I Moved! Did You Know I MOVED?

Hello, I moved!

Come on over to the new place.

Abducted by Aliens.

At least that is how moving to my own site feels.

I no speak the language.
allthatmakesyou.com moved to self hosted

I would have taken you with me but

WordPress wouldn’t let me.  

If you were following me on WordPress as a WordPress follower you have to

head on over to my new site to continue

to read my stories.

I have a place for you to

subscribe by email

RSS

or even follow me on Facebook.

Head on over to my new place.

allthatmakesyou.com

I am still unpacking and decorating.

Stupid things keep happening to me…

I keep giving out my opinions…

The dog keeps sneak-attack-cuddling on people…

Our boys are still smuggling a small zoo in our home…

Oh, and we now have a cricket farm in the basement to feed EVERYTHING…

The boys tell me if the Mayan’s are right WE can eat the crickets too! (not happening)

Just in case the Mayans are right I am having my 40th birthday party on 12/21/2012…

Because I am just that STUPID LUCKY to turn 40 on “The End of the World.”

If you don’t follow me over at

allthatmakesyou.com

then you will never know if I ever reach the unobtainable goal

of a vacation stay to the nut house.

If it is really you, Bethenny Frankel reading this and you have FINALLY found me please just click this link and I will tell you where to send all the Skinny Girl Cocktails, Smoothers n’ Shapers, and all the other products to help me and my homies stay

39 FOR-EV-ER

(just in case the Mayans are wrong.)

Oh, and you are invited to my party!

Not just Bethenny, but all of you!

Ok, I might mean in spirit because I don’t know how you behave when you are at a party and they are serving booze.  Ok, fine because I don’t want you to take any pictures of me and behaving badly and then share them with all our internet peeps.

I think December 22 we are all going to be wishing the Mayans were right.

Anyone want to send about 100 hangover cures as party gifts?

Bethenny, are you making that yet?

Skinny Girl Hair of the Dog Hangover Cure!

You have EXACTLY

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Bethenny Frankel brings SkinnyGirl Margaritas ...

Bethenny Frankel brings SkinnyGirl Margaritas to Dallas (Photo credit: CynthiaSmoot)

Birth of a Blog

Mitchell (6) & Avery (6) in the Outerbanks of North Carolina

Avery…”Are there flowers in Heaven?”

Me…”I like to think so.”

Mitchell…”Are there bugs?”

Me…”I like to think so because they pollinate flowers and butterflies are wonderful.”

Avery…”Can big trees grow in the clouds in Heaven?”

Me…”Hmmmm…I don’t know about trees but I am sure…”

Mitchell, (butting in)…”Avery, TREES DON”T DIE AND GO TO HEAVEN!  THEY TURN INTO COUCHES!”

Mountains of North Carolina August 2012

Do you keep the things that make you smile, laugh, think, love or cry?  

I don’t mean cars or jewelry.

I mean the everyday quiet blessings that make you say a little thank you. 

– An old photograph of your family’s first home they owned, on American soil.

– Did you write in your daughter’s scrapbook the day she lost her first tooth?

– Do you have a photograph of a half eaten coconut cream pie because you want to remember what delicious looked like?

– Did you collect shells when you were on your honeymoon and bring them home?

I send myself an email often, of things I want to remember.

That is how this blog came about.  It is how I named it.

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

By talking to myself I am ensuring my external hard drive keeps the memories that my mind sometimes cannot remember.  When I looked back at my photographs I knew I needed to tell the story.  My blog was born.  

Even the little things are out there floating in cyberspace.  

Mitchell (3) & Avery (3) in Michigan chasing Jim at State Park

I even beat myself up when I cannot remember what I didn’t have time to type up on my phone and send to myself while we were shuffling out the door and on our way to school.  That really funny thing I told myself to write about later.  Memory can be a little temperamental.

Then I remind myself that I have recorded one more thing than my parents did for me.  I do not have a baby book from when I was born.  When I was twenty-eight I was given my immunization record, but it was only for my first set of shots.

I do not know when I read a book to my parents for the first time, or what we looked like while it was happening.

