What am I all about?

i've done some searching today, and for the life of me i can't find any site that explains the "rules" of blogging. what are the grammar requirements? how long or short should a blog be?? what can you post?? what should you post?? do you know if you are "blogworthy"?

in no order, here are some insights into me & my blogging. (but for those who know me the first should come at no surprise)

i was NOT a english major in school, nor did well in the required grammar class i took; i barely scraped by with a 70. my blogging will reflect that. if you are a grammar whiz, un-bookmark my blog - i promise i'll disappoint you.

a big reason i blog is to get out feelings my three year-old and my almost two year-old just can't understand. most days they are the only two people i talk to, and not to slight them, but they just don't get what i'm saying sometimes. forgive me (not really) if i do post something i'm feeling that day about losing my only sibling, my brother (50 days ago today). honestly i'm pretty messed up about it, so i us MY online diary to express myself.

i may post twenty random thoughts without one of them being funny. and if they happen to be funny, kudos to the way i typed it out, because most of the time nothing i post is intended to make you laugh. i don't post to be funny - if you only want to read posts that make you laugh, don't expect my blog to fulfill you in that way.

also, i'm not trying to impress anyone - even my fellow bloggers on my links list. i'm certainly not trying to lure others in to reading my blog with my creative writing skills - i ain't got any. i know after a while, my "link friends" will stop reading & commenting. one day our blogging fun will end, and i'm cool with that. in reality, i blog to procrastinate my time away. the time i spend blogging should in reality be spent on cleaning my house, or spending time with my kids. so in other words, i know someday my blogging will stop abruptly - probably when i kick out this third kid.... i'm not posting to have lots of people i don't know read my blog. if i bore you, let this be the last post you read. but honestly, i don't think i've lost my audience - stacy and bufkin are still reading....

another thought on how long someone reads a blog/has a blog. a few years ago, about 15 girls from the BSU years of 1993-1997 participated in a yahoo group. we loved the group. we had tons of interesting conversations. well, sadly, members of the group stopped posting and it died. may p31ladies rest in peace. we are joyful though - most of the girls who were a part of p31ladies blog now!!!!

so, here's what i believe blogs should be about: any darn thing you want it to be about. please blog about things that are not funny, grammatically incorrect or just plain dumb. tell me about the things you are struggling about in your walk with the Lord - because trust me, i'm going to tell you. tell me about the stupid kids who live next door to you & how fun it is to be a homeowner. tell me about how ticked off you are your car is a broke-down mess. or, tell me how exciting it is to watch your six month-old get up on all fours and rock back and forth. know that i'm there with you; i've been in the working world and know how stupid people are; i've had a car i wish i could have traded in - and odds are i've just finished cleaning up poop that leaked out of ethan's diaper, or have just sneaked in to watch my kids peacefully sleep.

so anyway, there are no rules i've found. blog away about what you are all about.

Sunday smells

after taking a six month or so break from cooking, i've finally gotten back into the kitchen. i have prepared a wonderful lunch of slow-cooked roast, potatoes, carrots and fresh green beans - and of course, sweet tea. i forgot to get bread, but i normally do that anyway, so i guess things are getting back to normal. it soooo smells like sunday in our house!!

Why buy toys??

well, about a week or so ago emily and ethan watched a blue's clues episode where steve interacted with a sock puppet. emily thought the sock "pocket" was hilarious, but ethan was totally afraid of it. i guess when emily chases him around the house with a sock on her hand trying to talk to him it freaked him out a little. anyway, that's all changed. ethan is now obsessed with sock "puppies" - all day long he brings me socks to put on his hands, and sometimes, mine. last night he had socks on both hands and would not let dan take them off, so he went to bed with them on. dan had to trick him this morning to get him to take one off so he could eat his breakfast. now, he and emily have socks on both hands, and emily has two pair of socks on her feet because she is "skating." why do we even buy toys?? we should just invest in a bunch of empty boxes, packing peanuts and socks. evidently all of the above are cheaper and keep a kid busier than any toy out there!

