I never knew the world had a need for.

But it was a major award!

Don't simply enjoy my witty snark for 30 days, dish out some of your own!

PS: Want to do something fun tonight? You have till 10pm tonight to enter....check out Mae's Monster Challenge. It's fun! Look for our entries tonight!

It's Almost the Weekend!

So laugh yourself to Friday....

What's Pink and White and Frosted and, Gulp, GONE?!

Rest assured, dear friends, The Goose lives. It only took me about a day to get over the Motherly Wrath we spoke of earlier. It melted one night when she was in bed and all of a sudden started crying. David went in to check on her. She'd been playing with an elastic headband and it had snapped her in the face. More specifically, on the eye. David was concerned it might have hurt her badly.

"How many fingers am I holding up, sweetie?" He showed her 2 fingers.

"But I only have THIS MANY!!!" She sobbed back, holding up one finger.

It was this plus her sitting in my lap trying to count all her freckles today that made everything okay.

The feeling of everything being okay was shattered when Michelle had this conversation with a checker at her local Vons.

Did you click the link? Did your read how THERE WILL BE NO MORE PINK AND WHITE COOKIES? No more Iced Oatmeal? No more English Tea with their hint of lemon? No more Taffy with the slightly odd flavor you just can't pinpoint? And no more Sugar Wafers where you eat all the pink ones first, the white ones next and give away the chocolate ones? NO MORE!

Mother's Cookies is bankrupt and while my sis-in-law and I discussed buying it (I have about $12, who is in?) or asking for it for Christmas, it looks like no one is going to bail them out. All that was left to do was join a Facebook group and then do my part this afternoon by buying, well, a lot of cookies. 3 stores just for the Circus Animal ones, actually.

So join me in the mourning as we raise a frosted cookie together and salute the 92 year old institution that defined our childhoods. I am sad to know Ella will live in a world with no frosted Circus Animal cookies. Well, that world will start after we run out of our ever growing stash.

I leave you with the following. A commercial for Mother's Cookies Ice Cream....and Joey Tribbianni. (Matt LeBlanc)
Enjoy.

Mad.

This is not the post I had planned to write.

But I am MAD.

Ohhhh you don't want to be a freckle faced 3 1/2 year old right now.

Of course if you WERE a freckle faced 3 1/2 year old, you wouldn't have broken your baby doll bed and then taken the broken pieces and colored all over them.

And your Mommy wouldn't be livid and telling the internet how livid she really is over a baby doll bed on her blog. A blog she usually likes to use to uplift, entertain and add just a little bit of the occasional scandal to your life.

I am alternating between the worlds called "My Wit's End" and "Overflowing With Neverending Loving Kindness and Heart Shaped Bunnies" with her. I can't keep up with the changing moods. And don't tell me it will be worse when she's 12. I worked with Junior Highers for 7 years, I know it will get worse and that worse will also involve boys and mean girls and hormones. I don't want to hear all that.

Instead, I want to hear that it won't always be like this (lie if you have to.) I want to hear that those of you who know and love my daughter can still find redeeming qualities in her. I want those of you who don't know my daughter to say that you have always wanted to get to know her because she is so cute. And so freckle faced. And dressed like a farmer.

Even though right now all I want to do is call her a Poo Poo Diaper Baby.

That's All I Need

Ever read something so simple and hilarious and all you can think is how you wish you'd written it?

Yeah me too: Happy Meals and Happy Hour-The Jerk Goes Shopping

What do you think I am? A Jerk or something?

Ten on Tuesday-Tuh, Tuh, Tuh

Time for Ten on Tuesday including things I am thankful for that begin with the letter"T" in no particular order.

10. Taco Shops, because in my world, the fifth food group is "Mexican Food"

9. Tablets of Paper, my friend Deanne was recently introduced to my love of all things office supplies. If she saw how many notebooks, folders and tablets of paper I had, she'd simply die.

