My girls are generally the last ones to turn in their school permission slips.  They are the children who show up at school missing either their entire lunch or part of it; they are the ones wearing mismatched soccer socks on game day because I can’t find the set.  I am scatter-brained and disorganized and the girls often suffer at least the short-term consequences.  (I do get their permission slips turned in eventually and if they’re missing their lunches, I bring them before it’s time to eat, even if that means a quick run to Publix to pick up a oh-so-healthy Lunchable.)

Our house is usually much closer to a disaster area than something belonging in House Beautiful.  They don’t have as many play dates as they’d like, mostly because I can’t make them work with my crazy schedule and my lackluster housekeeping skills make spur of the moment company difficult to say the least.  They’re often later getting to bed than they should be because I haven’t managed to get dinner on the table until well after 7:00 p.m.

I worry about this. a lot.  I compare myself to other moms and I often feel inadequate, particularly when we’re out somewhere and I see a mom who has everything all organized and running smoothly and I can’t find water bottles, backpacks, school folders, my keys, my sunglasses.  

Last night, though, none of that bothered me.  Last night it was okay that my daughters may not get the benefit of an organized, all-together mother.  They do get the benefit of a creative, playful one.  Their dinners are late, but we have a lot of picnics.  Their permission slips get signed slowly, be we’ve been a lot of places that don’t require permission slips.  Our house is often a disaster, but we do a lot of crafts that involve glue and paint and glitter.  a lot of glitter.   

Last night we had a Glow In The Dark Easter Egg Hunt.  I saw the idea somewhere on the internet (and for the life of me, I can’t remember where!)and knew it was something that the girls would love.  I ordered the mini-lights and picked up some plastic eggs.  I already had the jewel-shaped eggs – they looked really cool with the lights. 

Steve “hid” them around the yard – since they were glowing in the night, they weren’t hard to find.  We called the girls out and told them we wanted them to come look at the moon.  When they walked out the door and saw the yard aglow in Easter colors, they shrieked with joy.  And I smiled!

Abigail ran giggling round and round the yard and Gracie kept saying “This is sooooo cool!”

I need to work on my organizational and time management skills – I know I do.  But, at least for right now, I’m going to celebrate my strengths instead of beating myself up constantly for my weaknesses.  Yes, yesterday was chaotic, but there was a whole lot of laughter and that, at least in my eyes, is something to celebrate.

Abigail had her tonsils and aednoids removed last Tuesday by a skilled surgeon wielding a cool little tool called a plasma knife.  Her recovery has been both better and worse than I expected.  She ran a low grade fever and had some significant pain for a few days after the surgery.  Both were easily handled with regular Tylenol and an occasional dose of Lortab.  I had to bribe her a couple of times to take the Lortab.  Just call me the kiddie drug dealer of our neighborhood.  “Here little girl…try this and I’ll go buy you a LaLaLoopsy doll!” 

I anticipated fever and pain.  But, the last couple of days, she’s had an upset stomach, most likely from the antibiotic she was prescribed by the doctor to reduce the risk of infection in the open wounds in her throat.  And she is tired, much more tired than I expected her to be.  Yesterday, she didn’t leave the bedroom except for a quick car ride with Steve to my mom’s house.  She has only left the house twice since Tuesday.  I’m sure that a lot of her weariness is from her lack of eating.  Tonight, at last, she is actually playing with some of her ponies and using her “pretend voices” for all the characters.  So, maybe we’ve turned a corner and tomorrow will be a better day. 

I am much more weary than I thought I’d be.  Part of that is worry and part of it is that Friday morning, I twisted my back horribly and spent the better part of two days in bed in some pretty rough pain.  Yeah, I have wonderful timing.  I thought that during Abigail’s recovery I would be super-productive – well, that just didn’t happen.  But, this is a new week, a new month, a new beginning.

This is the face of a child with ADHD. I have not blogged about it too much (more hints and innuendo than directly discussing it), not because I’m bothered by it, but because she has specific concerns about me blogging about her experiences. And, I respect her wishes on this. I’m completely and absolutely amazed by her bravery and her ability to confront this. Because she has some other diagnostic things going on (I know, again with the vagueness), she deeply feels the stigma (and yes, there is one…believe me there is) that goes with her ADHD.

I don’t feel I’m breaking her confidences by telling you this story.  If it turns out I am, I’ll take this post down.

