Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. How about you?

We had a delicious meal at Mark's parents' house. Most of the fam was there. We even got to bring home some leftovers (despite the crowd)! Mmmm... turkey on rolls the next day is definitely a favorite. :)

This year we were able to have my niece and nephew, Shantaye and Chez, with us. Their parents went to Thailand for a friend's wedding and were supposed to return the day before Thanksgiving. However, if you've been following the news, they aren't going to be catching a flight out of Thailand anytime soon. So, they are going to travel by taxi for 14 hours to Malaysia to an airport there. After 77 hours of travel, they'll arrive home Sunday, 3 days later than planned. Poor parents! poor kids! But it sure was fun to have some older cousins around to play with Alex and the brothers.

Anyway, hope your turkey day was great!!

Happy "Hump" Day!!

Today is the halfway point for my parents' mission! Hurray!! It seems like they've been gone an eternity. But, I'm soooo happy that we're just counting down the days from here. Thanks for all of your wonderful service and for your example to your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I miss you!!!

Amendment to my movie critique

Well, I went back on Saturday for a second viewing of Twilight, and I'm happy to announce that I really, really liked it the second time around. I'm sooo glad I went back! I was over being critical about the differences from the book, and I was actually able to just relax and enjoy it. I hope you all enjoyed it too!

Twilight

Well, I hate to report that I didn't care for the movie. It was okay but not great. I think it could have been fabulous (as I think the book was). I think if one hasn't read the book, then you'd be a bit confused by the movie. Edward was better than I thought. But he sure looked goofy sometimes. Bella looked like she was always in pain, not in love. :) (I'm such the critic, eh?)Nevertheless, I'm going again today! ha ha!

However, the company was fabulous!! I went with Mindy (thanks for the tickets!), Elisha, Ashley and Beckee. These beautiful girls all live in my neighborhood and are seriously the best gals ever! So here are some pics from our delightful evening! (Aren't they good looking?)

This is the first premier of any movie I've been to. It was quite the gala!

Elisha, Ashley, Mindy, Beckee, Tiffany

On our way to pick up some popcorn and soda. Yum!
VIP wannabe's. People were seriously walking out in black-tie attire. Elisha and Ashley were dying to join! Okay... not really.

Our seats. Funny thing, we went to the wrong theatre at first. So, once we found the right place, we could only get four seats together. Thanks for squishing to fit me in, girls! Sorry about the sore bottoms!One angle. Elisha, Ashley, BeckeeThe other angle. Tiffany, Mindy, Elisha (again? how'd you pull that off?)These gals were so funny. There was a costume contest, and people went down in full Twilight/vampire attire. These gals decided that they could pass off as Rosalie and Alice as well as anyone. So down they headed, doing a great catwalk for the whole audience. Don't they look ethereal? True vampires.

I'm Twilighting!

I'm Twilighting at midnight! Here's hoping it's not too disappointing! (I know... good attitude!)

Ahhh, poop, poison control, and other misc

Just to put your mind at ease from the start... No. My child did not eat poop, resulting in a call to poison control. Just FYI.

What a day! And it's only 12:45 p.m. And so I blog for therapy.

I just put all my bath toys in the dishwasher, and a load of laundry in the washer. I'm bleaching my light colors. Why? So that I can get the poop germs out of the toys and washcloths and the pee germs out of the bath towels. How did this happen, you ask? Well, let me tell ya.

It all started with a whining and crying Alex. (surprise, surprise) He started crying first thing this morning, and hasn't stopped yet. Granted, the poor kid has a nasty head cold, so I know he's miserable. But still! Males.

Anyway, I threw all three kids in the bath and all was going well. I was just getting Jackson out and drying him off when AJ stood up in the tub and said, "Poo. Poo. Poo." I looked over to see the lovely stuff floating around in the water.

Gross.

So, of course I had to put Jackson down (naked) in order to save Andrew from playing in the stuff like it was play-doh. I successfully got AJ out fairly poop free, got him dressed and went to find Jackson.

Then ensued the discovery of the pee soaked towel. (Thank you, Jackson, for not peeing on my carpet.) As I cleaned up and dressed Jackson, AJ got a hold of a full, newly-opened-this-morning, box of cereal (thank you, big brother Alex) and quickly dumped the entire contents out onto my bedroom floor. We then had major meltdowns as Mom vacuumed the floor instead of letting the 18-month old child use the vacuum.

*sigh*

All this happened as my husband tried to book a flight for me to visit my parents in Georgia. With all the distractions, we missed the steal-of-a-deal pricing by about 1/2 hour as all the flights proceeded to fill up.