Women in Crisis

i survived the week of extra kids! i did decide i would not be working at MDO until after we sell the house and move. i need to take advantage of every opportunity.

tonight i found myself blubbering like an idiot listening to the radio. our local christian radio station, KSBJ, is hosting "the world's largest baby shower" - i'm sure it's not the largest. anyway. for about 5 years now KSBJ has been partnering with our local Crisis Pregnancy Centers collecting things they need. i got in the car in the middle of one of their updates and caught the last of a story about a 16 year-old girl. she came in to one of the centers last week to get counseling - she thought her only option was to abort. she was terrified to tell her parents she was pregnant. anyway, she had an ultrasound at the center, and right then and there decided to keep her baby. and even better, after the volunteer shared Christ with her, she accepted Jesus. i started crying right there. it was so neat to hear about what their ministry really does. their not just about collecting cribs, diapers etc. but they really care about the girls and their hearts.

listening to that story brought me back to being pregnant with ethan. when i was about 6 months pregnant i began noticing this girl, i'd say between 14 and 16 in the OB office. every time i saw her i would try not to really look at her - but it was hard, she was the only young girl in the office waiting. the rest of us had our husbands (or whatever) with us for support, but she had her mom. who knows if the father of the baby was still with her, but i always wished for him to be there. even though her mom was there with her she looked scared to death. i kept thinking about delivering emily, and how tough that was - how was this tiny little girl going to handle delivery and being a mom?? i was 32 at the time and sometimes i could barely make it. i prayed for that girl for a while. i'm glad she was there - whether it was to be a mom to her child, or to deliver and give another family a child.

what a miracle conception, pregnancy and birth is. as i type, i can feel a life kicking around in my body. sometimes i don't even notice it, but tonight i will. my prayer right now is for scared girls all over the houston area who have lives growing in their bodies. i pray God would give them hope and courage and lead them to a CPC to hear about Christ and the plans He has for them, and their babies.

Kids everywhere!

this week it seems i'm running a day care. monday a neighbor called at 9:30 to see if i could watch their two girls until around 2:30. fun. it really was not too bad, the girls are 4 and 3 & emily's loves to play with them. but monday night another friend asked if i would watch her kid; tomorrow i'll be a sub at emily and ethan's MDO working in the two's!! by the end of the week i'll be crazy!

Cracked Pots

i am an imperfect vessel. tonight i joined a group of ladies at my church who are otherwise known as "cracked pots" - we are starting a beth moore Bible study called Breaking Free. i'm sure many of you have heard of it & many of you have probably completed the study. honestly, i only decided to go because two of my closest friends were - you know me, i'm such the non-joiner...anyway. i did not have a real understanding of the theme, but i guess God did! :) good thing i am clueless - i would have never gone!

if you don't know much about it, the theme mostly deals with breaking strongholds in your life. i'm glad to be doing the study now. i definitely need to be broken down in certain areas of my christian life. it's no secret i'm pretty mad at God these days. so in that regard my stronghold would be my way of thinking i can deal with things on my own. does that count as a stronghold?? well, i'll consider it one because i'm choking right now. my anger toward God affects every area of my walk. the way i deal with that anger is to push Him out and deal with things on my own. in my heart i know God did not "take" my brother from me, just like he did not "take" my father-in-law from dan, but man it feels like it. so here's to the first day i really deal with my grief over losing my loved ones, hopefully i'll be receptive to the Holy Spirit and learn to break free.

I learn something new everyday

things i learned saturday night:

i shouldn't pay so much for free parking.
oprah's reps will probably be calling bufkin soon.
if you laugh really hard, you can bump your head on a wall.
deborah has accomplished a great laundry feat.
linda is a flying ace.
the goings on of one woman shall remain a mystery.
stacy does not wink when it comes to camp fires.
jennifer has another thing, but i can't remember it, so i'll just say she's having a boy.
shandra has a hard time with turning lanes.

all in all i'd have to say i'm most impressed with what deborah has accomplished since 2000. you are an inspiration to married women everywhere. (insert inspirational music here)

i had a great time, ladies, thanks for the laughs.

