Dear Hubby,
I’m writing you this to let you know how much I love you. Over the last 16 years, you have been there for me when everyone else left me to die. You have been my rock. You keep me grounded. And above all, you are my best friend.
When I first laid eyes on you in high school, I never dreamed my life would turn out the way it has. I never imagined having someone in my life that loves me unconditionally and cares about me.
I could not have picked a better partner to be with for the rest of my life. You complete me. We are like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, we just go well together.
Over the last few months, I was on my way to losing myself. You never once quit on me. Instead you gave me courage to take baby steps. You were there holding my hand when I wanted to run away. You took over the daily housework, shopping and tending to the girls when I couldn’t. You gently patted me on the back and told me job well done if I managed to go into a store. You take me as I am. You accepted the crazy in me. You embraced the stubborn side of me. You wiped away the tears and comforted me. And you coddled the frightened side of me.
I have always said that without you, I am nothing. These last 16 years have been the best years of my life. I look forward to the rest of our lives together. Honey, I love you with every ounce of being I have in me. Happy Anniversary. Here’s looking to the next 16 (well many more) years together with you.
With all my love,
Your Crazy Wife
We caught a critter
It has come to my attention that I am more amused with the Critter Cam than I thought I would be. I actually anticipate the morning times when the family retrieves it. After days of only seen hubby’s backside or one of the kids wandering through, we finally got something of interest on the camera last night.
If you look in the right bottom corner you can see some kind of canine. I’m not sure if it’s a dog or a coyote. Either way, it’s nice to see some type of critter besides asses and elbows. LOL.
The World Wide Web. It’s a huge playground for adults, teens and kids alike. But we hear too often of how predators like to lurk on kids sites. As a parent, I try to find a safe environment for my 7 year old.
Bella Sara is an online community designed for children. They incorporate magical horses into a Fairy tale land. Sign up is free and super easy. And best of all, it’s safe for your youngsters.
Shorty signed up immediately and chose her horse. Then she got to name her horse. Princess Jellybean!! I thought the name she chose was hilarious because she knows I call her sister Jellybean here on my site.
Once you sign up and get all your registration stuff taken care of, your young one will have a journal, it tells them what activities they have done and what their today’s to do list.
Shorty loves going to the stalls. In there, she can feed Princess Jellybean, water her and even give her a nap.
Once she’s done tending to her horse, she can then go out into the world. The world consists of various stages for play.
What I really like about Bella Sara is, not only is it a safe place for her to play on the internet, it also teaches her about responsibility. When Shorty gets her computer time, the first thing she does is log in to check on her horse. Even the older two, who are 12 and 14, created their own Bella Sara horse.
Not only can your child enjoy the land of Bella Sara, but they can get trading cards, party supplies and much more. Bella Sara is a great site for your child. My child absolutely loves it and I love that I can let her play and learn online and still be safe.
Get in it to win it!!
Go over to Bella Sara and sign your child up. It’s free and fun. Come back here and tell me what you think of it. And you can win a Prize Pack from Bella Sara for your child.
You can gain extra entries by:
1. Tweeting the contest (be sure to leave your ID)
2. Blog it. Help spread the word to other parents about Bella Sara.
3. Sign up for my feed (leave ID)
4. Stumble (leave ID)
5. Follow me on Twitter.
Contest will end on Wednesday June 17, 2009 at 9 PM CST. Winner will have three days to contact me with their info. This contest is open to all US Residents. Good luck and enjoy!!
Thanks to Team Mom for this opportunity.
Everyone is faced with their own mortality at times. The decisions we make throughout our lives, will eventually have some type of impact on us. A family member is in the hospital tonight staring his mortality in the face. All because they drank. Every day for years and then quit cold turkey.
He’s in ICU right now fighting for his life. Because his body decided to go through withdrawals of being an alcoholic for so many years. His body is pissed and I can’t say that I blame it. I don’t understand. Yes I know that alcoholism is an addiction, and I know that addictions are hard to beat. I just don’t understand the need to stay drunk every single waking minute of the day for years. Just doesn’t make sense to me.