This summer, Steve and I sat in the child neuropsychologist’s office and discussed Gracie’s test results.  We received her diagnoses and some of the things were painful to hear.  The news wasn’t all bad. Really, in hindsight, I don’t think any of the news was bad.  She was seven and two weeks into the second grade when we tested her.   The interesting part to me was the results of her aptitude tests.  The doctor told us that her math skills (her weak point) were on a third grade level, her reading skills on a fourth grade, and her spelling skills were above a fifth grade level.  Basically, the doctor said, she’s a seven-year-old who thinks like a ten-year-old.  Which I think helps to explain last night.

Yesterday, Gracie was tired and angry and a whole bunch of other exhausting emotions.  So, she sat down and started to write in her journal.  I could see the anxiety falling away from her as the words poured out onto the paper.  She came out a little while later and told me that she’d decided to write a book for children with ADHD to help them understand what they were feeling.  The book, she says, is going to have sections on famous people with ADHD (Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Robin Williams, Beethoven) and sections on how the children may feel and a final section on what they can do about it.

It blows me away.  I remember reading somewhere that the best way to help yourself feel better when you’re going through a difficult time is to help someone else.  I hope more than anything that I teach my daughters that learning from whatever experiences life throws at you is important, but that taking that knowledge and helping others with it is the most amazing thing of all.  I don’t know that I taught Gracie that – I think she just knows it instinctively.  I can’t tell you how much I love that girl.  I am proud to be her mother!

I feel aimless this morning….I don’t feel well and my mind is overrun with thinking about all kinds of things, both good and bad.  Are you that way?  When you have so many things to do, you’re not sure where to start so you just don’t start anything?  This week has really thrown me for a loop.  We’re still trying to jump through hoops with doctors to get Gracie some help with her focusing problems.  I’m crazily nervous about Abigail’s surgery in a couple of weeks.  I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to juggle plumbers and contractors and large amounts of upheaval.  But, in ten days, the girls start Spring Break and I’m taking the entire week off of work.  I am so excited that I’m counting the hours!  So, those are the things that are floating around in my head.  I actually took a nap this morning, something I can count on one hand the times that I’ve done in my adult life.  It felt good and I’ve felt slightly less aimless this afternoon.

I’m rambling and this probably sounds very stream of consciousness but that’s the way my brain is working today, apparently!

I’ve started Project 365 at least four times in the last five years.  And, generally I make it through the first three or four months taking pictures and only the first few weeks documenting the pictures and printing them out.  I realized last year that this is completely okay.  Yes, I fail at the project.  epically.  But, here’s the thing, I have at least a few weeks out of our year documented.  And that is better than nothing.  So, just call me the Slacker Project 365er!  So, in that vein, I started again this year.  And, knock on wood, with my new “embrace the failure” attitude, I’m doing better than I have most years!  I’m using Weeds and Wildflowers Every{day} Life Pages.  I’m enjoying it because I don’t really have to think about photo layouts or embellishments at all.  All I have to do is drag the pictures in and journal.  Years ago, I would have thought this was cheating.  What can I say?  I was an idiot – I missed the point entirely!  This makes it so much easier and I’m actually accomplishing something!  And, strangely enough, I’m scrapping other pages because I’ve freed myself up from worrying about Project 365 pages.  I remember someone somewhere saying long ago that if scrapbooking became too much like work then you were doing something wrong.  And, that’s where I was for a long time….it felt like a chore…  But, between the Every{day} Life Pages and switching to using 3-ring binders for my albums so I don’t have to scrap chronologically, I’m actually enjoying this hobby of mine again. 

Anyway, how this for a random post!  Here are a few of my 2012 Every{day} Life layouts…I’ve even had a few printed already and they’re in my album.  Hooray for doing something that doesn’t feel aimless!

Gracie was a little late to choir yesterday.  Mostly because ten minutes before we were supposed to be there, she was doing this:

Sometimes, it feels like we have so much going on between work and school and scouts and piano and soccer and choir and church and reading and reading and laundry and dinner and reading some more that there’s not enough time to stop and smell the salt air.  Yesterday, we took the time.  I sat on the sand and took a hundred deep breaths and the girls ran and shrieked at the cold water.  The laughed and played and found treasures.