Moving on

well, it's finally january. yipee! this weekend will be the weekend dan and i are going to seriously begin prepping our house to be put on the market. there's not a ton to be done, just some touch up painting and a couple of other projects. mainly we need to clean out closets and the garage - YUCK! the closets won't be too much of an ordeal, but man, the garage is a wreck. dan uses half of the garage as his woodshop so it has all his tools, wookworking equipment, etc. i have a lot of things to pack up in the house to make it more buyer-friendly, but where are we going to put all the boxes?? the garage! oh well - i guess i'll have to start parking in the driveway. i hate that. we also need to do some yard work. neither of us really care a ton about landscaping so we don't have anything blooming other than the mexican heather that's in a bed. speaking of mexican heather - it grows out of control with no maintenance! i wish we had more of it. so anyway, we need to spruce up the yard and get some curb appeal.

houses in our neighborhood usually only stay on the market a month or less. one down the street from us sold in 4 days earlier last year. i read on the chron.com this morning housing sale prices in houston are up which is good and bad for us. both since we are looking and selling - but hopefully we can be smart about our purchase. i've been tough on the houses we have looked at. things like paint color, fixtures and appliances are pretty much deal breakers for me. dan gets so frustrated telling me to ignore those things, but hey, i want a house that is move in ready. i don't want to think about having to replace things. so anyway!! the fun begins!

Are you Lost?

i finally figured out how to turn on the silly title bar. so are you lost?? i totally am. i only watch two dramas and lost is one of them. i think the creator of lost is also the creator of alias - i'm not an alias fan; in fact, i've not watched one episode. alias and 24 premiered about the same season and we chose 24. watching both would have just been too intense. anyway.

so i got home late last night (as i always do on wednesdays) & dan recorded lost for me. i dilly-dallied around until a little after 9 to sit down and watch it - if i had any idea there was an hour "special" before it i would have skipped that. i'm a fan - there was no need for me to catch up! anyway.

last night viewers finally got a glimpse at the "thing" that's on the island. but is the thing the same for everyone?? i don't think so. i think the thing came to mr. eko in the shape of a demon, since he was dealing with his demons. also, when locke saw the monster last season he said it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. that thing mr. eko saw was in no way "beautiful" - so i guess i'm on board with locke. they are all there on the island to correct wrongs in their lives, or something like that. maybe they are all there to confront their personal demons. just a thought, have eko & locke been "redeemed" now that they have confronted the thing??

on another lost note, i really like the musical score. it's really good. i don't think i've ever really thought some t.v. show's score was good, but i'd like to have some of it on a cd. i also think music touches people when words can't - maybe that's one of the things that hooks people to this show, the music. i try not to pick apart television - after all, it is only entertainment, but it's hard not to with a show that does not give answers. i will say i don't think they are in purgatory as some insist. i won't even go as far as to say the writers/producers make every single detail in the script relate to each other. how can they do that?? so, i'm pretty sure the writers/producers don't give answers to anything to keep viewers tuning in.

so thank you very much, i'm happy being lost.

dan and i had a nice time on our date the other night. we went out to eat and sat at a table for two, not four! that was nice. after eating we drove around a few neighborhoods we are looking at houses in. then to top the night off, we dropped by kroger to pick up a few things. sounds boring, but it was so nice without kids!

i'm still semi-sick. my ears have popped, but no all the way. but it is nice to have some hearing back! dan thought he dodged the bullet, but he woke up this morning with his ears all messed up. i hope his ailment does not last as long as mine has!

generally, i'm not real superstitious. the most i go into all that is to pick a penny up and hope for good luck that day. but when it comes to pregnancy myths (old wives tales) for some reason i'm totally into that. for the most part all of the ones i think i've experienced have been true. well, not all - i had terrible indigestion with emily and ethan but neither one of them were born with tons of hair.

