Because I'm Busy...

Yo! Sorry I haven't had time to flesh out any posts the last few days. Things have been busy. Ella made the All Stars for soccer, so I'm completely obsessing over it. Here are two pictures of my girl. Please accept this generic post as clever content.



I never claimed to be creative or gifted in the writing department, so this is the best I can come up with quickly.

 

Let's kick it. 

Enough...

Ooooo, I'm pretty sure that if looks could kill, I would be six feet under.

 

Why? Just Why?...

Another unfinished post. I don't even know where I was going with this one....the only words in the post make up a lovely fragment under the picture. Surely there was a point. No, and stop calling me Shirley.

And I am pepper.

Cheesy Boy...Slacker Mom...

This picture has been in my draft section for months. Months. I'm tired of being taunted by the draft section when I log into blogger.

So, I'm going to start publishing my unfinished posts. I'm not even going to bother completing them. It's time to clean house, and some of these pictures are so old that my children don't even look that way anymore. I'm a slacker.

Unfinished Post #1: This picture didn't even have any words with it. It was just a picture in a draft post!

 

This might get ugly.

Too Much Fun...

Too much fun will cause a little girl to sleep in the backseat of a Jeep.

 

Sure, I'll Smile...

"Hadley." I am met with silence. I try again.  "Hadley." Still no answer from the eldest of my three. "Hadley!! Come here. I want to get one picture of you in your competition outfit before we leave for the football game."

"Fine."

And so she smiles in the driveway. But what you may not realize is that she is actually telling me to eat dirt. She's not saying it with her mouth. It's the eyes...and the iphone still firmly gripped in one hand. 

"Fine," she says, but what I hear is, "My God, woman, you have already taken no less than 1,800 pictures of me in all of my colorguard uniforms, and now you are dragging me out into the front yard to take more. There are people driving down this street who can see you acting like the Mamarazzi. Is the zoom lens really necessary? Did you just set your camera to action, so that you could take 15 pictures in 3 seconds? Is this almost over? I understand why people move to Serbia get away from their parents. Ireland Baldwin is the only other person on the planet who understands my embarrassment." 

And I dropped her off the the away game. I went on to the school later and tried to blend in with the crowd, so that maybe she wouldn't see me in the bleachers with my zoom lens and embarrassingly big purse.

I don't think she saw me.

That was a Goal...

Layton makes videos with his ipod and sends them to me. He has made several of himself playing paper football. After thumping the disposable clump over the goal he assembled from last week's spelling test, he looks right into the camera (on the ipod) and says, "That was a goal." He's proud of his ability to thump. I am proud of it too. In the grand scheme of things, being the class champion of paper football isn't a shabby title. I'm sure he will have many more titles in the years to come. Kids are like that. Nose picker, Pants wetter, baby, dumb dumb Howie - the nicknames and cruelty are meted out generously in elementary school and junior high. Some nicknames are bad, and some are hilariously adorable.
I just hope that when Layton inevitably receives a new nickname, that he will be able to look at the bestower and say, "That was a goal."

 

What do you think? Do you think Ella was able to whizz this one past him and score a goal of her own? 

All Good Deeds...Not Good Deeds...I Need Professional Help...

-The last few weeks have been very busy. The Athens Grease Festival and the Bojangles Apple Annie Golf Tournament have taken up a good bit of my time. Both were worth all the hard work though. I put these two activities in my "Good Deeds" column. I am a type A personality and tend to box up and column off everything in my life. Heck, you might even say that I organize everything in my life spreadsheet style. P.S. If I have emailed you a spreadsheet of things to be done, I apologize. Just because I have mad Excel skills I shouldn't force it on the rest of you....



Good Deeds        Grocery Store        To Do Today        What I Forgot Yesterday           Oh, Snap
-sell chicken         -dish soap             -sign up for             -if I remember it, I will            -SOCCER
  stew for the        -crackers                 CPE                        add it to the list                    TOURNAMENT
  band                   -oil                        -take soup                                                               -attempt to
-devise a way                                      to work                                                                   blog
  to raise enough
  money for handi-
  capped playground
  equipment at local
  parks

These are all actual things on my to do lists from this week. I know; I have issues.

-I loved the shirts for the Grease Festival this year. 

-A few weeks back an acquaintance asked me to make out with him. It discombobulated me. It took me so off guard that I was an a$$ when I replied. The last time a man even remotely showed interest in picking me up was in 2010, and he had one tooth and was hanging out at the Texaco. But, but, but at least he offered to pump my gas first. There wasn't even an offer of french fries or a beverage this time....just a straight up...Hey, let's make out. On average, I'd say that I get hit on once (almost twice) a decade. Amanda : Men : : Garlic : Vampires. So, this was not a moment that I knew how to handle with any kind of grace. J was full of hilarious responses when I told him about it. He gets a kick out of my awkwardness. Did you like my analogy? Did it give you SAT flashbacks?