Oh, and where does the Poison Control come in? Well, luckily that wasn't today. That was yesterday. Because, you see, this mother (who really is in the running for Mother-of-the-Year) left her little toddler (guess which one? yep, AJ) in the basement for no more than 30 seconds unsupervised. It was long enough for Alex to come running upstairs yelling, "Mommy! AJ is eating the washing machine soap!" Sure enough, the Tide with Bleach was all over the floor and all over his mouth. Hence, Poison Control. (I'm happy to let everyone know that a few drinks of milk or water are enough to dilute the small amount swallowed and all is well. But when he's 14 years old and failing all his classes, remind me that the Tide just might have caused some permanent brain damage. Only time will tell.)

And thus it is.

I'm ready for a nap. Ciao.

For my Star Wars fans

This is for my son and brother. (And all you other Star Wars fans out there)

Miss Spider

As I discovered this post about National Adoption Month, it reminded me of the sweetest book that we checked out at the library some time ago. When I read the book "Little Miss Spider," by David Kirk, I wanted to buy a copy for all of my friends and acquaintances that had ever adopted a child. Well... since I'm on a budget, I thought I'd tell you about it instead.

This books tells of Miss Spider's quest to find her mother. After a long journey, Miss Spider adopts as her mother the green beetle, Betty, who has been assisting Miss Spider all along. As the text explains,

"For finding your mother,
There's one certain test.
You must look for the creature
Who loves you the best."

Mmmm...

It was too quiet the other day. Yep. No AJ following underfoot. It was time for a mommy investigation.

If only you could hear the "oooooooh!" that went along with this picture. He was so happy about it.

And one more moment of enjoying his spoils before mean mom took it away:

Photo Tagged

I've been photo tagged by Jenn. If you'd like to do it, then I tag you!

Go to your fourth photo in your fourth file of Pictures, and post about it.

Here's what I found:
This is my sweet little Andrew, just over a year ago. Can he already be one-and-a-half? Sheesh, how time flies. I'm glad he was my fourth, fourth photo, because he is such a joy to have in our family. He is always so happy and pleasant, and there is just something extra special about him. He's busy, busy, busy, and into everything, but he's a tender-hearted, sweet little guy.

I tag Julie, Sherine, Marni and Camille. (and anyone else!)

Words...

Ya know... I never was one for possessing great words. No real words of wisdom. No funny sayings. No clever comebacks. Nope, not me. I could spell those words, and I could place them in a grammatically correct sentence. But I wasn't ever one for being able to arrange those words in a funny sentence, or one that could spew out some cool saying.

I always admired those people who said "cool" words. Ya know... like "flip." Or "rad." Or "totally sweet." In Jr. High, I was the queen of copying people with cool words. Even now I like to pick up on rad sayings.

So how do some of you bloggers come up with such clever stuff? There are those of you who I read regularly. And then there are those I happen upon, like this or that, that I can't stop reading - even though I don't know you from my mother's uncle's neighbor's friend... well, you get the picture. (My husband razzes me about this daily.)

And then there are the people who can recite every word, word-for-word, from movies and songs. How do they do that? Seriously? All I have to say is "Monty Python," "Nacho Libre," or "Napoleon Dynamite" in certain crowds, and we have entertainment for the evening. (And to drive home my point, I just spent two whole minutes on Google, trying to remember the name of the movie "Napoleon Dynamite." See what I mean, people? sheesh.)

What about those people with a perfect comeback? Really. I mean, after you've just been verbally attacked or ridiculed, you don't all just say, "Well... uh... hmmm." And walk off? Wouldn't I love to be able to say the 100's of things I think of, after the fact, while I'm fuming in the privacy of my own home? Oh to be so talented with an immediate reply...

Oh, and names? Forget it. You'll always be Jane Doe to me, until you've either been married into the family for a few years (and even then there's no guarantee), you've grown up with me since kindergarten, or you're my own child. (And then, once again, no guarantee.)

See my point now?

This is why I'm SO GRATEFUL that this flaw of mine does not seem to be passed on genetically to my child. Or perhaps it's the good genes from his father. But Alex seems to come up with some doozies. In fact, I keep a Word file called "Alex-isms" just to keep track of it all. Now, I know a lot of his sayings aren't "originals," but he's only three. THREE, and he's saying things like,

"WORD UP, Mom."

or, after dropping his toy, "Oh RUBBISH. What a mess."

or, "Mom, that's totally SNAP."

And names? He can tell you every Tom, Dick and Harry that he's ever met. Every character in every story and movie. Every store that we've ever been to ("There's 'Burt Brother's', Mom!"). Every proper name of every animal at the zoo. (Me: "Look at that cool monkey, Alex." Alex: "Mom! [with a slight air of disgust] That's a Mandrill. Or are you looking at the Lemur?") Even if it's been months, and he only met the person, went to the store, or saw the animal once - he remembers.

And so it is. Words - totally not my thing. But luckily for my kid, it's totally snap.

Happy Halloween

We had a great Halloween at our house. The kids are still bouncing off the walls, they're still behind on sleep, and Mom's still pilfering the "stash." Good stuff!