Family Adventures Family Adventures When my children are grown and gone, I hope that they will look back on their childhood and remember the sound of their mother's laughter. Sometimes that is easier said than done. Articles
9:51AM
2007-12-29 15:39:00 I stole this meme from Laura.What did you do in 2007 that you?d never done before?I moved to Mississippi, I had never been to Mississippi, who knew it would come to feel like home for me so easily.Did you keep your new year?s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?My resolutions are always the same: eat better, exercise more, be kinder...I never keep themDid anyone close to you give birth?No one in my real life. One of my very favorite bloggers Julia, has or is about to give birth to twins. After trying for many years and going through many losses. My heart is filled with so much joy for her and her family. And Sari surprised us all by telling us she was having a baby just days before she did.Did anyone close to you die?No, but I found out on Christmas day that my dear sweet Grandma has terminal cancerWhat countries did you visit?I started the year in Misawa, Japan. I still miss Japan sometimes, but not the snow. I really loved having a lovely 70 degree sunny Christ... More About: Meme
Braces
2007-12-27 18:00:00 Mandy needs an absolute ton of dental work. She is meticulous about her teeth and has never had a cavity. But, when she was 9 she fell off of her friend's bike and knocked out her two front teeth. Over the years she has had them put back in, had a root canal, had both extracted, had dozens of temporary replacement devices. One year the flipper broke during her birthday slumber party. One broke on safari in Kenya. They break at all the wrong times. In order to get her teeth fixed permanently we needed to wait for her to stop growing. She also needs to have braces. The loss of the two front teeth caused the bone on the top jaw to deteriorate and it is now much shorter than the bottom jaw. She has to have this repaired with braces. For the past seven years we were not living in America. Supposedly when you live overseas with the military you get free dental and orthodontics, however, the orthodontist gets to choose his patients, and he did not choose Mandy. We tried and t... More About: Braces
Lemons
2007-12-24 14:46:00 Do you need any lemons? We have 8 bags full. The stocking are hung by the chimney with care. In hopes that St. Nicholas soon will be there. The shopping is done, too much money has been spent. The gifts are all wrapped and waiting to be opened. The packages all mailed, even to the relatives who choose not to reciprocate. Cookies are baked and delivered to the neighbors. What is a family to do, while we wait for the big day? Why pick lemons of course... I hope you enjoy my professional videography. Chad is the one on the ladder, Jeff is the one holding the ladder, Lily is the one picking up the lemons, I am holding the camera. Merry Christmas to all, would you like a glass of lemonaide? Some lemoncello? Some lemon Gelato?I follow comments. Leave a comment and I will come visit your blog. More About: Lemons , Mons
Christmas Dinner Revised
2007-12-24 13:09:00 The Chili for Christmas dinner idea was nixed by the girls. We are having a more traditional ham. I am rebelling against the formal traditional Christmas sit down dinner by serving potato salad, green salad, and Jello salad with the ham.Our cat ran away several days ago. I am worried. I was having cat related nightmares, I couldn't sleep and got out of bed at 4AMI kept hearing the cat meow, or was it my imagination? The dog wouldn't come in the house, she kept going over the the fence. I looked around in the dark, no cat.I finally went out front, and looked on the other side of the fence, in the empty lot which is a forest, in the dark, this is where I found the cat. Could I have heard her, in my house with all the windows and doors shut, meowing in the lot next door?Can a cat speak to you in your dreams?She didn't lose any weight being gone for three days, I am thinking she has an alternate food source. Although, she is currently eating and purring at the same time.At lea... More About: Dinner
Christmas Dinner?
