Last Morning of Summer 2012

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Waking up in the mountains and I can’t bring myself to wake up Peter. It’s his last morning of summer vacation and he is sleeping just like a little boy who spent the entire day before in a river kayaking. He also caught crayfish in a creek, frogs and salamanders. He tried sleeping in a tent by the river and it lasted until Jim and I headed back to the house.

His big brothers lasted longer. They made it in the tent until Jim, Peter and I made it to the house.
What a terrific weekend with friends. I will add some pictures to this post when I get home later and can download them off my “real” camera.
Hope everyone had a great weekend and an ever better summer and here’s to having a fantastic fall!

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Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

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Summer Camp

Saying goodbye at camp.Little brother Peter was left to watch Lilly our dog while we were unpacking Mitchell and Avery.  Peter was so worried our dog was upset that we were leaving his big brothers.  I think perhaps little brother was a little sad we were leaving them too.

Can you see how nervous Avery and Mitchell are while we check them in?

I CANNOT BELIEVE I LEFT MY BABIES!

I went to summer camp for the first time when I was their age.

That is what I kept chanting to myself every time I had the thought to throw them back into  the car and drive them to Disney World so I wouldn’t have to leave them with strangers.

The summer camp I went to in Michigan was not sitting on the top of a mountain though.

I would have happily stayed with them for these views for a week.

The camps now email the parents daily pictures of their kids and what they are up to.

The camp sent me this picture the first day.  I snapped a quick pic of the computer screen on my phone and texted it to my husband.

It looks like my boys are fitting right in.

Do you have fond memories of summer camp when you were a child?  Did you decide to send your own children to sleep away camp?

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

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Creek Tips

 

I love it when I come across something my boys have done that I didn’t know about.

Here is a video our Peter shot at one of his special critter catching locations.

The walk to the creek the time prior revealed a snake.  It looks like he went back with our big black rubber snake to leave out in hopes it would scare away any snakes that were venomous, while he could look for newts.

Thought you might enjoys…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv8uMqmdYGs&feature=youtu.be

My story, just yesterday, about same black snake and one of its evil doings.

How To Tell Your Lawn Guy You Are Very Sorry

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

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All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.

 

I Don’t Know What to Name This Post

I promise you there is more to this than it appears. Just keep reading.

“Exactly what would a raccoon want to eat the most?”

Yes, our eight-year-old Peter asked this. Yes, I know what wretchedly mean creatures raccoons can be and I know they are smart, can be trained as pets, and I also know they can have rabies.

“What time does Ace Hardware close in North Carolina?”

“What time do we have to leave by to get to Ace Hardware back home before 7:00?”

“Please do not say no before I say all of this. Promise mom? Let me say EVERYTHING before you tell me no because I have thought about this and I know I can hold the live trap on my lap on the way home because I know the car is already full from our suitcases and us and the dog but it is a short drive from the hardware store to our house and I am afraid if we don’t go buy my live trap until after we go home and unpack the car Ace Hardware will be closed and I will have to wait until tomorrow to go buy my live trap.”

Don’t we totally look like we can fit a live trap?”

WTF, WTF, WTF!!!!

I am going to kill my husband and my father-in-law for showing Peter my father-in-law’s traps.

Oh yes, my FIL still traps. Yes, it is barbaric and no he will never stop. Don’t yell at me in the comments as I have been trying to get this man to vote for the right person every election for the twenty-one years I have known him and there is no changing him.

He lives on the marsh his French fur trapping and Native American ancestors lived on.

They have just changed the dwellings in which they sleep. Currently, my father-in-law resides in a modular home, (do not call it a double-wide or else they will knock your teeth out as it has a full unfinished basement and a back-porch.)

The motor home has been forever “for sale” on the back forty. I felt the need to snap some photos of it in case one of those shows like American Pickers or Antiques Road Show stops by and decides the “seventies mobile” needs to be in a museum. All the years I spent trying to keep this monster out of the background in the pictures I take while we are in Michigan and now I am snapping pictures of it to make us laugh when we are old.