Keep my family in your thoughts please. I don’t know the outcome or what’s to come. I, of course, left out several details. I gotta protect my own ass in all this. But it’s not looking good for now. But I will say this before I leave, if he makes it through this, I hope for his sake, he never touches a bottle again. Next time he might not be so lucky.
I love cute and retro things. I was recently given the opportunity to review a tote bag, bracelet and key chain from Calypso Studios by Mom Fuse.
I love odd and unusual items. Calypso Studios has some of the cutest bracelets I have ever seen. I absolutely love mine. I wore it over the weekend to a party and everyone complimented me on it. It’s decorated with Dice on it. Perfect for a girls poker night. LOL
I showed my MIL my key chain and she fell in love with it. I really like it because it’s funky, cute and different than anything you would buy in town. It says Girls Night Out… which is something I so desperately need. LOL
And the S.H.O.P tote bag. OMG I absolutely love it. I love the retro colors. I haven’t been to town yet to use it but when I do, I’m sure I will get some reactions from it. And if you had any of the items from Calypso Studio, you too would get some reactions.
The tote bag is really awesome. It folds up and fits right inside my purse. So now there’s no excuses for leaving it at home. It has a wrap around strap and button on it. Check mine out. . I love it. You need to order one, not only for yourself, but for the environment. It helps keep all the plastic bags out of the landfills and waterways. I’m just saying!!
Another day wasted away outside. Well sort of. I spent some of the day getting some things organized, tending to Shorty’s new puppy (Scooter, a 7 week old Jack Russell), walking my 1 plus whatever miles.
I weighed myself today at my MIL’s. I don’t do it often, I mostly try to gauge my weightloss by how loose my britches or shorts are. The shorts I have on are pretty darn loose on me. Last year, they were kinda tight around the middle. I mean I honestly had to unbutton them if I ate anything. Well I hopped on the scales and I swear those dang things are about 7 pounds off.
I mean, I know about what I weigh.. if I had to guestimate, I’m somewhere in the mid 130’s. Her’s said over 140. BS. I walk, I watch what I eat (much better than taking any kind of Fenphedra. I do carry a little bit of belly pooch that could probably disappear if I ever decided to do any sit ups or crunches. But my excuse for that is, it hurts my back and neck. (Anyone have suggestions how to flatten a blubbery belly with a bad back and neck?)
Back to my story. I wanted to bad to tell my MIL that her scales were way off, but I decided to gripe about it to hubby when I got home. I should have made him crawl up there to see what he weighed and counted the difference since he just went to the Dr. Why do I always think of these things way to late?
Education is the key. I have found this so true with Shorty’s food allergies. When she was first diagnosed last month, I thought it was just a fluke and nothing serious could become of it. Boy was I ever wrong. Since then, I have learned how allergens are hidden in certain foods and some foods can be cross contaminated by being near each other. For instance, did you know that McDonald’s French Fries has beef in it? This is straight from their allergen list:
French Fries:
Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives]*), citric acid (preservative), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil ((may contain one of the following: Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness), dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent). *
CONTAINS: WHEAT AND MILK (Natural beef flavor contains hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients).
It broke my heart when I started researching her allergy, to tell her no more McDonald’s. But now, she’s learned it’s for her own safety. And surprisingly enough, she’s quite fine with it.
There are other common foods that she can’t have anymore, but we are adapting. It is a very hard process when it’s a strange allergy such as beef, but every day we are finding ways around it. One problem is cross contamination. Eating out is especially hard. I have to make sure that her chicken isn’t grilled with hamburgers or her chicken fingers aren’t fried in the same grease as say corndogs or fried shrimp. So we have avoided it. With the exception of fried chicken twice. Nothing grilled though.
My MIL gave us some money to take the girls out. So here in hick town as Jilly Bean calls is, we only have a very few selections. So I went online and looked up all the allergen info at the eateries in the big town, no luck. We decided to just stick close to home and go get some food from Jack’s. Shorty has ate a fried chicken basket from there with no problem, but tonight she wanted a grilled chicken sandwich. I didn’t think about it until I pulled up to the window, they cook the grill chicken on the same grill as the burgers.
