Hello?!?!?!?!?!??

Is anyone there? Does anyone ever even check here anymore? There's cobwebs in the corner of this poor blog, it's so neglected. Someone's going to call WPS (Weblog Protective Services) on me. I suck. I know this about myself and I TRY, but to be honest, this holiday season was SO crazy I was just too busy and too tired to blog. I should have, though, because then you, my adoring public, could have oohed and aahed over the DARLING and AMAZING things I made this Christmas season!! And Halloween and Thanksgiving, too, for that matter!!

Thanksgiving outfits:


Christmas skirts:


Quilt for my mother:


Also managed a bunch of little pillows for the girls' school, and I'm trying to get started on the supercool class pillows for the school auction in February. I'll try to do better about posting. But I'm not making any promises.

What not to wear..... Wings over Houston edition....

So we went to the air show this weekend. Prince Charming has been campaigning to go to this for YEARS now, so we finally went. After my fifth "Why the HECK would someone wear that to an air show!?" the thought struck me that I should take pictures for my adoring public to enjoy. (Ok, ok, so for Lara. And maybe Hayley :) And my loopie buddies :) Not sure anyone else actually reads this.)

Exhibit A:

Not sure you can see clearly, but Miss Thang has on 4 inch espadrille platform wedges with the ribbons that lace up her legs. This was at like 10:00 AM and she was already limping. NOT the smartest thing to wear to an air show.

Exhibit B:


A slinky sundress and heels? REALLY? I mean, REALLY? It's like 90 degrees outside and we're going to walk and sweat and be all stinky in an hour. Everyone else is wearing blue jeans or shorts and t shirts and flip flops. When you were thinking about what to wear this morning, THIS is the outfit that struck you as ideal? Really?

I pondered the ridiculousness (ridiculosity? Ridiculity? Help me here, teachers!) of this for approximately a minute, and THEN I saw the Air Force guy she was "asking questions about the aircraft" to....
Oh, sweetie. You're forgiven :)

And the t-shirts..... My number one was almost a (read dripping with sarcasm) REALLY attractive and cleancut guy who had on a shirt that said "I'm not a gynecologist, but I'll take a look." I threw up a little in my mouth because of that shirt. I couldn't figure out a way to take his picture of him without him noticing, and I didn't want him to realize he was the object of my attention, so I was bummed. And then I saw this guy (cover the kids' eyes)....
LOVELY. And don't you know she's as proud as she can be of her man? Ick. At a family air show! I swear, some people just shouldn't be allowed to buy their own clothing.

We also went to a family wedding down in Houston and on the way home today I stopped at IKEA for the first time ever, but THAT'S a whole 'nuther post. Maybe tomorrow. ;)

Shiny fingernails!

::::::::polishing fingernails on shirt:::::::::::
Yep, I've got them! And a bruise on my back from where I've been patting myself ;) I'm proud because I made a dress FROM A PATTERN! Those of you who know me well know that I SO do not use patterns. They skeeve me out. I think they're always so much more complicated than they should be. But I wanted a specific dress for the girls to wear for sister pics on Thursday, and found some material I like, so off I went to cutting out a pattern. It's one my mom had bought and cut me a copy of in both of the girls' sizes. Well, I neglected to get the DIRECTIONS on how to sew the dress together. Of course, those of you who know me well also know exactly what I said at the point I figured this out. (no, not THAT.....) I said "how hard could this BE?". (So I've never claimed to be a genius!) I'm happy to say that after only four phone calls to my mom and one to my sewing guru friend Neile, VOILA!!!!!!!!

It still needs to be hemmed and have buttonholes put in, but I'll do that tomorrow! What do you think? Now to make it in a size 2, lol! By Thursday! I have to sneak in a gypsy skirt for HRH's individual pictures on Wednesday, too, but those only take about 20 minutes, so that's a no-brainer.

A shoutout and I was tagged!