8. Tea, hot and cold. All of it. My Starbucks order is an Iced Venti Green Tea Latte with Soy. Yum. My favorite loose tea is anything from the Republic of Tea. (A friend's blog reminded me just how close Christmas is so I thought I'd drop just a few hints in case anyone is paying attention.)

7. Tiffany's. The magic of that little blue box. I have 1 bracelet that my dad and stepmom got me for Christmas a few years ago. I remember thinking I could never pull it off-that it would look out of place on my wrist. But now it is one of my post precious possessions and while I don't wear it every day, I try to. After my wedding rings, it's my favorite thing to wear. It somehow has the magic to make me feel beautiful. And I feel so loved by the givers as well. (I hope to someday expand my collection!!)

6. Television, oh how I love thee. I know it's wrong but I really do.

5. The Twilight Series of books. I can't stop reading them! I am halfway through the series and while I promised David that I wouldn't ever stay up till 4am to finish the books again, I never promised that I wouldn't let the laundry pile up higher than me to catch up. I will miss the Cullen family when they are out of my life.

4. Tombstone, the movie. This is one of the most quoted movies in our library. Plus it is the favorite of Neighbor Jeff which means I get to say things like, "I'm your huckleberry" and "You tell 'em I'm comin' and hell's comin' with me, ya hear? Hell's comin' with me!" a lot. I also get to see Val Kilmer. And I love Val Kilmer.

3. Tetris, it is addicting. And now that I found it on Facebook and can't seem to beat Deanne or my sister-in-law Jamie, it has become even more addicting. (It's driving me crazy too-I used to be super good!)

2. Tuesdays and Thursdays: pre school days! You probably think I am going to say it's because Lucy is gone and I am down to only 1 kid. But it's more because my sweet Goose's world has been opened to so many possibilities that it is overwhelming! she talks and talks the whole way home and all the rest of the day about everything she did at school. It's amazing. I hope she never stops talking to me like that.

1. Texting. I looooooooove texting. I can ask a quick question, tell a joke or beg for prayer all while preventing my friends from hearing the cacophony going on in the background. Text me. Always text.

This blog has been brought to you by the Tee-Double E- Double R-Double R-Double I-Double F-Double I-Double C C C C letter T! Check out more of them over at Crayl's little spot: Beyond Black and White and then go type up your own list of thankful things that start with T!!

Do You Forgive Me?

Internet! Hi!
How have you been?

I know, it's been-like-forever! What have you been up to?

Me?
I was just a little sick. (Read that: Thought I just might die.)
We've been taking some pictures.
I took the kids to Disneyland all by myself and returned with all 3 of them.

Ella waves now and says hi. But it sounds like "Hhhhhhaaaaaaaa" and it is possibly the cutest thing you have ever seen. It's as if she's the only baby to ever wave and say hi. And while I know she's not, I do know she is the cutest baby to ever do it. Don't argue with me. She's cutest.

My shows are back! I have been watching a lot of TV. The DVR is on overdrive and I think I broke the record button on the remote.

School is going well. Nate has a lot of friends and one girl specifically who, according to Nathan, calls him "Ethan" but "that's ok, Mommy, I like it." He and this young lady also like to figure out sign language that, when demonstrated after school, his mother has a very hard time not laughing at the aerobatic ways her son perceives the deaf to communicate.

And in the other romantic news in the lives of my children... (Everything in that sentence is wrong.)

....Lucy has made a friend in a young man at school who she says is her best friend and that they are going to get married. "And when we play on the playground we kiss like this." Then she makes kissy noises. When talking to Lucy about how there are OTHER ways to show our friends affection, (like hugging, or standing all the way across a room and smiling, but NOT kissing,) I was told, "But Mommy, I like kissing him." After I told David about it, he got the guns out for cleaning.

Oh! I have also been reading. I am engrossed. The laundry is neglected, the dishes are piling up, I threw mac and cheese at the family for dinner and there are rumors that a couple of kids were possibly put down for a nap early so I could finish the last few pages of "Twilight." But you know how those rumors are.