anyway, all that to say (as i shout) I'M HAVING A BOY!!! i would have bet the farm on having another girl. i'm 5 1/2 months pregnant and still struggling with vomiting and nausea! i've always heard girls make their moms sick because of the extra hormones. i was sick with emily for several months and not sick with ethan so i was so sure i was having a girl!! when the tech asked us if we wanted to know we said sure - thinking we already knew and she would just confirm it for us. well she just pointed to it and i was like - oh my it's a boy - and there is no denying it! well the shock has not worn off, but it will. we are excited either way, but emily on the other hand is crushed. we sat them down (like ethan knew what was going on..) and told them we went to the doctor and we found out mommy was carrying a baby brother. emily quickly said "SISTER"!!! she's not happy. even a day later i tried to pump it up and get her excited about another brother, but no luck. i guess she'll warm up to it. now i guess i can sell/give away her clothes. for a couple of years i had a serious gymboree addiction - nearly all her clothes from newborn to 3t are gymboree...what a sucker i am/was!!

we'll probably have one of his names be christopher. hopefully we can find another "e" first name, but i doubt it. i really like emory or eric but of course dan does not - so i guess we'll just discuss it for the rest of the pregnancy and see who the victor is!

also, he was a very photogenic baby - we got lots of good pictures, so i posted a couple!!

whoo hoo! dan and i are going on a date tonight. a friend from church out of the blue asked if she could come over and watch the kids so we could have a break. her husband is on a trip with one of his religion classes to the Holy Land, and i think she's bored. anyway, it was an offer we could not refuse. it'll be an interesting time since my ears are still plugged up. if we go out to eat i'll have to read his lips - with all that background noise i'm sure i'll be totally deaf.

going out is a treat for us. we have not sprung for a paid babysitter since i was pregnant with ethan. why you ask? in a nutshell, money. when it's all said and done we've spent way too much money to do it a lot, so we really try to trade off watching other friend's kids, and really, we've not done that a lot. all bets are off when you have a baby that nurses and refuses to take a bottle - emily started us on our "going out alone" fast.

i know it's foreign to some couples not going out. i was a nanny for two boys for six years and that couple had noooo problem leaving me with their kids. the first time they left town after the second boy was born was when he was 3 weeks old!! i was not too worried, they had another nanny that was solely responsible for brice until he slept through the night. man, what a gig that must have been for that woman. teaching somebody else's kid to sleep through the night. i'm sure she was paid well. i do remember thinking that one day when i did have kids they would not love their babysitter as much as they loved me. but on the bright side, i made a ton of money. so much that, if ron ever wants to run for public office i was told to deny ever setting foot on erie drive - you know, i was paid in cash. ANYWAY.

we do see movies, but since we've discovered the free movies at the library we just wait for the ones we want to see to come to dvd and check them out. grant it, the wait is usually about 6 months, but oh well. sometimes we'll spring for the kroger rental movies - you know, the movie box outside the check-out stands. but that's only if we REALLY want to see something. but the downside of watching anything is i'm normally asleep by 8:30 or 9 so dan has to tell me how the movie ends...i have not been a fun date in a while.

i don't even really miss going out. i'm sure when our kids are older we'll start to go out and see movies and eat alone. but here i am, pregnant again and thinking we only have a few more precious weeks to go out and do anything. but i'm sure we'll not get around to it. by the time we want to do something my blood pressure will be so high i'll be on couch rest.

oh the joys of raising kids with no grandparents around.

okay. so today will be totally random. get ready.

ethan got a FurReal friends, Scamps My Playful Pup for christmas. if you have not seen the commercials, it's a dog that you can call commands out to and it responds by doing that command. ethan loves it - but frankly, i'm a little scared of it. the whole concept of an electronic pet is just too bizarre for me. ethan cannot speak "real" english, but yet it responds to him. when he plays with it he gets on the floor and looks in the face and says "puppy!" - and then the dog moves his head around and wags it's tail. "puppy" is not a command...i think the thing is possessed. and realize, too, not everyone can understand a 21 month old's version of words. again, another reason i think the dog is possessed.

emily is obsessed with watching a dvd dan burned with video of her and ethan. if we'd let her, she'd watch it 24/7. i hope she likes it - we could not fill a dvd with video from last year, we hardly took any!!!

warning: skip the next two paragraphs if you don't want to read about the icky things i'm dwelling on today.