And I watched the pelicans searching for their dinner

I don’t like to be late for things (Steve is laughing manically as he reads this…I am perpetually late!), really, I don’t.  But sometimes, it just might be worth it. 

We celebrated my youngest niece’s third birthday this weekend at my grandfather’s farm.  It was a fantabulous day and the party was over-the-top adorable.  I have tons of pictures and tons of words but no energy tonight.  I have a cold and I’ve run from pillar to post back to pillar today.  But, as I was looking through all the images from the weekend, this one made me smile and I wanted to share it.  It makes me happy to look at it.  You know for all my talk about taking pictures to preserve memories and to have a documented history for my girls, the truth is, the real reason I take pictures is for moments like these.  On my best days my pictures make me happy.  But, on my worst days, they add a ray of joy to even the greyest of hours.  Yep, the memories, and the history, and the legacy are all wonderful amazing things.  The joy, though, when I need it most, is the reason my camera is always close.

I think it’s pretty obvious that I’ll use any excuse to celebrate with my girls.  I decided long ago that just celebrating birthdays wouldn’t give me enough opportunities to throw all the parties that I want to throw.  Two kids at roughly twelve birthday parties each (and I know the twelve might be stretching it…I’m thinking 12-year-old Gracie might not want a unicorn and rainbow party, but I’m wishful thinking) gives me only 25 parties.  Gracie doesn’t really “do” parties – she’d rather just hang out at home and Abigail’s parties are generally these huge backyard affairs that we have ever two years, because it takes twenty-three months to recover from them.  So, what’s a mom who loves to plan parties to do when she doesn’t have enough parties to plan?

Well, I figured I had two options.  1)Have about thirty more children or 2)Celebrate everything!  I bet you can figure which option won, can’t you?

Friday was Dr. Seuss’ birthday and we celebrated with Seussisms all day long (“A person’s a person no matter how small!  The people who mind don’t matter and the people who mind don’t matter!”) and for dinner, we had green deviled eggs and ham sliders.  The ham slider recipe was from Annie’s Eats.  They were so good, we’re having them for dinner again tonight!  I made Cat In The Hat Cupcake Push Pops – they didn’t turn out was cute as I’d have liked, but the girls loves them and I think that’s all the matters!  I decorated with some Dr. Seuss bulletin board cut-outs and Gracie & Abigail laughed out loud when they walked into the kitchen.  Over dinner I told them some Dr. Seuss trivia (that Theodor Seuss Geisel didn’t have any children of his own and in fact wasn’t even particularly fond of children).

Was it a little bit of work? Sure, but not much more than a regular dinner and the smiles on the girls’ faces made it all worthwhile.

Yesterday, Gracie was one of the “Positive People of the Day” at school.  Abigail and I went to the media room to watch her deliver the positive thought for the day on the school’s television. 

She looks thrilled, doesn’t she? 

She did a great job.  Her  thought for the day was “be your best”.  It was just the thing I needed to hear. I’ve been struggling lately with that all too familiar feeling of never doing anything well.  I usually feel this way when I have so much on my plate that I never end up finishing anything.  Steve and I always try to teach the girls that all we expect of them is that they try.  It’s a lesson I apparently needed to learn myself and, as usual, it’s my daughters who teach me!

It’s March.  I’m happy…spring, at least for us along the Gulf Coast is almost here.  I try every year to embrace the mild winter we have here.  I really, really try.  I’m just not cut out for winter, even mild ones. I know how ridiculous that sounds as I sit here in my 65 degree winter weather. Trust me I know how ridiculous it sounds.

It’s March and I’m glad. But….Of course, there’s a but.  And here it is.  March may be coming in like a lion and out like a lamb, but this March is going to be a bear to make it through.

There are parts of the month that I’m very excited about.  I’ll see my family this weekend and celebrate my youngest niece’s birthday.  Spring break is in two weeks and I’m looking forward to spending the week with my babies.

Between that fun, though, we’re replacing all the piping in the house and our insurance company is replacing all the flooring in the house.  We had a leak in a wall in the kitchen and it managed to cause enough damage to warrant replacing all the carpet and wood flooring in the entire house.  When we’re all done, it will be wonderful, but it’s going to be chaotic for a while!  And, in the middle of all of that, Abigail will be having her tonsils and adenoids removed.  I am not looking forward to that at all.  Again, once it’s over, it will be a good thing, but the idea of passing my sweet crazy girl off to a surgeon fills me with worry.

