not me! monday ~ birthday edition

time for not me! monday. this week we ate out more than we ate at home. i stayed in my jammies until afternoon. on two days. and i didn't put ryan down for a nap until 5 pm last night.

that's what took place this week...


...and here's what did NOT happen:

samantha did NOT turn six this week. i was NOT super sad about how fast she has grown up.

on her actual birthday we did NOT have to go to target so that i could buy her another present, a card, gift bag, and a birthday cake.

we did NOT give her a digital camera (that ben won on a pallet at the auction) for her birthday. she is NOT totally enjoying it and has NOT already gone through a set of batteries and has NOT taken over 200 pictures. in 24 hours! and last night at walmart she was NOT taking pictures of random strangers...

this week samantha is NOT going to have her first ever friend birthday party. and she is NOT extremely excited! this is totally NOT a spur-of-the-moment-thrown-together-party and i am definitely NOT behind on preparations.

so while scurrying to get samantha's birthday party invitations in the mail i did NOT buy a book of stamps at walmart, slap on the address labels i had pre-printed, and drop them in the mailbox at the post office on my way home from walmart. the next night i did NOT open up my purse and see a full book of stamps in there. yes, you guessed it--i did NOT forget to put stamps on every single invitation. not quite knowing whether the invitations would come back to me or be delivered with postage due, i did NOT then have to call every mom (except for the ones i facebooked!) to tell them when and where the party was and appologize in case they would have to pay to receive their invitation.

and while i was chatting on the phone with the last mom, she did NOT inform me that the pool where we're gonna have the party didn't open until an hour and a half after my planned time. so i did NOT have to change the time and then call everyone back again with the correct time.

next time samantha has a friend party (or just a birthday for that matter)? i am NOT gonna plan waaayyyyyy better.


what did you NOT do this week? stop by mckmama's blog for more not me fun!!

i blinked...

and six years came rushing past me.

dear samantha,

it seems like just the other day i was bringing home a newborn baby girl. i was so excited about my new role as mommy, although still a little hesitant about the huge task that lay before me.

but at the same time it seems like forever ago since you were little. i can't believe that today you're six. before i know it you'll be asking me for the keys to the car. you have grown up to be such a wonderful little big girl!

did you know that you never fail to surprize me? all the funny little things you do and say--you definitely give me something to smile about!

did you know you are an exceptional daughter? daddy and i are so blessed to have you as our daughter. we love to experience new things with you and watch you grow physically, intellectually, and spiritually every day!

did you know that you're such a good sister? ryan is so lucky to have a sister like you--a sister that prays for him. a sister that watches out for him. and a sister that loves him so very much!

and did you know that even though i'm YOUR teacher, you have taught me way more important things in your six years of life than i could ever teach you in school?! with your heart for people, your zest for life, and your love for God, you have shown me the meaning of faith like a child. you have demonstrated how to love your neighbor as yourself. you have taught me to think in light of eternity.

and when i love you with every ounce of love i could possibly give you, i realize how immeasurably more God loves me.

i love you samantha!!

happy 6th birthday!

love, mom

blogging begins with toothless grins

for the last few months samantha has been asking me for her own blog. i told her she could practice on mine a few times before i let her have her own.

so today, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time, i am proud to introduce samantha, who is here to share some exciting news!

----------------------------------------------------

this is samantha. yesterday i lost my first tooth. and dad used pliers and then my tooth fell out.

this is my tooth.

the tooth fairy got me two five dollars.

----------------------------------------------------

i think she has a future in blogging, no?!

i wish she could put into words just how happy she was last night. her tooth was really lose yesterday, but not quite ready to pop out just yet. until we went to subway last night. she took a bite into her sub and...

"OUCH! mom, my tooth hurts."

so i ended up cutting her sub into little ryan-sized bites and she was able to eat her dinner. ben told her that he'd pull her tooth with pliers at home and she was fine with that. i told her that her gums might bleed a little bit, and then she was worried!

when we got home daddy had the brilliant idea to let her eat a popsicle first to numb her gums. and then POP! he pulled it out. and samantha was THRILLED!! she has been waiting for this for sooooo long!

then came all the questions about the tooth fairy. will the tooth fairy take my tooth? can i keep it? it is a boy or girl? how does the tooth fairy know what house to go to?! does it come through the window? maybe it's waterproof and comes through the pipes!

