Last Morning of Summer 2012

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!

Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

When Did I Lose Faith in Myself?

I worked in corporate America until I was put on bed rest with my twins, now twelve.

Companies would send their private jets to a little airstrip, by my home, and I would fly up to a factory and be back home in time for dinner.  I was young and feisty and I could keep a project together from idea to market.  I could negotiate a price and delivery date from China to the eventual chain of outdoor stores or military base.

I was on a product development team for a major boot company.  I was a woman in a business of men.  When passed a cigar to enjoy, I did.  I was comfortable there.

In college I worked in a steel mill running a blowtorch and assisting the crane operator.  I don’t remember another woman who worked there, but I know they did in the offices.  I weighed about 100 pounds and I wore three layers of flame retardant clothing, steel toe boots, safety glasses and a hard hat.  I fit in there.

I started blogging February 29th of this year.

I recently started calling myself a blogger.

I AM a blogger.

Bloggers need to go to conferences.  They need to meet others that proudly say they are bloggers.  They need to network and meet with publishers and find out how to monetize and find their people.  I need to find my peeps.

BlogHer ’12 is in New York City August 2-4.

I have looked at plane tickets.  I talked about going to the conference to my husband.  He has told me it would be awesome for me to go and encouraged me to do so.

I have no excuse not to go to BlogHer ’12, but I cannot get myself to do it.

Why?

The idea of going to a meeting full of women terrifies me.

Please don’t chastise me.  I know this is a counterproductive statement for women.

Hear me out on this.  I have always had a little secret motto in my head that goes like this…

“If a man can do it, I am sure I can.”

Women, for most of my life, have been harder to gel with.  I have girlfriends, but most of them would probably also get along with guys better than girls.

Where is that Abbie that would stomp around a factory floor asking the foreman questions?  Where is that Abbie that hopped on a plane and negotiated the price of thousands of sides of leather?  Have I gotten soft since having kids and no longer have an edge or a belief in myself?

If a man can walk into a conference full of women, why can’t I?

I feel stuck in limbo.  I am stuck between the person in the workplace full of men and the reality of my life now as a mom raising three little men.

BlogHer announced a contest today.  They are giving goodie bags to people who are NOT going to BlogHer ’12.  I wrote this to enter into the contest.  I was writing this post in my head though before I even knew about the conference.

Here I am on BlogHer

I have been thinking that if by chance I were to be chosen for a goodie bag I would like to request, rather rudely, that I would much rather go to the conference.

But I need a mentor. 

I would much rather see BlogHer run a contest granting one newbie the chance to shadow a BlogHer team member, DURING BLOGHER.

We would be instant chums.  She would tell me she appreciates my brass ba!!s when it comes to what I want to post and yet understands why I spell inappropriate words with symbols.  She would give me the inside scoop on how things really work and tell me plainly what I am doing wrong and how I can improve. She would share my fondness of vodka and love of desserts.  She would tell me there is a place for me and that I am not like everyone else that calls herself a blogger.  She would offer me a cigar.

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

allthatmakesyou.com

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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.

Why Can’t You Drop Your In-Laws off at a “Safe Haven”, No Questions Asked?

If you are my husband. Stop reading. I know you do sometimes and that is OK, but today, step away. Go shopping online for golf clubs if you’re between patients but staying here is just going to ruin our evening. Oh, real quick, if you did tell people about me writing after I told you NOT to…big mistake.

Call those people and tell them there is a widespread internet blogging virus that turns your computer’s insides to liquids if you login to any blog sites. Tell them you are sure “That Lady in The School Drop Off Line” created the virus since so many mom’s are complaining about her on their blogs. Now stop reading Jim and call anyone you told about allthatmakesyou dot com and lie to them.

Ok, now that it is just us…I need to tell you about a little problem I am having with my in-laws.

Jim, I swear to God if you don’t stop reading this you won’t like me tonight and it is way too close to the weekend and that means we willl both be mad at each other and you won’t be getting hanky-panky for two weeks!

Now that I know my husband is gone…

No one talks about this issue we are having. At least I haven’t read anything about the stage between “Annoying Parenting Advice From My In-Laws” and “Caring For My Elderly In-Laws.” There is a whole “middle ground” that has me all in a state.