I pull up to the window and the manager is taking the money. I asked her about the chicken and explained Shorty has an allergy to beef and inquired about the cooking process. She told me that they did cook them on the same grill but different sides and told me that she would be happy to clean the grill off completely and cook her a grilled chicken sandwich. So we run to the store and come back as she said it would take about 10 minutes.
We get back and go inside. I sat there and watched them gingerly prepare my daughters food. They did not cook any hamburgers while we were there. They put her sandwich separately in it’s own bag. They told us that any time we wanted to bring her there to call them and they would have it fixed and ready for her so she wouldn’t have to wait so long. I thanked the staff profusely for accommodating my daughters needs. I was brought to tears by their generosity.
If there’s one lesson I learned through all of this, having a food allergy isn’t the end of the world. If it’s one of your children, you have to speak up and be their voice. Not everyone will understand and be kind to your request. But those who do are helping keep my daughters life a little bit more normal.
Several years ago, I decided I wanted to grow a nice patch of buttercups (daffodils). I had never attempted to grow anything besides kids. I was a little leery of attempting it, so I convinced my mother to ride around with me on some of the back roads and “borrow” some. This way if I failed I wasn’t out any money.
We rode around for hours. I was looking for some double buttercups. Couldn’t find any, so I had to settle on the single ones. We finally hit the big time about a mile from my house. We were equipped with a 5 gallon bucket, some shovels and two eager little helpers (Jelly Bean and Wild Child). We get to digging thinking ,that since it’s on the side of the road in the middle of BFE we would be okay. Not so much.
First we had this local woman who loves to drink stop by and ask us if we had a phone on us. Yeah I carry a pay phone in my back seat, let me get that for ya. Then she wanted me to carry her to the local bootleggers house. Uh nope sorry I’m knee deep in buttercups. I eventually sent her on her merrily little way. Of course I’m already petrified that we were gonna get caught by the boozing babbling idiot and she was gonna give us up to the local officers. So every time a vehicle would approach us, I would crouch down and pretend to be invisible. I instructed my mother that if anyone came up, for her to do the talking.
Each time the coast was clear, I would emerge and get back to my little treasure hunt. Then out of no where, well it was somewhere, I was just trying to tame two little girls and steal some buttercups, comes a truck with an elderly gentleman in it.
Holy shit Batman, we have been spotted. I couldn’t dive into a ditch, I couldn’t run away in a callous getaway with two toddlers holding me down. I had to come out with my hands up, minus a heaping helping of buttercups. I look towards my mother and tell her to handle it. The man rolls up and asks us what are we doing. Momma goes into a song and dance about how we found these buttercups and we were helping ourselves to them. He informs us he’s the owner of the property. Oh fuck me running. We’re going to jail for theft of property. I can see it now in the headlines “Two adults and two toddlers arrested for theft of buttercups”.
My mother, who could sweet talk the sunglasses off a blind man, managed to strike an agreement with the fella. Really I have no idea what she said to him, for all I know we placed those dainty little flowers on a loved ones grave. But he told us to help ourselves. I came home to change myself.
The scare with my father in law is more real than they are leading on. My hubby was telling me that after his doctors appointment yesterday, they went and changed their wills and settled their affairs. Hubby’s mother checked their life insurance rates and policies. They also signed the deeds of the land over to who they left it to. As of right now, we are proud owners of 1/2 acre.
My father in law has always been in good shape. He watches what he eats, he exercises regularly yet, he still has an abnormal heart rhythm. Sometime today he should get the appointment scheduled for the cardiologist.
I can see it and feel it. This has my husband scared to death. He has every right. Up until a few years ago, he didn’t have a good relationship with him. But over the last few years he has realized that his father isn’t getting any younger and he is more involved with him than he’s ever been.
My husband is breaking the cycle of non involvemental parenting. What I mean is, his father wasn’t involved with them as kids, nor was his father and I’m sure the list goes further down the line. But my husband broke the chain and is so much a part of these girls lives.
I’m hoping that what ever is wrong with my father in law can be fixed. This family is not ready for any bad news. Keep the whole bunch in your thoughts will ya?
Look Whose Talkin’