“A Mere Blessing” is painted across the front.  I have never seen this man go to church a single Sunday.

I have known my husband long enough to remember the old farm-house they knocked over with a tractor in 1991. They put the modular on the exact spot the farm-house once sat.

I wrote a little about my husband’s childhood here in my story about my “WTF” license plate coming in the mail, randomly.

Jim’s dad even still sells the pelts and I even have to hear, every freaking year, how he got better prices in 1984.

Will someone please bring back wearing dead animals so I don’t have to hear my FIL complain about the prices anymore. Oh, and you have to make wearing MUSKRAT coats cool, (again?)

I still married my husband after watching his father, (duration of six dating years or as Jim says while I was waiting to see if he actually got into medical school) sit in front of the television, in the living room, with a five gallon bucket, and dead animals in a pile while he stretched their fur on wire thingies and then hang them all over the basement ceiling to dry.

I know that sentence is weird but that is how I would say it if you were sitting across from me.

Think about how much fun it is to trip the circuit while blow drying your hair, (when you are in town visiting) and you have to venture into the basement or as I like to call it…

The Dead Zone.

There is no switch to flip to turn on the basement light. You have to walk across the basement, in the pitch dark, and feel above your head for the chain to pull.

THERE ARE DEAD THINGS HANGING ALL OVER FROM THE RAFTERS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!!!

We come from a long line of weird. We both have to have a lot of weird behind us for this to not faze me. Ok, it fazes me…but for the love of God there is dead $hit dangling from the ceilings where I have to sleep!

Have you looked at a picture of me? (!!!)

This is me taking my own picture in San Francisco recently. I am smiling because behind is Union Square and I can see Macy’s from my hotel window, all half a dozen or so stories. I was happy because even if I couldn’t be shopping with the people all of the time I could stare at the people all walking around inside like a Richard Scarry Storytime book. I am not a good photographer and so…no Macy’s but I swear it is there…in all its glory!
It makes me happy and don’t judge! I am keeping the economy moving.
Dead former fluffy critters hanging above me with holes where their eyes used to be DOES NOT MAKE ME WARM AND FUZZY!
I do not have pictures of me at my father-in-law’s house holding my thumb up and smiling at what was formerly a mink but now is drying on a misshapen wire coat-hanger.

Don’t I just look like the kind of girl who would marry a man with a “Pet cemetary” in his basement?

I am so happy that our little guy doesn’t want to kill anything. He just wants to take a close up look and let it go, unless muskrat coats come back (???) in style and the prices of a water-rat pelt rise. Oh, I’m kidding! Stop it. We are animal lovers and if nothing else stimulators of the economy lovers! Why can’t my husband be from San Francisco?

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.

Story Ideas: This is new and a way for me to remember, possible, future things to write about as I am such a pro, bahahaha! If I don’t do it right here and now, it is gone like the wind. How can I remember the minute details of a situation but I cannot remember to write down a few ideas that pop in my head at the end of writing a story? Anyone else like that? I will make myself crazy trying to remember an idea, that I knew was good, but couldn’t write it down at that exact moment. I also like the idea of running it by y’all and you might be all, “good Lord I am not coming back for another story about her embarrassing herself by getting an appliance stuck in her hair, again!” and you can just tell me that before you stop “following” me and WordPress informs me I can no longer use their service as no one is reading my nonsense anymore and would I also like the phone number to a mental health professional? Anyway, feel free to comment and “shut it” if it’s about my lack of REAL writing skills. I know already.

-Remind me sometime to tell you the cool story about how my husband’s family acquired their last name. It is really awesome and could be complete horse$hit, but were going with it since anyone who really knows if it’s true is dead.

-Remind me to tell you a story about where I worked before I had kids as I have more hunting stories than my husband, (primarily because he doesn’t hunt ever.) Don’t I just look like a girl who can walk around Cabella’s and talk camo and expedition gear and yet I have never been hunting in my life. So much talent I have going to waste it is no wonder I have not mastered grammar when I am too busy playing “name that camo” while walking around walmart. It is really easy as it is nearly always “Mossy Oak.”

