Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Letters (post cards) Home

Kansas:
Dear Mom,
I (heart) you.
I was thinking about you in Kansas all along.
I want you to know that I care about you
and I know you care about me.
From your sweet dotter Rhiannon

St. Louis:
Hi (heart) Mom, dad and Brogan
We miss you and we went to the TOP of the arch.
It was AWESOME!
I touched the Mississippi :)

Philadelphia:
Hi Dad,
I (heart) you
I went to Pennsylvania.
It was cool.
Did you know the (liberty) bell is 3 feet?
It was cool.
From Rhiannon
I (heart) u

New York:
hi mom and dad
I went to new york (city) yesterday it was fun.
We went to a sky ride (Empire State Building) and it was midnight I bot a shirt there.
I had to take a train to go to new york and we got back at 2;00 it was late.
And I went to sleep and I had a good sleep. On the couch I think?
from your sweet doter Rhiannon.
I love you.

New York:
hi Mom
I was thinking about you guys here in New York.
I (heart) you.
I went swimming,
I saw a friend on the same D.S., her name is Jorden.
I (heart) you mom
From your sweet Dotter
Rhiannon

(boo hoo hoo, I miss my baby!)

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Off Your Rocker







Though apparently there is argument over height, weight, width, blah, blah ... I saw, what Texas is claiming to be, The Worlds Largest Rocking Chair ...

The chair stands in front of the Texas Hill Country Furniture and Mercantile just outside of Lipan, built by one of the stores proprietors Larry Dennis.

TRE

Is there anything more fun than riding on public transportation?
These pictures say "No".

I'm Outta Control

As of this blog post, I only have 6 more posts till I hit 600 entries.
That's ABSURD right?
I mean, really, who has THAT MUCH to say?
Especially someone who rarely goes any where, does anything, or sees anyone.

I'll console myself with the thought that it's not all been useless, random rambling.

Some posts have been nothing but pictures.

Which reminds me, I need to start hinting to ... someone who will listen that I want a nice camera for Christmas.
My last one is way more than lame.
It's on the road to never being used again.

The shutter (haha, I almost made the mistake of replace the "u" with an "i" ... good thing I caught that!) won't open on it's own.
The picture quality is less than my phone.
It won't take rapid succession action pics.
Useless.
As in of no use to me at all.

A nice camera and a good editing program.
That's all I ask.

That's a lot, I know.

You have to dream big people!

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Dublin


Texas.
Not Ireland.
I won't lead you astray.
I'm still pouting over not going to THAT one while my sister in law and brother did. My sister in law who didn't even know WHERE in the WORLD Ireland was. *sigh*
It's okay, Jenie, I may not understand you, but I sure do love you.

Anyway.
My mom came to Texas to ... do some stuff that I won't write about because it's not my story.
The side pot of her coming to Texas was us getting to go down to Dublin, Texas where Dr. Pepper has been getting bottled since 1891 on a road trip.
I've fostered a love of road trips and factory tours in my kids.
Why not?
I'm their mom, I can do what I want ;)

Sacagewea

This year was filled with fun "school" projects.
Most of which stretched my "creative" boundaries to their absolute limit.
The last project of the year was the second grade American Hero project.
The kids each picked a hero, wrote a book report on whomever it was, then as a kicker had to make a cut out thing-a-ma-bob. It was graded on a "rubix'. I'm not even going to explain it other than to say it's ridiculous and once again a tester to see how involved the parents are.
I'm not racist, just factual when I say they'd never give this as a project to the kids in the inner cities.
I let her do it all in the order she picked ...
(all while biting my tongue)















Splash Park


McPherson Park in Colleyville.

Fake it till You make it.

I'm still not sure how to write about Rhiannon's birthday.
Still not sure how to put a positive spin on it.
Still not sure how to write about something I detested from the get go.

Between she and her father, they decided she should have her birthday at the Great Wolf Lodge with three "best friends".
I thought she should have it at a public pool with ALL of her friends.
What do I know?

It turned out to be a disaster.
Instead of inviting girls she's been friends with all year, she invited three girls who have been best friends with each other ... not so much her. Girls she wanted to be friends with. Not already was.
Within a half hour of arriving at The Lodge and hitting up the water park, she was wandering around by herself.
Ditched.
At her own birthday party.

Birthday dinner ... no one crowding around her to be the one sitting next to the special girl.
All but ignored.

Blowing out her birthday candles ... taking an extraordinary amount of time to make her wish.
Day after the party, she comes to me in tears and declares that her birthday wish didn't come true. The girls kept on excluding her. (Please, tear out my heart now.)

Deciding who was going to share bunks ... Rhiannon sleeping by herself.
Ended up coming out and sleeping on my bed with me, in tears.

