As my sons get older, their posing together for photos is becoming more and more rare…
Almost exactly one year after Timmy and I spent the day at Denver Zoo to celebrate his stock market contest win, I took both boys up there for Mother’s Day in May. Dave was in Pennsylvania visiting his own parents, and as I’ve said for many years, I only ever want a fun day—doing something I want to do—with my sons. More »
I love this picture!
As always, when asked what I want for Mother’s Day, the answer is the same. I want an outing with the family at a location of MY choosing.
It often involves something more feminine. Being in a house full of guys, I usually have to give up the girlier things during the year, but for Mother’s Day I get my berry picking and botanical gardens visits!
This year, I asked for a trip to Bellingrath Gardens near Mobile, Alabama. Again. I had already dragged the family out there over the holidays to see the fantastic light show, but I wanted to see it in the spring with all the flowers in bloom before we moved to Colorado.
I was not disappointed. And Timmy, my little naturalist, was just as impressed with all the flowers and animals.
I took the good camera with us so I could capture the beauty! Enjoy some pictures. Be forewarned, I took over 300 pictures, so I’ve distilled it down to about 30 of my favorites.
Hopefully the Moms reading this had a nice Mother’s Day. I enjoyed a nice day with my boys. I’ve cracked the code for happy kids: a trip to the beach! They were happy, I was happy watching (and catching a few waves with a Boogie Board!), all was well with the world.
The boys each brought home really cute Mother’s Day gifts from school on Friday. I’m such a sucker for handprint art from my kids!
Timmy asked me to turn his Mother’s Day card to me into a Handprint Identification Panel for his room. So that only he could enter/exit, and not his brother. Okay, why not? What else was I going to do with a Mother’s Day gift from my son?
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| That’s my handprint on the right, so I could access Timmy’s room to empty his trashcans and take care of his laundry. Otherwise he would have been on his own for those chores 🙂 |
Each boy also brought home these question and answer sheets. They filled in the blanks answering questions about Mom.
I won’t show the whole thing — since it has things like my age and my favorite colors. You guys don’t need to know all that. But here’s a sliver of each boys’ assignment, which is a glimpse into what they think about me.
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| An excerpt from Jacob’s assignment. The first question and answer absolutely melted my heart. The second one…well…I guess it’s a sign that perhaps I need to get off the grid a little more often. |
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| From Timmy’s assignment. If you can’t quite decipher it, it reads “She likes to clean and shop.” I guess I’m glad Timmy thinks I like to clean. Not sure I want him thinking I don’t like cleaning…even though I don’t care for cleaning that much. A necessary evil. |
The other questions and answers were all very nice. Jacob’s answer certainly has me assessing the laptop fused to my lap, and whether it’s time to back off a little. I think so.
So if you see less of me online, this is probably why…
Happy Mother’s Day everyone! Yes a little early, but I have a fun-filled weekend planned so I don’t know when I’ll write again.
Dave did really well this Mother’s Day!
Okay, so he booked his annual trip to visit his model railroading/railfanning friends in Maryland and Pennsylvania for this weekend. And that’s where he is as I type this. But that was seriously unintentional — the group he hangs out with belongs to the Conrail Historical Society, and they planned this annual BBQ/membership meeting for the 1st full weekend of May. That’s usually when it is. But this year, since Mother’s Day is on the 2nd Sunday of May…and the 1st Sunday of May was not the first “full” weekend of May…well…my head hurts just thinking about it.
As we usually do as a military family, when real life gets in the way of a particular holiday, we just choose to celebrate on a different day, so we went out to a nice family dinner last weekend.
But a package arrived yesterday from Thinkgeek.com. I didn’t expect anything other than the dinner out…I ask for the same thing every year: a nice day with the family.
Is it what I think it is???
At first I thought, “no”, since the package was heavier than what I thought it was. After all, I hadn’t indicated to Dave that I wanted ANYTHING from ThinkGeek. But he somehow knew.
I didn’t know he even realized that there’s a GeekMom.com t-shirt! I’d planned to just get myself one eventually. But he knew, and he got me one! Perfect gift, perfect size!
