About the Video

Once in a while I am inspired to make a movie.  My haircut was one of those inspirations.  If you know my relationship with my hair then you understand.  It has been a rocky road for us.  I do feel more like myself now than I have for the past few years.  As my stylist cut away inches I could see myself return..... Melodramatic? Yes.  True?  Yes.  The movie will stay up for a week or so and then I will remove it so postings look normal--- cannot figure out how to embed the movie clip into a post.  It does not show up on mobile devices.  IPad and computers will play it. 
love and hugs, B

Spring Planting

I love spring planting.  Sunday I worked on vegetables.  I am not ready to work on planting shrubs in landscape beds yet since the Alabama summer is guaranteed to be hard on newly planted items.  We had a bed lying fallow so I decided it was a sunny, but protected enough place to try our hand at a few veggies.  Here is the before pic of one side of the bed (you know I never remember to take blog pics until I am already involved in a project).

Next laying out the veggies where they should be so nothing too tall is against the sprinklers and so in the end it looks pretty.  I have a thing about organized veggies.

The completed (for now) veggie bed.  The kids are trying to get some pumpkin and watermelon seeds to sprout to add to the mix. 

Can't wait until this little guy is giving us scrumptious tomatoes.  Finger crossed for good growing. 

Here are some of my flower pots that I have been working on over the last few weeks. 

Happy Spring!  love and hugs, B

Our First Alabama Family Adventure!

I have never claimed to be a big football (or any sport) fan, but even I had fun when we went to A-Day on Saturday for our first Alabama adventure.  The University of
Alabama won the national championship in college football last year.  The stadium is huge.  The fans are rabid. Football is not just a fall sport in this state, it year round through commentary, radio shows, spring training, recruiting, pre-season games, and then the "real season".  The boys were interested on the way there and had lots of questions we could not answer about what it would be like.   Here they are watching everyone get ready for the scrimmage game.






Here are each of the boys with the field behind them-- great shots if I do say so myself.

 Two of the boys who were not having any fun-- you can tell from the looks on their faces they are so sad;  nearly in tears from the torture of watching the game and eating and eating and eating.

I would say that our first Alabama adventure was a great success.  love and hugs, B

Medical Alert M

Relax. There is no new trauma to poor M right now. I just thought it would be funny/tragic to do a total review of M's health history. You might get some insight as to why I try to know where the nearest medical facility is at all times. While the poor thing has not had any permanant damage or serious illness the illness just seems to keep coming with him.
0 to 1 year: the usual ear infections but with minor allergic reaction to one antibiotic and was born with a deformity of the genitals requiring surgery at 6 months (under general anesthesia) and one round of bronchitis.
1 to 2: ear infection (immediately after we arrived in Gig Harbor so I had to do the hurry up and find a doctor), strep (don't believe the doctor when they say children under 2 are too young to get strep) and ear infection again.
2 - 3: a very quiet year for M medically speaking-- of course we know he is saving up to end the year with a bang. Stomach virus and allergy things begin. Right before he turns three his femur is broken and he begins 10 weeks in a body cast.
3 -4: Begin the year in the body cast, we then relearn crawling, walking, and then work to get the foot straightened out the right way. Once he can stand and walk we decide to begin potty training in earnest, but fate deals us another cruel blow with mononucleosis-- the teenage kissing disease-- in a 3 year old. He is so young that a blood test won't accurately register it but we know it is because after a few days of a sore throat and narcoleptic-type sleep habits his throat shows the full blown signs. One month after mono we have strep. And then a couple months later we had strep again. And then again.
4-5: one round of strep. Figured out that his allergies to dogs are not going to be casual. Oh yes, we can't forget Lyme disease from a tick bite; caught it early so he did 3 weeks of antibiotics and didn't show any after effects. fall allergies.
5 - 6: We are nearly halfway through this year. He is SUFFERING with allergies to something here in Alabama and is on multiple things and had a allergy induced asthma attack while out of town with D a couple weekends ago. And we just added glasses to his record-- no telling how many times those will be broken. All in all this year has been too quiet-- he hasn't had anything bizarre or not age appropriate. We don't even knock on wood anymore to try to keep the bad health luck away from him-- it's coming and we know it.  So that is a wrap up of M's medical history. Perhaps we have a little doctor in the making. Perhaps we will be flagged by all medical insurance as uninsurable from this point.
love and hugs, B

A Little Housekeeping

I am sure I have mentioned somewhere along the line that my goal for my home is making every space a useful space.  We have had homes with formal rooms that sat empty (unless you count using them to fold laundry).  Formal rooms have no place in our lives right now.  Anyone who comes to visit knows us well enough to know it will be a casual get together where everyone can relax and you don't have to worry about your kids breaking anything because if ours haven't broken it then it can't be broken.   So.. getting to the point... as I unpacked I found I had all these cute jars and things I had saved from jams or gifts or preserves from friends and I thought why am I saving these to collect dust.  But I unpacked them and put them on a shelf to collect dust anyway.  Same with flower vases-- up on a shelf to be pulled down once a year (if they are lucky) to hold flowers.   I began years ago to store my fruit in a bowl on the counter--- cute decoration and the amount of fruit the kids go through is  too much to store in a fridge. Also hate to forget about it on a shelf and have it go to waste.   

I also started keeping sugar and cinnamon sugar in pretty jars on the counter out of necessity-- little bits for cereal and cinnamon sugar for toast and oatmeal.  An everyday item that making it pretty made my "job" a little more fun.                                                                              

 When we moved to Alabama we discovered that the taste of the water is a bit different, not bad just has a little more chlorine than we are used to.  Every place has water that tastes a little off from the previous place.  Problem here is the boys refused to drink it as is and we did not have a water dispenser on the fridge for super cold water.  Enter pretty carafes and lemon water.  When we are very fancy we make lemon cucumber water-- wouldn't think the boys would be crazy about it, but they would drink it all day.  Having lemon sliced all the time led me to a way to use those jars that were collecting dust. 

 Using my pretty jars made me think of alternate uses for other pretty items gathering dust and thus arrived the idea of the orange vase......

 and the grape hurricane glass.

 They both look so pretty in the fridge and are items that the kids can help themselves too anytime.  At the end of the weekend the grapes were down to one little bunch and the clementines were half done.

Those few little changes made my kitchen feel so much prettier and brighten my mood each time I see them.  Pretty and practical.   I am now searching to find other ways of putting objects I love having into everyday use.   love and hugs, B

Easter Weekend 2012

Finally back with a quick post about Easter weekend.  The nicest part for me was spending Friday with just D and M.  We had some paperwork to do at the county courthouse about the house;  that went more quickly than the 5 and a half hour ordeal to get driver's licenses and titles.  We then just went here and there with no real agenda.  The entire weekend was like that.... here and there with no agenda.  Friday afternoon after school a neighbor did a egg hunt for some of the kids-- great fun for the kids and great fun for me to hang out with moms; my main company these days is M and the conversation is a bit weak.  Saturday we did some running and some grilling- YUM!  Kabobs!
Sunday the kids woke to find their Easter baskets and then went to church.  Out for lunch and home for an egg hunt.  Pics follow.  Low key was the plan and that plan worked out just right for us. Hope everyone had a relaxing, fun Easter weekend!  love and hugs, B