Want a window into my mind? This also leads me…

-Remind me to tell you about how I sold my soul and saved a line of trees behind our old house and below a power line, all because I ran out of my back door talking “hunting smack” and throwing names around like “Bill Jordon” and “Realtree Outdoors” with the utility guy. It was good fortune that he wore a size ten boot and it was even better that I have an uncanny skill at guessing a man’s (only size ten) shoe size from great distances, (such as up in a tree.) Thank you Bill Jordon for the hats you signed for me to give to my groomsmen and sorry Jim’s friend that no longer was getting a Bill Jordon hat at rehearsal dinner. You may only understand this if your are from “hunting country” where your vacation time is planned around when opening season is.

PS, Anyone with any advice for “homesick?” I have a nine-year-old niece that is homesick and has a week to go until she goes back to Michigan. I only was able to plunk this story out because my darling husband picked her up like a sack of potatoes and removed her from my hip and took her on a golf cart ride on the golf course in the dark. I am a bit worried he is out there telling her if she doesn’t let me sleep in bed with him tonight he will leave her out in the middle of no where with the toads that make the creepy “baaaahhhh bahhhh” sound like sheep. For shizzel, I am feeling a bit like Jack from “The Shining.”

Gotta go I hear them pulling in. I am sure I will have to go pet the toads they caught on the golf course cart ride.

For real, goodbye!

I have camo boots on but they didn’t get it in the picture.

Kidding.

Macy’s wins, always and forever.

Boy Versus Racoon Versus Macy’s

I promise you there is more to this than it appears. Just keep reading.

“Exactly what would a raccoon want to eat the most?”

Yes, our eight-year-old Peter asked this. Yes, I know what wretchedly mean creatures raccoons can be and I know they are smart, can be trained as pets, and I also know they can have rabies.

“What time does Ace Hardware close in North Carolina?”

“What time do we have to leave by to get to Ace Hardware back home before 7:00?”

“Please do not say no before I say all of this. Promise mom? Let me say EVERYTHING before you tell me no because I have thought about this and I know I can hold the live trap on my lap on the way home because I know the car is already full from our suitcases and us and the dog but it is a short drive from the hardware store to our house and I am afraid if we don’t go buy my live trap until after we go home and unpack the car Ace Hardware will be closed and I will have to wait until tomorrow to go buy my live trap.”

Don’t we totally look like we can fit a live trap?”

WTF, WTF, WTF!!!!

I am going to kill my husband and my father-in-law for showing Peter my father-in-law’s traps.

Oh yes, my FIL still traps. Yes, it is barbaric and no he will never stop. Don’t yell at me in the comments as I have been trying to get this man to vote for the right person every election for the twenty-one years I have known him and there is no changing him.

He lives on the marsh his French fur trapping and Native American ancestors lived on.

They have just changed the dwellings in which they sleep. Currently, my father-in-law resides in a modular home, (do not call it a double-wide or else they will knock your teeth out as it has a full unfinished basement and a back-porch.)

The motor home has been forever “for sale” on the back forty. I felt the need to snap some photos of it in case one of those shows like American Pickers or Antiques Road Show stops by and decides the “seventies mobile” needs to be in a museum. All the years I spent trying to keep this monster out of the background in the pictures I take while we are in Michigan and now I am snapping pictures of it to make us laugh when we are old.

“A Mere Blessing” I have never seen this man go to church a single Sunday.

I have known my husband long enough to remember the old farm-house they knocked over with a tractor in 1991. They put the modular on the exact spot the farm-house once sat.

I wrote a little about my husband’s childhood here in my story about my “WTF” license plate coming in the mail, randomly.

Jim’s dad even still sells the pelts and I even have to hear, every freaking year, how he got better prices in 1984.

Will someone please bring back wearing dead animals so I don’t have to hear my FIL complain about the prices anymore. Oh, and you have to make wearing MUSKRAT coats cool, (again?)