so right before bedtime samantha wrote this note, shoved it and her tooth in her tooth fairy box, and hid it under her pillow.

as i tucked her into bed she asked me ever so sweetly if she could have the video camera in bed with her. her plans were to stay awake for as long as she could, or try to wake up so that she could take a picture of the tooth fairy. of course i obliged!

i kissed her goodnight, snuggled the video camera in by her bear, and then i was off to play tooth fairy i went to bed and apparently the tooth fairy came in the night!

samantha awoke this morning excited to find $10 (the going rate for first-time tooth loss. i think the next tooth will only earn a dollar.) and a note from the tooth fairy. she was excited to find out that ms. tooth fairy is in fact a girl, and she was so grateful that she got to keep her tooth!

thankful thursday

today i am very thankful. and very proud.

my nephew cameron, who is at the US Navy boot camp, underwent a huge test last night. from 8pm to 8am he took his final test, called battle stations.

Battle Stations is the culminating event of Navy Boot Camp. It's designed to wrap everything you've learned about swimming survival, teamwork, fire-fighting, damage control, and more into one massive 12 hour hands-on exercise.

after being up all day, he had to stay up all night and pass this final test to graduate and become a US Navy Sailor.

first off, i'm thankful that ryan was up from 3am to 4am last night. it gave me a chance to pray for cam!

second, i'm thankful to those of you who knew about this test and were praying for him too. thank you!!

third, i'm so thankful that HE PASSED!!! he will graduate from boot camp tomorrow morning, and i will be the very proud aunt of a US Navy sailor! congratulations cameron! we love you!!

wordless wednesday

not me! monday

hello monday! what a great day to confess those things that we'd rather not admit to, which is the whole purpose of not me! monday! so here goes:

i did NOT let ben cut the grass, pull weeds, plant tomatoes, and grill our dinner. on FATHER'S day. this was NOT justified because i worked in the kitchen for 3 hours on mother's day!!

ryan did NOT pee on me today. ugh.

i did NOT about have a heart attack while shopping in petsmart on saturday. while we were looking at the various rodents ben looked up and said "oh, look at the snake." and as i looked up to see a 12-year-old boy (about 5 feet away from me) picking up an 18-inch snake i did NOT jump and let out a slight scream. i was NOT so relieved when the boy said, "don't worry. it's only a PLASTIC snake." but then he continued and said "but that one's real." and he turned to his father who was standing behind him with a 5 foot live ball python around his neck and arms. i did NOT gasp and back away a little and the man did NOT procede to ask me if i'd like to pet it. ummm... i'm fine, thanks! as we quickly walked away from the snake i was NOT the slight bit embarassed by the fact that i was freaked out by a tiny plastic snake when there was a huge live one right behind it!

ben did NOT run around walmart the other night stalking this little old man in hopes of capturing his hair-do on camera. he did NOT have a nice little bald spot with a mohawk. i do NOT think it's totally cute!



the temperature has NOT reared its ugly head around here. it is NOT 97 today with a heat index of 112 degrees. and we're not even to our hot months yet. sigh.

i am NOT gonna go eat a popsicle!

happy monday!

saturday sunday cell phone mosaic

first of all, happy father's day daddy! and happy father's day ben! y'all are the best dads anyone could ever ask for. i love you both so much!

today was a great day! here's a quick run down:

sleep in/wake up at 8:30

nursery duty at church-2 year old boys

lunch at mr. goodcents

sherwin williams

home

father's day present

cut the grass

pull weeds

admire our one ripe raspberry :-)

grill dinner

simon & simon

quick run to home depot

more yardwork

kids' bath and bedtime

shower

look at our baby fish

late night snack

netflix

ahhhh... yes, it was a good day! and now, goodnight!

s.o.s. [UPDATED]

update:
my hair is very thin and very fine. and there's a slight bit of natural curl. but only when it grows past chin length. i don't know that i'd really want bangs, you know, since i don't like to have hair in my face! but thank you all for the suggestions here and on facebook! i'll consider every one! well, except for the mohawk and mullet. seriously, people!

original post:
so i'm not really on a ship. let alone a ship that needs to be saved... but i do need some help.

i'm about to pull my hair out. literally. (although i wouldn't have to actually pull. it's doing pretty good falling out on it's own.) i'm in desperate need of a haircut right now. ben keeps asking me if i've made an appointment yet but i haven't. and believe me, i wanted it cut yesterday, but i just don't know how i should get it cut.

