I love the South

"Hey! That's a really awesome purse! Where'd you get it?"

"Downtown. It's the perfect purse. It's the perfect size. See? I mean, you can fit everything you need in here. Look, even my gun fits."

Memory lane

Tonight Grandma came over to visit and told us a bunch of funny stories from when my dad was little. I laughed until I had tears in my eyes. I enjoy spending time with her like that.

Oh...and tonight in one of the stories my Grandma actually used the word "penis"...

My dad almost fell off the couch.

The stories might be good, but that one just might scar me for life.

Bug

"Why do you call me bug?"

"It's because when you were born you were so small, you were just like a little bug."

"Oh....a crotchroach or a ladybug?"

The Explanation

Could someone please come over to my parents' house and explain the phenomenon commonly referred to as a "ghost turd" to Owen? Because man, he doesn't get it.

ps-Hey Adam, NOT YOU!

Proof my parents have visited Texas way too much

"We need to make sure we stop at the rest stop at the Mississippi-Alabama line. It's the dogs' favorite rest stop. There's a grassy area there they just love and Maggie has a favorite tree."

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Well we finally made it to Georgia on Monday. The trip went well, as well as you could hope for with 4 children under the age of 8 in the car along with 3 adults and 2 dogs. We stayed at a pet friendly La Quinta in Monroe, Louisiana Sunday night which the kids loved due to the fact that I allowed them to jump on the beds for as long as they wanted. I also let them take a bath and flood the entire hotel room.

Here are some of the more commonly heard phrases and questions heard throughout our trip.

"Are we there yet?"
"How much further?"
"How long is this going to take?"
"Are we still in Texas?"
"What's that smell?"
"Owen's not buckled!"
"I'm hungry."
"I'm thirsty."
"I have to go to the bathroom."
"I think I need to throw up." (this one caused a mild panic)
"Are we on-post?"
"What state is this?"
"Good God Jim, SLOW DOWN!"
"Watch the dog...WATCH THE DOG!"
"Do you want me to pull this car over?"
"Do you want me to take my belt off?"
"Can I have one of your xanax?"

Something to laugh about

Army Ball 2007

Tonight Scott and I got all dressed up and went to the Army Ball. It was LOADS of fun, let me tell you! I put together a little slide show of some of the pictures that are viewable by my parents and other various people I know from church who look at this blog. All the pictures that showcase my somewhat poor taste will be posted on my myspace page (which my parents do not look at).

Feeding the turtle

Thursday Amy and I took Chase, Ashlyn, Kenny, Haley, Owen and Skylar to Kids' Kingdom to play. After an hour we decided it was too hot and we needed to go to Sonic for a slush but the kids wanted to feed the ducks first. Luckily Amy was by chance carrying around a couple of loaves of bread in the trunk of her car. Sadly, no ducks were hungry, but we did get a turtle to take a couple of bites.

The Talk

Where to babies come from?

God.

I mean, how do they get in your stomach?

God puts them there.

Well, that's not how Bailey said they get there.

Aw crap...damn these over-educated big mouth second graders!

Mama?

We're not talking about this right now.

Why not?

Because I can't drink tequila at 11am Ashlyn, I just can't.

Marker Ban

Some time ago I had to ban all small plastic beads from our house. There are several reasons why I did that, the main one being that they were becoming a huge pain in my butt in general. Since the banning my life has gotten better in that I can now vacuum freely without the fear of breaking the dyson with a hot pink flower shaped piece of plastic. Thinking I had won I congratulated myself and then Amber had the nerve to walk into my house carrying this, which is now sitting on my closet shelf waiting patiently for Arden's birthday. And I don't care how much shipping to Italy costs, I'll pay it, DO YOU HEAR ME?

Now, sadly, I must ban another item from my house and in the process stifle my children's creative ability, probably scarring them for life. It seems that in the absence of school there is a hunger for art, art that should only be done far far away from me and my things and my house (which isn't even my house because we are renting). And this art, this masterpiece, this Pièce de résistance happens to be taking blue magic marker and coloring all over the carpet in the bedrooms, all over the bathroom, and somehow soaking it into several towels. This was taking place while Scott and I were sitting in the den trying to watch a movie.

