Time For An Update!

Wow you guys! I've been terribly neglectful of my blog lately, and as you can see I'm trying to get back with it. My posts have been somewhat uninspired, but I'm hoping to get my mojo back soon. ;) I've been looking over my blog though, and all of my family pictures are really old and outdated! I think I need to go through and update them so the family looks true to life. Otherwise you may think that I'm a 26-year-old mother of 6 and 3 year olds forever! I'll be 40 with 2 college aged children (insanity!!) and everyone will think I'm a young mom of two babies. Strange how life tricks you into not realizing that you and everyone around you are getting older. Next month I will be 29. 29!!! How does this happen? I need to hurry and get myself into shape. I'd like at least one year in my 20s where I like the way I look and feel.

I have heard that people mellow when they hit their 30s and start feeling more comfortable in their own skin and more content with life in general. I hope it works out that way for me. I think if I were more relaxed it would make a huge difference for my family. I try, but I've been a crazy woman lately. Maybe that's why the blogging has come hard for me. I don't even recognize myself anymore. I've been prickly and irritable. I have a hard time thinking nice thoughts about anyone. Every little perceived slight sets me off. This is really weird for me because I really like most people, and I generally give people the benefit of the doubt. My philosophy for many years is that people are not out to get me, and their underlying intentions are not to hurt me, so I'm not easily offended. But this is not the case anymore. Don't even think about disagreeing with me or saying something that could in any way be perceived as a criticism or ^%@&MARY!!*^$# will come out and get you! And believe me, you don't want to meet ^%@&MARY!!*^$#! Anyway, I'm hoping to get Mary back soon. In the meantime, maybe ^%@&MARY!!*^$# will provide some entertaining material. We can only hope.

Launa's New Socks

I bought Launa socks in early October because I was unable to find all but maybe one pair. Even after searching the house, under beds, in closets, and under the couch *shudder* I still couldn't find any of her socks. It had been a while since I bought socks for her anyway, so I decided it was time. When I went to Walmart to pick out a new set, I was happy to see this adorable pack that had different colored socks that could color coordinate with pretty much any outfit she had! Obviously not considering the fact that I couldn't find any of my daughter's current socks, and that if that happened to any of these socks, they would have no mate, I grabbed the package. I am entirely serious when I say that some of these socks were worn ONCE before their mates disappeared! (I'm sure you could tell by looking at the pristine condition of some of these socks.) I have already had to pair the gray one with the black one, and the blue one with the purple one. I know people joke about missing socks, but really, where DO they go?

Cub Scouts

Daniel started Cub Scouts this school year. He is a bear cub. Today they worked on earning their wood-working badges, and they made bat houses. You read that right, bat houses. Because I want screechy, rabies riddled, terrifying flying rodents around my house. It's a good thing that we rent, because I can say that we aren't allowed to put it up. Here are pictures of the bat house that Daniel, Launa and I (but mostly Daniel) made at scouts:

Daniel and Launa posing with the bat house:



Close-ups of the sides and inside. That's some high quality craftsmanship!







I hope the bats don't end up with tetanus on top of their rabies.



As a reward for sticking with me this long, an added bonus - Launa playing the DS:

Sweet Launa

Okay, so this might be "overshare" territory, but I was in my underwear after my shower, and Launa came in. She wanted me to help tear the perfume samples out of a magazine we had been talking about and looking through together earlier. So I sat down, and we were looking through the magazine, when she starts patting my adorably distended mommy belly. She said, "Belly, belly, belly. I used to live in there. It used to be my home." And she kissed it. Suddenly my belly doesn't seem so hideous to me anymore.

More Than Just A Family Story

The kids had Fall break over the weekend (5 days off in a row!), so we got to go visit my family in St. Louis. My grandma has had a rough year and recently moved into my folks' house. It was really nice for my family to get to spend some real time with her, since we have rarely been able to make visits across the country to visit her in California. Before I went to bed (super late on that last night in town), my mom got out a little album that they put together of family snapshots.

You know how there are some stories that you hear about growing up, but you really can't grasp the true horror of it until you have lived life a little? We revisited one of the tragic stories of our family history as we went through the album and as I was telling Jeremy about it later, the depth of anguish I felt over this story surprised even me. Here it is:

As we were going through the photos, there was one of this beautiful, goofy, adorable little girl with short, tousled, blond hair, and the typical knock-knees and giant teeth of a pre-teen, holding a lit-up birthday cake and grinning ear-to-ear. My aunt Nancy. It was her eighth birthday.

When my mother was very small, and my uncle was an infant, the family was involved in a terrible car wreck. In this wreck, my grandma's pelvis was crushed and she was told that she would never walk again. My aunt Nancy was thrown from the car and died on impact (this was in the early 60s when seatbelts weren't even installed in every car). My grampa, who has always struggled with depression couldn't care for the entire family, so the oldest three children stayed home while my mom and uncle Mark, who were babies at the time, had to be cared for by separate friends and family members until my grandparents could get things back under control in their lives. The oldest child, my aunt Debi cared for the home and the other two siblings, while still going to school and maintaining her grades. At the age of 12. This one event set them back for years as people and as a family. The accident happened two months to the day after the photo was snapped of Nancy's 8th birthday.

Grampa and Gramma made it through the tragedy. My Gramma walks. Nancy is a well-used family name, in honor of the aunt/sister/daughter that everyone loved and missed. It has occurred to me that on Tuesday, my son Daniel will be the exact same age as my aunt Nancy was when she passed away. And I now dream of the beautiful little girl frozen in time, waiting in The Father's arms for the rest of her family to join her in their own times.

Cool Facts About Spiders!

So I asked the exterminator about the black widow looking spider from my back window. I told him that it looked like a black widow with a red squiggly line down it's back. He told me that it was a male black widow because they have either a red squiggly line or a dot on it's belly instead of an hourglass. I told him how strange that was since there was an egg sac in the window. He told me that it must have been the dad and that he got away from the mom (who usually kills the male after mating), but was coming back to eat the eggs. I feel kind of bad that I had J kill the eggs, since it sounds like the dad had the same goal in mind. The exterminator told me that the males are also venomous. As he was leaving, the exterminator told me to take the broom and sweep down all the spider webs on my front porch because spiders only make enough web in their lifetimes to make one web. They absorb the web (Liz told me that spiders can absorb their webs, but I didn't know they can only make one web in their lifetime) when it gets really yucky, and then use it to make a new one. If their webs are knocked down though, since they can't make anymore webs, they will starve to death.

My Dining Room Window

I don't go outside as much as I should. And I rarely have any reason to go out back. My back door is in my dining room, right next to my dining room window. As I was coming inside from the back today, I noticed all these bugs on the ledge and I thought, "Wow, we must have a serious spider living on the window!"




I ran inside to grab my camera and take a picture of the window sill to show you the carnage. When I came out, I was surprised to find ...

THIS!!!!

It looks like a black widow, but instead of an hourglass, it has a red squiggly stripe down it's belly. I wonder if there's a variety of black widow that looks like this, or if it's a benign garden spider sporting camo?