All I could do was try to show her how this was a good lesson.
That you have to be good to the people who are good to you.
Maybe your birthday isn't the best time to try to evaluate who your best friends could be. But the ones who are.

*sigh*

This Dress

... or maybe seeing her in it, choked me up.

The dress is beeeeautiful.

When we went to the American Girl store with her Grandma Crabb to pick out her birthday doll we also found her baptism dress.

I have never found myself emotional about seeing my kids in clothes.

But this dress, how she looks in it ... I was glad I was sitting when she turned around.

She looks so grown up and so much like my baby.
The combination
Killed me.

Geek

I love finding places near and far that have been high lighted on the Travel Channel and Food Network.
Just to see if what they were talking about it as good as they say.
I don't like taking anyones word for anything.
Unless it's scary.
Or gross.

A McDonald's PlayPlace in Dallas that is designed to look like a Happy Meal was featured on the Travel Channel. The show declared this to be the happiest McDonald's in the world - Darn it if I didn't want to find THAT! For the record ... I don't think it's any happier than the rest.

Surprises

I've started walking/jogging pretty regularly.
Various routes.
Irregular lengths
Collection of different ladies.
Random times.

Some days it just isn't fun. It's hot.
It's rainy.
It's too far.

My ankles hurt.
I want to sleep longer.

But then I'll see something like this and I keep going a little further.

Kindy Grad

This event is tough for me to write about.
Not because I am crying over it, or had some heart wrenching "Oh my baby is growing up" moment over it.
No, not at all.
It's hard to write about because of how hard the event was on Brogan.
I don't know if it was the surroundings, the standing, the sitting, the singing ...
But he was checked out of his graduation ceremony before it even started.I'm glad we went though.
I refuse to let him opt out of events simply because they make him uncomfortable.

There were a couple of cute moments during the ceremony that made it worthwhile for me.
They were calling each of the "graduates" out by name and stating what the child had said they wanted to be, when Brogan came up they stated that he wanted to be Indiana Jones when he grows up. Well, everyone can't be fire fighters ...
At the very end they were singing the school song, which ends in the kids doing a coyote howl (a coyote being the school mascot). I watched as Brogan crouched down, perched himself on the edge of the riser and howled like no ones business.

Six Flags

Someone or other sponsors a reading program every year at our school ... probably at a lot of other schools too. But I'm not AT those other schools, so I can't really tell you about them.
I could speculate.
But I won't.
Cause I have better things to do.
Like ramble on about what we HAVE done and I DO know about!

The deal is, a child must read or be read to a certain amount of minutes (it's not a small amount either. I think it's like a million. That may or may not be an exaggeration.) to "earn" a free ticket to Six Flags.

I'm all for it.

Okay, sure. I wouldn't other wise take my kids to Six Flags.

I'd save myself a day of telling Brogan to stop licking hand rails.

Reassuring Rhiannon I haven't run off and joined the circus when she can't see me every single minute.

And sometimes HOURS of debilitating lines.

But heck, we have a Six Flags 25 minutes from our house and we're not going to take advantage of it when we can? Whatever, loonie.

I talked one of my friends that has older kids into coming with us, that really made a HUGE difference in our day.

The kids were able to go on rides I simply cannot handle (spiny rides make me puke. Like projectile. Seriously, stand back.) or didn't want to go on AGAIN (what is up with kids liking to drive cars they actually have no control over?) with the friends older kids and EVERYONE was happy.

Run the Jailbreak

A month or so ago a friend posted a link on Facebook talking about an event that is taking place here in the DFW metro in September.
I have been looking at other events like this in places like Austin - so to find one right here in our back yard?

Call me stoked.
Pumped.
Jazzed.

I'm In it, not to Win It ... just not DIE.

Run the Jailbreak is a 3.8 mile race that includes obstacles, mud pits, creeks, hills and promises screaming muscles the next day.

Aweeeesome!

No, seriously I am so excited about this race I hate that it's three months away.

Then again, it SHOULD be cooler in three months ...

What? Who? Me!

My seeester pointed out to me the other day that I have officially become a blogging failure.
You know, Dawn, 10 years ago that wouldn't even be possible.
So really, you should congratulate me on breaking ground.
Okay, so I haven't even broke ground.
Michael was a blogging failure WAY before me.
Check HIM out - it's been forever since he wrote more than a couple sentences.
How we mourn your writing loss, dear brother.
Nobody can talk like a Jones; and you optimize Jonesness.

As for me and my house ... I'll start blogging tonight. I got too much sleep last night and I'll be up till dawn. Might as well be productive in some sense of the word.

On with the show!

I love that this post will be buried under all those to come, so you don't even have a chance to back out of reading all that is to come till after it's too late.

Hahahahhaha, oh my evilness is truly diabolical!

Or at least a little lurid.

Pesky?

Juvenile.