So, I’ll make my way through this month, enjoying all the good things these four weeks will offer, but mostly, I just want to make it across to the other side of April with all the worry and chaos (at least for now) behind us!

There are so many things I want to change in my life right now.  Not the big stuff…I’m not going to change religions, leave my family, and head off to Borneo.  It’s the little things…making the girls’ lunches the night before, finding some devotional time that’s not peppered with incessant questions from everyone in my life, reducing the amount of “stuff” that we have, trying hard to reach my goals.  Yes, it’s all little stuff but I think making those small changes could make a big difference in my life as a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, an employee.

The Lorax says  “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not!”

And I do care.  I care an awful lot.

Mardi Gras is a pretty big deal around here.  This year, we had a lot going on and didn’t make it to any parades except for this one at  Abigail’s preschool.  It was supposed to be in front of the community center, but the weather was rough, so we had it in our newly re-opened sanctuary.  Yes, that would be one of the things I love about our church – the sanctuary was closed for several months for repairs and the first event that was held in it after it reopens was a preschool Mardi Gras parade! 

Abigail was, of course, ridiculously cute.  And I can add reason number 425,000,000 to why I love my Silhouette cutting machine.  She’d been sick the entire week and I only remembered thirty minutes before school that she was having the parade.  I wanted her to have something festive to wear (like that matters. at all. but I am me which means ten minutes before we needed to leave I was grasping at straws) and luckily I found an old purple shirt of Gracie’s.  I pulled out my Silhouette, found a mask design, pulled out some white transfer material, and voila!  a Mardi Gras t-shirt.  kind of….

The parade may not have had huge floats or moon pies or marching bands, but it definitely made up for that in sheer sweetness.

I love this bead-throwing girl!

I woke up suddenly at 3:00 a.m., a full hour before my alarm was set to annoy me with its chirping.  I tried to figure out which of my senses was responsible for my jolted awakening. 

I could hear Ella Bella, our sheltie,  tippy tapping across the kitchen floor and then her quiet whine begging to be let out, usually a sign that there’s an possum lurking on the other side of the fence in the back yard waiting to torment her.  But, I didn’t think that was why I was awake…I’m usually a fairly deep sleeper and there’s the whole single-sided deafness thing I have going on, so it’s rare that a noise, particularly one as subtle as a dog’s nails clicking on wood would rouse me from sleep.

I could smell Abigail’s breath, next to me, as she snored softly. It wasn’t exactly sweet…she is not an infant anymore and her night-time breath is not the sweetness of milk and angel and kisses, but it wasn’t exactly strong enough to pull me from my dreams.

I could feel the tightness in my back as I stretched, but it was more the soreness of a productive weekend than any kind of wrench from sleep pain.

I couldn’t remember any dream that had startled me.  I just shrugged it off to something I couldn’t explain and got up and let Ella Bella out, then came back to bed to sleep for a few more minutes.  As I pulled the covers back up, I leaned over and kissed Abigail’s forehead and instantly realized that the sense that woke me up wasn’t might sense of sight or smell or hearing or touch or taste.  It was my sense of motherhood, that thing when I was younger that I feared I would never have, that mystical ability to sense, on a primal level, when something is wrong with your child.  Abigail had a fever, thankfully not a very high one, but enough to alert my senses and wake me up.  Before I was a mom, I was sure that I would never, ever have that instinct about my own children.  Basically, because I’m clueless and generally non-observant.  The running joke in my family was that I would have a baby and leave her somewhere:  the shopping cart at the market, a bench at the park, waiting on the platform at a train station.  My absent-mindedness is something of a legend in my family.  In spite of that, or perhaps because of it (am I hyper-vigilant because I’m so sure I’m going to do something forgetful that will hurt them), I do instinctually know when something is wrong with my babies.  And, I wouldn’t have it any other way, even when it robs me of an hour of sleep!

Tonight, Steve and the girls and I are going to watch The Miracle Worker.  You remember the movie, don’t you? The one about Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller with the climatic scene at the pump.  W*A*T*E*R.

Gracie has an obsession with Helen Keller.  She read her first Helen Keller biography when she was in kindergarten and since then, she’s read every book she can find about Hellen Keller that’s in her reading level.  She was Helen Keller for Halloween this year.  Yes, you read that correctly.  My child is nothing if not unique. 