I still married my husband after watching his father, (duration of six dating years or as Jim says while I was waiting to see if he actually got into medical school) sit in front of the television, in the living room, with a five gallon bucket, and dead animals in a pile while he stretched their fur on wire thingies and then hang them all over the basement ceiling to dry.

I know that sentence is weird but that is how I would say it if you were sitting across from me.

Think about how much fun it is to trip the circuit while blow drying your hair, (when you are in town visiting) and you have to venture into the basement or as I like to call it…

The Dead Zone.

There is no switch to flip to turn on the basement light. You have to walk across the basement, in the pitch dark, and feel above your head for the chain to pull.

THERE ARE DEAD THINGS HANGING ALL OVER FROM THE RAFTERS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!!!

We come from a long line of weird. We both have to have a lot of weird behind us for this to not faze me. Ok, it fazes me…but for the love of God there is dead $hit dangling from the ceilings where I have to sleep!

Have you looked at a picture of me? (!!!)

This is me taking my own picture in San Francisco recently. I am smiling because behind is Union Square and I can see Macy’s from my hotel window, all half a dozen or so stories. I was happy because even if I couldn’t be shopping with the people all of the time I could stare at the people all walking around inside like a Richard Scarry Storytime book. I am not a good photographer and so…no Macy’s but I swear it is there…in all its glory!
It makes me happy and don’t judge! I am keeping the economy moving.
Dead former fluffy critters hanging above me with holes where their eyes used to be DOES NOT MAKE ME WARM AND FUZZY!
I do not have pictures of me at my father-in-law’s house holding my thumb up and smiling at what was formerly a mink but now is drying on a misshapen wire coat-hanger.

Don’t I just look like the kind of girl who would marry a man with a “Pet cemetary” in his basement?

I am so happy that our little guy doesn’t want to kill anything. He just wants to take a close up look and let it go, unless muskrat coats come back (???) in style and the prices of a water-rat pelt rise. Oh, I’m kidding! Stop it. We are animal lovers and if nothing else stimulators of the economy lovers! Why can’t my husband be from San Francisco?

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.

Story Ideas: This is new and a way for me to remember, possible, future things to write about as I am such a pro, bahahaha! If I don’t do it right here and now, it is gone like the wind. How can I remember the minute details of a situation but I cannot remember to write down a few ideas that pop in my head at the end of writing a story? Anyone else like that? I will make myself crazy trying to remember an idea, that I knew was good, but couldn’t write it down at that exact moment. I also like the idea of running it by y’all and you might be all, “good Lord I am not coming back for another story about her embarrassing herself by getting an appliance stuck in her hair, again!” and you can just tell me that before you stop “following” me and WordPress informs me I can no longer use their service as no one is reading my nonsense anymore and would I also like the phone number to a mental health professional? Anyway, feel free to comment and “shut it” if it’s about my lack of REAL writing skills. I know already.

-Remind me sometime to tell you the cool story about how my husband’s family acquired their last name. It is really awesome and could be complete horse$hit, but were going with it since anyone who really knows if it’s true is dead.

-Remind me to tell you a story about where I worked before I had kids as I have more hunting stories than my husband, (primarily because he doesn’t hunt ever.) Don’t I just look like a girl who can walk around Cabella’s and talk camo and expedition gear and yet I have never been hunting in my life. So much talent I have going to waste it is no wonder I have not mastered grammar when I am too busy playing “name that camo” while walking around walmart. It is really easy as it is nearly always “Mossy Oak.”

Want a window into my mind? This also leads me…

-Remind me to tell you about how I sold my soul and saved a line of trees behind our old house and below a power line, all because I ran out of my back door talking “hunting smack” and throwing names around like “Bill Jordon” and “Realtree Outdoors” with the utility guy. It was good fortune that he wore a size ten boot and it was even better that I have an uncanny skill at guessing a man’s (only size ten) shoe size from great distances, (such as up in a tree.) Thank you Bill Jordon for the hats you signed for me to give to my groomsmen and sorry Jim’s friend that no longer was getting a Bill Jordon hat at rehearsal dinner. You may only understand this if your are from “hunting country” where your vacation time is planned around when opening season is.

