Mom! Dude!

2009 began with a bang, but how could it not with my three boys? It was the first weekend of 2009, a Saturday morning....ah, let me reflect briefly on my life BC (before children). Saturday morning meant sleeping late, waking up to throw in a load of laundry and a start a pot of coffee. I would sit in the kitchen of my old, old as in former, house, at the kitchen counter and beside the sliding glass doors looking out over my backyard. I would watch the birds and squirrels in my backyard, thinking over various gardening projects, drink my wonderful, hot coffee, cup after cup, smell the freshly scented fabric softener I used in my load of laundry, read the newspaper, leisurely, and listen to the soothing sounds of Bach, Brahms or Beethoven on my CD player. My morning would slowly unfold as I would plan my day, my weekend, and the next week. The first Saturday of 2009 began with the Triple A Threat careening through the house like rabid monkeys on espresso, with a Red Bull chaser. A...

It being close to a year since I've blogged regularly, I'm just gonna wrap up the year 2008 in one post. Nah, it would have nothing to do with the fact that, as a full-time-office-working mother of 4 kids...well, 5 including the hubs, that I can hardly remember last night's dinner, much less almost two years ago. I actually had to go back and look at my scrapbook pictures to remember anything at all. Thanksgiving of 2008 had only two pictures. Yup, that's right...2. In a family as large as ours, and as OCD as I am about photographing every moment of my children's lives as humanly possible, to only be able to find two pictures of a major holiday like Thanksgiving is disturbing. That must have been a real hair-puller of a day. Which also does not make a lot of sense, because according to the pictures, we dined in a nice restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner that year. Although, given the chance, my kids act worse when eating out in public, just because they know i...

Wow, has it been almost a year since I blogged? That can't be...well, actually, yes it can. It's been a helluva year. In a lot of ways. Since I last blogged, I've seen the lowest of lows, and the highest of highs. Right now, life is looking pretty darn good, so on this positive note, let the blogging resume. I will try to pick up where I left off, just for the sake of continuity, coz I'm like that, and then try to stay very daily...well, weekly, or, at least, monthly in my blogging. Some things I can and will share; others, I will not. Suffice it to say, life is looking good again, and it's time to share some laughs and some tears. I'll pick up again next week. Welcome back, me!

The month of October started out full of promise and plans. We had something scheduled every weekend, and usually 3 or 4 things every weekend, and even some nights during the week! Florida is full of festivals and parties and fairs and parks and events, all during the month of October. Well, I should have known better than to plan, coz right when I did, everything fell apart. We went to our church’s pumpkin patch early in the month, and got one of the biggest pumpkins out there, as well as a wagon full of different gords and little pumpkins. Mom and Dad went with us, and it was a great night: not too hot, lots of pumpkins, everyone in a good mood, a bounce house to jump in and wagons to ride in. We got the house decorated for Halloween. Did most of it in one day, actually, when Austin and Andrew took long naps. Alex helped, of course, which basically means he dragged junk out of the storage boxes and trailed everything all through the house until he got bored with it, and then ba...

We arrived in Orlando around 9:30 PM. We stayed at the same condo complex as we did back in May...only this time, our condo was right by a big pond. We unpack and the boys, naturally, are wired and stayed up until around midnight. But this time, we expected that...so we knew to just go with the flow. The only really remarkable thing about our first night, other than the ridiculously late hour at which the boys went to bed, was that after dinner, Pete and the boys all got gas. I don't know from what, and why it didn't happen in the van on the way down (Thank God), but as soon as everyone got inside and started running around, they all got gassy. Pete, too. Even baby Andrew chimed in with a few tiny toots of his own. Must be a guy thing. And I said as much to Pete, or, to be exact, I complained in an exasperated tone, "what IS it with you all? Why are all of you doing this to me?" To which Alex replied, after overhearing me, "Mom, we can't help it....

We celebrated July 4th, in big style as always. We took off Thursday after I got home from work. The 2-hour trip to Tampa took about 3 hours. We got to our hotel around 9PM. We were prepared for the boys to get all excited and knew it was hopeless to try to put them to bed right away, so we let them stay up and horse around while we unpacked. We did NOT expect them to still be up and wired and running around and playing and carrying on after 1:00 in the morning, however. Those boys would not settle down. And the real problem was Andrew! He would not let his big brothers sleep. He would pick at their feet, pull the sheets on the bed, grab their fingers and hands, crawl all around, bellow out; in general, make a bunch of noise and mess and would not go to sleep! Even Alex was ready to give it up at this point, but the baby would have none of that sleeping nonsense. So the next morning, after about only 2 hours of combined sleep, the boys were up and raring to go before 7AM. We went to br...

That was a good weekend: we first went to a Mother's Day banquet at church on Friday night. Mom couldn't make it because of work, of course, but Aunt Chris went and there was dinner and then dancing by a troop of young girls, and singing by some members of our church, and a Mother's Day poem read by a youth in our church. On Sunday after church, the whole family (us, the boys, Mark, Granny, Pawpaw and Aunt Chris) went back to one of favorite places, the Gateway Grand, where we'd been for our Easter brunch. It was, as always, delicious. Austin had his first bite of chocolate mousse there. After brunch, we came back to our house, where we all exchanged Mother's Day cards and gifts...and unbeknownst to any of us ahead of time, we all got the same thing for each other....a fruit, marshmallow and chocolate Edible Arrangement! After naps that afternoon, we went to the duck pond to spend a lazy afternoon feeding the ducks. It was a relaxed, enjoyable time, but a lot of ot...