-I have continuing education on Monday. It's a sales tax class. Try to contain your jealousy.

-Soccer is over. I'm actually a little bit glad. The schedules of the codependents this Fall has kept me hopping.

-If it were possible to read minds, I would be in trouble. My brain is like rapid fire, ADHD thought roulette. My blog posts are evidence of this.

-Does anyone else love the Elvis station on XM radio as much as I do? Listening to it has me considering a trip to Graceland. Again. I've taken the Platinum Tour more times that I should admit. Seriously.

-I think I would like to parlay hanging out at charity golf tournaments into a career...all I had to do was ride around in the golf cart taking pictures and drinking beer. Can one become a professional, charity golf tournament photographer? Probably not. It was fun though.

-It's time for the weekend! Let's all kick back and relax!

Front Yard Fun...ny Faces...

 

 

 

 

 

Her Soul...

 

She stares right through me. It's very unsettling. :)

Wheel, I Need to Rest...

Sometimes, you just have to plop down wherever you can...

 

Afternoon Drives...

**Reposting because I was told the pictures were not visible to some.**

On warm afternoons, we like to load up in the Jeep and go for a drive. Destination unknown. Length of time to be spent in the car unknown. The open road and the codependents. Stopping at a stop sign and tossing a coin to determine if we go left or right.
I'm making this seem far more romantic and interesting than it actually is, but we do have a lot of fun on our trips away from the main drag.

A venue that we have frequented more than once is the Mount Zion Church area not too far from where J's maternal relatives live. The road - let's use that term loosely here - is a piece of concrete that a creek flows over. Try driving through a creek to take your children somewhere. They will scream like it's better than Christmas morning.

I like to watch the water as the vehicle charges through.

I do not like the facilities though. HA!

It's an interesting place to go see. 

People still attend church in this small, out of the way spot. You would think that at some point people would get tired of only being able to make it to church, "God willing and if the creek don't rise." Literally - if the creek don't rise. Do other areas of the country use that expression too? It makes me cringe. I should start a campaign for subject/verb agreement in idioms. 

I love small, country churches.

More pictures from this adventure coming soon...

Treasures...

Much like Layton finds a rock and makes it his prize, Layton is my prize. These hands dig for rocks and throw balls. These hands write letters to me. These hands fold up inside my hands.



The softness of his skin and smell of his sweet hair linger on me after I drop him off at school. When I close my eyes, I can almost feel him curled up in my lap. 

His personality and energy are intoxicating.

 

I love this little boy.

Holes...War on Signs...

So, I was looking at this sign and pondering whether or not to add a bullet hole of my own....ok, not really because I think it might be illegal. I'm scared to death of being arrested.

But seriously.

Why is there a war on signs? What did this poor sign in the middle of nowhere ever do to anyone? It's not like the sign jumped out in the middle of the road and caused anyone to drive into a ditch.

 

The sign didn't pull out in front of me. The sign didn't give me the finger. The sign definitely did not call me ugly words. No one gets hooked on signs and has to go to sign rehab. No one is terrorized by road signs. I doubt the sign is a bully or pedophile. Nancy Reagan did not ask me to "Say no to Signs."

Why the war on signs?

For crying out loud, save the signs and your ammunition. Both might be in short supply if the government can't get its stuff together. Too soon? Ha!

Smudges of Joy...

Have you ever noticed that children are never clean? They look clean for about 5 minutes after their bath. Without fail my little ones always have a smudge of marker or ink on a hand. They like to color and create. Thank you, ancestors, for those genes. I missed out on the creative DNA, but my children did not. Painting, drawing, building, and imagining are their most favorite things.

I, on the other hand, can organize. I am efficient. I do not care how it looks. I want to get the job done. J is an engineer. No, not on a train. In a lab. Or something. I don't know what he does, but we got to go there once and play on a scud missile launcher. Yeah, J and I are never going to open an art studio or anything of that nature.

 

Even on days spent outside, there is always a smudge on small hands.

These are my smudges of joy...

Unless the smudge in on a brand new dress, 15 minutes before a family photo session, or church...

All the Smiling Faces and my Child Being Me...

Look at all the smiling faces of the color guard members and majorette line after they won the whole kit and kaboodle at a competition.....and then look for my child....looking like me.


 

I'm Not Above a Redneck Dryer...

I might have held his shorts in the wind to dry them on the drive home....

 

Soaking Wet...

Layton might have gotten a little bit wet when wading in the creek at Mount Zion....

 

Things to do...

Watch the water pour over the slab....



Get in the water even though we didn't bring a swimsuit...

Long for a swing in the cool, creek water...