2007-12-21 16:15:00 What are you cooking for Christmas ? We have a tradition of having Chili. We open presents, eat a fabulous breakfast - eggs: with ham, cheese, onion, peppers, warm rolls, fruit. Then I make a big pot of chili and nibblies, and we just snack for the rest of the day.It all started when we were in Italy. We had a ton of great friends and all of us being away from family we started a tradition of inviting people over to play games. We would have an open house game day. Our friends would stop by for an hour or two, we would offer them chili and other snacks, play a few games etc. Here we don't have any friends to invite over. Here everyone has their family, their friends... But, we are still having chili and games. What is on your menu?I follow comments. Leave a comment and I will come visit your blog. More About: Dinner
Christmas Shopping
2007-12-19 15:15:00 Last Friday, Jeff had the day off from work and we went to do the Christmas shopping. I mean the shopping for all the out of town relatives. We have for the most part finished our shopping for the kids, each other, and Chad. All of our family lives far away and we both have good sized families. This year I decided to cut down the list from my side of the family. I am feeling a bit guilty, but I have two brothers, and they have kids etc. These lovely brothers have never sent me even a card, no gifts, no thank yous, no cards. We spend hundreds of dollars every year to give everyone in their family a gift, and mail it to them, wrap it etc. It is a lot of money and a lot of work and I am thinking that perhaps they would feel less guilty if I like them, just sent good wishes via prayers. Those two never even email or call me...So most of our list was Jeff's family although he has some members who are like my brothers, but it is his choice to send so we send. Jeff is not a scro... More About: Shopping , Daily , Christmas shopping
The Christmas Party
2007-12-17 15:44:00 Last week was the Christmas party for Jeff's office. I had to buy a present for Lily from Santa, I waited until the last moment due to all my other obligations and had a really hard time trying to buy something for her with her right there. She is so observant, I couldn't get away with anything. I also had to buy three white elephant gifts, for Jeff, Mandy and I. I also had to make a dessert, pick Mandy up from school, bla bla, bla, it was a very busy day, week, month...I chose to get Lily a watch for her present from Santa. Santa actually came to the party and called out the kid's names. It was sweet. Lily has been interested in what time it is and little else for over a month. She asks me about the time every 10 to 15 minutes all day long. She checks all the clocks in the house etc. I thought a cute little Dora the Explorer watch of her very own would be just the right present for her. I managed to get it in the shopping cart and paid for on the sly.When Lily opened ... More About: Party , Christmas party
Finished, yet hardly begun
2007-12-13 15:40:00 I finally finished my class. I took my final exam last night and now it is over. I have been so busy with so many things that I haven't really even started Christmas shopping. We are extraordinarily busy today. Jeff has tomorrow off from work, so I have decided that we are going to get up early, make lists and knock out all the shopping in one morning. We will wrap in the afternoon and get it all in the mail. It would be nice to have that done, I am hoping our marathon shopping day does the trick.I am really looking forward to doing Christmas crafts with Lily. I am thinking of stringing popcorn and cranberries, of making those paper chains, making some ornaments, and making some of those pine cone, peanut butter and bird seed things for the yard. Having a four year old at Christmas time rocks.We have been working hard to find ways for Lily to play with other children. I was not successful in finding her a pre-school, that we could afford in our area. They are all either ... More About: Nish
A Christmas Miracle
2007-12-11 03:49:00 First just let me say I have not slept in two day, but my final project is done. http://nova.umuc.edu/~ct386a03/index.html check it out if you are bored. It is not all that and a bag of chips, but I think it is pretty good.Every year Mandy and I used to go and see the Nutcracker Ballet. Every since Mandy was about 4 years old. We both love the ballet so very much. When I married Jeff and we moved out of the country we did not get the opportunity to see the Nutcracker, it has been 8 Christmas es. This year, due to poor planning on my part, we found out that this weekend was the absolute last chance to see the Nutcracker and Mandy's work schedule conflicted with all the showings. I was distraught, but it was probably for the best because I had so much work to do on my project - very big procrastinator am I.On the morning of the very last day of the Nutcracker, Sunday morning to be specific. I was up early coding away on my trusty computer. Mandy had to be at work at 8AM. Whi... More About: Miracle