yesterday i got a copy of my brother's accident report. i was prepared to read it - i wanted too. anyway, i got past the first two pages fine - mostly those pages dealt with the officer filling in the blanks on what part of the vehicle was damaged, road conditions, etc. the most comforting thing i got from reading it was the coroner's observation/opinion at the scene. he said chris most likely died on impact of ejection. i wanted to know that - but in no way did i want to know that by reading a graphic coroner's report. so i guess that makes me feel okay, knowing he did not suffer when the other truck struck and dragged (or drug?? bufkin, correct me in your head). i'm still struggling with making sense of it all. not that i want to do anything with the information, but the man's name and birthdate was in the report - the guy that hit him. he left the scene after it happened. that sorta irked me, but anyway.

i wish i could get the vision out of my head of him flipping his suv, going off the road, flying through the air and knowing he was possibly about to die. i'm really messed up about what people are thinking about when they know, or have a feeling, they are about to die. i struggled with it a lot when dan's dad died, and i've never really gotten it straight since. i only know if someday i'm in a dire situation, i know i'll be so upset knowing i'll never see my husband again, or live to watch my kids grow up - but i guess that'll only be if i have a long time to think about things, not dying suddenly. how depressing you say?? well, today i guess it's just a day for me to have a pity party and be sad. i go for a few days not even thinking about it, and then one day it's like a tidal wave of emotion. pardon my language, but i'm just pissed all this happened to him and i feel terrible for my mom. so anyway.

i thank God for my kids today. they are happy and relatively healthy and they fill my heart with pure joy. same feelings for the third one - even if sometimes he/she makes me vomit.

well, it's confirmed. emily has an ear infection as well. we took her in this afternoon (i had to have dan with me. i can't control both of them in a confined space!!) to get her ears checked out. we pretty much knew what the verdict would be - her ears, after all, were draining. i thought the whole reasoning behind getting the tubes put in was to prevent ear infections?? oh well. now emily will have her turn with medicine. she's not going to like it very much though; no pink stuff for her - she gets the nasty chalky white stuff. yikes. we used to have to put a little applesauce in the dropper to even get her to take it. i think she's wise to that though....

i get my turn at the doctor again tomorrow. my ears have not healed!! i'm praying for the tablet form of whatever antibiotic he'll prescribe...i'm not as good with medicine as my children! i'll be so glad to be able to sleep at night and to be able to hear again.

i you happen to hear an explosion, we fire bombed the house. there's something wicked loose in here!!! if i see another pink eye or snotty nose i'm going to lose it. i'm soooo looking forward to MDO starting again!

and for those who know Cara Hanchey Von Tress - she, David & big brothers Jacob and Joel welcomed their third child yesterday. a girl, Anna Celia was born via c-section at 10:03 and weighed 6 15 and was 19 inches long. if i'd of thought about it i would have asked her if i could post a pic when i talked to her today, but i didn't so i won't! she's a cutie though!

for stacy: yes, dan took ethan to the doctor, and YES he had a double ear infection. and i'll see what i can do to fix your link! thanks for the relay from jessica.

so anyway, we had a lot of post-christmas fun. dan's mom came for a visit last monday and stayed until thursday - she had a really nice visit. then on thursday we all made the trip to baton rouge to celebrate christmas with dan's brother, sister/husband, nephews and his extended family (a.k.a. the annual McNeal Christmas Party). the trip to BR was fun for the kids - they love getting to play with their cousins and see mae mae and uncle david. ethan was feeling a little bad because of his ears, but he would perk up every now and then.

emily and ethan's first cousins

emily's favorite new hat - crocheted for her by great-great aunt bootsie

i did not have such a great time in BR. i had a cold before we left that turned nasty once we got there. my ears stopped up and started to hurt like crazy. i took some over the counter stuff, but never really got any relief. i went to the doctor today only to find out i have a double ear infection!!!! how odd is that? i've never heard of an adult getting ear infections. i can sympathize with ethan now - and i totally understand why he can't sleep at night. i did get some nice pain medicine to get me through - at least i will be able to sleep tonight.