My MIL and FIL have been divorced since the beginning of time. I reference time with when my husband and I began “raising each other.” That was 21 years ago. We were kids. We have been together since we were kids! We have been together longer than any of our parents have ever been with anyone. I personally take credit for any success my husband has had. I take credit he was not only the first doctor in his family but also the first person to GO to college and the first person to GRADUATE from college. Aren’t I full of myself? I don’t care what you think of me. I raised a doctor and I am only 39 so that means I am pretty smart, for a stay-at-home mom.

I know my husband Jim also takes credit raising me to be the only “sane” member of my entire family. Oh, don’t chuckle that I think I am sane! It is all relative as my family not only likes to make the “arrests” section of the local paper back in Michigan, (we are over achievers) we strive to make the “arrests page” the “front page” on the same day.

If you are going to do something bad like walk into the mayors house and make yourself a drink and sit down in the front parlor, (we lived in the house for ten years, before the mayor lived there) you have to do it with PIZAZZ! No silly, not me, I didn’t get arrested. My husband raised me better than that.

Since I have NOT been arrested, (yet) and since within a six month period all of my husbands family members managed to get arrested, (one of his sisters did make the newspaper and gave my mom a run for her money with “Lady With Shotgun…”) I think my my husband and I did a rather fine job of raising each other.

Thank you and again…we both take full credit for what wonderful well adjusted spouses we raised despite of our parents. Ugh, our parents.

Here is where it’s getting sticky…

His parents are both in relationships with other people. This is not the problem.

They come to our home for visits from out-of-state and stay with us. This is not the problem. Shocking right?

The problem…

Holy crap bags, I cannot sleep for fear their “significant other” is going to sneak out in the middle of the night and leave Jim’s parents with us FOR-EV-ER!

Why…

Because, despite the fact that Jim’s mom and dad separated when Jim was a mere egg in his mom and sperm in his dad, (Jim was a “make up” baby and we know how that “Reunion Show” ended) his parents should have been forced to stay together. They should have been forced to stay together so they didn’t make two OTHER people miserable! Those two other people being their “significant others” they are with NOW. They should have been forced to stay together because they are the SAME PERSON.

My husband goes to work while they are here, in our home, and I am left playing marriage counselor or sounding board or BOBBLE HEAD all day. It is like confession time and I must look like someone that doesn’t tell secrets. So if telling secrets will get people to stop telling me secrets, then here goes…

I go in the living room and his dad’s girlfriend is telling me she can’t take his dad’s smoking and complaining. She is tired of picking up after him. That he never wants to do “anything.”

The last time his mom and “Her Man” were here I had to ask them to please not fight LOUDLY because my kids have school in the morning. “Her Man” was so sad telling me he wants to be able to travel now that his kids are raised and his parents deceased but my MIL has made it impossible…

I finally started taking my box of Corn Pops and spending a significant amount of time in my closet when they come to visit. It is just until the kids or Jim come home. I take my phone and call my best, bestie and run through the days antics, so far, with her. If she says I deserve “closet time” then I stay.

BTW, “My Bestie” has never thought I should come out of the closet based on my in-law stories. That may be because I keep her entertained. After all, the worst thing her parents ever did was buy her a charm necklace with an imprint of a plant that they didn’t realize was a marijuana leaf. Some people win the parent lottery, and the rest of us did not.

Hey, don’t judge unless you have had to start a conversation with, “Now MIL NAME, you aren’t fooling anyone by smoking in the bathroom. We don’t mind if you smoke but could you just do it outside?…. No, no, I won’t tell Jim, (your son and my husband) that you smoke.” As if he doesn’t know she started again.

This is NOT a problem seen through a daughter-in-law’s jaded lenses.

My husband brought the fear of his parents being abandoned by their “others” at our home to light.

One night, when his mom was visiting, we were laying in bed shell shocked after a marathon “counseling session” with his mom and “Her Man”. We were laying side by side staring up at the ceiling.

Jim says to me, “I don’t know. I mean, I know I should be honest and say if I think my mom is right but I don’t want to piss off “Her Man.”

I am like, “huh” and “what” all in my head because I know Jim. Jim always tries to see the good in people. Jim speaks up if he thinks someone is being wronged.

I am shocked and I say, “Why would you be worried about making “Man” mad?”

He replies, “What if he just leaves her here? I mean, she is to blame for plenty but I have to be careful. WE NEED THEM TO WORK THIS OUT!”

Jim is soooooo smart. I raised a smart doctor.