You see, Crayola makes this. It's black paper with special markers and when you color with them it makes rainbows on the page. Well, I'm sure the good folks down at Crayola would like to know that if you put something wet on the black paper it makes a royal blue color that immediately spreads to anything and everything remotely near the page. This is why, I think, it was all over the bathroom and the towels. Why it was on the carpet I don't know, the kids don't know, nobody knows. Nobody even saw it on the carpet until Scott's booming voice pointed it out to them. The blue color was also all over Ashlyn's face, even though she didn't have anything to do with it, she wasn't even playing with the markers, she didn't even know the markers were out. When she saw her face she suddenly remembered. Owen and Haley were covered head to toe in it.

Needless to say Scott got very loud and very red, which is never a good thing, and I got a trash bag and the kids threw all the markers away. So now all we have left in the house are colored pencils and a few broken crayons. (I refuse to buy more crayons because Owen breaks them on purpose.)

Note to all people who sometimes send packages to my house:
DO NOT send markers. It will be a waste of your time and money because they will immediately be listed for sale on ebay. Markers are NOT ALLOWED. Quite possibly in a few years I may consider the Color Wonder ones, but I'm not making any promises. And if a certain bunch of kids don't stop acting like complete morons with the glue sticks, well, then, they're next!

Posing for Ashlyn

Summer vacation is here and we have already run out of things to do. I'm sure we could find plenty of activities if we were to leave the house but NO WAY! am I taking all these kids any where! To pass the time the other day Ashlyn took about 346 pictures with my camera. I deleted the ones of all our furniture, the ones of each and every pair of shoes in our house, and the ones of the Hannah Montana episode that was on tv at the time. I've got to get her a camera! Here are some of what was left.

Swim pictures

Tonight after supper Scott and the kids swam a little bit so I could take some pictures. Haley has finally mastered turning a flip under the water and Owen has perfected the all-out whine. Most of the pictures are of Skylar, but she was just so darn cute in her bikini I couldn't help myself.

Me not showing my feet

The feet post generated a lot of activity, both on my blog and my myspace account, where Gabe told me my big toes were no longer fat and ugly. He doesn't remember saying it but apologized anyway. I think I can finally move past it now...

Update on Sally

Sally is an incredibly good dog. She is sooo sweet. She is also lazy, and sometimes she thinks it's okay to poop in Ashlyn's floor. She will be making the trip to Rome with us this summer, so get ready Pops!!

Speaking of Pops, he is having a cook-out at his house on July 1st at 4 pm. If you would like to come please email me and I'll send directions to his house. Also, we need to know if you prefer hamburgers or hot dogs.

My cell phone

My cell phone was involved in a horrible accident the other day but Scott fixed it with some Super Glue. Unfortunately now some of the buttons don't seem to be working and the phone smells a little bit like it's burning so I had to order a new phone. Until then if I am not home for some reason you may not be able to reach me on my cell phone because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The new cell phone should be here this week, and the number will not change.

Just letting you know!

It's all because of Gabe Hall

I hate feet. My feet, your feet, anybody's feet. No matter what, I find fault with all feet of the world. And it's all Gabe Hall's fault.

I've known Gabe since kindergarten. He's a nice person. He's married to one of my good friends. But I have many issues and one of them is my feet and it can be traced back to a moment in time long ago, a moment that involved Gabe.

We were in kindergarten. I distinctly remember that Luanne and Chris were there also. We were all in a line and we had our shoes off; I guess we were doing some kind of kindergarten project involving our feet. Anyway, Gabe was standing beside me and he looked at my feet and told me very loudly that my big toes were fat and ugly. And that was it. The end of life as I knew it. Here I was, 5 years old, and a boy told me my big toes were fat and ugly. I have been scarred ever since.

I didn't wear flip-flops until my honeymoon. I wear socks all the time, unless I am in the shower. I sleep in socks. And everyone wants to know why. Well, this is why. Because Gabe Hall told me I have fat, ugly big toes. It gets worse...

