What would you do?

Mya Angelou once said, "I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights."

Uh-oh. If this is true, what would that say about me? Let's look...

Rainy day: Stay inside at all costs. If it is thundering and/or lightning then hide underneath the sheets and pretend like nothing is happening.

Lost luggage: Dare I even say how I would handle this. If this happened to me at just the right moment then I suppose I could be big about it since throwing myself on the floor and crying like a baby voicing my concerns wouldn't help the situation anyways.

Tangled Christmas tree lights: Frugal little me actually spent the extra dough to buy a tree with lights on it already. I spent many years weaving lights in and out of my mom's tree to give it depth. No, you can't just place them on the tops of the outer branches; you must weave them in and out of each branch. I'm still roped in to helping light the tree every so often so hopefully mom will get an upgrade one of these years. hint, hint! And, truthfully, it might even be a cost saver to buy the tree with the lights because I haven't had to replace those lights for 5 years now. That counts for something doesn't it?

So, what does this say about me? How would you handle these situations?

Re: New Features

"Good day! Me thinks the comment fix is not working properly. I crave your pardon whilst I work to fix the problem. It will be most splendid when we can see the comments from the main page. I bid you to please continue to leave comments in the mean time. See ya! Fare thee well."

New Features

I have added two new features to this blog. Let's hope that they work.

1. Comments: hide vs. show. I am attempting to allow comments to be shown on the main page. Currently, they are "hidden" and you have to click the "comments" link to read comments. I want them to show on the main page. I made a slight adjustment and now comments should show on the main page. Apparently, this will NOT fix the previous comments so we'll have to see what heppens when the next comment comes in.

2. Reactions. I have added "reactions" to the bottom of each of the posts (see example in the pic below). This is for those who have a reaction but don't really want to leave a comment. Now, you just click on the appropriate box which corresponds to your reaction to the post.

I'd love to know if you like the new changes. What do you think? Leave a comment or a reaction below.

Medal Standings

Here are the medal standings. I don't know if this will update by itself or not. Guess we'll find out soon enough.



Olympic Medal winners at NBC Olympics.com!

Name that Toon Tuesday

This is a background cell from a popular Disney movie. Can you name the movie? I found this question on another site and won't look at the answer because I don't want to ruin the surprise. Who would sit in that chair? Mary Poppins in the animated sequence?

Note: This is NOT a rhetorical question. Please feel free to reply via comment, located below.

Up, up, and away

Dear husband procured a boom lift so that he could paint the front of the house. (Well, the house has siding but also has many other wooden parts.) Look what else he got into.

First we have a picture of him and dear daughter safely nestled on the landing.

















Here they are getting higher and higher.















Finally, they were so high that they could see the seafood market located out on the highway. For those of you who live in the area, you know which seafood market I am referring to.

I was fine with them going up in the air until the little orange arm (the top part holding the 'basket') started extending higher and higher. Notice in pic #2 the orange arm is not extended. In pic #3 it is all the way out. Yikes! That was about all that mommy could handle.

Blog from my family

Where to begin...

Let me just put this out to you. I am busy. I am very busy. I blog at midnight because that is my bit of free time. When I am not blogging, I am cooking, grocery shopping, nursing an infant (rather time consuming I might add), doing homework, learning dance moves from my daughter, changing diapers, and so on and so on. Those of you who are mothers understand this.


Well, I happen to be fortunate enough to have a husband who is great with cleaning the house. He is the first to vacuum, clean the bathrooms, clean the dishes, and so on. Now, I am not enjoying free time while he does this, I am... see list above.


Well, the other night, while the family was watching the Olympics, I went to get the vacuum cleaner and started vacuuming (during commercial). Well, dear husband had to look at me like I was crazy and said, "Oh, so you do know how to use the vacuum cleaner." Ha ha ha. Then he says, "Let's blog about this!" (Since everything in my house is open to blogging nowadays.) Of course, my dear daughter does NOT defend me but rather she runs to get her digital recorder so that she can have record of mommy vacuuming, for the blog.