Five Zero Zero
2007-12-08 14:20:00 This is most 500th post. In January I will have been blogging for three years. I enjoy blogging so much. It is my me time, sometimes the only me time I get. As I reflect back over the time I have spent blogging I think the most profound thing I have gained from this experience is the knowledge that I am a know it all and no one wants my advice. Believe it or not I was not aware of this fact pre-blog. While that is good to know, as you all know I still struggle with the telling people how to improve their life issue. My inner Dr. Phil is just aching to get out and tell you exactly how to fix your life. Not that my life is all that grand, I just have this urge...Have you ever read a blog and felt, wow, that same exact thing happened to me? Of all the blogs in the world, I must have come here for a reason and it is surely a sign that I tell this person how to fix her life. I have learned that we all struggle with the same crap, it isn't a sign. I need to listen and learn ins... More About: Blogging
Promises, Promises
2007-12-07 16:40:00 I am sorry to have not shown y'all how to make a marquee, it is pretty easy. Right now I am having a nervous breakdown, so you will have to excuse me. My final project is due Monday. All kinds of things keep getting in the way of me being able to accomplish any type of progress toward the completion of my project. I am trying to balance taking care of Lily with my school work. She just happens to be going through one of her more difficult phases. We also have a lot of invitations to Christmas type things. Since I have no friends and we don't get the chance to get out of the house and interact with people we actually know very often it is hard for me to say no. Yesterday for instance we spent the entire day out of the house. Today, Chad's parents are coming to stay with us for the weekend. We extended the invitation, come and stay with us anytime... We found out Wednesday afternoon, coming today. My house was not actually company ready. I was up all night, now my hous... More About: Promises
Confusing
2007-12-04 01:00:00 The more I think about this the more confused I become. -LuckzmomWow, that is deep. I couldn't have said it better myself. I sometimes have trouble expressing what I think, I know what I think, but explaining it, I cannot find the words. Sometimes when I discuss it with others I think, yes that is it, or no that isn't what I was thinking, but it helps me find my words.If we made a scale from one to ten, private to intimate. One being the loneliest number and representing a person who does not enjoy sharing themselves with others, someone who is very private, someone who does not especially like to be around other people. Ten being a person who holds nothing back, will tell perfect strangers at the grocery store the most embarrassing and humiliating details of their lives. Most people fall somewhere in between those two extremes. I know that when I was a child I was much closer to a one than I am now. I didn't trust anyone. In fact as a child, teen, even in my twenties, I... More About: Feminism
Little Bits of Separation
2007-12-02 16:15:00 When Lily was only a few months old I decided to go back and try to do this college thing again. Being a stay at home mom, this was my first time out of the house in months. I just loved the opportunity to be Marsha. Not Jeff's wife, not Mandy's mom, not Lily's mom - Marsha. We read and discussed a lot of interesting material. My professor was the best professor ever, he knew how to get a good argument going. Turns out that most of the time I disagreed with everyone in the class (I know you are all shocked). Still I had a great time debating all kinds of things. One of the other students was a Japanese national, she was not married and nearly 40. This is very uncommon in in the rural northern part of Japan where we lived. Living near the military base gave her the opportunity to have a job, on the American military base, and support herself. She asked me about marriage, she had noticed throughout the class that I am very outspoken and basically a hard core feminist. ... More About: Feminism , Separation , Bits
I did it
2007-11-30 22:56:00 Lily and I took a walk down to see the Gulf. I somehow stubbed my toe and pulled off the nail about half way, ouch. We came across a man who was fishing. He spoke in the exact accent that the guy on King of the Hill, who you cannot understand, uses. It cracked me up. I had no idea what he said. Instead of saying, what? I asked him if he had seen seen the alligator. He said he hadn't seen her today, but that he say her earlier in the week. Then he started going off in that accent I cannot understand. I just kept walking. I wonder what he said? He wasn't cute like the guy on King of the Hill, he was old and had a dirty shirt, with his big belly sticking out. I think he was the first back water good ole boy I have met since moving to Mississippi, he seemed nice.I follow comments. Leave a comment and I will come visit your blog.
