Wordless Wednesday - Southern Grammar

 

For those of ya'll that don't live in the South....it's true....REALLY!

 

 

Happy Turkey Day!

I am so thankful for so many things in my life, but most of all I am thankful for my friends and family...especially my kids!

When I first came across this I knew I had to put it aside for something special. I’ve stopped to read it multiple times since first getting it…maybe I’m sappy, but it brings tears to my eyes every time.

 I hope you guys enjoy it and are having an awesome holiday week!

The following is called: A Child’s Ten Commandments to Parents, by Dr. Kevin Leman

1. My hands are small; please don’t expect perfection whenever I make a bed, draw a picture, or throw a ball. My legs are short; please slow down so that I can keep up with you.

2. My eyes have not seen the world as yours have; please let me explore safely: don’t restrict me unnecessarily.

3. Housework will always be there. I’m only little such a short time—please take time to explain things to me about this wonderful world, and do so willingly.

4. My feelings are tender; please be sensitive to my needs; don’t nag me all day long. (You wouldn’t want to be nagged for your inquisitiveness.) Treat me as you would like to be treated.

5. I am a special gift from God; please treasure me as God intended you to do, holding me accountable for my actions, giving me guidelines to live by, and disciplining me in a loving manner.

6. I need your encouragement, but not your praise, to grow. Please go easy on the criticism; remember you can criticize the things I do without criticizing me.

7. Please give me the freedom to make decisions concerning myself. Permit me to fail, so that I can learn from my mistakes. Then someday I’ll be prepared to make the kind of decisions life requires of me.

8. Please don’t do things over for me. Somehow that makes me feel that my efforts didn’t quite measure up to your expectations. I know it’s hard, but please don’t try to compare me with my brother or my sister.

9. Please don’t be afraid to leave for a weekend together. Kids need vacations from parents, just as parents need vacations from kids. Besides, it’s a great way to show us kids that your marriage is very special.

10. Please take me to Sunday school and church regularly, setting a good example for me to follow. I enjoy learning more about God.

 

One too many

Today is one of the days…I like to call it a recovery day (aka not used to drinking), Call me a light-weight if you will and I’m ok with that!

Source

We went to two great parties last night (with NO KIDS). Can we say a woot, woot to that one? First we went to a wedding reception of some friends of ours. They had this beautiful destination wedding in the Dominican Republic and then had their reception a couple weeks later so those of us not able to go could get a glimpse and help them celebrate. It was in this quaint little restaurant/event location…it reminded me of some small restaurant in the French Quarter in New Orleans. The food was delicious.

Source

Next we hopped over to my best friend Ami’s house for her husband’s 40^th birthday extravaganza. We had a great time there as well. I knew almost everyone between the years of knowing them and then going to so many activities in their neighborhood. Ami went all out this year…DJ, someone doing drinks and all. Jason was totally surprised. Funny thing was, Ami had a bunch of the same food at her house that they did at the reception (her and her mom are awesome cooks). Thankfully Ami’s mom and co. were there to help out with clean up.

We were so thankful to have someone to watch the kids and actually get out of the house childless for a bit. Trust me I love them….but we’ve gotta have some adult time! I hated having to split time between the two events. Both of these girls are awesome and there was no way I could say no to either one of them.

Hope you guys are having/had a great weekend!

Ode to a busy day...



Source

 

I do believe EVERY and I mean EVERY member of this house has something that has to be done today. We started out bright and early this morning where the 13 y.o old had a band concert/tryout.  Then we needed to do the everyday stuff to keep this house running. Not to mention mommy should have had presents for the wedding reception and birthday party tonight all done…did I?...heck no!

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Took Livie for some girl time to get our toes done (daddy stayed home while Hailey took a nap…woo hoo) and then rushed back home so daddy could take Tyler (the 13 y.o) to basketball tryouts. Oh yea, forgot to mention I did groceries this morning and cleaned house.

