Thursday, May 28, 2009

We aren't THAT cool people.....



I think maybe the angle of that photo makes the slide look bigger than it actually is. The pool is so NOT a huge pool. It is seriously about knee deep on me. I guess it does look like some huge pool to play in.......NOT the case at all. Plus it takes 85,000 years to fill up so you'd have to slide for like 12 hours before it's all the way full. At maximum capacity it might be up to my knees. I'll take some more photos and post them.

Taking nothing away from the fun factor of the whole thing though. It is so much fun. The entire neighborhood loves it, even the cool kids that have 'actual' pools in the back yard! It is definately hours of entertainment for the kids.

Can't wait to get my water bill. Super excited about that.
Maybe you can slightly see the kids climbing up the slide on the bottom photo and get a better idea of the actual size of the thing? No? Well, I'll try taking some with my camera instead of my phone and maybe that will be better? Or maybe you guys don't really give a pig's pickle about it.......either way

A Thousand Words Thursday


Because we needed more crap in our backyard.......




(taken from my mobile....won't go any bigger)


For more Thousand Words Thursday see my friend Jen at Cheaper than Therapy!


Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.....or not

Late last week one of the grandmothers (they have three.....don't ask) called out of the clear blue and asked if the minis had plans for the weekend. "Why no, no they do not. Why do you ask?"

My brain automatically shot adrenaline through my body and my hands were twitching in anticipation of the next question.......

"Could I come and get them for the weekend?"

Wait a minute.....did you say WEEKEND? Like ALL weekend? Like two whole days of mini-free bliss-dom?

"Could I bring them now?.....hahahahaha.....just kidding"(sort of)

I was almost skipping Friday morning into Storage to drop of Little One imagining what I would do with all my free time over the weekend.

It was fantastic. It was a wonderful much needed break and vacation for me and for them. I had fun, hung out with friends, went out to dinner both nights, stayed up and out late...partied a little with our neighbors and friends and just generally had a fantastic time. I laid in bed watching Lifetime for a couple hours Sunday, cleaned and laundered. Changed sheets in peace and grocery shopped without whining, crying, reaching, pulling, throwing, kicking, flailing babies standing in and on carts. It was awesome.

About 4:00pm Sunday afternoon it hit me like a ton of bricks......I missed them. I was ready for them to come home.

and then they came home

what was I thinking?

Thursday, May 14, 2009

happiness is not unimportant...or something like that

the super cute (even though she thinks my name is Holly) blogger MamabearMills over at Pour Some Sugar on Me has tagged me with the meme 6 unimportant things that make me happy! (and this is hard because if it makes me happy, then it must be important.....pfffft!). So since she thinks I'm Holly...maybe she tagged me by mistake and doesn't really give a rip what makes me happy, hmmmm....



1. Little One's hair sprouts. I love putting her hair in those two little sprouts. They look so damn cute in the morning (before she's pulling and yanked them all day) that they make me smile.

2. Half cut tea. If you know me, you know I'm southern to the core and they might revoke my Southern Belle Card if they knew I liked my tea half sweet/half unsweet instead of fully loaded.

3. A Tivo full of my favorite shows!! I love when my Tivo has tons of stuff for me to catch up on, especially on the weekends when I might occasionally be known to lay on my bed and watch tv clean clean clean till my fingers fall off while Little One naps and Big One does whatever she's doing.

4. Wine spritzers and grilling (together)...(for you northern friends grilling = barbequeing...you see BBQ is a noun as in "Let's eat some BBQ" not a verb as in "Let's go out back and barbeque something")

5. Thursdays (Thursday is the new Friday........for me)

6. My cell phone. LG Lotus. Love it love it love it love it. OH OH OH and and and I also love my new iPod Touch, but funny enough hated the iPhone when I did the 30 day trial, but that's 7 things so if I had to choose then definately the phone.

Now I tag :
Shannon at More Wine Please
my friend Jennifer at Momma Made it Look Easy
Amy Amy at Life of a Nguyener
the Mom Jen at Cheaper than Therapy
Tena at My Therapy
(do we see a Theraputic pattern to all of this?)
and
Clemsongirl

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Lazy being the operative word.....

If you ever decide to buy a piece of furniture from LaZBoy and they push you to buy the fabric protectant and/or a protection warranty....

DON'T DO IT

DO NOT DO IT. In fact try desperately to find a piece of furniture you like as well or better somewhere else!