I dream about Gabe about twice a month, sometimes more. I have dreamed about him my entire life. In the dream we are always doing something illegal, most of the time we are robbing a bank or a gas station. (yes, I know I'm crazy) In the dream we are being chased by the police and Gabe is yelling at me to run faster. Then he sees that I have flip-flops on and he shouts at me even more that I should never have worn flip-flops when we were robbing somebody. Then he stops running and yells at me "How could you wear flip-flops in the first place, even on a normal day, when your big toes are so FAT AND UGLY?!"

For as long as I can remember I have been critical of feet, probably because of my own feet's shortcomings. I can close my eyes and see Gabe right now, wrinkling his nose and pointing at my toes in kindergarten. So that's it, the whole sordid story. That's why I hate feet, hate looking at feet, hate feet touching me. It's all because of Gabe Hall.

When Jenny and I got a pedicure (which I do in effort to make my feet look as presentable as they can possibly be, what with my toes being so horrible and all) I told Jenny the story and she said "You have great toes!" I thought she was lying just to make me feel better but then she said "AND you can pull off a belt really well too!"

?

Uh, thanks Jenny.

So here is a picture of my toes. Please, if you must judge, don't leave it in a comment...I don't think I could handle any more dreams of people yelling at me.

The dress

The Army Ball is fast approaching so I needed to get a dress to wear. This is the one I got, and it is blue, very blue, but it is also very comfortable and able to be worn with a corset. It also matches the blue in the military intelligence shoulder strap on Scott's uniform. I'm sure my father will take a bunch of pictures of us all dressed up with our hair fixed so for now here's a picture of just the dress.

The upcoming visit

I am very glad that people have been emailing and calling me lately to say they cannot wait to see us when we come home to visit. We are all getting very excited here too. Tonight as I sat in the den and Skylar screamed in the swing I was reminded that all our baby gear that Skylar doesn't like isn't going to fit in the car with us for the trip. Sooo if anyone has anything we can borrow for the time we are home it would be greatly appreciated. Some of the things we may need that Skylar will not appreciate or like would be:
swing
bouncy seat
jumper
muzzle
tequila**
xanax**

In other news we got our swimming pool all set up and running and have been enjoying it for the past week. I was going to take a bunch of pictures tonight of Skylar swimming for the first time but right after we ate dinner the mother of all storms blew in. So instead we sat in the den trying to watch tv, which was impossible because every minute (I mean every single minute) the tv show would lose sound and there would be a very loud beep and then a voice would come on to tell us of the thunderstorm and flash flooding we were experiencing. We ended up watching a bunch of tivoed episodes of Gene Simmons Family Jewels, which is hilarious. Man, I love that show! If you have never watched it you really need to. That guy is such a bumbling idiot in his home life. Anyway, pictures of Skylar swimming will have to wait until next weekend when Scott is home because I do not trust Ashlyn to hold her in the pool. I do plan to take some pictures of Ashlyn, Haley and Owen swimming this week though. Because I am super cool and my kids NEVER get hurt I agreed to pull the trampoline over beside the pool so they could jump off into the water. I am the coolest mom ever! Little do they know me being nice to them is just a ploy so when I am old and crazy they feel obligated to take care of me.

**i'm just kidding about needing someone to supply these things-i'm bringing them with me!

The Ever-Growing List

I have a few things to add to the list of things Skylar does not like.
They are:
1. applesauce
2. pears
3. bananas
4. spoons anywhere near her mouth holding applesauce, pears or bananas

Amber's tagged!

Amber said there was no way she would do the tagged thing. She never does the survey's either because she's such a fuddy. SO I'm going to do it for her! HA!

1. Amber is allergic to dogs and cats but she has both a dog and a cat. Every day she takes medicine so she can breathe around them.

2, Amber is the first female I ever met who casually uses the "f" word at least twice in every sentence that comes out of her mouth. And for some reason it doesn't sound low class when she does it...

3. Amber dips copenhagen.

4. Amber hates Rachel Ray and refuses to watch her on television.

5. Amber knows I hate feet (which should have been on my list-I hate hate feet...can't stand to look at them or touch them). Anyway, she knows I hate feet and everytime I'm around her she tries to touch me with her toes.

6. Amber has many many tatoos. Some I've seen, some are in places I don't feel right looking at.

7. Amber is the best "best friend" in the whole world, but BACK OFF! She's MINE!