Siiigghhhh….the day’s not even half over yet. We have a friend of the family coming over to watch the brood so we can go to said wedding reception and birthday party tonight. I think I’m exhausted just from typing all this out.

Wish me luck!

Source

When I grow up…

Source:http://www.squidoo.com/playing-doctor?utm_source=google&utm_medium=imgres&utm_campaign=framebuster

Ok ya’ll….I actually resorted to using the writing prompt today (annnnddd I didn’t have it all written and scheduled to post first thing this morning). I know, I know…you guys are getting spoiled by me being all organized and all. I do have to say, I need to get this thing done and posted before the girl decides to wake up from her nap…yikes!

source: http://www.sxc.hu/

The prompt for today was: “if you could have any job (and instantly have the training and qualifications to do it), which job would you want?”

 

 

source: http://www.sxc.hu/

That is actually REALLY easy for me…my whole life I’ve worked in healthcare in some way, shape or form and I’ve known I wanted to ever since I was a little kid! Of course, when as a little kid I wanted to grow up to be a doctor…I think a lot of us did. However, my want of it was a little more specific…I wanted to be a pediatric surgeon or an ER doc. Yes, this was when I was a little kid. Needless to say life gets in the way and allllll those years of school are a near impossibility with little kids. That is unless you want to miss their younger years and I didn’t.

I’d still say with 100% certainty that if I could be a pediatric surgeon without all the years of schooling…I’d do it today (ok, I’d do it when Hailey starts school)!

 

 

 

Wordless Wednesday

Source: Pinterest

Gotta love these....

Gettin' all dolled up!

Making sure everything is in order.



 My little glamor girl had her first haircut today. She was super excited….the girl does love the one on one attention! Thank goodness she’s used to having to sit still for us to paint her cute little toenails on those cute little pigs (not that mommy is biased or anything).

 

At the park and watching the trains.

We decided to make it an all-out girls day….a little trip to the park and water fountain. She got to watch the train go by. Then off to lunch at a cute little restaurant where we shared some yumminess.

A little walk around the cute shops (not that I was trying to wear her out for a nap or anything ....)

And then...of course we had to finish it off with a treat from the cupcake shop. Hailey picked out the yummiest wedding cake cupcake with mile-high frosting (mommy should have taken a picture of all the deliciousness....but it didn't last long enough for that!!!).

 

 



The little ham at her best with the new do.



 

My momma always said…

If ya don’t have anything nice to say….don’t say anything at all!

Seriously people…geesh! Don’t you just love when people take the time to make a fake profile to make unnecessary comments.

HEL—LOOO, if ya don’t like what I have to say….then don’t read it!

Over the last couple months, I have met so many nice people doing this blog…It’s been awesome! I’ve really enjoyed writing and having an outlet to vent or say whatever I want. I never started this thing to please everyone else. It was for me! (if other people enjoyed it… all the better)

Over the last week we have been getting stuff done to get ready for school starting on Monday. (you can find that post here http://chasinghailey.blogspot.com/2012/08/on-countdown.html) In the process of that I wrote a post about getting the kid’s haircut and some lady laid into me like I was some trailer trash, no tooth hillbilly with an absent baby daddy. Darlin’ I may live in the south, but that isn’t how we roll….

Maybe I’m over thinking what she wrote. I don’t know about the rest of ya’ll, but I look forward to comments and make sure I reply to each and every one of you. I was just a little taken aback.

On the countdown…

It’s the last few days of summer and I think EVERYONE is a little antsy!

 I love it when the kids are actually excited about school starting. The 11 y.o. starts middle school this year and she is super excited, while the 19 y.o. is signing up for his first college classes today. Woo hoo! (We shall see what he signs up for…eghad)

The 13 y.o. is kinda meehh about the whole thing. Hey phoned it in on the whole school clothes/supply thing and was like eeehhh….get me whatever. Allrighty then…ye shall get what ye ask fer! Like my mama always said (or somebody important like that); “ya get what ya get and ya can’t pitch a fit!”