Pompeii
2007-11-29 18:00:00 In January 2002, shortly after my first miscariage, Jeff decided what we really needed was a trip. He picked Pompei as our destination. We rode the trains from where we lived in Pordenone to Pomepei. Picture northeast corner of Italy to mid to lower west coast of Italy. This train trip took us through Rome, the only time in my two years living in Italy that I saw Rome, was out the train window. I guess our time in Italy was spent taking the road less traveled. We kept putting off Rome and then we were gone.Pompeii was completely destroyed in the year 79, by a volcanic erruption of the nearby Mount Vesuvius. The entire city of Pompeii has been escavated and you can go there and see an entire Roman city. There is so much detail. It is not a couple of buildings but blocks and blocks of buildings, an entire city. There is so much detail, the paintings on the walls inside the homes and shops. The address outside each house along the street. Sidewalks, billboards, two arenas, f...
Are we there yet?
2007-11-29 05:02:00 Does anyone have any ideas for a blog post? This is excruciating. How many days left in November? Why do I always wait until the last moment?One of the things I love most about being a stay at home mom is the fact that I am never in a hurry or running late. I like to live my life at my own pace. It is peaceful. Someone taught Lily how to tell time. She is driving me crazy. Every day we have the same tentative schedule, we do things in the same order and most likely at about the same time. I don't really look at the clock so who knows. I wont bore you with the details of our mundane schedule today. At breakfast Lily has started asking me what time are we going to do this, that and the other. I tried to tell her, whenever. She did not accept that answer. I tried making up approximate times. She is now holding me to those arbitrary times. All day long she is like the rabbit with the watch, telling me we are late, we are late. I am going to have to read her Alice in Won...
Assisi
2007-11-28 05:05:00 Another of our day trips while living in Italy was to Assisi , which is also located in the Umbria region. Assisi is the birth place of St. Francis. We went to Assisi on a tour bus instead of driving there ourselves. We discovered on this trip that we preferred to travel with our own car. Tours are nice, you get to sleep instead of drive and you get a guided tour. Jeff and Mandy do not like the guided tours, too much talking, and I don't like to ride on buses so much. We arrived in Assisi on a very cold, rainy day with extremely cold and strong winds. The town of Assisi is full of hills, so imagine us walking up steep hills in the rain with 100 mile per hour wind blowing toward us. This is how I remember Assisi. Whenever we got to a location of interest and took shelter inside. We got to see the church that St. Francis attended as a child. We got to sit in the pew and look at the cross he was looking at when God spoke to him.My favorite part of the day was at the church bu... More About: Adventures
All quilted out
2007-11-27 05:10:00 I have spent the last few days doing almost nothing but quilting. Trying to complete my very first quilt. It has been a long road. I have found that I am not very good at measuring, not very good at cutting, not very good at sewing a straight line...All that and it was still going pretty good. But, today I found out that you should actually read all the directions and not just assume you know the rest. So I am not very good at following directions. I made a huge mistake and spent the rest of the day trying to fix it. I am a little disappointed but the end result is ok. I still have a bit of fixing to do tomorrow and then maybe I will take a picture or two.Lily helped me with the whole thing. It is a new quilt for her because she has outgrown her baby quilt. She loves it tremendously, I guess that is all that matters. I really learned a lot and I can now say that I can thread the machine, fill the bobbin and sew a very straight line.In other news Trent Lott resigned but I ...