What was the heavier-than-a-tshirt item in the box? It was this:
Does Dave know me or does Dave know me??? I’m so excited to get this book, Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter. This book was featured on GeekMom last December (complete with a giveaway for a free copy) and I’d been interested in getting it for several months.
And before anyone asked, YES, I have the Alton Brown books!
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| From 2008 05 06 Fl… |
For Mother’s Day, I thought I’d share this clip about a fellow Air Force “Major Mom” and her family featured on Saturday’s CBS “The Early Show”.
Dave and I watched this together yesterday. I’m being considered for a deployment to Al Udeid, Qatar in 2009 (don’t fret, this is a good thing) and Dave is hoping that maybe if I’m gone next Mother’s Day, CBS will present him and the boys with a trip to NYC, tickets to a Broadway show, and iPods for everyone.
You HAVE to see the look on the oldest daughter’s face when the CBS lady says that the USO donated iPods to each of the family members!
To all the Military Moms out there, I salute you!
No matter what cookies we make, there’s always some for Santa! What cookies are you making this year?
I’m a one-trick pony: I make the same cookies every year. I’ve written pretty elaborate posts about them in 2008 and 2011, so this year I just want to round them up for you.
Today is the day I plan to address all of my Christmas cards once and for all. This year’s card list has over 70 families’ names! I’ve had more in the past, such as when Dave was a squadron commander and I sent cards to many of the squadron families.
But after the cards, I’m free to start COOKIES! This year has been unusual in that I didn’t do the early cookie batches to send to Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a bittersweet thing: I’m sad that I don’t have troops to which we can send cookies, but I think that also means that our presence in the war zones is winding down.
These five cookie recipes linked below are our family’s favorites. We might do others (such as these Ande’s mint pillows), but these get done every year!
Feel free to drop links to your family’s favorite recipes in the comments section! I love trying new recipes! High altitude recipes will give you a double-bonus-word score!
I made a batch of cranberry-almond biscotti a couple weeks ago ahead of our Thanksgiving week trip to Estes Park (a forthcoming post), but those are almost gone. It’s time for more!
Tonight we’re making the Holiday Surprise cookies, which are always a big hit with friends, but is by far the most labor intensive of all our family favorite cookies. The kids don’t mind helping, which makes this a wonderful family activity.
The Neiman Marcus Cookies have received some internet-love at the end of last year, being featured in GeekMom’s “Eat Like a Geek” series, since the recipe was taken off an Internet chain-letter meme.
Classic sugar cookies are good for Santa too! These are iced with the Betty Crocker “cookie icing”.
We also enjoy classic sugar cookies here. I use the Betty Crocker sugar cookie recipe, which includes almond extract. The taste of these cookies takes me back to my girlhood: my mom used the same recipe when I was growing up.
Finally, we will make spritz cookies. I haven’t done these in a couple years but I think this holiday season we will break out my Pampered Chef cookie press (earned by having a party!) and have a good time! My mother’s spritz cookie recipe included orange zest…but I don’t have that recipe. I rely on the Betty Crocker Buttery Spritz recipe.
Spritz cookies are fun and easy. A little colored sugar will make them holiday-esque.
Share your family’s favorite holiday cookie recipes in the comments or on my Facebook post about this post. Happy Baking!
We are done!
Today the contractor finished grouting the backsplash tile, and with the exception of some very tiny touch ups and sealing the grout, our kitchen is officially REMODELED!
Before:
This was how the kitchen looked when we were first viewing the house in May 2013.
Yesterday was one of the baseball-iest days I’d ever experienced. Each of the boys had their own baseball games during the day, then we headed out to Pensacola and enjoyed seeing our new local AA minor league baseball team, the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, in their brand new stadium right on Pensacola Bay! More on the Blue Wahoos later.
Our boys here play for Navarre Youth Sports Association’s baseball league. As is typical in Florida, they’re serious about sports here. And they start those boys EARLY! Our own sons had never played baseball until we moved here, and it turns out there are several hundred boys playing baseball here, and several hundred more playing soccer in the same club. And come this fall, ALL those boys (except my two) are playing football.