Peter Reading me a Bedtime Story, for the First Time

I don’t know if my boys will even care that I have written their stories down since they were born, when they are grown men.  I do it anyway.

I do not have a newborn picture of me in my own mother’s arms.

I know I was loved.  Everyone loves their baby.  Their child.

and there probably

were those things

somewhere…

…over time

and with divorce

and death,

things get lost.

If it weren’t for emailing myself these little gifts, I couldn’t unwrap them years later and share them with you. 

I do it because I love them and I love our life and when memories fade we will have our story, out here, in cyberspace.

What do you do to keep the everyday things of your life from being forgotten?  Should we let the moments we forget just be forgotten as they were intended?

Abbie Gale

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Funny First Days and the Proof is in the Photos

Today my three boys all went off to school.  

It was the easiest first day of school for everyone.

It made me smile the whole drive home.  

I also now have time to write more and share it with you.  I am sorting some of my old stories from the journal I have kept since we began our family and I came across a funny from Mitchell when he and his twin brother Avery were in kindergarten.

My husband Jim came home from work and…

Jim, said very enthusiastically, “How was kindergarten boys?”

Mitchell, said with a very grown up matter-of-fact manner …“Dadda, I think there is more yelling than learning going on in Kindergarten.

First day of school – Kindergarten

Avery and Mitchell’s First Day of School – 7th Grade

(note our dog always wiggles her way into photos)

Peter’s First Day – Kindergarten

First Day – This Morning

I may not go back to pick them up.

I’m joking!

If I am not, I am sure it will make the news.

Abbie Gale

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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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Boy in the City

You can take the boy to the city but he’s still going to find a way to act like Tom Sawyer.

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Peter won’t shoot the animals in the game.

He shoots next to them to watch the video game lizards run.

I gave him a dollar to play.

Was it a waste to let him play it of he didn’t “play?”.

Ha ha!

They are all three such good boys.

His big brothers thought it was cute that he won’t even shoot a video game animal.

They came over to the table to tell me this fact as I was taking his picture from the booth and posting it here on my blog.  I thought this fact made it a much better story.

School starts Monday and I am going to miss my buddies.

Booooooo!

Abbie Gale

Introducing Us

“You did WHAT Boys?

That is me, Abbie, and that is what I say, a lot.

What you cannot see on the floor behind me is my constant pile of clothes I am trying to fold, at all times.

Let me help you.

 I should be happy to be folding clothes because that would mean I am not pulling a slug off of someone or cleaning milkshake off the ceiling again…

or for that matter, getting the legos out of the blender.

I can help you with that one too.

I started sharing my favorite stories February 29, 2012.

I have written our stories down for years and I take pictures of everything, clearly.

 

Avery is really is not happy

because I am taking a picture

instead of helping him

get the bag off of his head

He is 4 in this photo

 

 

Avery is the “oldest” of the twins and likes to say since they are identical twins and came from the same egg he “made” Mitchell.   Avery is now 12.

 

 

 

 

 

Mitchell just happy I’m taking

his picture despite not being able

to get the bag stuck on his head.

He is 4 in this photo. 

 

 

 

 

Mitchell is 12 now and he says he is a “chick maggot”.  Mitchell thinks he is a middle child?

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is our Peter.

Enough said.

Peter is four in this photo.

 

 

 

 

 

Peter is now eight…

…and has had an entire post dedicated to things he has said called,

“The $hit my kid says is funnier than the $hit your dad says.”

 

 

 

Jim is my husband and while he was in medical school I began emailing him stories of our kids for him to read when he had a minute or two, knowing he was missing out on these “priceless” moments.

 

It may have also have been to explain my future trip to the nut house that I didn’t realize was an unobtainable goal.

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I would send our favorite story in our annual Christmas letter.  People began requesting I add them to the growing mailing list to receive the “DREADED” Christmas letter I decided this may be a better idea.

She doesn’t care where she sleeps as long as it’s on me.

Our Mutt Lilly (if she could talk)  “My brothers have found a new way to entertain themselves… When I am outside they yell, “Lilly in the house!” The funny part to them and not me is when I barrel through the yard and leap up the stairs and…this is the part that makes them laugh…I slam face first into a SHUT door. I don’t mind. I like making them laugh but our mom made them stop.

