Today was the perfect day. (minus a few boogers)

I adore family time. The girls are at wonderful ages; old enough to have some independence and hilarious personality and still young enough to believe Mom and Dad are the two coolest humans ever. They are so very much fun right now and while I relish every moment, my heart simultaneously aches -knowing that all too soon this childhood bliss will pass and be replaced with teenage angst.

Today is one of the days I am burning into my memory; storing it away for a time when my opinions, comforts, thoughts and very presence are repulsed and replaced with those of adolescent peers.

We started with a shopping trip to Academy so we could outfit the entire family in brand new Tech gear for football season... Then we had lunch at Logan's and Kenly didn't break anything, offend anyone, nor did she burn the joint down. She did locate the stash of napkins behind our table, blow her nose 45 times and discard the snot-filled trash into the booth next to us - but no one was sitting there so I'm not sweating that one. (I picked them all up, BTW). We came home and played in the water; complete with some wicked mud-pie making. (I must say that I am coming a LOONG way with my phobia of dirty children. I only had a mild panic attack when both girls plopped down in the middle of the mud-pit; this is progress.) The girls and I have done makeovers on one-another; Lala came by and watched a movie and ate popcorn with Ashlyn in her room, and for a solid hour we played a family game of hide-n-seek.

Also, Ashlyn explained to me (after having my makeover) that I needed to "walk like this (she then proceeded to very dramatically swing her hips) so that Daddy will notice how pretty you are and then he'll marry you." Bless her heart; she doesn't realize that the swinging of these Sonic-sized hips of mine; dramatically or otherwise, would lead to either serious injury or severe property damage.

Like I said; it was the perfect day.

Cookie Dough Blues

My severe stupidity often shocks me. Not that I find it shocking that I’m dumb; no, no – I’m well aware that intelligence isn’t exactly my thing. However there are times when I think or do something so completely and utterly dim-witted that I begin to question the contents of that space between my ears.

An example:
I recently decided to attempt a new cookie recipe, and on the eve of the experiment I shared my intentions with a few friends. This particular recipe was for “no-roll” sugar cookies and we were discussing how that meant the dough would end up a large blob from which you plucked smaller blobs to roll into small circles rather than a neatly rolled log of which you cut raw cookie slices. Fast forward to the making of said blob-dough and I begin to think about the “logs” of cookie dough you get from the grocery store. We purchase those footlong packages of heaven often around my house and the offspring and I make a huge mess with a few cookies to spare. It occurs to me that perhaps the log of pre-packaged cookie dough is meant to be sliced rather than plucked. (I know, I know… these are things I should understand by now.)

After discussing my thoughts with pretty much everyone I know I came to the conclusion that everyone slices the log. Everyone besides me, that is. There I am; pulling dollops of dough and rolling it into balls only to realize that I need more dough for the 1-inch diameter requirement, therefore forcing me to tug off another bit of dough and continue rolling-all the while having smallish dough pieces stick to my fingers and causing me to have a moral “do I lick it off and keep working and never tell those who will eat these cookies” dilemma. Had I anything besides protoplasmic goop (does that even exist?) in my noggin I might have realized much earlier that pre-made cookie dough was developed to make life easier, and as such there might be an easier way to get from log to cookie sheet. Oy.

Cheers!

Suds in the Bucket

When we woke up this morning to the already blazin' heat the girls and I decided that washing Daddy's truck would be a fun thing to do for father's day. (Or it was just a good way to get wet.. whichever..) I'm not sure Allen's truck got any cleaner; but it was a lot of fun watching the girls work on it... Then we moved to the backyard for a little pool time and a picnic.
Al is leaving for work again tomorrow but he'll be much closer to home and should be home next weekend; so my sanity should remain intact.

"We don't want to eat, we want to get back in the water..."

Cheers!

Kayla

So much to catch up on!

