Here are a couple of links that I find interesting:
1. I have been "complaining" to Cornbread about "this" for a really "long time". I had to laugh when I saw this blog as a featured blog on the blogger dashboard. It "is" brilliant!
2. We have one of these around here. And I get mad at myself everytime I look at it, because I can't stand it - but its like a trainwreck - I know I shouldn't look, but I just HAVE to - and then I regret it.
3. Cornbread received one of these the other day and it sent him into kind of a tizzy for a few hours. Annoying.
4. This drives me absolutely crazy - out-of-my-mind. Seriously. When a newspaper shows up in my mailbox and the reporter doesn't know the proper use of they're, their, or there and the EDITOR doesn't catch it, their is a problemo.
5. Thank you Doni for this one : Clearly Clockwise for me. How about for you?
PS - you've gotta keep on your toes, people! I'm a blogging maniac - 2 days in a row.
I have a very, very poor memory. Long-term, I guess. I'm not quite sure what the deal is, but I just don't remember details of situations - or movies or books. I don't remember much of my childhood - not that it was bad, but I just don't remember much of it. I don't remember much of high school - not that it was bad, but I just don't remember much of it. I'm beginning to realize that some of my memories of college are on their way out, too. This makes me a little upset, but I also understand and embrace the fact that I can't - and shouldn't - live in the past. It was what it was. It would be nice to revel in the joy of the good memories, but boy it would suck to wallow in the bad memories. So I guess this works pretty well for me:)
To a certain extent this is part of the reason why my posts here are so fricken long at times. Okay, okay, most of it is because I'm chatty, I like to talk and I like to write. But there is an element of wanting to capture everything about the moment - the feelings, the descriptions - so I can read it years from now and remember it, or at least try to remember how I felt when I wrote it or experienced it.
Recently it dawned on me that I will no longer have babies... I will never again have my own 18 month old and pretty soon I won't ever again have my own 2 year old. Maybe I'm getting sappy or mushy, but it occurred to me that there are some moments in life that I just never want to forget, but I'm sure I will. I adored Nora and Ryann as toddlers and they were so cute and fun and funny, however, I don't remember them as toddlers anymore. I barely remember Ryann before she started talking (maybe because she never shuts up now). I barely remember Nora as 4 years old. I think that sometimes I'm just trying so hard to get through the moment - the NOW - that I fail to pause and take it in. And Nora's moments and Ryann's moments are as fun and exciting now as Georgia's will be at the time simply because they'll be the "last time I experience this". So I am trying to be a bit more intentional about capturing photos of moments I don't want to forget - not just the exciting things we do like go to the zoo, or to grandma's, or this thing or that, but the everyday things that create such joy in my life. The everyday things that fill me from head to toe with a sense of peace and joy and wonder.
Here are a few recent photos that I took, just for this reason - not because my kids are so incredibly cute and I want to show them off, but because it was a moment that I never want to forget:
This is how Georgia looks every afternoon when I put her down for her nap. We go in her room, get her pacifier from the bookcase, and I lay her in bed on her pillow. I show her Turkey the Leopard, she smiles and grabs for him, hugs him and I pull her blankie on top of her. I start Baby Tad's 6 minutes of music, give her a kiss on the forehead and say, "Goodnight Buggly, Love you." THIS is how she looks:
Ryann has a bed. She doesn't often fall asleep in it. Many nights we come upstairs to find her sleeping on the floor next to her bed, or sleeping in the threshold of her bedroom door. This night she fell asleep hugging her soccer trophy: 
Every time I ask Nora what she likes most about school, her answer is "Riding the bus." Her bus comes around 12:25pm. We sit outside and wait for it together - just me and her (and sometimes the neighbor boys). Sometimes we listen to the ipod together, sometimes she just rides her bike while I watch. When we see the bus come around the corner a block down from our house, she stops whatever she's doing, grabs her backpack and RUNS to the sidewalk to wait until it stops in front of her. She patiently waits while the stop sign and the arm come out, the bus driver says, "You can cross." She crosses the street - never looking back - only looking forward.