If you need a laugh today…

Ten Things We Learned This Weekend

Another Holiday That Tries to Turn Me Into a Liar

I have some serious stories to tell too.

Not Everyone had a Mother to Celebrate

What I cannot figure out is why they have reality shows called “The Real Housewives of…” but no one has a reality show of what a REAL housewife’s life is like. We have the most crazy, fun, REAL times in a crazy, fun, real, gated community with our families.  The best part is that we know how abnormal it all is and we go with it.

Here I am with our traveling Nutcracker, In August.

He enjoys Grey Goose and brunettes.

 

I write down our stories because, let’s face it, I am never going to make a scrap-book.

“If you would just smile she would STOP taking our picture!”  

Our Norman Rockwell moment.

I just started February 29, 2012 and so far I feel like I’m giving birth…mostly that legs apart and up in the air while naked in a well-lit room with strangers…feeling.

“Look mom!”

“You keep an eye out Peter while we sneak a kiss.”

“Those aren’t real boobies mom!  They just have sponges under the shirt!”

The stories I write are to give our kids one day.  Having a forum* to share our “funnies” encourages me to write them down so that when they have children of their own…

I can show them that they will only get to the brink of insanity.

Ha, take that!  The “nut house” would be a vacation and God needs parents to stay home and take care of their kids!  I will be sitting back laughing at my grandchildren’s “funnies” while watching my own grown kids squeegee the cooking oil off the floor.

I’m pretty sure their kids will one day POUR COOKING OIL ON THE FLOOR to slide around on or POUR A GALLON OF MILK INTO THE CARPET to see if it makes its way to the pipes that we should have NEVER told them run all over under the floors.

Peter is Tom Sawyer.  I can prove it.

So I may be new to blogging but I have years worth of stories that I will try to deliver daily to make you smile, laugh, think, love and possibly occasionally cry.

* My parents were hippies and I may not have made it to school as often as I should have to learn grammar and punctuation.

That is your warning.

I write as I think and am already aware I do not know how to use a comma or most punctuation.  Up until now I made my husband proofread our Christmas letter which was the extent of anyone seeing my thoughts fall onto paper.  Jim likes to tell me my writing is like an ugly porn star and my punctuation is the ugly part.  Thank God he finds my inadequacies cute.  Oh, and thank God for spell check.

Please don’t make me regret this thing yet.

What have I gotten myself into?

People like to tell me my kids are funny. I always reply with all kids are funny. It is wrapping your mind around the moment and finding the humor.

Halloween 2011 and yes, that is Doogie Howser, MD and Vinny.

 Mitchell and Avery are IDENTICAL twins and this is how much they looked alike before the can of black hairspray.

I believe in having a grateful heart and being joyful mother of children.  I am trying my best to instill in my children that we have to find things to be grateful for in order to be happy.  I am also sarcastic and not afraid to laugh AT MY KIDS, as well as with them.  I also think it is important for my kids to see adults having fun.  I want them to look forward to growing up as well as enjoying each stage.

“Oh no Bat Baby, have mercy!”

I want to create a place for people to check after they have read the day’s news in the car pickup line at school or on the side of a practice field and now you need a smile.

“Mom, the baby is eating dirt…don’t worry he likes it!”

-Abbie Gale, 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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Funny Ending to AWKWARD and a Lesson For Us All

 

I decided to contact the mom from my kid’s school who sent me the AWKWARD AS HECK NAKED PHOTO OF HERSELF to my phone.

I am soooooo glad I did and so glad I didn’t have to tell her I am not into girls, that way.

I think we can all take away a BIG lesson from what happened to her, (and don’t forget me, as I was handed this AWESOME situation to write about.)

I just copied the text conversation I had with the mom who sent me naked pictures of her boobies this week.

 

The sliver of the photo and white bubbles are from her.  It took me HOURS to reply, (in blue.)  I get a boobie picture on my phone and “It took forever to get up the nerve to take this” and I am pacing the house chanting…

“What the heck do I do?  What does this mean?  

Ahhhhhh who can I share this freaking hilarious situation with?”