This summer the girls and I headed up to Florence, Alabama to meet my sister and her girls to visit a place I read about on the internet.  Oh, there’s a story there, but I’ll save it for later.  Anyway, my sister arrived at the hotel before we did.  When we were about twenty minutes away, she called and said, “Guess who was born just a few miles away?”  For the life of me, I could not figure it out.  When she told me it was Helen Keller (she was born in Tuscumbia), I was thrilled.  Gracie was beyond thrilled.  The next morning, even though we had big plans, we worked our schedule out so we could make a visit to Ivy Green, the home where Helen was born and the home where Annie Sullivan came and broke through the little girl’s disabilities and opened up the world of communication to her. 

The tour was an absolute treat.  I love historical sites anyway, but watching Gracie completely engrossed in everything about the house and the grounds was simply wonderful.  The other three girls really enjoyed it, too! 

Sometimes, it’s the completely unexpected adventures that turn out to be the best!

There was a framed Helen Keller quote in the living room at Ivy Green.  It was such a beautiful sentiment, I thought I’d share it with you:

“They took away what should have been my eyes,

But I remembered Milton’s Paradise.

They took away what should have been my ears,

Beethoven came and wiped away my tears.

They took away what should have been my tongue,

But I talked with God when I was young.

He would not let them take away my soul…

Possessing that, I still possess the whole.”

Really, I don’t think I could ask for a better hero for my daughter to have!

This winter has been unbelievably mild.  Granted, it’s not like we have harsh winters here anyway, but even by our standards, we’ve had unseasonably warm weather.  Right now, I’m sitting on the couch with the doors open and the sun streaming through the windows.  We’ve had a day or two of sub-sixty degree weather, but for the most part, the temp has hovered around seventy.  The girls seem to find peace and comfort at the beach just like I do, so we’ve spent a lot of time walking the shore and playing in the water over the last couple of months.  (They play in the water a  lot more than I do…even with seventy degree weather, the water still feels chilly to me!)

After piano lessons a couple of weeks ago, we headed down to the pass and played on the rocks.  This is one of their favorite places to go.  I enjoy it……the beach feels massive here because there’s water on both sides.  It makes me feel really small and insignificant which I firmly believe is good for your soul.  Because if you feel small and insignificant, how can your problems be anything but small?  This time of year, the beach is pretty much deserted, a true secret paradise. 

Enough talking…here are the pictures form our outing…I think we’ll be heading out again very soon!

Looking west across the pass…

Here’s another Pinterest recipe that we tried.  The original recipe is from Alexandra’s Kitchen (link).  I pinned it a few weeks ago and finally, this week I managed to pick up a lemon and some blueberries from Publix.  I am the world’s worst about forgetting one crucial ingredient for a recipe and then becoming completely frustrated and swearing I’m never, ever, ever going to make anything with more than two ingredients again.  Anyway, Gracie woke up early this morning and she helped me whip this up and get it the oven.  This was certainly a kid friendly recipe.  Gracie even enjoyed zesting the lemon but her favorite part was tossing the blueberries with the flour – I suggest if you’re doing this with children to put the blueberries and flour in a bowl and cover it with some kind of plastic wrap and then let the child toss to cover.  ‘Cause, otherwise, you might or might not end up with blueberries and flour all over the floor.  On second thought, if you’re doing this with children or you’re clumsier than the average person (read, me), you might want to do that.

As usual, we were running late for church this morning.  Anyone surprised?  I pulled this out of the oven just as we were rushing out the door and left it on the stovetop to cool while we were gone.  When we got back, I cut into it, took one bite and declared to to Steve that I am never making blueberry muffins again.  never. ever. ever (or until I don’t have the ingredients for this on hand and am stuck making the more instantaneously gratifying but less satisfying Duncan Hines box method)

I truly think the buttermilk makes this recipe.  I love cooking with buttermilk…the tartness just takes the sweetness of recipes like this to an amazing level.  On a completely different note, I do not like to drink buttermilk.  My grandfather, who drinks it like water, had a glass on the table and I picked it up and took a swig thinking it was something else, and I almost choked.  That’s another story for another time.  Let’s just say that some things that I bake with are not good on their own…I’ll just put shortening and buttermilk on that list for now.

