Happy Birthday!

Somehow, even though he was born just a few months ago (surely it’s only been a few months!) my son is turning eighteen today.  I have a mama’s pride in him, I admit, but he’s one of the funniest and smartest people I know. 

 

To give you a small example from a few weeks ago:

son: Do you have any questions of the universe you need answered, mom?
me: You’ve got it all figured out, have you?
son: I think I do. (said seriously to goad his mom)
me: Well, you’re doing better at almost 18 than I did! (laughing)
son: So, questions?
me: How come, at my age, I don’t know myself better? (This’ll stump him, haha!)
son: Because life’s not about knowing yourself, it’s about knowing others.

Check. Mate. 

 

From the beginning I have said we’re lucky he lets us raise him. 

 

And if I don’t stop walking down memory lane, and wipe these mama-tears away, it’ll be another 18 years before I get his cake decorated! 

Happy Birthday, Beautiful BoyYoung Man!  I could not be more proud of you and thankful for the chance to be your mom!  I love you!

Family Movie Night

My family kindly indulged me on Family Movie Night a couple weeks ago, and were good with watching Mary Poppins Returns. My husband and I both agreed it was an excellent “throwback” movie, in the Disney style of musical, much like the original Mary Poppins. There was singing, there was dancing, there were bright and bold colors. Not a single supercalifragilisticexpialidocious could be found, however. That give me a tiny sad.

Regardless, it was a fun movie, and quite nostalgic, even though it was new.

At the end, I asked my son, who is 17, what he thought, since he’s never seen the original.

His reply?

“Spoiler alert, Poppins is Thanos.”

😂😂😂😂😂

Happy Birthday!

My babiest one is now officially a teenager!  When did this happen?!  Just yesterday she was

Now …

This is her cake.  She loves Oreos, that’s what’s in the filling.  I still have to put the writing on it, and maybe some sprinkles if she’d like. 

She’s in a “don’t get me any presents, Mom, don’t make a big deal,” kind of phase.  I’m trying … a little.  😉

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!  I love you so!

xoxox Mom

Conversations

Mom: Well, men and women are just different, in a lot of ways …

Son: Yeah?  Like how?

Daughter: Women have periods.

Son: Well, men have exclamation points.  But mostly we have question marks. 

*****

That boy just cracks me up.  😀

Merry Christmas!

What?  You don’t celebrate Christmas in August?

Normally, we don’t either, although one year we did celebrate it in January. 

This year, it seems, we’ve shaken things up a bit.  Okay, a lot.  Touché!

You see, we wanted to do something special for the kids again this year.  We had two ideas, Plan A, or Plan B, but my husband and I weren’t sure which one the kids would prefer.  After kicking it around between the two of us, we figured we should probably bring the kids into the discussion too, since it most affected them.

They were all excited, and after a bit of discussion, made their choice.  And I mean, they really didn’t hesitate in the least.  Once presented with the options, they knew exactly what they wanted.

I apologized to them for spoiling Christmas, but at least they had something to look forward to. 

So I thought.

They couldn’t wait for December.  They approached us and asked if it were possible to get it now, instead of waiting. 

Honestly, I couldn’t think of a good reason.  Neither could their dad.

So, we made the decision and went shopping.  All the Christmas fund has been spent.

On the bright side, no wrapping presents!

On the down side, no presents to unwrap.

On the bright side, I had a Christmas fund to spend!

As usual, our first purchase was a disaster, and I spent I don’t know how many hours online trying to search for solutions.  This doesn’t work that doesn’t work and how the heck are we supposed to get it to be how we want it?  Much swearing ensued.

So that necessitated another round to the store to return purchase A, and spend time hemming and hawing over what purchase B should be … So far so good on purchase B.

I feel like I need to set my mailbox in front of Best Buy.  I have been there so many times in the last few days, sheesh! 

I am something like nearly a week behind in my email and WordPress, my house is an even bigger disaster than it was before (Please tell me I’m not the only one who hates vacuuming!), but my kids had Christmas in August and it’s pretty doggone amazing when I stop to think that things were so bad a few years ago that I tried to make them Christmas presents out of socks so it wouldn’t be empty under the tree. 