They honor next to nothing but make it sound like a dream come true......until you need to use it......shoot me now

They got me......don't let them get you too

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

In typical 'me' fashion, the Husband's birthday cake (birthday was 3/18) just got made a week or so ago. I think it's because I'm a busy working mother of two that does not get the help and spousal support needed from her husband and is too tired and drunk on wine spritzers overworked to think about baking birthday cakes. (or it could be that I subconsciously didn't think he deserved one....)


But who's counting right?

Well in my house cake is cake and frosting is well......






YUMMY!!!!

and you have to LOVE that hairdo girlfriend is sportin'

(she pulled out her horns piggies)

Monday, May 11, 2009

"MMOOOOMMMMM....maker her stop!"

Little One fully clothed and overjoyed infiltrated the slipnslide fun Friday evening...just took off and ran right on.....much to the chagrin of Big One and friend!

"Baby Intruder.....Baby Intruder!!" "Mommy make her MOOOOOVVVVVE!" "Get her off, she's in our way!"

She was having so much fun I just couldn't make her get off! All me and the Husband could do was laugh and run for the video camera.....she was HILARIOUS!


This is a girl that has NO idea there is a rogue baby running towards her!










Thursday, May 7, 2009

Storytime

Gather round boys and girls, I have a story to tell you. This isn't just any story. This is a story about a girl and her Dad. Now before you saw, awww how sweet, it's not that kind of story. This girl loves her Dad. She loves him very very much, but she and her Dad don't always see eye to eye. Sometimes, well, a lot of times they don't get a long quite well. You see when this girl was a little girl she thought her Dad hung the moon and for the most part he was an okay Dad. He'd never be up for Dad of the Year by any stretch of the imagination, but he was good for the most part. The thing the girl could never understand was why her Dad always seemed to be in a bad mood. He was grumpy almost all the time. He complained a lot and nothing seemed to be good enough. It wasn't till later in life that she realized he wasn't like that with everyone. Most people found him quite charming. Seems he saved all the grumpy for the family. Unlike most people he was a much nicer and more like able guy to perfect strangers than he was to his own family. I guess always might be stretching a tad, sometimes he was in a good mood, but more often that not you just didn't bother Dad. What still bothers the girl the most to this day is that her Dad never ever NEVER not one time in entire life......NOT ONE TIME...ever told her he loved her. He hugged her and kissed her and all that but never not once told her "I love you". I guess "it was how he was raised" or something akin to that.



When the girl was little she was involved in a lot of extracurricular activities such as Girl Scouts and Art lessons and Dancing and Swim team. The girl was quite good at dancing and danced from age 3 to age 19. She taught dance for the last 3 of those years along with dancing competitively (and expensively) and winning many many trophies and titles. She competed all over the United States and was invited to dance one summer for a cruise line but since she was 17 her mom drew the line (talk about crushing the dream.....the girl just knew it was the end of the world). The girl was also an avid and very good swimmer. The girl competed in swimming during the dancing off-season (summer) and was highly ranked in that as well. Would you believe that the girl's Dad never came to see her dance or swim. Never. Well, maybe once he came to see her swim and then probably only because her brother was swimming too and maybe once (and only once and stayed for one dance) to a recital, but even that's up for debate. My point is that the Dad never thought twice about it. I think the Dad didn't realize how important it was to the girl and I don't think he knew the hole it left that it wasn't important to him. On the flip side he loved to brag about how accomplished his daughter was and how she won this and did that and could have danced for Carnival and blah blah blah, but never once did he show her that pride and admiration. Not once. She believed she would never be good enough, nothing was ever enough. When the girl did something that wasn't up to snuff or something he didn't think was up to snuff, she was often times called stupid. (stupid is the worst word you can say to her to this day.....she will spit in your face and you will no longer exist to her if you call her or her children or anyone she loves stupid.......inanimate objects can be stupid but people, and most of all children, should NEVER be called stupid). This is not to say he didn't or doesn't love her. He does, he just very rarely shows it in any way shape or form. I don't think he has any clue of the stigma that the word stupid carries for her.