My very dear longtime friend Angela sent me this DARLING banner for the top of my blog!! How precious is that!? Thank you SO much, Ang! I am so grateful, as I have absolutely NO talent for that sort of thing!

And she also tagged me.....

Here are the rules:

1. Open your pictures folder.
2. Go to the sixth folder.
3. Open the sixth picture.
4. Import into your blog and tell the story.

So here's the photo:
Look at my babies!!! This is from September of 06, so the Hurricane was more of a Tropical Depression at that point in time ;) She was 5 months old and HRH was 2 years and 5 months old. This was back when they were both still full time sleeping with us every night. As little as that bed felt those nights (we only have room for a queen in our long narrow bedroom), I sure do miss those days! I just love how Lu has her arms wrapped around HRH's arm and her face smashed up against her. My sweet little babies! I can't believe that Lu is as old now as HRH was in that picture! That doesn't seem real!

My turn for tagging people! I usually tag my loopie email friends, but I'm going to shake it up a bit now and tag Lara and one of the coolest teachers from the girls' school Hayley. :)

RECHARGE!!!!

OK, so we've been feeling a little harried and crazy around here lately. It's HARD having two in preschool, making lunches, making sure they have something adorable to wear every day, making sure they have non-flip flops to wear, convincing the Hurricane that if she wants to wear big girl panties to school then she has to start going poopoo in the potty and that dumping poo from her panties into the potty herself isn't sufficient, just waking up on Tuesday through Thursday in time to do everything. And we only live about 2 miles from the school, lol! I can't imagine how fun this will all be when we finally build and move! Anyway, we were needing a family recharge. It's Prince Charming's fall vacation week, and the girls were begging for just two things. To ride on a big airplane like Daddy flies, and to go swimming at the beach. My requirement was a short flight, family friendly place to stay, and booze. Prince Charming went to work and next thing I knew, he had booked us a long weekend in Cancun! LOVE him! We rode down there on vacation passes, which means standby, and it's not really easy to get to Cancun on standby, but we made it. The girls were FABULOUS at the airport waiting through several full flights to finally get on a plane. People movers, people. Best inventions EVER! I think we rode back and forth and back and forth no less than a hundred times. I had a bag full of tricks from the Dollar Tree and gave them the LAST one as we boarded our flight. They both did beautifully. HRH's ears hurt her a little as we were landing, but we made them pop (she says crack) by opening her mouth BIG to see how many tacos she could fit in it at once. A shuttle to the resort and within 30 minutes, Prince Charming decided we needed to stay one more night, so he took care of that while the girls and I stood on our porch and looked at the ocean, which was literally 50 feet or so away.



So we had four days and nights of swimming, beach time, nachos, theme shows, a ferry ride over to Isla Mujeres..........


Isla Mujeres is amazing. The water is so blue that it seriously looks like someone dumped food coloring in it. We didn't take a tour or anything, just rode the little local ferry and stepped onto the island with no plan. SO fun. We rented a golf cart and puttered all around the island.... there is a sea turtle farm that is so much fun! The girls got to pet sea turtles and sharks and the people are SO nice. They treated the girls like little princesses everywhere we went. We drove around while the girls took a nap on our shoulders and just admired the beauty of the island, then found a hole-in-the-wall cafe and had the best meal of our trip. Two shrimp tacos, six cheese quesadillas, four beers, two bottles of water..... less than $20! Can you tell how relaxed and happy we are?


The night before we came home, HRH went to bed saying "I want to stay here forever all my life" and in the airport back in Houston waiting to go through customs there were several amused looks from people listening to the girls begging to go "BACK TO MEXICO!!!" HRH has been browsing through the Continental Airlines magazine, asking about where certain pictures were taken, and has decided that she wants to go to Vegas now. :) I told her to give me a few months to catch up on laundry and stuff first!

The Hurricane, the SEQUEL?!?!?

