New addition

In February I saw a lump under some bushes in the neighbor's front yard. I went over to investigate and the neighbor came outside. She knew nothing about it and we ended up dragging a puppy out from under the bushes. She was terrified and filthy and covered in ticks. She was tiny and I put her in a cat kennel to take her to the pound. The pound would not take her because I found her in one town and they are in another town. The suggested our vet might do adoptions. Well, the vet was more than happy to check her out, give her shots and charge me $100 and send her home with me. We tried to find her a home but we had no takers. She is still with us by default. The last thing we needed was another dog in this house.

 When we got her she weighed 16 pounds and we figured she was about 4 months old. She gained 10 pounds in the first two weeks we had her. We named her Trace after the area we live in, by the Natchez Trace. Our other two dogs are named after the areas we lived in at the time we got them.

Louie fell in love right away. They love to wrestle and snuggle. Belle does not really like other dogs very much in her cranky old age. She mostly just spends her time baring her teeth and growling at Trace when she gets too close. This dog now weighs more than both of the other dogs. She is over 60 pounds and is not even a year old. She is exceptionally timid and it took her awhile to get used to us. She would just collapse she was so scared. Now she is scared of strangers- but only adults. She loves other animals and children. It looks like we are a three dog, two cat, two kid family. I have so said no more living things are allowed in the house!

Easter

We dyed eggs a few days before Easter. This is always such fun and we come up with some crazy decorations each year.

Easter morning the kids checked to make sure the Easter Bunny came. Then we noticed the Bunny had left eggs all over the back yard! The kids had a great time runnign around collecting them from the yard.

Our neighbors invited us to attend Easter services at their church. After the egg hunt we got dressed and ready to go. Afterwards we went to lunch at the golf club. It was a lovely day

Spring Break

Our spring Break was in March. We took a week and spent a couple days in Mobile, AL. It was very rainy but we saw the USS Alabama battleship. Then we spent a few days in Orange Beach with some good friends. Then the remaining few days we spent in Destin at my parent's house. Unfortunately, on the ride home Double A threw up in the car and at her Greatmother's house and we stopped a few more times on the way home for roadside sickness. She had a 24 hour stomach bug of some kind and thankfully the rest of us avoided it. These photos are from the battleship

Never know what to expect!

My nine year old daughter, Double A, came to me the other night and said "after you put Bumblebee to bed I need to talk to you about something." Now, many of you don't know Double A like I do. She NEVER wants to talk about something other than Taylor Swift and horses and dessert and there is no build up for those conversations...they flow out unbidden. Double A is quite reclusive about discussing weighty topics or feelings. So you can imagine my surprise and worry stemming from this statement.

Bumblebee was in bed and I went in to discuss this topic of unknown origin. She looked close to tears and I thought we were on the edge of a "Santa isn't real" or a "how do you make a baby" conversation. My heart was racing with dread and Husband #1 was not home for backup. This is what I got: "Sometimes some pee comes out before I know it, even when I don't have to go pee." At this point she is about to burst out in tears for reasons I cannot understand and I am about to burst out in laughter and say "If you think it is bad now, you are soooo doomed! You haven't even had a baby yet!" But see above where I mentioned possible conversation topics. I wisely steered clear of my outburst and rationally began asking her a stream (see what I did there with that pun) of "medical" questions. (I am not a doctor but I play a doctor's wife in real life. This qualifies me for absolutely nothing medical but for some reason, people seem to think it does.)

After assessing this issue with all of my non-existent medical knowledge, I determine she has no problem other than she needs to go to the bathroom sooner. She does not perceive this to be the problem so I (again) wisely refrain from dismissing her with this corrective action in hand. We discuss at length how your body needs fluid and you need to pee more than twice per day. This morphs into color and smell of pee, bladder and kidney infections, etc. We develop a plan for drinking more water at school and regular bathroom trips whether she "has to go" or not. She seemed happy with this resolution. I was happy she was happy and that she actually felt comfortable enough to talk to me about this since it was obviously a very big deal to her.

There are just some things no one ever tells you will have to do as a parent. Along with "catching someone else's vomit in your own cupped hands" and "inserting a suppository in your one year old in an airport bathroom", discussing color and smell of urine with a nine year old is one that "What to Expect When You Are Expecting" neglected to mention.