So, yes mommy is blogging that mommy can use the vacuum cleaner. There you have it. I hope that they are happy! Where's the video you ask? Oh dear - it was late at night and mommy was in her pjs at the time - so no video today.

"Notice Me Horton"

What's all the buzz about the 'Horton Hears a Who' cookies? Well, Lulu was in 'Seussical, Jr.' this weekend at her summer camp. This play centers around Sr. Seuss' most famous books starring Horton. Hence, we are Horton maniacs at home right now. Check out this pic from the local paper. Lulu is 3rd from the left.

Back to school traditions

Since one of my favorite nephews is getting ready to go back to school, it made me start thinking about back to school traditions. Our only tradition is that I cry the whole morning. Not really... but kinda. All joking aside we have a fancy breakfast, of course, and take the first day pictures. Here are some of our previous pics for you to view.

1st Grade...

... with her big bright orange sticker designating where she goes after school.

2nd grade. I see that some teeth are missing.

3rd grade.

A very cool 4th grader.

Guess what else I noticed when I looked back on these pictures? Check out our garden in the background from first grade to 4th grade. Hah!!! Also, we now place the back-to-school flag in our garden as well; it's a tradition too!

Here are some other great back to school ideas. If you use one of these ideas or have an idea of your own then please share.

Moody family makes egg in a nest toast and eggs for breakfast, but in the shape of a star instead (because the students will shine brightly in class - get it?).

Cook With Me serves a very unique back to school breakfast including pencils and scrambled brains (from all of the studying that they will do).

Scribblescraps has some easy back to school photo tips.

Messy Life gives their older students money for clothes shopping and encourages them to look for deals. hmmm...

Finally, Tip Junkie has loads of ideas and tips to get your year off to a great start.

Leave Your Husband at Home When You Go Shopping for Baby Things

I guess this should be titled, "Leave Your Husband at Home When You Go Shopping for ANYTHING," but since I actually don't shop for anything but groceries then I am a little out of practice.

OK - so Bro needed new bottles. We have 4 oz bottles at home but my 7 month old needs more than 4 oz at a time. Right now, the nanny has to stop feeding him after 4 oz and add more ounces and then start to feed him again. That's crazy.

So, I tell my dear husband that I'm going to go to the Super Baby Store to get some bottles. He agrees and offers to go with me. I thought that he wanted to keep me company. I figured out, after we got to the store, that he wanted to monitor my spending.

Background: The bottles come in a two-pack. Prior to going to the store, we had 2 large bottles at home already. Bro will eat from 2-3 bottles a day. I will come home from work each day with milk (that I pumped - again, we'll get to that later) to fill 2 bottles. When I get home from work, 2-3 bottles will be sitting (dirty) in the sink. Thus, I am thinking that we will need to purchase 4 bottles. See - two (maybe 3) in the sink and I'll need to fill two others. Are you with me here?

So, I go to grab 2 packs of bottles (meaning that we would purchase 4 bottles = 6 total at home) and he actually is seriously having a discussion with me about how we can make do with only buying 2 bottles (meaning that we would have 4 total at home).

To break it down, his version means that on any given day when I get home from a long day at work... my first stop can be to wash that day's bottles so that I can fill them up again... with a crying baby in the back ground, with a daughter who needs dinner - needs to get her homework done - needs to get to cheer practice... and so on.

Fine - we get past this and put the 2 packs of bottles in the cart, of course. Well, the bottles are right at the entrance of the store. Now, I had a whole super store of baby supplies to peruse, right? OH - the look on his face was priceless when he found out that I wanted to look through that store.

Of course, I did get to stay and look through the store, but I couldn't buy anything that I wanted to buy because I had the purse-police peeking over my shoulder the whole time.

Oh well, it's probably all the better. I'll just know to leave him at home next time. Lesson learned.