Yeah, yeah - all of this "I'm going to make time for the blog" talk but no action. It seems that not having Allen home was causing me to be busy. That's right - I spoke of his being gone in the PAST tense. He made it home FINALLY and has been here almost a week. I'm just now rejoining the real world as I have finally stopped staring at him long enough to do so. Gosh, we missed him! Of course (and don't tell him this) it's also been an adjustment. I've done everything alone and had the place to myself (not counting the offspring) for so long that when hubby wants to watch The Military Channel during my regularly scheduled reality TV viewing things are getting hairy. Ah well, I'll definitely take fighting with him over the remote over him being gone anyday!
There are a million things to blog about and I will get to them soon... I will also say that it is high time that the rest of my blogger friends get on the ball, too. C'mon, it's not like you people have lives to lead or children to raise (or bake, in Sara's case). Tell me what's going on in your lives already. Or just tell me a joke. Something.

Cheers

There's something about that red circle

I MISS MY HUSBAND! Allen won't be home until the end of July and I'm losing my mind without him. (Okay, okay so I didn't have much of a "mind" to begin with) He's never home during the week but for awhile now and until July he won't even be home on the weekends. Trying to keep this house clean and laundry done and kids fed while spending quality time with them and finding "me" time is becoming increasingly difficult... plus, I just MISS him. The girls miss him so much, too and comforting them takes such an emotional tole on me somedays.
I'm going to get through this though; Lala (my mom) is helping a ton and I've got great friends who are willing to give up their free time to come hang out and help me feel human every now and then. Plus, I'm choosing to stop wallowing in how much this sucks and just get through it. (Uh, that does NOT mean that when you see me you won't hear 153 times that I'm lonely, tired, need help, etc... I'm just not wallowing. Got it?)

So enough whining already, eh? Let's discuss Target. Target is seriously the most genious establishment in existance. I cannot pinpoint why, exactly; other than the sheer fact that everytime I "pop" in that place to purchase one item I walk out 2 hours later with $200.00 worth of "Oooooh, I could really use that." How do they do it? Seriously... I need an answer here.

Until next time...

I see the winds of change, but I don't even feel a breeze.

Have you ever reached a time in your life when it seems like everything around you is changing? Relationships, routines, attitudes, passions, etc? I feel like that is where I am now - everything is changing yet I haven't actively invited or implemented any of it and I sort of feel like I'm sitting in idle watching it all happen. It's very strange, and I guess it means that I need to jump on the bandwagon and get to changing some things.

Until then.. a few pictures of the darlings. The bond between these two gets stronger every day, and they love playing together. They fight too - but more often than not they are laughing and stirring up trouble together. It's fun! (Unless they've conspired to coat every standing thing in the house with vaseline. That, it turns out, is absolutely NOT fun.)

I knew I was missing something..

I have no clue why she is posed this way... I had nothing to do with it. I pull out the camera and for the next ten minutes hear "Oooh Mommy, this is beautiful, take a picture of this"... I believe I'm in big trouble with this one...

Oops. I sort-of forgot about my blog.. I'm finding that the older I get the less time I have available. I long for days of old when I would say "I'm bored; there's nothing to do" - but it seems those days are long gone and replaced with days where I don't have time bathe myself. Or the kids. Rest assured, though that I will drench us all in perfume if you want to come visit. Just don't expect me to have time to talk to you. In fact, if you do come visit please do a chore or two for me. Leave a note somewhere telling me who you are and what you did. I'll send you a thank you note.

Regarding the picture above:

Yes, I have 2 kids. No, I do not have an updated picture of the youngest. Is it because I don't love her as much? No, no - she is quite loved. She just also happens to be quite full of attitude. Anytime I pull the camera out she looks at me long enough to see that I have the flashing/clicking contraption in hand and she REFUSES to look at me again until I put it down. Seriously. I will ask her questions and she will answer- all without eye contact. Perhaps I will post a collage of pictures of Kenly's profile, or the top of her head, or her backside. Because that's all I have.

I will be around more often, as my goal is to produce a little boredom in my life. Who needs a clean house/clean clothes/fed kids anyway?