my hair is pretty long (for me) and i don't like it on my neck and in my face. it's a little clastrophobic if you ask me. so here's how my hair day usually goes: shampoo. tad of conditioner. brush. put in ponytail. take down for 2 minutes. put in ponytail. take down for 30 seconds. put in ponytail... catch my drift?

i really don't like to do anything with my hair. (why not if you stay home all day and when you go out it's just to walmart or target...) and i will absolutely not blow-dry it in the summer. so i need something easy. but cute.

and i don't have to worry about ben liking it either. because the other day he told me that no matter how i got it cut he wouldn't like it right away. yes, this being said right after he told me my hair was too long and needed to be cut. men.

all right... let the HAIR STYLE IDEAS start pouring in!

thankful thursday

i'm one of those people who likes to procrastinate. i mean, i like to procrastinate so much that i made myself a procrastination award for heaven's sake!

what's that? you want to know some of my favorite things to procrastinate on? well for starters,

cleaning. i actually just cleaned the living room two days ago, and it is once again a MESS. so instead of cleaning the living room every other day, i like to procrastinate and clean it once every two weeks...!

laundry. a little bit like cleaning, but at the same time all together different when it comes to procrastination. ben keeps his painter's whites for work separate from the other laundry so it gets done separately. and i procrastinate. if he still has one more pair in his drawer for the next day i procrastinate on washing them! so i don't know how many times at 11:30 pm i've started a load of his clothes because he doesn't have any clean ones for the next day!

putting away groceries. why fight the pantry if you can just leave a bag of non perishable items on the counter/table/floor? especially if you're gonna use them the same day. or the next day. or the day after that...

paying the bills. this gets a little tricky. i always make sure the bills that could accrue late fees (i.e. credit cards) are always paid on time. but our gas, electric, and cable are the ones that i mainly choose to procrastinate on paying. and not because we don't have the money to pay them, but mostly because i forget about them. and by the time i remember to pay them it's usually 2 or 3 months worth of charges to pay.

so today i remembered that i haven't paid the bills in a while. and here's where my thankful thursday comes in: hesitantly i logged into our electric company's website to view my bill. thinking that it would be over $200, i gasped when i saw $50. apparently i not only paid my bill last month, but i rounded up and overpaid! same with the gas bill. and the cable bill. overpaid last month. YES! instead of dishing out what i figured would be $500 to pay the bills today, the damages were less than $100! *picture found on google images*

hmmm...... maybe i should do this every month!?

we wanna follow the deer!

saturday was daddy daughter date day, so ben took samantha to the zoo for their monthly kid's fun fest and conservation club. each month they have different activities and games, like making fingerprint animals and balancing like a flamingo. samantha also had fun catching felt frogs with her velcroed noise-maker tongue! (why they were frogs and not flies i don't know.)

but the highlight of last saturday was that our local pbs station was there and helped the kids make a movie! they divided the kids into groups by their age, then went and made a movie about an animal. samantha got to pick the animal for her group and she chose the deer. yes, out of all the zoo animals she had to pick from, the deer ranked #1 on her list! but that was okay, because they wanted to keep the kids close by.

they all got a turn at using the video camera, which was a tiny flip camcorder, and the pbs lady helped them with what to say. after they were done she edited the clips and made a dvd for each of them to take home. the lady wasn't able to edit out her voice, so you can hear her in the background. but the kids are cute! samantha is the one saying "we love the zoo" at the beginning. (and in case you're wondering what happened to her nose, she nose-dived (nose-dove?) off of a bounce house slide and got a rug burn sort of thing.)

so if you have 33 seconds to spare, watch the movie. you just might learn something about the fallow deer! and i guarantee you'll love the little boy at the end!

for more info about events and attractions at the kansas city zoo, click here!

not me! monday

where did last week go?! it's already time for not me! monday again! this blog carnival was created by mckmama. you can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.




this past weekend we finally got to spend some time together as a family, part of that being at trip to the zoo for the annual member picnic. and while we were watching the hippos, an older lady did NOT ask us "are hippos mean or are they really friendly? like would they be nice to you if you walked up to them?" i did NOT want to tell her to try it and see... (fyi: more humans are killed by hippos than crocs in africa. and no, i really do not want little old ladies to get killed by hippos.)