Over the years the shine wore off and she no longer thought her Dad hung the moon. She started to see that not all Dad's were like her Dad and that some Dad's loved hanging out with and being a part of their children's lives. She started to notice that some Dad's were even supportive and all that dad stuff. She noticed that she didn't like that her dad seems ignorant sometimes and racist sometimes and didn't like the way he treated her Mom most all the time. She was starting think maybe she didn't like him so much. She loved him sure, but she was pretty sure she didn't like him too much. This went on for years and years and years, etc. ( so many more sordid details left out....trying not to make it a novel, just a story)

Then one day the girl got married and had her first baby. Something happened when she had that baby. This Dad that she'd been loving and hating at the same time all these years turned to mush and fell instantly in love with his new granddaughter. He doted on her. He treated her like he should have treated his daughter. The girl was happy with that. Very happy. So happy her daughter would never wonder if she was or why she wasn't good enough.

Skip ahead 6 years and one miscarriage. The girl is now 6 months pregnant with her second baby and has been admitted to the hospital for the remainder of her pregnancy due to a placenta previa and several big bleeds. The girl is beyond devastated. The girl is not in a good mental state. You see, the hospital she has been admitted to is an hour from home. This means she cannot go to work (and desperately needs to.....desperately), this means she cannot see her husband and daughter every day because they have to work and go to school. This means that she probably won't get a lot of visitors because it's not that convenient and after the newness of her being admitted wears off, people won't think to come and she will and did become very lonely and depressed. She was right. Wouldn't you think her parents would be there? You would and should think that. Her Dad came to see her exactly ONE time in that month. Once. He stayed for about 15 minutes. He didn't like hospitals you see.

Unfortunately and fortunately one month into the incarceration (as she refers to it) and 3 days (it was leap year) after her birthday (yes, she spent her birthday in the hospital...oh AND she missed her 6 year old's birthday party and everything too) she had another big bleed. This one caused major blood loss and she was sent in for emergency c-section to get baby out and save Mommy. The baby was delivered at 34 weeks. She was 4lbs. 13oz. and she was rushed immediately to NICU. She wasn't ready, obviously. The girl was terrified and her husband almost didn't make it to the hospital in time. She was prepped for surgery when he burst through the OR doors in time to get scrubbed and prepped himself. Barely. Like literally 30 seconds. The next morning the girl's Mom and Dad (shock) showed up bringing her oldest daughter with them to see Mommy and Daddy and the new baby. Mom would have stayed all day. Dad wanted to see the baby and get to steppin.......so that he did. He saw the baby and then they left.....wham bam thank you ma'am.

Fast forward 7 or 8 months. The girl and her family are doing good. The baby is thriving and wonderful. Business is slow and money is tight. She works at her family's business. Her dad is in the process of retiring. He is 64 years old. It's October and he gets a cold. A month later he still has the cold, it won't go away. Even weirder is that he's having these nose bleeds too. He goes to the doctor, they give him antibiotics and send him on his way. Not working. This goes on for a couple weeks. They do an endoscopy to try to see why it's bleeding. They find what seems to be an overgrown polyp. They biopsy it and try to remove it...too much bleeding. Can't remove all of it. Biopsy comes back. It's cancer. It's not just any cancer.....it's melanoma. The girl is beside herself. She is inconsolable. She is grappling with why she is so upset and if she is allowed to be this upset when she doesn't deserve to be because of her past opinions of her dad.

INSIDE the sinus cavity. It's Mucosal Melanoma. Very VERY rare. Like only 1000 cases since 1924. Extremely rare. Fine, we'll remove it, deal with it. So he has another surgery by a specialist at a renowned hospital about 2 hours from home. Successful. They get it all. No chemo (none is effective for melanoma) and no radiation. Thank God. Two weeks later he gets a scan and BOOM.....more cancer. New tumor. The girl is once again terrified and inconsolable. This is her dad, how can this be happening and my God, sure they didn't always get along, but she didn't want to lose him forever. This surgery is far worse. They remove the bones and all sinus tissue in the left cheek and nose. Leaves him somewhat disfigured, but cancer free. Very very hard recovery. Still getting through it. 3 weeks into radiation.

Fast forward to today. Strange lump on Dad's forehead and getting bigger every day. May be a cyst? They decide to biopsy to be safe. As the girl sits at her desk, tears streaming down her face she writes a story about her Dad. She isn't sure how she is supposed to feel and if she is allowed to be as heartbroken as she is. She has after all not gotten along with him very well all the time.

At the same time, her Dad is at the doctor's office........ I'm very sorry Mr. Dad but it's more melanoma.......

 
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