Okay, enough chitter chatter.  Here’s the recipe:

The Stuff You Need:

½ cup unsalted butter
1 tsp. lemon zest
1/2 tsp. pure lemon extract
1 cup sugar with 2 tablespoons reserved
1  egg
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 pint fresh blueberries
½ cup buttermilk

The Things You Need To Do:

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Cream together butter, lemon zest, lemon extract, and all but the reserved sugar until light and fluffy.
2. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until combined.
3. Toss the blueberries with ¼ cup of the flour (use the method I talked about above unless you want blueberries all over your floor!)
4.  Stir together the rest of the flour, the baking powder and the salt.
5. Add the flour mixture to the batter a little at a time, alternating with the buttermilk.
6.  Fold in the blueberries.
7. Grease a 9-inch square baking pan with unsalted butter. Spread batter into pan. Sprinkle batter with remaining two tablespoons of sugar. Bake for 40-45 minutes.
8. Let it cool before serving (I cooled mine for about an hour and it was perfect, but I don't know if I'd have had that much discipline if we'd actually been in the house while it was cooling!)

Enjoy!

The only thing that would have made this more delicious would have been if I’d used some blueberries straight from my grandfather’s farm, but I’ll have to wait until early summer for that.

Just look at that yumminess!

I love this girl. so much.  She is funny and goofy and stubborn and kind and sweet.  She is closest in age of all the cousins to Gracie and probably gets her more than anyone.  They fight light cats in a bathtub sometimes, but I’ve seen Emmie be kind to Gracie when Gracie needs it if even she doesn’t deserve kindness.  Emmie’s laugh is contagious.  And, she loves my homemade projects more than anyone else in the entire world.

I made these shirt for the girls for Christmas for our upcoming Disney trip.  Peace, Love, and Mickey Mouse just seemed like a good theme for our visit (what?  You don’t have themes for your trips?).  When Emmie opened her box she smiled and said thank you.  Even though it was obvious they all four liked their matching shirts, none of the girls were exactly dancing around the room.  They were shirts after all, not American Girl doll clothes or horse accessories.    My sister quietly said to Emmie, “Did you know that’s an Aunt Daffy shirt?”  and Emmie’s face lit up.  “You made it?” she asked and the shirt, in her mind, was instantly elevated to something else entirely.  I’ve made her t-shirts using whatever is my craft medium of the time since she was a little bitty girl. She is sometimes the reason I keep crafting, just to see that smile on her face when I give her an Aunt Daffy shirt.   Yep, I love that girl. 

When the girls got dressed that morning, they looked so cute!  I loved how Emmie added her Happy Birthday pin over the peace sign on her shirt.  It looked great!  I was particularly worried that morning because Abigail’s temperature was back up really high again and she just looked very sick.  Steve decided to take her to the urgent care clinic in Orlando (her second visit in four days).  I was more than a little stressed, but I still noticed how cute the girls looked in their shirts.

It wasn’t until later in the afternoon, after Abigail returned from the doctor with a new antibiotic and a confirmation that nothing was seriously wrong, that I learned the secret of the pin over the peace sign on Emmie’s shirt.  Do you see it in the picture?  Yep!  You see it.  I put the peace sign upside down on her shirt.  Emmie’s shirt said Mercedes. Love. Mickey Mouse.  She had put the birthday pin on over the Mercedes sign because she knew I was worried about Abigail and she didn’t want me to be upset about her messed up shirt.  See?  Even my nine-year-old niece knows I have a perfectionist streak!  Once she took the pin off, I just laughed and laughed and laughed some more.  I have issues with peace signs all the time.  I can never, ever, remember if the lines point up or down.  But, really, the peace sign isn’t the important symbol on this shirt.  And neither is the mouse ear symbol.  The important symbol on all their shirts is the heart.  I am so blessed to love and be loved by all four of these girls.  Little girls who love me enough to proudly wear a Mercedes, Love, and Mickey Mouse shirt.

I am pretty sure I am the only person in the entire history of the universe who dreads going to Disney World.  I know I am an abomination, but I just can’t help it. 

We’d been planning a trip to Orlando with my sister and her family for almost two years.  One thing or another kept getting in the way, but finally, finally, we all got our acts together and made the trek down to the Mecca of commercialism in January.

I was thrilled to be taking a vacation and over the moon about getting to spend some time with my sister and her family.  But, honestly, I was not excited about Disney.  I’m not even sure I can tell you why. 