JCPenney

In preparation for the first day of school, we went to get haircuts today. He, he…I had to do a sneak attack of the 13 y.o.. WHY do boys this age NOT want their hair cut? (He had a near coronary at the beginning of summer when I cut his hair short.) Well guess what…it’s that time again! Bwa, ha ha.

I heard about the JCP special the other day...if only I were that organized to have planned it in enough time to get them in....sigh...

It actually went pretty smoothly. We were in, out and done in a flash with minimal resistance. Then off to lunch.

Now to get the mini munchkin to take her nap WITHOUT taking her diaper off!

Playground smackdown....naaah...What’s your neighborhood personality?

Isn’t it funny how every neighborhood or playground has its own very special personality. What I mean is, the people that make up that place all seem to have the same kind of viewpoint towards others (i.e. open and friendly or kind of just acknowledging one another). I love those neighborhoods where you drive down the street and everyone waves (even if they don’t recognize you).

Cobb Co Parks

Well the toddler area of the park I take Hailey to usually has this very open and friendly vibe in the mornings with lots of moms with little ones right around her age….it’s awesome! Everyone gets along and talks to each other (even if we haven’t met before) It’s sorta like an informal mom’s group.

Not this morning though, yikes! I should have known the minute we walked into the park. First, there were two moms there together with their little ones that seemed to be snubbing everyone else. When they went to leave, they left the gate wide open! What the heck…just because your little angels aren’t here anymore doesn’t mean the rest of us want our kids to run out into the parking lot! There is a sort of unspoken park etiquette, which obviously some don’t think applies to them.

Teen Mom

The next little unfriendly incident was a mom with two little girls, one a little older than Hailey and the other was 4 or 5. Hailey is one of the friendliest and outgoing babies you will ever meet…she likes to go and great all the other little kids. On one such mission, she decided to go play with the above mentioned little girls. Needless to say it didn’t go so well. The little girl that was Hailey’s age was winey and unfriendly and the mom wasn’t any better. I even tried talking to her; at first she just ignored me and when she finally answered me it was very abruptly. HELLO, if ya don’t want to socialize or talk to anyone then maybe you shouldn’t have come here!

Ok, I’m done venting now…thanks for the audience. J

Striving for Perfection…

I love this pic...found it on Pinterest!
I can’t help it, it’s in my nature! I can fully admit that I am a recovering OCD momma. Even with five kids, I can still find it rearing its ugly head.

At least the baby isn’t crawling on the floor any more... she would end up with dirty spots on the knees of her clothes. Ya don’t think that didn’t drive me batty? (That was even after mommy sweeping and cleaning the floors on a daily basis.)
I can’t believe I’m admitting that to everyone, but it’s true.

The reason I bring it up is because I find it meandering over to my blog… I look around at all these awesome blogs and think am I measuring up…I could be doing this or I could be doing that to improve it. Anyone who’s looked upon my little slice of heaven can attest that I‘ve changed the layout, color scheme and content about 50 million times since it began.

When I’m not altering the set-up of the blog I actually write. I’m thinking maybe I should just be doing some more of that, and then I might be able to write more than once a week. I have no idea how some you write every day!

Screaming Mimis

And this is what I did on my mini mom-cation (the baby is asleep and the rest of the family is at the movies)...anyways, on to the post....

Uh huh… the older kids thought it was funny to yell at the baby any time she would yell because every time they’d do it…she would copy them. That was until yesterday! We were driving to the shoe store and Target and they got it in their heads that if the baby was yelling in the store that mommy wouldn’t want to stay very long. Well, they got what they wanted, but they didn’t stop to consider that they wouldn’t be very happy with the outcome either! (The oldest tried to bail and go to Starbucks…I was like oh hell no….you started it, you can deal with the outcome with everyone else)

All I kept thinking as we were walking through the store was: OMG, I’m one of those moms with one of those children that everyone looks at and shakes their heads.

