Friday, February 12, 2010

Birthday Brunch

Every February 7th, my mom, my sister, Rhonda, and I go out to eat in honor of my dad's birthday.

This year he would've been 65.

Last Sunday, Rhonda and I drove out to Harrison and took my mom to a local restaurant for brunch. We ate delicious food, talked and laughed, and reminisced about Dad. Mom told the story of the time she shrank Dad's wool sweater when they were first married and we laughed til we cried.

I hope he knows how much he's missed.


Thursday, February 11, 2010

Littlest Lost Fan

Until this year, the minute the white letters on the black screen would appear, my kids would run screaming from the living room in fright. They refused to watch "Lost", saying it was too scary. (This was fine with me; I could watch my beloved show in peace, my Mike's Hard Lemonade and homemade popcorn at my side.)

Now the three of them are older, braver, and are as addicted to Lost as I am. Gabe knows the characters by name, loves John Locke the best, and has even started to make Lost scrapbook pages.

He is his mother's son.

Wanna see?

On Netflix, I have started watching all the episodes from the beginning, with Gabe at my side. He turned this scene:


into this:


(The yellow thing on the lower left-hand side is the airplane, crashing onto the island. I didn't know there was an active volcano there, but obviously Gabe thinks so. See the black dot in the middle at the top? That's the hatch. And down at the bottom? That's a dinosaur, like the polar bear or the Smoke Monster.)

He included palm trees and even figured out to make the mountains and trees stand up on the page. This project took hours! He worked on it while I finished up my Disney album.

I love it!

What about your house? Any little Lost fans there?

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Row, row, row your boat...

How do you entertain three cooped-up kids on their umpteenth snow day this winter?

Take them sailing, of course!

Gabe and I have made paper sailboats before, last summer. Something reminded him, though, and he wanted to do it again. At first, I was like...honey, it's just too cold to sail a boat. But when I saw that the creek out back wasn't frozen, I changed my tune.

So we set to work, Gabe and I. He picked out the paper, I printed out the instructions (again...memory loss sucks) and while I folded, he drew sailors and cut them out, then taped them to our boats.

Ta da!


The snow/sleet/ice was coming down as we headed out to the creek, so I left my camera indoors. Gabe, Isabel and I each picked a boat for our own, and watched as they raced down to the culvert in the neighbor's yard. Gabe's boat had the lead until the very end, when Isabel's caught up and won the race. Then we headed back in to warm up with some hot cocoa (although Gabe just likes the marshmallows).

Nothing like a little backyard regatta to spice up a snow day!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

MIA

I will be MIA these next couple of days.

Why, you ask?

A fun getaway with my husband for an early Valentine's Day surprise? Nope.

An extreme makeover, complete with boob job and tummy tuck? Nope.

Found a great book and just have to finish it before I blog again? Well, I am reading a good book, but that's not it...

The real reason I will be missing in action is that I have my first college midterm this Tuesday evening! I also have to write three journal papers of 1000 words each, reviewing films I have watched. Yep, I'm a procrastinator when it comes to school work; I've kept up on my reading, but I write much better under pressure. The kids being home on Friday put a wrench in my study plans, so I'm hoping for a quiet night at the hospital tonight (although studying at 2am is really hard to do).

I'll be back Wednesday. Hasta luego!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

It's coming!

What's coming?

Why, the white death, of course.

The weather forecasters are having a heyday, predicting snow/ice/wintry mix/more snow for our area. Counties to the north (namely us) look to get more than the southern counties.

While the kids (and Joe) have been prancing around, madly hoping for a snow day in the morning, I was busy stocking up on milk, bread and bananas to wait out the weather.

'Cause you know we may not be able to get out of the house for, oh, maybe five hours. We don't want to take a chance that we might starve...

Makes you wonder if the meteorologists are Kroger stockholders: There's a slight chance of snow, guys. Mark up the bananas/milk/bread and quick!

Ahh, I am counting the days 'til spring (and there's way too many!).

Are you in the path of this latest snowstorm? Do you make a grocery run when they're calling for bad weather? Do you even like bananas?

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

One, two, three?!

Count with me...

Four hours of sleep (after working all night).

One dentist appointment for all

Three kiddos.


Two loose teeth for Isabel, one for Gabe, zero for Elijah.
Zero cavities for Isabel and Elijah.

One, two, three cavities for this guy:


Two more trips to the dentist to fix those three cavities for this one boy who takes after his Big Papaw in yet one more way.

(My dad had to get dentures before he was even in his thirties! Sigh.)

And now one very tired momma, three new toothbrushes and lots of clean pearly whites. Hoping for at least eight hours of sleep for all five of us in this house...

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

I like big books and I cannot lie...

The bigger the book, the better.

I know, I know, that's not always the case, but I do love me a good, long book. (That's what she said :)

One of my favorite books of all time, Stephen King's "The Stand". I love Stu. Sigh.


Ken Follett's best novel, hands down. Love, love, love this book. I've read it at least five times, and am so excited it's being turned into a television mini-series! Oh, I can't wait!

And my current book, weighing in at 1072 pages (my heart be still!). I love Stephen King, and while Barbie may not be Stu, he is already a lovable character at page 251.

So what about you? Do you like big books, or do you stick to the skinny novels? What book do you wish they would put on the big screen?