The Christmas Tree
2007-11-25 22:01:00 We still haven't gotten the lights outside put up, I guess the turkey still has us in a fog. It is almost gone, back to having to cook I guess.We own a fake white Christmas tree. You can go here and watch a video I made last Christmas of Lily singing her ABC's next to our Christmas tree . Ok, you only see a little bit of the tree, but isn't Lily cute? We originally bought this tree because I am allergic to the real thing. Jeff went to the store and bought the cheapest tree he saw, he didn't notice that it was white or that it was only about 3 feet tall. The picture on the box was of a green really tall tree. We had the little white tree for many years. The first few years we covered her in Christmas lights that had a green wire, we finally found a white strand of lights last year and our tree looked almost respectable. The thing about fake trees is that through all the moves and all the time spent in boxes the tree starts to look pretty bad. This year when we took it ou... More About: Tree
A perfect day
2007-11-24 19:13:00 While I should be doing homework, we are sitting around watching the Virginia vs. Virginia Tech game. Go Virginia. My belly is full of leftovers. Don't have to cook. Another perfect day.I follow comments. Leave a comment and I will come visit your blog. More About: Perfect , Perfect Day
Nice Matters
2007-11-24 05:01:00 Dixie was kind enough to give me the Nice Matters Award that I would like to pass on to some of my blogging buddies. Of course you are all very nice!Lynn, one of the nicest people I have never met, always kind on her blog and on others, always finds something nice to say. I hope I can be more like Lynn someday.Shelia,is a great combinations of nice and smart. Always giving good advice and thoughtful blog posts and comments.Lorelei, OK so she is a bit of a Yankee, but still sweet underneath it all. I bet if I ever needed anything Lorelei would be there, stand by your friends thick and thin kind of girl. And it is nice to have someone who always makes you laugh and tells it like it is. Angel, Can't ever have a list without Angel. Not only are you nice but you are fun. Where is the Moscato.Kimberly, I know you are out of town and wont even see this, still I would feel bad not putting your name down. Laura Capello, We have been blogging buddies forever now. Always nice to ge... More About: Meme
Jumping the Fence
2007-11-23 00:50:00 Our dinner went well. I cooked the whole thing on my own, with a lot of help from Wal-Mart. Nothing was perfect, I actually forgot to put the mashed potatoes and stuffing on the table until we were done. I made everyone sit back down and eat some. Most years my turkey gets done a couple of hours past the time I estimate, this year it was a couple of hours earlier. Is that Karma? Otherwise it was a perfect meal. Everything tasted great and we were all happy and thankful. The only thing Lily will eat today is carrots, raw sliced carrots. The rest of the food she wont even taste.We played football in the yard. It was a crisp fall day. We are not terribly athletic and Lily was not having any fun. She said, "Excuse Me Everybody, I want to play hide and seek". So we did. We were hiding in our neighbors yards, crouched behind garbage cans, jumping fences, laughing our butts off. I am surprised we didn't get shot.After dinner, I took a lovely nap. Then we had the outdoor ... More About: Fence , Jumping
happy Thanksgiving
2007-11-22 04:23:00 I hope y'all have a lovely turkey day.I follow comments. Leave a comment and I will come visit your blog. More About: Thanksgiving , Happy , Hank
Turn that frown upside down
2007-11-20 16:24:00 This post is brought to you today by the word SMILE, lol-I crack myself up-too much Sesame Street I suppose...We did eventually make it over to Pisa. It was a bit of a drive from our home in Pordenone. If memory serves it was a 5 or 6 hour drive? We left our house at 0'dark early and arrived at around 10AM. We were of course hungry, but there is no food served in Italy until 12:30PM therefore we stopped at Camp Darby, an Army Post, and grabbed a quick bite at the Burger King. When we arrived at Pisa I was very disappointed. The whole thing is a courtyard with the tower and a church and I think there is another building? We did not have a reservation to climb to the top of the tower and it was very expensive if memory serves. For some reason we didn't climb to the top. We walked around, went in all the buildings and an hour later we were looking at each other like, what now?I had noticed on our way to Pisa that we had driven past the city of Vinci. I looked it up in my tr... More About: Meme , Adventures , Turn , Upside
Walking
2007-11-20 04:14:00 Jeff and I are doing a walk your way to fitness through the holidays thing with the base. We got pedometers and we have to keep track of our daily steps until Jan. 1st. Jeff and I are competing with one another to see who does the most steps between now and the end of the contest. We haven't decided what the winner will get. So far he is beating me, big surprise. We did go for an evening walk together. I am amazed to see how sedentary I really am. Hopefully I can kick it up a notch. Any ideas what I should ask for when I win?I follow comments. Leave a comment and I will come visit your blog. More About: Walking