Needless to say....they won't  be yelling at the baby again any time soon! (So maybe this little outing from hell was worth it)

What I’ve gradually come to discover over the last couple days is that my little darling (who likes to do EVERYTHING early) has decided to grace us with the terrible two’s early. Joy…joy.

I’ve been so excited every time Hailey would do her milestones early; however, this is one I could do without…. Please, for all that is holy let this be a very short phase in our lives! J Where oh where has my little angel gone? Just in the last couple days she’s turned into an even bossier and independent little tyrant. How exactly do you reason with a 15 month old…..problem is….YOU DON’T!

Slacker

I know, I know….I’m a slacker! I’m posting this a day later than normal. Who’d have thought that staying home with the baby can be so tiring? I ran my booty off all weekend trying to keep up with her (which would also explain the name of this blog)! She’s become quit the little speed demon (and my husband wondered why I baby proofed the whole downstairs).

Speaking of baby proofing; just today Hailey ran into the dining room and came back into the kitchen with outlet covers in hand (I think she can get those puppies out faster than I can). She’s been able to get them out for a while, but thank goodness she doesn’t normally mess with them. Obviously mommy isn’t allowed to do anything else when she’s up…or she’s looking for trouble in order to get my attention. I mentioned to my friend on the phone what she did and what did little missy do next…she went hunting around the downstairs to find more outlet covers to pull! I’m thinking it’s probably time to just take the ineffective outlet covers out. I would love to be able to put these expensive ones throughout the house, but with my luck she'd figure those out too!

On a brighter note, I think little bit is going to have a green thumb like her mommy…we went and got flowers for the flower pots by the front door and planted them on Saturday. She loved playing with the dirt and flower pots…the only problem was…she kept wanting to take the flowers back out! It’s so cute, every time I turn around she wants to go outside and look at the flowers. Just wait till mommy gets really motivated to work on those flower beds and then she’ll have all kinds of pretty flowers to look at!

Angry Eyes

All I have to say after today’s match is arrrggghhhh! I love playing tennis and we have a REALLY great group of girls that play together, but sometimes I just want to pull my hair out! My partner and I played a really long and great match today (3 sets and a tie-breaker). At one point all we needed was one more point to win the game…but noooooooooooooo!

I haven’t even gotten to the part that is making me so angry yet. The other team on NUMEROUS occasions cheated with blatant bad line calls. The first couple of times I gave them the benefit of the doubt but after I specifically went to them and complained (in a nice way… I promise) they continued on for the rest of the match doing the same thing. The problem lies that in recreational tennis you rely on honesty and integrity because we play by the honor system. This wasn’t the first time that I’ve come across this in my years of playing. I just think it’s sad that so many people think its ok to cheat.

I refuse to stoop to a cheaters level and do bad calls just to even the score. It’s not really winning if you have to cheat to do it! I appreciate the outlet to vent and all of you who read this….I feel somewhat better. Oh yeah, we ended up losing after all that....so I was deffinately wearing my angry eyes!

I'm WHAT?

I never thought I’d be here again; heck I was almost done raising my kids! The older kids were 17 and 19 when I found out I was pregnant with Hailey. So it had been a very LONG time since I had been pregnant. (With our combined family we have a 9, 11, 17 and 19 year old.) Our newest addition officially made us the Brady Bunch.

The pregnancy, birth and so far her first year has been like doing it for the first time all over again. It’s amazing how differently you see things as a 40-something as opposed to a 20-something! It’s amazing all the little things you forget that you swore to yourself you never would. Of course all the medical things were way easier and not as scary (I worked in critical care pediatrics for 10 years before I had Hailey and with adults for years before that) but there were so many new gadgets that they didn’t have when the older kids were little. Thank god I have friends that have little ones not much older than Hailey! People automatically assume you know everything when you have kids…especially if you work in Pediatrics! Ok, I’m raising my hand saying….I don’t know it all and am still a mom-in-progress…