Know what else I have been doing? Neglecting YOU, Internet.
I'm sorry. I will be back soon.
And that's a promise.

Do you forgive me??

It's a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame, For a Ballgame Today!

Last weekend David got 4 Padre Tickets from a friend at work. These were nice seats that David and I had enjoyed in seasons past. Our normal thought would be to pawn the kids off on some unsuspecting kind hearted people to take other grown up friends with us to the game. But, for some reason, we got the wild hair to just take the whole family. The WHOLE family. This includes the 3 year old who can't sit though any length of movie and the 7 month old who screams when she's ready for a nap.

Let's all go to the ballpark!

We had fun.
Strike that.

We had SO MUCH fun! I wish I could write the paes and pages of great stuff but I will spare you the details. Because I have pictures!

There was an Adrian Gonzalez Toothbrush Holder Giveaway...I think Adrian is saying "Brush your teeth, punk!"

Ella and I snuggled in the wrap for most of the game. She loved looking at the scoreboard.

The rest of the time she snuggled with Daddy.

Nate loves baseball!

Ella does too!

Lucy really loved the Padre's Friar Mascot and he came out and danced but then he went away. We talked about where he was and Lucy decided that he was taking a nap. But later, when he didn't come back up she told me, "Mommy, I want to snuggle the Friar."

Oh look! It's naptime!

When the game went into extra innings (you read that right!) David took the kids for a short walk and got a big pretzel for both of them. You can also see the key to us lasting at the game so long: go to a game played by a struggling baseball team the same day your not struggling football team has a game. All the seats around us were open with a few people who were very kind to our kids.

At the end of the game, we wandered down to the field level seats to grab a picture but we were too late. However, one of the ushers called Nathan down and had a game ball for him! The security guard on the field saw Lucy was with him and grabbed a brand new ball for her. The kids were elated.

Here's the wind up! (See Lucy's sassy shoes?)

All in all, this day will go down in my memory with our family memories of Colorado and Reno. We totally took a chance and had an outing as a family of 5.
And we all survived.

Shameless Self Promotion

While it will be “officially” fall in a few days, you can be sure our weather probably won’t be reflecting that anytime soon. But that won’t stop us So-Cals from pretending it’s crisp back to school weather! In that spirit, we are going to have a Fall Mini Session available on Saturday, September 27. We will have appointments available from 4:00pm to 6:45pm. Each session is $45 including the standard website hosting and CD with 3-5 images of your choosing. (Additional images available at $6 each.) Our location this time is still being determined but will be at either Old Poway Park or Miramar Lake.

A mini session is a 15 minute “guerilla style” photo session. Perfect for grabbing a family shot or one or 2 poses of your kids.

A few things to note:
- This session is a perfect way to show off a cute back-to-school outfit or think ahead and get some cute shots of your child in their Halloween Costume.
- We will still be having mini-sessions in November for Christmas cards.

Contact us right away to book your time or with any questions you may have.
And please pass this on to anyone who may be interested!

http://zabphoto.blogspot.com

"It's MY School Now, Mommy!"

Tuesday was Lucy's first day of (pre) school and we knew things could go one of two ways:
She'd be completely confident

or

She'd become a sudden new growth attatched to my leg.


Thankfully it was the first one.
She knew the drill: you get your bucket and go out on the front lawn for photos with Mommy.

She would NOT put the bucket down for a full outfit shot.

And why would you put down a bucket that has Sleeping Beauty on it?!

"Take a picture of me by this tree, Mommy!"

David met us at school and Lucy was SO ready. When we pulled into the parking lot Lucy reminded me that this was HER school now. NOT Nathan's anymore! LUCY's school.

