Have to brag

It's Friday. On Fridays after school, we try to do something fun, which is USUALLY a trip to Tutti Frutti. However, HRH is still adjusting to the demands on her body and psyche of starting back to school, which means she is also seriously testing the limits of Mommy's patience. Therefore, today, I was less than inclined to sit in "get out of Houston for the weekend" traffic on I-45 coming home from Conroe, and more inclined to try something a little closer to home. We hit the local BBQ joint for Marble Slab ice cream sandwiches (yum!). Little did we know that, due to the wildfires, our local high school football game had been moved from "away" to "home" and we dropped right into a pep rally! We walked in and the girls are "ooooooooooooh, there are CHEERLEADERS here!!!!!" Big Ben's oblivious, as he was trying VERY hard to stick both hands down my v neck shirt right then. We get ice cream, sit down, and one of the GORG cheerleaders comes over and asks the girls if they want their faces painted. Well, DUH.
Then after that, the cheerleaders (who have these FAB huge bows with glitter stripes running down the middle of them that the girls were DYING over so if you know where I can find them, let me know, K?) started warming up and doing some little chants. At this point, the girls were SO focused on them that ice cream was dripping down arms and I didn't even care b/c they looked so cute. And THEN Ben noticed them. The sweet little sweetums was literally staring at these girls with drool running out of his mouth, LOL! (Teething, we'll say). HOW FUN IS THIS!?!?!?!? I love small town living.

We stayed for a couple of cheers, then had to run home b/c Ben was about three shades beyond ready for a little nap. On our way out, the girls saw a sign that said "fire donations here". They asked about it. I told them that I had already gone and donated a couple of times, mainly water from Sam's (did you know that you can get a 32 pack of water for less than $4? That's $20 for 5 HUGE things of water, people.... jump on it and go donate it). As we had already talked about the fires this morning due to all of the smoke around, they are pretty up on what's happening. But what they DIDN'T realize is that there are people out there who have lost everything. Their houses burned down and they don't have anything left. The Hurricane's eyes welled up when she said "even KIDS?!?!?!". And here's where we get to my brag. They are upstairs of their own accord in the playroom, packing a bag or two of toys to take to drop off for kids who have lost everything. We're hitting their closet later, b/c they have so many clothes that it's sinful, and before we drop off at Zach's we'll go to the store and grab a few more things. Here's what my princesses are doing right now :
Again.... don't judge me. It's a PLAYROOM. They PLAY in it and I don't even go up there to look at it. Those playrooms that are totally organized with a place for everything and everything in its place kind of creep me out. What kind of playing goes on in those? Not OUR kind of playing, I'll tell you. We play, we mess, we destroy, but we also GIVE. SO proud of my beautiful (inside AND out) girls :*)

I'm BACK!

And better than ever! (always wanted to say that). I bring surprises, if you don't know me. Meet Big Ben :


Isn't he scrumptious? Don't you want to just eat him up? We call him Big Ben because he's my mongo baby. I'm so original. We should have called me "Big Mama" when I was pregnant....
but then I might have thrown something at your head and blamed it on hormones.

Life is fabulous. HRH is in the SECOND grade (Mommy cries a little), the Hurricane is in kindergarten (Mommy cries a LOT) and Big Ben is 10 months old (inconsolable). We finally moved into our dream house about four months ago and I'm still unpacking. Don't judge me. I have babies. I'll get it all unpacked and organized when they go to college. For right now, THIS is more important :



Anywho.... I have discovered Pinterest. Consider yourself warned. This is probably going to turn into a 99% crafting/cooking blog, b/c I don't have time to sew anymore. I don't even know where my embroidery machine is :::::shocking gasp::::::. I'm working on a project or two.... will post soon. :) Hope there's still one or two of you out there who care!

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!