Slinkies and Straw Wrappers

So there are two things I hate about my kids' childhood. Or at least just two things I am prepared to discuss in this post. Stick with me here...this is not one of those deeply heartfelt posts about how I hate the fact I cannot spend nearly enough time with my wittle pwecious babies and am missing so much! Nope, nothing sweet like that! This post is about Slinkies and straw wrappers! See! So much more fun to read about than my deep and abiding love for my children and how I cannot fathom a life without them. Because even though I am technically a "mommy blogger" I am not THAT type of mommy blogger (or really even much of a blogger at all).

First off, the Slinky. Hate them, have never understood them and still don't get how someone, somewhere, got this hoax of a "toy" produced...and it is still produced!! They somehow appear in our house. I don't know from whence they come, but good golly do they ever come. They come in all colors and sizes, too... rainbow slinkies, traditional silver slinkies, slinkies that can fit around your wrist, slinkies that can fit around your finger. WHY? I don't get it. I have never once been able to get a slinky to go down more than one stair step. Were the stairs much shallower when this sucker was invented? I cannot get the slinky to "walk" using its own momentum or whatever the heck it is supposed to do. So, they show up here in the house, unbidden, only to become immediately tangled. Then I have an upset child who, from some reason, thinks this toy is the be all and end all of all toys they have. I THEN have to devote the next twenty minutes trying to unravel the stupid thing. They are never the same after unraveling. They always have some weird bend or kink left in them. But really, what does it matter, they never worked to begin with.


Second bane of my existence: juice pouch or drink box straw wrappers. Hate them with a passion and if they weren't so darn convenient for outings and barbecues they would be banned from our house entirely. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't hate them for the purpose they were invented (unlike the Slinky), covering the straw. I just hate what they become...useless, almost invisible but not quite, trash that ends
up with a weird stickiness and you find in the oddest places. I think they have some force field built in that makes them polar opposite magnets to trash cans. They just never seem to make it in the trash. I have found these things everywhere. And best off all, they end up in two pieces! So you have double the straw wrappers than you have drinks. More fun for your money! I guess it is their near invisibility that makes it just so dang hard for my kids to get these wrappers within five feet of a trash can. Or it's their total disregard for who has to clean up after them. I bet they don't bio-degrade for a gazillion years and generations from now when Wall-E comes to earth to clean it up because we ruined it, he will have the stupid straw wrappers stuck to his robot treads and get all gooped up in there and he will shut down and die a sad robot death...all because my kids had a juice box.

BumbleBee turns 7!

BumbleBee's 7th birthday was on a Monday in January. The Sunday before we had his friends and classmates at a party at the bounce house place. He had tons of fun jumping and sliding with Double A and his friends.

 The day of his birthday we had diner at home and celebrated with super fancy cupcakes. He got a few presents from family and his daddy got him his first BB gun. He was so excited and surprised!

First Mississippi Christmas

This was our first Christmas in our new house in Mississippi. We were excited to have family come stay with us. It was one of the most exciting Christmases I can remember as an adult...mostly due to the two great gifts the kids got this year. Santa wrapped a note for DoubleA and sent her on a scavenger hunt. It ended with her finding the one thing she wanted most but really knew she wasn't getting...a kitten!

She was so excited and surprised. She has named him Flash. He is pretty speedy.

BumbleBee REALLY wanted a "Bass Pro Four Wheeler." Its a battery operated ride on type toy. We told him it was too expensive and he probably wasn't getting it. His grandparents took pity on him and got it for him. It was hidden in another room and halfway through the morning I pulled him aside and asked if he had gotten everything he wanted (he had already unwrapped the biggest boxes with no four wheeler). He forlornly answered "yeah, mostly." This was when grandpa sent him into the guest room to "find his knife." When BumbleBeewent in he saw the four wheeler and jumped up and down he was so excited!

It looks like BumbleBee wasn't the only one excited about the Bass Pro Four Wheeler!

My mom and dad were here among many other visitors. At one point we had up to 15 people here!

Its always exciting when the cousins are together. They had so much fun playing together and made tons of noise.

I had done a detailed menu plan and spent much of my time cooking meals and desserts. I enjoy doing this and Husband#1 helped with main dishes by cooking most of them on the Big Green Egg. Many other people pitched in with prep, table setting, and most importantly...clean up. I made a yummy Gingerbread chocolate cake. I also made a cream cheese wreath which turned out to be essentially a king cake without all the sickening sugar. Husband #1 told me I should rename it a Queen Cake and claim it as my own. We had a seafood casserole, fig and balsamic glazed cornish hens, mini ham and roast beef roasted party sandwiches, beef tenderloin, and so on. Husband #1 and my brother learned how to smoke cheese and they did some duck breast.

I have gazoodles more pictures from Christmas but will spare you the "slideshow." :)