Lucy has grabbed Goose to take along with her to school. I told her that today only she could bring him with her and he had to stay in her bucket. This is Goose. Not to be confused with THE Goose-that is the one in the brown shirt and curly hair. Goose is Lucy's "lovey" and he has never left her side. The moment he was first handed to her, she's been carrying him around the same way. When she was smaller, she figured out how to hook his beak on her shoulder and carry him around while still having full use of both hands.

Once we got to the school front doors, Lucy said she didn't need goose anymore. She said Ella could watch him for her. She had a PLAN when she got to her class. She'd been telling me about it since she'd visited last week. She was going to put on the purple princess dress as soon as she got there.

Success! The dress was not taken yet! Lucy had her teacher button her up and she went about setting up a tea party. I had to take Ella to a doctor appointment (she has an ear infection!) so I came over to be sure Lucy was ok.
"Mommy, when are you leaving?"
Yeah, she was fine.

After I picked her up, I got a full report of the full day in the first 3 minutes of our drive home. Completely opposite of Nathan's first day. We were invited over to a friends house for lunch afterward which quickly became the icing on a very good day.

Which one of you gave her permission to grow up?

Ten-ish On Tuesday...The Catch Up Edition

I have fallen behind on my Lists of Thankfulness and while normally I wouldn't think it was a big deal, I have some people who I missed because I skipped their letters and they deserve to be called out for making my life one to be thankful for. So this is a hybrid, a medley, a roasty sweetness blend (borrowing the description off David's bag of coffee) of the 3 missed letters.



The Letter M:


10. Missy Shell, Mishka, Michelle, Queen Michelle... She knows all the ins and outs of my life. She introduced me to my husband. She has graciously shared holidays and her family with me. She will sing old 80's and 90's KYXY songs with me. She's worn my bra on her head as a hat. Life without her....well, there just is no life without her.


9. Macaroni and Cheese...The Patti LaBelle recipe that I modified to contain so much cheese, it is practically sinful and costs about $50 to make. It is prepared once a year on Thanksgiving and often additionally for my sister's birthday as her present.


8. Mimi's. My favorite place to eat all because of the Buttermilk Spice Muffins. I am getting ready to leave right now to meet a friend there so she can also drown her sadness of sending her lastborn off to Kindergarten today. It was the least I could do. I am such a good friend. I ADORE their cobb salad and their spinach avocado dip is sooo yummy. Also, they are open late so when you have to meet a couple of gals there late at night and you have been having so much fun and suddenly realize they are pulling the cushions out of the booths and cleaning the floors, it's good and late and you have had plenty of time talking.

7. My Mom. She's awesome. She just got married in December and rode off to her honeymoon on the back of a Harley. She has some sort of magical power over my kids and if I were ever sick, she'd come over and rub my head till I fell asleep.



The Letter N:


6. Nathan. Nate the Great. NtG. Puppy. You made me a Mama. You love to snuggle and can fold yourself into the same size you were when you were 1. Laurel and Hardy make you belly laugh. You sing with me at bedtime and you will watch Star Wars all day every day for the rest of your life if I let you. You like every hair on your head to be just right and care very much about your clothes. And I love you fiercely.



5. Noggin. Best channel on all of TV. My kid will probably be the only 6th grader who watches Little Bear over Sponge Bob. And Franklin. And Oswald. We loooove the songs in between and I looooove no commercials. They used to play Miffy and Maisy too but they were rotated out and we haven't really recovered from that. Miss Spider is a sweet show but it just doesn't fill the hole left by a clay bunny who may or may not actually speak and a cartoon mouse who puts on a dress just when you thought she was a boy.


4. Naptime. While I don't get to participate as often as I'd like, I love the peace they bring to the house. I get 1-2 hours a day of no fighting or arguing. I don't have to referee anyone or redirect away from annoying siblings. And arranging it so David can take one on a Saturday or Sunday is a wonderful gift to be able to give him.



The Letter O:


3. Onomatopoeia...a word that makes the sound it describes. And, when used in the past tense, one can say, "That was extremely Onomatopoeious!" And then one could giggle.