And so I shared it with y’all a couple of days ago.

The first half of the story here Awkward!  What do I do Now?

The aftermath and explanation below.

Deep thoughts by Abbie: 
We all get things in our teeth.  We all get boogers.  We all have boobies.  Just don’t have pictures of your OWN things as in food in teeth, boogers in nose or YOUR boobies on YOUR phone.  OH, and NEVER, ever,  leave your phone with a group of teenagers without a password on it.

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

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

PS  I promise I wont send you pictures of my boobies.  I may at any time send a picture of something in my teeth or an exceptional booger.  Stop it!  We all get boogers!

 

Things Every Mom Says Or Just Mine

I love that Twitter is trending #ThingsEveryMomSays because if gives me a chance to share one of my favorite quotes my crazy mom used to say…

 

“Honey, I HAD you to do the dishes. You should be thanking the dishes. It is because of the dishes you exist.”

Every year I think my mother was smarter than the year before.

Here is a story about my mom called “Back Back Before You Could Just Go And Buy Boobies” that includes the obvious mention of boobs and chicken poop and how you can use one to get the other.

Recently, when asking one of my 12 year olds to empty the dishwasher, he replies with, “I’ll give you $20 to do it for me mom.”

I say, “That is terrible. What would I be teaching you if I were to say yes?”

My 12 year old replies, “OK, fine $40.”

Now I am thinking I may just take his money to teach him a whole new lesson. I turned around and shot him a look, completely accidental, and he began unloading. Lesson learned…12 year olds these days have too much cash.

When they were little they would sneak and “wash” the dishes!
-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

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Ten Stupid Things I Learned at BlogHer 2012

Ten Things I Learned from Attending BlogHer in NYC

1. Turn off your phone and do not even answer if it is your kids. Chances are they will only call when you are talking to a “cloth diaper mom.” You will find yourself yelling into the phone, “NO, YOU MAY NOT WATCH THE HANGOVER 2! WHERE IS YOUR FRIENDS MOM? THAT MOVIE IS RATED R TOO! LET ME JUST SAY THAT NO MOVIE THAT IS RATED R IS APPROPRIATE!” The other mom with small children will look at you as if you are raising barbarians. Secretly, you are so happy your three boys called before they saw a woman in a movie shooting Ping-Pong balls out of her “place between where the babies exit out,” (you can click that blue link to find out why I wouldn’t teach my boys the word vagina.) You also secretly cannot wait until this woman’s kids are older and she gets hers.

2. That 5% of the 5,100 people who attended BlogHer in 2012 are the long time bloggers that really know what they are doing and have learned through their own successes and failures. Then there were approximately 3,000 people there with the objective to get something for free, go somewhere for free, get a discount on something back home to make it almost free or build a relationship with a vendor who will start sending them something for free. Those women had a pretty good offensive line. Then there were the rest of us.

Just in case we didn’t meet and because I suck at passing my cards out to people and then wish that I had and because there were 5,100 people there and I only had 100 cards and I came home with 80.

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The rest of us wandered and occasionally bumped into one another. We wished we had someone with more experience to talk to but it turns out those with more experience were out together trying to get away from the people trying to “crack into their nut.” I get it. I have long time girlfriends too and I am sure these women have amazing relationships. Do I sound jealous? I am not because I really do get it. They have worked very hard to learn what they have learned and I am sure they had some bumps and bruises along the way. I am thankful for the sessions I attended and I did learn things. I am looking forward to catching a few of the other sessions I couldn’t attend, online.

3. It is IMPOSSIBLE to blow dry your hair and paint your toenails, at the same time. I am sorry Hilton and way to plan for everything with that polka dot carpet! We will call it even stevens since I paid $450 a night for a room with broken seals in the windows and I couldn’t even see out my premium priced views.

4. I may just have to accept the fact that I will never fit in with 5,000 women, as hard as I try. I never rushed a sorority, joined a mom’s group, or went on a “girls night out.” I like mixed company and I like men and frankly they were passing out plush vaginas and I won’t even teach my three sons the word “vagina.” When a table of women hear me say that I wont teach my boys “vagina” and that I refer to it as “the place between where the babies exit out,” they will looked at me like I just said women should not be allowed to vote. BTW, I didn’t get a plush vagina and I would have really loved one. I am the sole vagina bearer in my house and it would have been nice to bring it out on occasions and let it vote during family voting issues.

