Don't you just hate it when that happens

So I kinda fell apart

Ty's school was perfect. He has three teachers, all of them adorable and sweet. Since Jennie kept Charlie we walked into the church (not our church,) and looked for his class. It didn't take long to figure out that we would have to go upstairs. Now, with Ty and Joy-who happily stayed in the Baby Bjorn carrier-taking the stairs to avoid the elevator wasn't a big deal. Not having Charlie with us meant we could skip a stroller. When it's just me taking him, in a mere few days, I'll put Joy and Charlie in the double stroller and have Ty hold onto it. Yes friends we're facing two scary obstacles: the elevator and a milestone.

Now, I've never been very emotional about school. Mom says I never wanted to leave school/church because I was 1)the third kid and 2)happy as long as I was playing with toys and fed. I didn't anticipate feeling a tug at my heart when I signed him up for preschool.

But I watched him in his little class, watched him cling to Sean, and imagined what will happen on his first real day. I felt that first twinge of, "I feel helpless...I won't see him, help him, feed him, etc and before I know it he will be in real school. Before I know it he will run into the room and never look back."

And there in that little room in that very big church, I was reminded how fast we came to this day. Some days it seems like our kids will never grow up. The day-in, day-out caretaking takes a toll. We wish they were more independent. But today I decided it was okay to freeze time and enjoy it. I decided I'm gonna work on enjoying sending him off and making the most of the time with only the girls and then be first in line to pick him up. And I'm gonna try to get some good practice under my belt for when they are in real school and I find myself totally clueless about what to do with my time.

So there you have it: what I envisioned as a necessary but not important day turned out to be an important one after all.

Useum

Yesterday we went to the Dallas Museum of Art with Emmy. The word museum will never sound the same to me after hearing Ty say, "Goin to Useum" all day. When we first walked in Emmy showed the lady her membership card and I kid you not this is what the woman said: "Welcome! You should take him up to the second floor and teach him the difference between a portrait, a landscape, and a still life."

Sure.

If only his own mother knew the difference between those.

Here are pictures from our fun afternoon

This was his favorite room--the "children 4 and under relaxation" room. Of all the things to see at the Useum these blocks were his favorite. I'm just glad I signed him up for preschool instead of a Useum Mommy and Me course.
They have really neat exhibits for kids. This is a texture table with crayons attached to teach the kids about shadowing and they encourage touching, comparing, etc.
The fountains outside were the close runner-up to the blocks. Not exhibits really but they resemble a car wash, his current favorite thing.
None of us had any idea why this is considered art but whatever.
Aunt Emmy provided lots of instruction and explanation--she does know the difference between the different paintings.
Right after I snapped this picture the kind lady told me I couldn't take pictures with a flash. This was his favorite painting.
I actually have memories of this from all the field trips we took as kids to this useum.

Sorry about the order of the pictures...He did like coloring at the texture table.
and now some big news: righthisminute we are getting ready to go meet Ty's teacher for school this year. Jennie is keeping Charlie so we can actually talk to the teacher and hear any instructions she has for us. Thanks Jennie! I'm sure there will be news to share after seeing his little classroom, meeting his teacher, and just his overall first impression of school. I hope he'll be THIS excited about school after today!

Mimi's Lasagna

Okay girls get your recipe cards out. This one's a keeper. Mimi, my MIL whose real name is Louraine, has legendary lasagna and she just taught me how to make it. It's one of those recipes that tastes much more complicated than it is and you can tell your friends/husband that you've slaved over it all day and really you just make your stove slave over it and you don't have to do much at all. Good luck! If you make it let me know how it tasted! Freezes very well.

Louraine's Lasagna

1 lb ground beef

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cans Hunts Diced tomatoes (28 ounce can) either plain OR with Basil Garlic and Oregano

2 cans Hunts tomato sauce (15 ounce can)

1 package lasagna noodles (She suggests Barilla 1 lb package)

3 tsp Oregano

8 oz package of grated Mozzarella cheese

8 oz package of Monterrey Jack cheese

1 9x13 pan, plus 1 8x8. The recipe makes enough to freeze one smaller pan.

The sauce needs to cook all day or at least 5-6 hours. It reduces by almost half and it's an important part of the recipe. Empty tomatoes and sauce into large saucepan and fill each can with water and add it to the pan. Now you can throw the cans away! Add oregano and stir well. Put pan over low/medium heat and stir occasionally, (literally, I stir it maybe once every hour.) Reduce heat if liquid boils too much-you don't want to make a huge mess.

After tomatoes have reduced or you're ready to show off for your in-laws/boss/husband, remove tomatoes from heat. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease pans for lasagna. Mix cheeses together in a bowl. Brown chopped onion and meat in skillet and then add to tomato mixture. Boil lasagna noodles for 10 minutes even though it says 8-9 on the package. Don't ask questions just do it. That's what Louraine said to me when I asked her if she was sure about the 10 minutes. Drain noodles and place one layer (trim noodles to fit) in bottom of pan. Then spoon a thin layer of tomato/meat mixture over to cover noodles. Sprinkle cheese mixture over meat mixture--again, a thin layer--and then start a new layer with noodles. There should be three layers total for the lasagna.

The key to this recipe is thin layers--just enough meat/cheese/noodles to cover the layer below and not too much of any one thing. It sounds like it wouldn't matter but it's exactly the right amount of ingredients AND it's melt in your mouth good if you just put thin layers. Like she said, don't ask questions just do it.