Part of me despises the whole “Oh, you have to take your children to Disney because it is the most magical, beautiful place on Earth.”  People, I’ve watched the sun come up over the Irish countryside and I’ve climbed to the top of El Castillo at Chichen Itza.  I have felt the mist from the English Channel brush my face on the ferry between Dover and Calais.  You can’t convince me that the slightly freakish It’s A Small World puppets can compete with any of that. 

Then there’s the silly argument that went on in my head debating the idea of taking Gracie, who hates crowds, loud noises, feeling out of control to a place full of tons of people, lot of strange noises where she’s at the mercy of snaking lines (albeit beautifully designed snaking lines).

Honestly, though, I think what I was dreading most was failing.  Something about a trip to Disney just sets you up with so many expectations.  And I just knew that the trip couldn’t possibly live up to everyone’s expectations.  Steve, who was looking forward to having fun with his girls and relaxing and enjoying family time.  Abigail who was so excited about going to Cinderella’s castle that she could not contain herself for a month before we left.  Gracie who wanted to visit every single country at Epcot.  And me.  I ‘m not sure what I expected.  I think mostly I expected to be let down.  Turns out, not a single one of our expectations were met.  Steve didn’t get to spend much time relaxing at all.  Gracie didn’t visit a single country and Epcot.  Abigail didn’t get to go inside Cinderella’s castle because she was sick and by the time she felt well enough to visit the Magic Kingdom, the castle was closed.  And, me, well I wasn’t let down.  Steve may not have relaxed, but he did ride the teacups with his girls and laughed until he could barely talk.  Gracie didn’t visit any country in Epcot, but she got over her fear and rode the Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom at least ten times.  Abigail didn’t see the castle but she discovered a passion for saving endangered animals after rescuing a baby elephant from poachers on the Safari trip.

While we were waiting for the bus our first day in Orlando, I spied this little bird hopping around as if he didn’t have a care in the world.  As I watched him flit from one spot of the bus stop to another, looking for whatever crumbs anyone may have dropped, I started to relax and let the joy of being with my family wash over me.  Disney may not be the most beautiful, magical place in the world, but it certainly does have a magic all its own and who was I to resist.

It’s a dreary first day of February here…the rain has been steadily tap, tap, tapping on the roof for hours.  It’s not cold; it’s not hot; it’s just miserable.  But, there’s a pot of curried pumpkin soup on the stove (yum) and Valentine’s Puppy Chow cooling on sheets of wax paper in the kitchen.  Abigail and I are taking a sick day from church tonight (she’s running a slight fever and I’ve pulled my back out yet again).  As gray as the day is though, I am so glad that it’s February.  I am glad to say goodbye to January.

The month certainly wasn’t without its high points.  We took our first trip to Disney with the added bonus of going with my sister and her family.  Gracie celebrated her 8th birthday in grand style.  We celebrated Chinese New Year and Gracie brought home a good report card.  We went to the beach several times and had a wonderful dinner at my favorite restaurant with some dear friends.  Not much to complain about.

Still, as delightful as parts of January were, there were still parts that tried my very patience.  Like Monday morning. I woke up and, as I always do, booted up my server so I could do some database work.  Or at least I tried to boot the server.  Two seconds after I pushed the power button, a message flashed on the black screen:  “No boot device available.”  Sigh.  Unfortunately, missing boot drives are bad news.  Fortunately, we live in an amazing time, particularly for wannabe computer repair techs with access to Google.  I found a cool little universal drive adapter that lets you pull out a hard drive and hook it up to a USB port.  I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived on Tuesday.  I pulled both drives out of the dead server and tested them.  Luckily, one of the drives was just fine.  Unfortunately, the other one still wasn’t recognized.  I am not the best at backing up my data.  I know, I know, believe me I know.  Most of my data is backed up in different locations, but it’s not exactly systematic and there was information on that drive that I really would have liked to have back, mostly pictures of the girls.  So, yesterday, I went on a quest and after tons of on-line searching and talking with Seagate (the manufacturer of the drive), I was able to restore the partition on the drive and get the data back.  Yay! Was it worth all that trouble?  I’d say definitely.  I found a slew of pictures that I’d forgotten all about.  Looking through the folders on the drive last night was taking a wonderful walk through my memories of the last few years.  Sometimes, losing things is the best way to find them again.