In this particular club (and I’m not sure who the national level organization is that this club now follows — last year it was Dizzy Dean, but this year it isn’t) the boys’ teams are simply named after the coach’s favorite major league team. Last year Jacob was on the White Sox, this year he’s on the Tigers. His current coach is indeed from eastern Michigan. Timmy is on the Braves and he couldn’t be more excited about that.
I captured some pretty good pictures of the boys at their games yesterday. They’re both respectfully among the youngest on their teams, and this is Timmy’s first year playing baseball. It’s remarkable seeing their skills develop over the course of the season!
When my boys' teams are the "visitors" here, I'm sitting on the side that gives me a good view of the batter. Here's Timmy hitting a foul ball. He's become a VERY good hitter this season...
Two hours later, we were at Jacob's game. I haven't taken many pictures this season because I always fear I'm going to miss something while looking at the screen on the back of the camera. And in this case, I took this picture right before he hit this ball for a single! Do you see the ball in motion? It's hovering between the third baseman and the shortstop.
You can say I tried. I think Jacob might have a future in long distance running…Timmy probably won’t.
At a Mother’s Day function this past week, one of Timmy’s classmates’ Moms tipped me off to a 1-mile kids’ fun run in Navarre Beach last Saturday. That night I headed over to one of our local hangouts in Navarre Beach, Juana’s Pagoda, for the registration. The owner of Run With It, a local running store, was taking the registrations and I was flattered that he remembered me from when I visited his store a couple months ago. It was very cute how the kids received t-shirts and runners numbers. The boys and I stayed for dinner Friday night and enjoyed the volleyball area and beach area.
On Saturday I took the kids over to the race. Jacob was quite excited, but Timmy? Not so much. Jacob met an 8-year-old girl who was getting ready to run the 5K with her Mom and Jacob seemed interested in that, but perhaps we need a little training first.
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| The first finishers received medals. I’m not sure how many medals there were, and I don’t know how fast Jacob completed the mile (being a “fun run”, it wasn’t timed). Timmy and I were WAY behind him and they were out of medals by the time we finished. Timmy was so proud to finish, he wasn’t jealous at all of Jacob’s medal (phew!) |
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| The medal is really really nice (considering it was for a 1-mile fun-run)! Jacob is incredibly proud, as am I! |
To follow up on yesterday’s panicked posting…
I went to the Apple Store today and came out of there with a new replacement iPhone. Apple has a program where wet iPhones can be replaced for $199. This is FAR cheaper than walking into the store in the middle of a two-year contract and buying a new phone: $500.
But far more expensive than if I hadn’t dropped the phone into the toilet to begin with.
Anyway, to get on with my life and put this sadness behind me…
Timmy came across an empty flower pot in our garage, where I’ve stored all of our flowerpots. It was one that he made for me at preschool in 2009 for Mother’s Day. It had a potted petunia in it. Once the petunia finished up for the season, I put away the flowerpot.
This upset Timmy. He asked this week “Can we buy some more flowers to plant in it?”
I told him “No”, but I did have a good idea…
You’ve all seen them at the doctor’s office or anywhere else where you’re having to sign paperwork and they’re attempting for you to not steal pens. The flower pot full of pens.
So that’s what I did this morning. I ran over to Michael’s and picked up a few fall-inspired flowers and some floral binding tape. I had everything else I needed in the house: the pot, the beans as filler for the pot, and plenty of pens and pencils.
I whipped this together in under 10 minutes. Cute, isn’t it?
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| From 2010 09 06 Timmy’s Flower Pot |
And here’s the back:
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| From 2010 09 06 Timmy’s Flower Pot |
Timmy was thrilled to see this come to life, and is happy his flowerpot is now a centerpiece at the kitchen table. And maybe now I won’t leave a trail of pens and pencils all over the house.
Although I have to say…the floral binding tape leaves a sticky residue that I hope goes away over time…
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