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before serving to let the liquid soak back up into the noodles. Yum. Enjoy!

Meet Robin

Robin is a family friend who happens to be a hair stylist. Did I luck out or what? Since Mom is here I got to go get a haircut today and I thought it'd be fun to show you what Robin can do with hair. I thought about having her dye it black or cut it really short for shock value but in real life I have to live with my hair so I opted for a trim. Here we are before.
That's how I wear my hair 99.9 % of the time when I'm home with the kids. I needed a mommy makeover.
and here we are after, with straighter than it'll ever be with me fixing it hair, feeling like a girl again. Isn't it wild how a haircut can make you in a better mood? It's still really long in the back but she added new layers to make it less heavy. In the winter we're gonna try bangs again. I try them every year and like them but during the summer it's a no-go with the humidity. If you know me in real life you're shaking your head, "Yes, yes, we've seen the lion look on you." Ha!

Where was I four years ago?

On this day four years ago here I was. See my veil blowing sideways? We had to bring fans in so we wouldn't pass out.

My groom begging me to go through with it. That's Emmy, my brother Graham and his wife standing beside Popeye. Isn't Ana a beauty?

Our officiants Mark and Jason with us on the big day, about 30 minutes before they would make it official. If you look closely you can easily see we are all sweating. I think I'm as bad as they are!
Bonnie (remember pics from her recent wedding?) She dropped by yesterday on her way home from work and the whole house lit up. So glad she lives down the street from us!
On this day four years ago I wasn't nervous or scared. I was relieved and excited. I was thankful and ready. I lied. I was a little nervous but only because the next day I was boarding an airplane. You know how scared I am of flying. To make our wedding our own, (what an obvious statement,) we had the musicians play, "I'll Fly Away," a great hymn with an extra significance because of my husband's occupation. Even hearing the music made my stomach turn a little bit. I need counseling. Ha!

Dad: "Are you SURE? Now's your chance..."

Just kidding. We were trying to figure out if we missed the cue to open the doors. That's Emmy and Maggie in the picture trying to help us figure it out. Emmy is, well, you know her and Maggie is my oldest friend. Like from before the womb. She's a surgical nurse now how cool is that? I tried to pull some strings and get her into the delivery room with Joy but she has cooler surgeries to do and apparently you can't just pull a nurse from whichever hospital you want to bring them into whatever surgery you want. Who knew.
See how happy I was to be marrying my man? See how hot I was even before the wedding started?

Fast forward (literally, very very fast,) and here we are today. We both look a little different than we did at our wedding. Sean has a few more gray hairs (or is it grey?) anyway, and I have a completely different body but we are the same people, still working at our relationship and still ready to face the world--or the kids--as a united front.

Four years ago today I made one of the easiest decisions I've ever made. And I was right. Sean, thanks for sticking around. I love you.

Too much extra time

Is it time to pull out the fall clothes since school is starting? Around here it's still hovering around 100 degrees so I'm tempted to say a big NO except for the painful awareness that my girls are outgrowing their summer clothes. Since you've heard all about the hand-me-downs around here, you might infer that I take full advantage of our wealth of clothes and rarely buy the kids clothes at all. And if you did infer that, you'd be right. I'm pretty sure that's not the proper way to use the word infer but you know what I'm talking about. I know how lucky I am that aside from the occasional tutu or shoes, our clothing budget is spent solely on me and Sean.

Oh who are we kidding. It's spent on me.

Except when one of the kids actually needs something specific. And about once a year when Sean needs either more work shirts or socks. While we're on the topic of his clothes, I'll update you on our dry cleaners incident. I think I forgot to do that!

Sean hardly ever has dry cleaning. I'm lucky I know. He has a uniform for work and the shirts they have to wear are designed to be tough/stand up to a ton of wear so besides the occasional church outfit I never take anything of his to the cleaners. Since I'm a girl, inevitably I end up with more "dry clean only" dresses than I'd like and the dress involved in the stand-off was one of the picky little tagged ones.

The day after the police came to help us, (two weeks ago I think,) the kid texted me to set up a time to try again. After back and forth texts--really weird to do with a business--Sean went to pick up my dress and get the full story. Maybe I should say, "try to get the full story." The kid really is just a kid-17 years old and the son of the former owner of the business. Since his father was too much of a weasel to meet his customers himself he made his son do it day after day during his summer break from school. Without going into how many different kinds of wrong that is I'll just say two things: I'm glad I got the dress back and I'm glad my husband would never run away from something like that if he'd been the business owner. I'm thankful for his character.

Okay back to the topic I started on: kid clothes. Specifically Charlie's clothes since Joy is wearing everything that used to be Charlie's. I get the in-between or specific things from various stores, always on sale. Resale stores are great too. Miss Charlie isn't exactly a wall flower and if I spent lots of money on her clothes I'd always be frustrated with how not-so-gentle she is while playing. Soooooo today when I had way too much free time, (all three kids went down at 12:30 and the first one woke up at 3:30!! Praise Jesus!!) I looked online for fun.

If I had unlimited funds to blow on totally unrealistic/impractical things for Charlie, I'd get her this. Or this. Or at least this.

Now that was fun. Pretend online shopping never looked so good!