PS, Anyone with any advice for “homesick?” I have a nine-year-old niece that is homesick and has a week to go until she goes back to Michigan. I only was able to plunk this story out because my darling husband picked her up like a sack of potatoes and removed her from my hip and took her on a golf cart ride on the golf course in the dark. I am a bit worried he is out there telling her if she doesn’t let me sleep in bed with him tonight he will leave her out in the middle of no where with the toads that make the creepy “baaaahhhh bahhhh” sound like sheep. For shizzel, I am feeling a bit like Jack from “The Shining.”

Gotta go I hear them pulling in. I am sure I will have to go pet the toads they caught on the golf course cart ride.

For real, goodbye!

I have camo boots on but they didn’t get it in the picture.

Kidding.

Macy’s wins, always and forever.

Recovering Emotionally From River’s Carnivorous Seaweed

Jim has had two weeks off between the fellowship that just ended and going back to his private practice.

I need a vacation from his vacation. We will be back home soon and I might make out with our washer and dryer.

I posted this picture yesterday I took while sitting in my father in-laws backyard in Michigan.

20120711-192723.jpgPeter has dragged his net from the back of a kayak in the mountains of North Carolina to the ditches of rural Michigan.

I am not kidding when I tell you he jumped outof a boat in the river to catch a water snake. Seeing that snake wiggle back and forth through the water towards the banks made me happy that he had a net in his hand and couldn’t swim after it.

Here is Peter with his only catch from Michigan.  A praying mantis.  He longed to catch a newt at his Papa’s marsh but it had been so dry he was probably more likely to catch a desert lizard.  

  Our friends all learned to never go canoeing with me and if they do they better be faster than I am in a kayak.

The teenagersall learned that I won’t baby them, as I am an equal opportunity canoe flipper.

FYI, if you ever decide, (after flipping everyone’s canoes) to float the rest of the way down the river next to your kayak so as to foil anyone’s attempt to “get even”…DON’T!

I was on my back, not looking where I was going, with “Crazy Sarah”, (whom I had recently left canoe-less due to a water problem her canoe had after I rolled it he, he, he) when a field of underwater seaweed-garbully-gook-icky-BEsgusting-man-eating-venus-fly-trap-under-water-human-eating STUFF enveloped me.

If anyone in the entire southeast section of America heard a grown woman screaming like a baby girl relentlessly and without shame last week between the hours of approximately 4-4:30, it was me.

What you didn’t hear was our entire pack of friends laughing at me. “Crazy Sarah” was smiling her evil smile while saying, “There are probably snakes that live in that stuff too!”

I kicked in place. I was stuck like a fly in Jello with a fountain of water spewing above me from my futile swimming. I was screaming in tongues.

Crazy Sarah was probably secretly hoping to collect my bones when the carnivorous river vegetation was done with me.

Crazy Sarah and her bone collecting and zombie apocalypse story here…

Karma will always give us a good kick in the pants if we deserve it. I soooo deserved it!

The older boys have “pool noodle battled” all of their cousins in Michigan and discovered all the attention a scratch on the neck gets you when people think you have a hickey.

They also learned what a hickey is.

I cannot believe how much I have missed sharing stories. This blogging thing has really surprised me.

Thanks for letting me share,
Abbie
allthatmakesyou.com
All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.

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What is a Wordless Wednesday?

I took this photo yesterday at my father in-laws house.
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Ok, so I get the wordless Wednesday thing but I have been without any consistent technology and I’m breaking! So until I finish writing, (ON MY PHONE) a post for tomorrow I will leave you with a photo I took yesterday, and a few words.

We are wrapping up a trip to our rural hometown, out of state, and I cannot stop daydreaming about making out with my washer and dryer the moment I walk in the door to our home.