2. Oreos...They make me think of my dad. (As do Mother's Brand Oatmeal Cookies.) I like mine Double Stuffed, or I will just make my own and leave all the naked cookies in the package for someone else to eat.


1. Overture...as in the 1812 with the great cannon blasts. Also because it means a show is about to start and I love shows, musicals or anything that considers itself important enough to have music dramatically play beforehand.

All caught up!!
Write up your won thankfulness list (we are on the letter "O") and also read MORE here:
Beyond Black and White: Give God the Crayon

Because It's My Job to Know These Things

For the record...


Prince Eric is Ariel's Prince.


Prince Phillip is Sleeping Beauty's (aka Aurora) prince.
(And my favorite of the Disney princess movies. He's drawn the handsomest and Aurora has the best songs.)


Snow White's prince is just "Prince."


And it is Cinderella who ends up with Prince Charming.





No, I did NOT spend an hour I should have used cleaning the house looking all that up because Michelle and I couldn't figure it out on our own when Lucy asked.

Yes, I AM a liar.

Distracted By the Lemony Goodness

I was in bed on time. WAS.
But then I saw Part One of a Two Part "Different World" where Whitley is getting married to that stuffy serious man but Dwayne Wayne shows up and realizes how much HE loves her. Sigh. I sat there. I knew I should turn off the TV and go to sleep. I made a promise to myself to be responsible. After all, this was just Part One ending. I was going to get the "To Be Continued" message any minute. Wait, what was this? PART TWO! Coming on RIGHT NOW?! Woo Hoo!

But I knew that 25 of the 30 minutes would be filled with indecision. Whitley would cry to her Mama, Dwayne would flip his flip up glasses a few times and mope about. So I had time to kill, a new biiiig bottle of lemon juice in the fridge, and a dirty shower door to tackle. (Love the lemony goodness of cleaning with lemon juice!!)

I scrubbed, I rinsed, I cleaned.
I missed it.
When I came out of my bathroom, the credits were rolling and now I sit listening to Dwayne and Whitley talk about their honeymoon.

Tomorrow-er, this morning-when I am most likely late for Worship team rehearsal, I am not so sure that the band is gonna be on board with my reasons for oversleeping my alarm.

Hang on to Your Ears

This is one of those days when I wish I had a blog where I could anonymously post and whine about everything that is bugging me right now. I don't mean share my troubles and ask for uplifting advice either. I mean whine. And I can get a good one going if I want. Where the pitch and timbre of my voice will cause all the fluid in your ears to vibrate and next thing you know, you are completely deaf.

And you'd be happy you were deaf because then you wouldn't have to hear me whine.

Instead I pose these questions for discussion:
When did I get old and stop liking cold pizza?
and
Does the fact that I eat pizza for breakfast (but heated up) cancel out the un-cool of heating it up and leave me where I already was on the coolness scale?

Happy Reason to Eat Cake!

aka: David's Birthday

Hubby's Birthday was yesterday and we kept things low key with the classic cake and pizza.

Actually, I should say that after Lucy and I took Nathan to school we blew through Starbucks and delivered breakfast in bed to David who took the morning off and got some much needed rest. Lucy insisted that the Starbucks Breakfast Sandwich have a candle in it so we sang him awake and we all had breakfast in bed.

When David went to work, Lucy and I made his cake. We had so much fun and I enjoyed showing her all the settings on the mixer. So much so, I set the mixer to high for the 4 minutes it was supposed to be just mixing on medium. All my eggs were whipped into a frenzy that no longer resembled cake mix. We'd used all the eggs, were running low on time so into the oven it went!

The outcome was...not awful. And, franky, it was still cake. With homemade buttercream icing. And that's all that matters, right? Even Ella reeeeeeaaaallly wanted some!

Happy Birthday to the man who changed my life for the better. To borrow the overused lyric from Juno, he's the cheese to my macaroni. Without him, I am just plain noodles.