and speaking of the zoo, while we were eating our dinner at one of the concessions, a zoo custodian did NOT come by our table and sweep--then pause--and then sweep again for what seemed like forever. ben and i did NOT give each other a look of concern because we both did NOT think he was spying on us. and i was NOT trying to see if there was a camera or microphone up his sleeve, especially since he was wearing a long sleeved shirt on a very hot day. that's a little suspicious, no? after he finally walked away ben and i did NOT come to the conclusion that he was in fact just sweeping and that we have definitely been watching WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY too many private invesigator shows (read: simon and simon).


after my week of eating out entirely too much, i am NOT back on my eat-healthy-at-home kick. so it definitely was NOT me, who in a moment day of weakness ate two chocolate chip cookies at lunch and a brownie at dinner. but if that could have possibly been me? well, i would NOT have enjoyed it!


ben had the day off today so we went shopping together. and while we were walking around the store he was NOT slightly making fun of two people who may have been a bit larger than us. and when we got back to the car and i told him how mean he was being he did NOT look at me and say, "give me a break--at least i haven't said anything about you yet." he is NOT in big trouble for that remark!


and now i need to wrap this up. because as i sit here typing this, my house does NOT look worse than it did last monday when i posted these pictures!


happy monday!

wordless wednesday

not me! monday

(alternately titled you guys better thank me for posting these pictures because it will make you all look like wonderful housekeepers!)

welcome to not me! monday! this blog carnival was created by mckmama. you can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.



well... first of all, it has NOT been a week since i last blogged.

last week was NOT crazy busy and i did NOT spend every available moment preparing for a garage sale. (which was this past friday and saturday.)

i did NOT totally neglect my kids, my husband, and my house whilst preparing. and the majority of my meals last week did NOT come from various drive thrus.

and now that the craziness is over with, i am NOT sitting here blogging while my living room does NOT look like this:








and my kitchen is absolutely NOT the one pictured here:





and these pictures were NOT taken after i had cleaned a little. phew! and i thought this was bad! i am NOT gonna go clean now!

what did you NOT do this past week?!

not me! monday

it's not me! monday again! after taking a not me! vacation last monday, i'm ready to go this week! (although it is NOT almost tuesday as i'm writing this!)


here's what has NOT been happening the past two weeks around here:

one afternoon while sitting in the chair being disciplined, samantha certainly did NOT blow her nose on her knit capri pants. and they were NOT her white capri pants. and her nose did NOT start bleeding when she blew it on her white pants... she did NOT get into more trouble for doing that.

* * * * *

in an attempt to keep ryan happy and occupied one day, i did NOT let him play with the pop cans he discovered. he was NOT busy happily stacking the cans and sorting them while i was doing the dishes. after finishing the dishes it was NOT i who forgot all about him playing with the soda cans. and as i was checking my email i did NOT hear KA-POW! HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS followed by frightened sobs. i did NOT find ryan (and everything within 8 feet) covered in pop. and it was NOT red cream soda.

i did NOT whisk him up to the bathtub (then run to get my camera) and quickly bathe him and samantha, all the while thinking about the mess that awaited me in the kitchen. after we were done with the bath i did NOT go downstairs to the kitchen and discover that ben was almost finished cleaning it up. thank you so much hun!

* * * * *

for the most part i care about my children's appearance and hygiene and make sure they wear clean clothes every day. so please, someone, tell me who let ryan sleep in the clothes that he wore during the day, and then let him wear those same clothes the next day. because it surely was NOT me!

* * * * *

i did NOT have a fun time taking engagement pictures yesterday, and i definitely did NOT lose track of time stay up until 2:30 am last night uploading and editing them.

* * * * *

last night ben did NOT come up with a perk of being married when he exclaimed, "you know what's so great about being married? i get to see boobies every day!" i did NOT tell him that was sooooo going on my blog. lol!

* * * * *

we have NOT had a turtle for a house guest over the weekend. she is NOT going back to her habitat in the wild tomorrow, so tonight we said goodbye to 'rosie-belle.' i thought that samantha would have a hard time telling her goodbye and that she might cry, but i was wrong. i was NOT the one who had tears in my eyes when samantha told her goodbye. samantha had NOT made this adorable card for her and she did NOT put it in rosie's "apartment" so that daddy could take it with rosie in the morning.

i am NOT hoping that we never find a stray puppy that has to stay with us for a weekend. i think i would fall apart! :-)

* * * * *

what have you NOT done this week?! stop by mckmama's blog to see what she and everyone else has NOT been doing!