I need a man in the group, who used to be a boy, to get my sense of humor. I need a man to understand that it is a lot harder for little boys to yell at one another, “You’re a giant place between where the babies exit out!” versus “You’re a giant vagina!” I don’t need Judgy Judy looks and for you to whisper, “My children know the appropriate terminology” to your girlfriend. I just need you to chuckle or a smirk, that is what I do when I get that the person is being sarcastic. My husband is a doc and we all know the proper terms. My mom called mine my, “kitty cat” and I am not a stripper. She did give me a sense of humor because it is freaking hilarious when I hear a little girl get off a slide at the park screaming, “My vagina hurts!”

5. Mc Donald’s employees in NYC are paid wayyyy more than Mc Donald’s employees anywhere else, as evident by the McDonalds employee that sat down next to me and wolfed down a $24 cheeseburger.

6. You need to make connections before you go to the conference to meet people. If you don’t you will find yourself spending an evening listening to a woman tell you about the sex toy lock box business that she tells me is thriving. This leads me to the next thing I learned.

7. You need to be able to keep a straight face or get Botox everywhere so when the “naughty box lock lady” starts talking you don’t immediately begin making weird astonished faces and then decide to fist bump her? Ok, Botox arms as well.

8. If you work for a sex toy lock box company they train you to not blink when you talk about your products. Not one blink. Not one blink. I pay attention to blinks, (my story here about fast blinkers versus slow blinkers.) My guess is there was way too much giggling at training sessions so they just Botoxed their eyelids open. This whole sex-toy-lock-box episode has given me so much to think about and when I say that I am “thinking about” something it means I am hashing it out in public to anyone who will listen, that mean you reading too. I mean, have women not heard of a lock on their drawers? You put a locked box in my house and that is like giving my kids a challenge. That box would end up on a dark road waiting for someone to run it over for my little boys to find out what is inside and in their heads it would be gold coins and Skittles. Locked boxes are asking for trouble in my house.

9. Just because you took off your name badge off, Abbie, it doesn’t mean that it is OK to harass a vendor on an elevator. “But, why do we need to kill bad germs in the air now? Don’t we need to be exposed to germs? And how exactly do you know you are only killing the bad germs? We get new information all the time like, what if a germ we thought was bad turns out to be good for something else?” When the poor man finally breaks down and says his dad invented it, you can’t just say, “Oh, you will sell them gang busters because new moms are sleep deprived will buy anything for their babies” and then try to fist bump him, again…what is with me?

(Yes, my name is really Abbie Gale, (I said this 25 times.) My parents were hippies and they named me after the MAN Abbie Hoffman who spent his entire life trying to get pot legalized. He wrote the book, “Steal This Book.” My middle name is really Gale because they were babies having babies and they thought it was cute and they were lazy. Gale, as in a gust of wind hitting a sail because they also liked to sail. I am not giving you my last name, unless you want to hire me. I have high standards for my boys and hope that they get into college one day but if the school learns of their concerns over sperm diameter and whether or not this “sperm” I told them about is a liquid or a solid I will have to home-college them and I don’t even know how to form a proper paragraph.)

10. Wear a vendor badge so people will talk to you. Wear a vibrator company badge and women will chase you down like you have a key to Christian Grey’s house. I may do this next conference because I am much smarter now and very good with PhotoShop. I just have to make up a ridiculous vibrator company name. I am open to ideas. Anyone?

I think I will just keep on writing and keep on building the relationships I have on the computer and if it leads to more, than great. Perhaps one day I will be asked to sit with the “big dogs” but probably not until I learn to use a comma.

Hey, all you BlogHer chicks I didn’t meet, you missed out. I am much better in person as you cannot see my poor punctuation when I am speaking. I also had a rubber alligator in my purse my son sent with me. That is always a guaranteed good time.

You Tube Link (Click here if video above doesn’t work, because I never plan to run for public office)

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

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