This picture is Gracie a couple of weeks before she started kindergarten.  I remember the simplicity of that summer…months without a schedule…the time before school and all its scheduling started, the summer before my father got sick.  It was a blissful time and it felt good last night to pull this picture up and remember it and to remind myself that life is not always as hectic as it feels now.

Mardi Gras season is in full swing!  Fat Tuesday is on February 21st this year and I’m sure I’ll take the girls to at least one parade.  Here’s a little known fact about me:  I was born in New Orleans and lived there until I was four.  For years, I believed that I was in an actual Mardi Gras parade.  I distinctly remember walking up and down the streets of downtown New Orleans.  Turns out, what I actually remembered was a parade at my preschool where we marched around the building.  Oh well.  I do remember my sister finding the baby in the king cake when she was two and thinking it was a huge deal and she was going to have good luck for life or possibly get some amazing present. 

For the last few years, I’ve made my dad’s jambalaya on Fat Tuesday and we’ve had some kind of King Cake for dessert.  I’ve tried cakes from the bakery, cakes from mixes, and last year, I tried one from scratch.  It turned out really, really good.  The cake part was the perfect texture and I really liked the filling.  (Steve wasn’t too big a fan of the filling, so this year I might try a different type)

I let Abigail and her friend help me make it and they had a great time.  I think some of the best childhood memories are made in the kitchen.  I used to love my Daddy make homemade pasta and string it up across the kitchen to dry. 

Here’s the recipe that I used (modified slightly from Taste of Home):

Ingredients

1 package of active dry yeast

1/2 cup warm milk

1/3 cup butter-flavored shortening

1/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cans of almond cake and pastry filling

For the glaze: 

3 cups of powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

3 to 4 tablespoons water

Purple, green and gold sugar for decorating – to make the sugars, I just used white sparkling sugar and a little food coloring to make the colors I wanted.  Finding purple, green, and gold sugar was difficult around here for some reason!

Directions

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add the milk, shortening, sugar, salt, egg and 2 cups of the flour. Beat on medium speed until smooth.  Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough (dough will be sticky).

Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth (about 6 minutes). Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.

Punch dough down. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; divide in half. Roll one portion into a 16-in. x 10-in. rectangle. Spread almond filling to within 1/2 in. of edges. Roll up jelly-roll style, starting with a long side; pinch seam to seal. Place seam side down on a greased baking sheet; pinch ends together to form a ring. Repeat with remaining dough and filling. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack. For glaze, combine the confectioners' sugar, vanilla and enough water to achieve desired consistency. Spread over cooled cakes. Sprinkle with colored sugars.

So, I find all these awesome things on Pinterest and on craft and food blogs that I read and in magazines at the check-out line in Publix.  I don’t try all of them (really, I’d have to be ten people with five lifetimes each to be able to complete even of 1/3 of the things I’d like to try).  But, the girls and I do try new things each month.  Sometimes, they turn out wonderfully and sometimes, well not so much (see these).  I thought I’d start posting my results with our experiments, mostly so you can see what happens when real people attempt some of the crafts/recipes that are all over the web and in magazines.

Last year, the girls and I made their school Valentines.  I can’t tell you how much fun we had making them and I got the added bonus of having willing participants for a mini photo session so we could get the pictures for Gracie’s cards.

I found the idea for Abigail’s cards at Family Fun.  They were fairly straightforward.  The hardest part was finding the shovels.  I found them at Giant Party Store.  They turned out cute and Abigail enjoyed helping to make them.

I found the idea for Gracie’s cards here.  I showed them to Gracie and she was so excited to try them.  So, after ballet one day, I changed the girls into their heart shirts and we tried to get just the right picture at the right angle.  The trick is to make sure that your little valentine is holding her hand out far enough that you get the illusion of depth and also make sure that her hand is not in front of her face.  Luckily, we got this one:

Then, it was just a matter of printing them out at 4X6 and cutting a slit for the the sucker to go through.  We mounted them on card stock to give them a little more stability.  This was our end result.

Gracie was thrilled to take those cards into school.  I couldn’t have been happier with the way they turned out.  Sometimes, trying new things ends up with great results!  I’m not sure what we’re going to do this year for Valentines.  I think it will be hard to top last year’s, but I have a couple of ideas that might work!