Ever since reading a book about DW losing a tooth, Nora has wanted to lose a tooth. I think she willed this tooth to become loose by just wiggling it until it did. We spent several weeks checking how loose her tooth was. One day, she ran off of the bus and yelled, "I LOST MY TOOTH!" It was an exciting day for all! She got a little tooth box at school and put it under her pillow that night for the tooth fairy. Apparently the tooth fairy comes, waves her magic wand and turns the tooth into money (this is what she told daddy - who relayed it to me when I asked what I was supposed to do with the tooth - leave it there with the money or take it.) The tooth fairy magically turned her tooth into a golden dollar that night!
Today is our anniversary. I wish I had a scanner so I could include some photos of the gorgeous bride and groom... perhaps I'll be able to do that next year:)
Our wedding day was perfect. It was sunny and about 70 degrees. A fair breeze and a virtually cloudless sky.
Our wedding was exactly as we wanted it - my dad did an amazing thing for us when we got engaged. He told us we had a set amount of money and we could spend it as we wanted... he gave us the license to have our own wedding - not the wedding of my mom's dreams or the wedding of my mother-in-law's dreams - OUR wedding. We knew how much we could spend and anything over that we had to pay ourselves - anything left over, he would give to us in the form of a check.
Fortunately, we are fairly simple in our tastes and desires and our wedding cost almost nothing compared to today's weddings. I had my dress made - and never did the wedding dress shopping thing. I had my bridesmaid dresses made and they were my favorite color (the exact color of this blog, in fact). I had gerbera daisies as my flowers. I had candlesticks instead of candleabras. And I had no opinions from anyone else - just mine and Cornbread's. All of these things made me very happy:)
Our reception was at Cannonsberg Ski Lodge. It wasn't fancy and it wasn't beautiful (although the picture in the link is much prettier than it was 9 years ago), but it was FUN!!! Our guests sat at long banquet tables, not round tables. The carpet was threadbare from ski boots being scuffed over it all winter. There were wagon wheel light fixtures and not chandeliers. We had cans of beer instead of draft or bottles. But we had the most fun DJ's, and we had a wall of windows behind the bridal party so we could see the trees with the changing colors. We had a huge deck on the back so we could hang outside in the wonderful weather. We were young and just out of college and our reception became an extension of the parties we had had at Fuller in previous years. All of our friends were there. We were the spotlight couple for the night and we had a BLAST!
But the best thing about that day wasn't the wedding of my dreams or the fun reception, it was marrying my Davenid. He IS and was all I have ever needed and wanted. He is my best friend. He is love and he has turned out to be so much more than I could have ever asked. He is my favorite person of all time:) He is the best father and constantly strives to be the best husband. He works to improve upon what he already is - not because he's deficient in anything, but because he doesn't want to be complacent, he wants to always be working on himself. And he inspires and pushes me to do that for myself. He works hard so he can be successful at his job - want to know why? His goal is to make enough money so that I can do whatever I want - not so we can have tons of stuff, but he wants ME to be able to make my own choices in life. He loves me and respects me so deeply, it brings tears to my eyes.
Every year I tell him that I've heard that marriage is difficult and I'm still waiting for that to happen. I'm sure we will have our downs, but I feel like we have had 9 years of ups so far.
with the flamingo's (Its hard to see, but they're in the background):
Cornbread and I had a fantastic weekend away in South Haven while the girls enjoyed themselves at grandma and grandpa's. When we initally began planning to go away that weekend we decided that it would be nice to do on the weekend of Columbus Day since the girls would be off of school that day. That way we could take our time getting home on Sunday and then we could all have a day at the zoo on Monday after missing them oh so much over the weekend:)
We LOVE going to the city so Lincoln Park Zoo was the destination. We had such a nice day together even with the heat and humidity. The animals were really active - which is a huge change from every other trip I've made to the zoo. And the zoo is much bigger than we remembered from the last time we went (couple years ago)... I was exhausted by the end of the day (had no idea I was also getting a head cold). And the girls all napped in the rush hour traffic on the way home.
This was Georgia's first trip to the zoo and her reaction to every new animal was the same: A really loud shriek and the following look on her face directed at one of us - like "Oh my gosh, LOOOOOK!!! Mom and Dad - LOOOOK!!!" We laughed and laughed with her - it was awesome!
We saw everything - even though I tried to skip a few (who wants to see wolves and black bears anyway?)
Nora's favorites were the anteater, the deer and the giraffes. Ryann's were the giraffes and the zebras (even though that is the one animal that we missed). Georgia's favorites, apparently, were all of them.
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