After witnessing an exchange between my little Hurricane and our cable guy last night while he was dropping off a new remote (at 7:30 no less! Yay for Suddenlink!.... and by exchange I mean that the Hurricane kept jumping in between our cable guy and Prince Charming while they were discussing remote controls and yelling "hey, SIR! I a pincess! I Awiel! Tister is Seeping Booty. I Cinnerella! Tister Tow Wite! I pwetty! Watch me dance like-a-rella! I a Cheetah Girl! I Aqua. Tister Dowinda and Mommy is Chanel!". :::::sighs::::: At least she said "sir", right?) and realizing how many people say that she acts JUST like me (Okay, okay, it was mainly my mom, and mainly when the Hurricane was in Category 3 or higher mode), the thought occurs to me that I should send my mother flowers fairly often. Okay, really I thought I should send her Vodka and Xanax, but I don't think I can really do the Xanax bit, and the vodka alone would just be sad, right?

On a brighter note, this kid is so freaking smart! She knows all of her colors, has sung her ABCs for over a year now, has been able to spell her name for about that long, too, can count to like 16, knows 0,1,2, and 5 by sight (I still can't figure out how she learned that one), can count to 10 in Spanish, is peepee potty trained (we're working on the other bit), and has a memory like an elephant (they're the ones with good memories, right?). She's also one of the MOST flipping adorable children I have ever seen, has joy radiating from her pores (most of the time :X) and has has the sweetest little voice. I could listen to her talk all day long. Most days. Who am I kidding, that IS what I do most days, lol!!

Well, if you're a semi-regular reader, (or have read more than once or twice) you know that you can never trust me if I say I'm going to blog "tomorrow". Here in JuliLand, "tomorrow" means sometime after I've slept. I never say how many TIMES I will have slept, lol! To be honest, I COULD have blogged, but I'm known as something of a procrastination queen, and I instead chose to make a nap mat cover for someone at the girls' preschool, do some embroidery, make my very first brisquet ever, blow up the bouncy house and let the girls have some friends over to jump, buy some Halloween fabric, plan some FABULOUS H'ween skirts and dresses for the girls and a few kids I sew for, and be online searching for a new dining room table and chairs that will eventually be my breakfast nook, and trying to figure out something to blog about. No wonder I'm tired!

DWTS, I won't do a HUGE recap, but let me just say that it looks like a fun season! The girls are excited about "Jake Ryan" from Hannah Montana being on there, and HRH thinks that Misty May-Treanor looks "kinda like my teacher!" LOL! DH thinks Misty May-Treanor is pretty, and I think MAKS is pretty, so we're all pretty thrilled around here. Although, I will say that I'm a little irked that they're allowing curse words on it. I'm no saint, and I'm no prude, but it was nice to have a show we could watch together without having to worry about crap like that. Eh, well, I guess we'll just have to say "you can't say that" when we hear bad words, but it still irks me.

Exercising, for anyone following my saga, lol. Prince Charming got me back to the Y this week. I reminded him that LTG wants me to just do the treadmill or elliptical, yet he managed to sweet talk me into some weight machines. Damn those gorgeous eyes of his @@. So ever my biggest cheerleader, he conned me into doing WAY more than I should have done and NOW I'm sore. I'm not sure what muscles are sore, they're in between my collarbone and my armpit. NOT a fun muscle to have sore. (I thought I had heartburn or something, I didn't know WHAT the heck was going on. Stop laughing, Lara.). Then the NEXT day, he had the nerve to get me BACK to the weight machines again. (I know, I know, it's technically MY fault, but I don't really do technicallys) After one too many "work THROUGH the pain"s, I convinced him I was done (and I'm sure it had NOTHING to do with the mathematical equation I was forming aloud that correlated the length of time I had to do those cotton-picking exercises to the length of time until he would see his wife naked again, right?) and we stopped and all was right with the world again, lol.

I'm in a blogging funk. What should I talk about?

p.s.- I realize the ridiculousness of me complaining about the language on DWTS right before I'm cussing about my husband's bedroom eyes, but it's MY blog so get over it ;)