Pixie the wonder dog
2007-11-19 01:02:00 Last night our dog was out in the back yard barking up a storm. Jeff opened the back door to call her in, but she wouldn't come. He put on some shoes, went out into the yard and tried to get her to come in the house. I was in the house listening to Jeff yell, "Pixie" for quite some time. I finally went out to see what was going on.There was an enormous opossum on the top of our fence. At least that is what we are saying it was in actuality it was dark and it was huge, it had a bald tail and that is about all we know. We were afraid to get between Pixie and the opossum so we were trying to call Pixie away from the fence. Of course she wouldn't listen. Jeff has this habit of standing up with his full six feet and yelling, "Pixie" and wondering why she never listens to him. I always just squat down and hold out my hand. I don't even have to call her she just comes to me when I do this. This is especially helpful when she runs out the front door and down the street at the ... More About: Daily
Mean Girls on MySpace
2007-11-17 15:50:00 Have you heard about this story?A 13 year old girl killed herself after being targeted on MySpace. Someone from her neighborhood who did not care for this girl pretended to be a boy named Josh. "Josh" spent a month sending messages back and forth with this girl. One day "Josh" told the girl she was cruel, and a slut, and fat. The girl killed herself.I remember when I was 13, I remember when Mandy was 13 sometimes I wonder how we ever got through it all. Even now at nearly 17 Mandy sometimes gets her feelings really hurt by her girls friends. When I was growing up we didn't have MySpace, we had the school bus and the playground. People were still mean, they found a way. Is it worse now with the anonymity of the Internet?I follow comments. Leave a comment and I will come visit your blog. More About: Girls , Myspace
Gubbio
2007-11-17 06:01:00 One weekend not long after our trip to Salzburg, we decided to go to see the leaning tower of Pisa. It had just re-opened and they were allowing people to climb up to the top of the tower again after having been closed for quite some time for renovations. Just as we were about to leave, we found out that in order to climb to the top of the tower you needed to have a reservation. They only wanted a few people per day to climb up the tower and it took awhile to get a reservation. So we decided to go another day. What is the point of driving all that way if you are not going to get to climb up the tower. Jeff and I couldn't decide where we should go instead. Our gas tank was full, we had snacks we wanted a trip. We decided to give the tour book to Mandy and let her pick where we would go that day. Mandy picked Gubbio.Gubbio is a little town in the middle of the Umbria region. Italy is broken up into regions like we are broken up into states. Each region has differing charac... More About: Adventures
The Concert
2007-11-15 15:44:00 Last night I stayed up until midnight waiting for Mandy to come home. She went to a concert on a school night. Aren't I a great mom? It was called the Carnival of Chaos and there were four bands: Red, Three Days Grace, Seether and Breaking Benjamin. I have never heard of any of them. Mandy says I would recognize their songs if I heard them...A boy invited her, he paid for her ticket, he picked her up, he brought her home (actually he doesn't drive either so it was his parents). She says this is not a date. I wonder what a date is? She had so much fun, she was bouncing off the walls when she came home. I imagine that she is sleeping in class right now.There was another concert in town this week one featuring Rick Springfield and Eddie Money, now I have heard of them.I follow comments. Leave a comment and I will come visit your blog. More About: Daily , Concert , The Con , Cert
Salzburg, Austria
More articles from this author:2007-11-14 16:02:00 We actually went to Salzburg twice, you can read about our first trip here. It is also a funny story where I make fun of Jeff and there are a few photos.Our second trip to Salzburg was with some friends, we wanted to go visit the famous Christmas market. Our friends had a Dodge Durango, an enormous vehicle, we had a lot of people in that vehicle and a lot of room. The drive from Italy to Austria was a lot of fun with a SUV full of fun people. It was snowing that day, and our driver was a bit of a daredevil. I was scared we were all going to die, but I tried to keep it to myself. I always like it better when Jeff drives, he is an excellent driver and not one of those guys who feels the need to push the limits past what is safe.Driving up through Austria we pass by beautiful mountains, and castles, the whole drive is almost as fun as the destination. In the summertime what I really love is the crops growing on the sides of the mountains. Like a patch work quilt the smaller gre... More About: Adventures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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