AND....I should say that I looooove cake.
So so much.
And when I saw this, I laughed out loud and watched it again. Enjoy!

One Day Down...12 First Days of School Left

Well, all the dry runs of years past made today just any other "First Day of School." He was an expert at posing on the front lawn, he ate a healthy breakfast, he woke up at God Awful:Thirty begging me to let him get dressed.


It all sounds about right!


There isn't a whole lot to tell: We dropped off, we said goodbye, we did our best to not trip over the little girl who was hiding under the table. (Seriously.)


I could barely hang onto him as he ran off to join his classmates on the rug with his teacher. I don't think David even caught a kiss. Lucy was too busy trying to steal the crayons. (They were brand new, I am sure they were calling to her. I completely understand.)



When we walked out I was fine. When we crossed the street to the car I was fine. It was when we climbed in and realized I forgot to pray with him that I started crying. I was mad at myself for forgetting that.



We dropped David off so he could go to work, and The Girls and I went to the Original Pancake House and drowned our sorrows in carbs and syrup. It really was the only solution.



After school, I was greeted by a smiley faced boy who likes school but said that pre school is more fun. I got a report about a gingerbread man story and how Nathan is going to suggest a camp out to his teacher. In tents. To see if the gingerbread men escape in the night.



Here is the media coverage of Nate's First Day......

The Backpack...Jansport. Simple. Star Wars Patch Necessary.

He looks so little heading into school....

...but he came out looking so much older.

He was even just a little happy to see Lucy.

I think we can declare school a success.

Totally NOT Freaking Out

Tomorrow is The Day.
I have warmed up a couple of times and gone through drills and treated them as if they were the Real Thing. But who was I kidding?

This is it. No turning back now. So many things to say goodbye to and yet so many things wait for us on the horizon.

I guess there is no more to say.
Tomorrow, we will start Kindergarten.

Something Isn't Right Here.

The kids just spent the last 30 minutes working together to clean Nathan's room.
They didn't fight.
They didn't argue.
No fists flew.
No Toddler Obscenities ("Poopy Face") were exchanged.

When they were done, Nathan walked over to Lucy, gave her a hug and said, "Thanks Luce. I never could have done it without you."






OK, WHO STOLE MY KIDS?!?!

All I Need is a Sharpie to Make Things Cool

Do you ever look around and realize you are missing something and you have NO idea what happened to it?

I am not talking about thinks you may have lost recently, maybe while pregnant, like 2 cell phones, a pair of Padre tickets, your wedding ring set or sanity. (NOT that I ever lost ANY of those things! No way.)

I mean things that you maybe had as a kid that were in your room one day and gone the next. Favorite board games, a doll or a book you used to read?

There is a picture of me with my broken arm wearing a shirt that had the sketch of a girl's face on it. It was Very 80's. Very Max Headroom. I don't know what happened to it. It was lost somewhere between Long Beach and San Diego when we moved.

And my backpack from high school. It was cool. It was a Jansport. It was FOREST GREEN-THE color of the 90's yes?-with the leather bottom and single pocket on the front. It had adjustable straps so that when it was cool to wear it slung as low over your rear end as possible, it complied. And then, when it was cool to wear your backpack up high on your back, the straps adjusted right where they needed to be. It was cooler than your backpack. Oh yeah it was. Wanna know why? Because I took a Sharpie and drew flowers all over the outside of the tiny pocket. Helped me find it in the sea of FOREST GREEN backpacks on my campus.

Where is it?
I want it.
I don't really NEED it, but I want it. It was cool.

No doubt the shirt fell victim to the Mommy Cleaning that all moms do in the middle of the night while you are sleeping so you can't be reminded that the pair of rain boots that are too small and hiding in the back of your closet are your all time favorites as she carried them to the Goodwill pile in the garage. But my backpack? Mom, you never could. It was too cool for that. It deserved more than that.

Is there a heaven for backpacks? Make sure it ends up on the cool side.