If my washer and dryer had legs and arms we would be running through a field of wildflowers towards one another, arms outstretched. When we get within a few feet of each other my washer would throw its door open and I would toss all of our dirty clothes in and possibly our three boys and definitely our dog.

Thanks for letting me share,
Abbie
allthatmakesyou.com All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.

Frog Hunting With Kids During Summer Evenings

Frog and toad hunting has been this weeks evening pastime.

It is HOT outside during the day and this gives our boys something fun to do when it cools off.

Access to ponds or creeks…We have both in our backyard and many more on the golf course across the street.

Transportation…We walk or use the critter mobile golf cart.

Lights…We use headlights and flashlights and even golf cart headlights.

Nets…Do we have nets!  We have short-handled and long-handled and large holed and small holed.  We are even willing to reach in.

My boys tell me this is a “smaller” bullfrog.

Container…We use a big tote.

Sense of humor…Peter likes to take “frog orders” before he heads out.  I say I would like a green tree frog and his brothers might say a bullfrog.  Peter especially likes to watch people open the tote and see how many he has brought home.  Below is poor Mitchell not expecting dad to pull giganto bullfrog out.

An ability to say goodbye…With the hopes of seeing you again in the pond behind our home.  This took years to perfect as saying goodbye to “caught critters” is very hard for little boys.

Peter may have been kissing this little guy on a dare from big brothers.  

Big brothers can be especially cantankerous.

Camera…It is much easier to say goodbye if you have a photo to remember your new friends.

Potato brush and soap…Have it at every entrance to the house for the “Frog Hunters” to use before entering their home!

Thanks for letting me share,

“All that makes you, smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.”

-Abbie  allthatmakesyou.com

The Hydrangeas are Blooming, Do You Know What That Means?

The hydrangeas are blooming.  

Do you know what that means?

Sangria time!

How are you going to get ready for summer living?

I happened across this pic and thought any of you that watched the video from a couple of days ago…

 Sometimes You Have to be Bad to Remind Yourself You are a DOG

and enjoyed then you might like this pic I snapped without them knowing.

That dog has no idea she is a dog!

Have a great weekend and see you Sunday!

Abbie, All that makes you…  allthatmakesyou.com

Sometimes You Have To Be Bad To Remind Yourself You Are A Dog

Sometimes you just have to let “bad” happen.  Not only did I watch it.  I encouraged it.  I took pictures and I videotaped it.

(I VIDEOTAPED AND EDITED MY FIRST MOVIE.  IT IS BELOW AND ITS ROUGH)

Our mutt Lilly has never done anything that has ever resembled being an animal.

She doesn’t scratch herself, she uses a pillow under her head to sleep and she doesn’t even lick her butt.

She is telling me with her eyes to “go get her boys from school.”

She has NEVER dug a hole or even wanted to play with another dog.

Then the chipmunk ran under our lamp-post yesterday.  I knew she would never get it and if she did she would just want to cuddle with it.  Here she is stealing a cuddle from an unsuspecting soul.  Oh, it’s me but the one of Jim spooning her is better but I am afraid he will shoot my laptop.

She is a chicken dog.  Look here at her a couple of weeks ago hiding from a baby goose from behind a chair.

It must have run up into the post.  I even recorded it.  The boys were at school and I knew they would be shocked at our dog…well…acting like a dog?

http://youtu.be/A1d01a3qy_Q

I slapped this thing up here a few different ways since I am new to this.  They are all the same video.  I couldn’t get the first one to play so I added the Youtube version.

I cannot wait to play the funny video for the boys.

I even replanted the pansies and fixed it all up pretty again.

I had sleeping kids in the room and so I couldn’t have the sound on and so…We will see when it posts how it looks.  I don’t think I will ever be a movie maker.  Ha ha!

Jim Thinks it is hilarious how she sneaks up and sleeps on me.

For two years she lived
only in our kitchen and for four years she never went in a bed.

One day the kids were watching a movie laughing and she jumped up and we all FROZE!