My kids are over the moon happy, which of course makes dad and I over the moon happy.  We’ll still put up the Christmas tree in December and decorate and eat all the bad food that we’re not supposed to eat.  We’ll still listen to Christmas music until our ears explode, and we’ll absolutely remember the whole Reason for the season in the first place. 

We just won’t open presents.  And not because we can’t like other years, but because we were blessed to be able to choose to do it a little differently this year.

Besides, Christmas should be like an every-day kind of thing, right?  When Christmas lives in your heart, it doesn’t matter what month it is. 

Merry Christmas!

Birthday Eve

She’s a gamer girl, and quite taken with the game her brother actually picked out for his birthday last year, Destiny.  She’s even made up a lot of fan fiction around one of the characters in the game. 

Sometimes, she likes to do her own version of “cosplay”:

She even got silly one night while waiting for a turn at the game:

So it seemed only fitting to try to incorporate that into her birthday somehow. 

This is the logo of the add-on my little Hunter Guardian loves most:

This is what I’m doing to her cake. 

I didn’t want to make it deep red because then it wouldn’t have shown up as well against the chocolate frosting, but I’ll add some red sprinkles over it tomorrow before we cut it. 

She still seems pleased though, so, whew!

Need a Tissue?

My husband came home Thursday with a cold, just in time for his 4-day weekend.  He was not a happy camper, let me tell you, and who could blame him?  The kids’ last day of school was Friday, and he was hoping to be able to hang out with them. 

Then Sunday night, my son and daughter both started to feel the onset symptoms, too.  If I’m going to get it, we figure it’ll hit me tonight, based on past experience.  This thing seems to have like a 3-4 day incubation period. 

Whatever it is, (and thankfully it doesn’t seem to be a flu) it involves a lot of sneezing and runny noses; lots of congestion.  So far, collectively, my family has gone through about a half dozen boxes of tissue in as many days. 

That’s a lot of tissue.  And no one, and I mean no one anywhere, likes to get up to throw a tissue away when they’re feeling sick.  No one likes to move the garbage can around the house, either, and no one who’s healthy wants to be the one to take the used tissues to the garbage so the sick person doesn’t have to get up.

A couple years ago, I saw this idea – pretty sure I saw it on Pinterest but I couldn’t swear to that.  It has been one of the best ideas.  I took an empty standard or family sized tissue box, and covered it.  You can use whatever floats your boat.  I used Con-tact paper because it’s easy to wipe but you could use fabric to color co-ordinate with your room, too.  Then you put in a full box of the boutique sized box, and an empty one.  The empty box becomes your tissue tosser.  When it’s full, all you have to do is throw away the box of yucky tissues and exchange it for a new empty box.  I keep a stash of empty tissue boxes on hand now for just this reason. 

I’ve made one for every member of our family, and I’ve learned to keep tissues as close to “nearby” as possible. 

While having a cold is never fun, this, at least, has made tissue disposal a lot more convenient.

Do you have any tips or tricks for when someone in the family is sick?

Vacation Time

Let the vacation begin!  Woo! 

At the end of school today, our vacation time officially began.  My husband has been off of work since he got home Friday evening, but the kids still had school yesterday and today.  But now they are done and we have the rest of the week off.  After that is one more week of school to finish our school year and then a whole month off!  But that’s for another post.

For the rest of this week it’ll be movies – right now my husband is in an eschatological mood so he’s searching for programs that deal with that topic, but tomorrow he’ll probably be in horror movie mood.  The man loves him some horror flicks and no vacation time passes without at least one B-level horror movie.  And then he will write and write some more.  Writers have to have books to publish, you know.

It kind of feels like an extra Friday.  So we’ll put another pot of coffee on and get down to the serious business of kicking back. 

Do you have any favorite movies to watch for relaxing?  What kinds of things do you like to do to when you have some free time coming up?