a deep sigh of gratitude

and so thanksgiving begins.

why I am what I am.

This took some introspection.



And, completely unrelated, there's the newfound fame issue... 

Anyone need a book for Kiddie Book Club?

Lucky for me, right on the heels of my pre-holiday breakdown, came some well-timed comic relief.

As I was putting Ellison to bed, she naturally wanted to read with me.  I grabbed a chapter book off of her shelf called "The Higher Power of Lucky".  It was a Newbery Medal Winner.  Guh-reat!  We hadn't read that one yet, and frankly I was a tad bored of mimicking what I thought Junie B. Jones' voice sounded like. 

Here we come, warmth and fuzzies!  Let us wind down together, darling daughter...

{An excerpt from Page 1}:

"Sammy told of the day when he had drunk half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all morning in his parked '62 Cadillac, then fallen out of the car when he saw a rattlesnake on the passenger seat biting his dog, Roy, on the scrotum."



So much for dewdrops and lollipops.



Too tired to discuss scrotal and/or alcoholic implications with my seven year old, I stared into her elfin-like face and mentally begged her just not to ask.  Too tired. Too tired. Too tired. 

Subsequently, my Junie B. Jones impersonation was dead-on.

The "I'm overwhelmed" holiday breakdown came a little early this year. 


Expectations of the morning pulverized.  Kids hadn't practiced the piano before school.  Again.  Scriptures not read over breakfast.  Again.  Lunches not made for kids.  Again.  Gym clothes sidelined.

Again.

(For an outfit perhaps better suited for the school Book Fair).

Seven pounds gained. 

A smattering of various other shortcomings magnified.  Forgetting to pick up Ellison at piano lessons was a particular lowlight of the week.  "Mom, are you ever coming to pick me up?" was the exact phraseology.  

I was a puddle of tears sitting on the stepstool in my closet by 8:30am.


The tears were cathartic.  The self-flogging over in five minutes.
[Twenty, tops].   

The thought bubble over my head might have read:  "Maybe I will attempt to sausage myself into Caroline's spandex mermaid tail and go swimming.  Then surely things would look up..."  (?)

Moving on.

Post edit:  After deeming the morning utterly unsalvageable, I mumbled something under my breath in the general theme of "I quit" and went back to bed until noon.   Thankfully there was a Bubble Guppies marathon on for Charlotte. 

I'm back.

you know you want one

My girls' lifelong dreams of becoming mermaids have officially been realized!! 

That, and some genius little grandma feverishly whipping these up on her sewing machine in Idaho is gonna be rich!

Even cousin Bridgette got in on the Mermaid Fever, as the girls pretended to "swim" around all day.

 More like little slugs slugging around on the filthy floor.

Helps with the girls' butterfly kick too!
 
(Because that's all they can manage in these constricting getups).

And don't even try to run...running with your knees glued together hasn't played out so well for the girls.

We can't seem to get enough of these.

What the darn are we supposed to do when it's 95 degrees in AZ at the end of October?

Impersonate mermaids, that's what.

I will be getting one for myself.

{not kidding}.

For my own dreams of mermadia.

You know you want one.

fall break 2011

Marc and I walked into our house tonight (at 11:19pm Texas time), looked at eachother, and muttered: "We pulled it off." 

Then we did that fist-bump thing.


Now we are going to bed.


I will state that our trip with all four kids involved the following:


1700 miles (one way) in a rented mini-van across three states,


Five different hotel rooms, (only one gross enough to necessitate the wearing of Hartz 2-In-1 Flea and Tick Collars to bed),


and a fabulous time in the Lone Star State.