Every since that day I take all my sessions visits with my in-laws very serious.

I mend fences. I tell the other nice things I have heard one say about their spouse ten years ago. I listen to all their complaints and tell them that everyone I know hates their spouse and as long as they don’t kill them, it’s OK. I shove love notes in their bags and forge their significant others signatures. I send them books titled, “Weird Things to do in Florida” to try and get them to travel more. We “accidentally” turn on the porn channel in the guest room when they are here. Kidding, but you know it would work or they would at least shut the door so my kids could get some sleep.

Anyway, I have started taking half an Ambien when they are here. If when I wake up “Their Others” have left for greener pastures I will simply tell my in-laws we are going to lunch at a restaurant that looks like a fire station.

When they get out I will lock their doors and roll down the window and throw out a box of Corn Pops and speed off.

Have you had to raise your parents or found their “stash” under the claw foot bathtub when you were a kid? Do you want to help me get a bill passed that allows for “Safe Haven’s” to be established in every community for dropping off your in-laws, no questions asked?

-Abbie allthatmakesyou.com

Youth Will Eventually Work It’s Way Out

Naivety of youth.

My God, my husband and I had an extra serving of that when we were young.  

We began dating when we were teenagers.  We knew we wanted to have a different life than what we knew.  No one taught us how to change our future family dynamic.

We wanted to get out of our dreary midwestern town and live in the sunny south where people were friendly and the grass is nearly green year round.  We only knew this much from driving through the south every few years on family vacations.

He wanted to be a doctor and I wanted to have a family and build a home for them.  He was the first one in his family to GO to college, yet alone graduate and no one had stepped foot on a medical school campus.

We were going to move to the town where the medical school was that he wanted to attend and he would take undergraduate classes there.  The first time we visited that college town was when we were moving there.

I quit my job and he moved from his dad’s and we left for out-of-state with a plan.  The plan was about two sentences long and without financial backing.

What fools we were.  My dad told me it would never work and his parents didn’t really comprehend the gravity and years of work that were necessary to do what we wanted to do.

Youth can make you try things, that when you are a seasoned adult, you would never try.

Naivety can be a blessing and youth will eventually work itself out, with age.  

This story is for our three boys so that they realize that they need to see what they want AND be willing to work to make it happen.  We are proof that with a vision of what you want your life to be and the ability to go for it you can have the life of your dreams.

You just have to be willing to be a little naive.

As you age do you find yourself far more cautious?

I think it is because we realize how much more we have to lose.

What do you think?

-Abbie, All that makes you…   allthatmakesyou.com

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Video Game That Goes Terribly and Hilariously Wrong

I was in the kitchen cooking and I hear horror movie screaming coming from the family room.

I turn around from the stove to see what was going on.

I see our three boys sitting around the laptop in a huddle.

Kind of like this…

The boys all begin yelling and have looks of terror on their faces. They have now backed up away from the lonely laptop.

The thoughts that are racing through my head…has the child safety features on our internet failed. What have they happened across…

I am now racing towards them as one of the older boys pushes his twin brother towards the laptop and he steps forward and slams the laptop shut while cringing. They begin to turn on each other.

“Why did you build it that short?”

“You should have sent a zookeeper sooner to catch it!”

Oh my word…I hesitantly open the laptop to see a ZooTycoon “NOTICE” on the screen that tells me a lion was eating the park visitors.

Our youngest, Peter, has tears in his eyes and says to his brothers, “Why did you let it eat those children?”

Zoo Tycoon. The game I bought for the kids because it was supposed to be happy and make their minds plan and organize, they get to create habitats and care for animals…lets the animals eat the zoo’s guests if you build the habitats wrong?

There are shrieks coming from the laptop. My three sweet boys have their eyes covered up as I shut down the game.

This really, really makes me laugh.

Have you ever met a person and thought that there was no chance you could ever be friends with them? I have a friend that is moving away and I have written her a reference letter to give to her new neighbors in case they judge her on their first impression like I did. Here is that story…

2 Broke(n) Girls

My kids need to be shipped off to a farm for a summer to toughen them up. So stinkin’ cute.

Bad mom but good sense of humor?

Seriously?! on Sunday.

He thinks the mermaid’s shell bra is muscles.

He cannot see below his chin and I may have told him I made him into the Hulk.

This is why he is making the body builder flexing/Hulk face.

I really, really am a good mom.