Ewwww!

So the other day I am making a sandwich and reach for the lettuce and realize that I am out of lettuce. Bummer, but wait no problem, I have a bag of spinach. Its not lettuce, but its got a picture of Popeye on the front and says right on it (and I quote) that its "thoroughly washed and ready to eat."


I know the picture is hard to read, but that is what it said. So I put a rather large pile of spinach on my sandwhich. In truth I was sort of hoping that all that spinach would sort of counteract the unhealthy parts in the rest of my sandwhich. Well I don't know if it did, but I do know this...about halfway through my sandwhich (which I was thoroughly enjoying by the way) I look down on the counter where some of the spinach had spilled out of the bag, and what do I see...





Yep! you got it a very large, very dead bug. EEWWWWWWWW! That's pretty gross, but then I realize that the bag is half empty. I have been feeding my family from the bug graveyard all week. I check the back of the bag and there I find it the ingredients.



As you can see it says spinach, it does not say big, fat, harry, bug carcasses, and spinach. No, its just says spinach. I have a feeling that Popeye is trying to trick me, just like years ago he tried to trick little children into believing that eating spinach would make muscles pop out of their shirt whenever they need them to fight off bullies, now he's tricking me into eating bugs, except mere manipulation won't work anymore now he's using downright underhanded trickery. So stop what you are doing right now and go check your spinach, don't believe the ingredients. Its a conspiracy and we don't have to take it.

Carrying the Banner...

Ain't it a fine life
Carrying the banner through it all?
A mighty fine life
Carrying the banner tough and tall
Every morning
We goes where we wishes
We's as free as fishes
Sure beats washing dishes
What a fine life
Carrying the banner home-free all!

Oh come on you all know what I'm talking about. I know me and all of my friends weren't the only ones that watched this movie like it was a religion. What moive say you? Why Newsies of course...



Ok I know you are all trying to be cool and pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about, but I know that in your heart right now your dusting off the place that is saved for Jack Kelly, and his pals (you know its the spot right next Johnny Depp in his 21 Jump Street days). And I know that you have a favorite newsie. Come on tell us was it Spot Conlon, Kid Blink, Mush perhaps? Or was it Jack...(the adoloescent in me sighs)



Why bring this up now well, this weekend I visited my family. It was a fabulous little trip, but at one point my sister and I started to chat. We started to joke about the songs that we like to sing with. She made a little bit of fun of the "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" CD that was in my car and then all of sudden we were talking about the newsies, and how we loved them so when we were younger, and how we used to know the words to every song, and then before I knew it there I was in my mommy car with my mommy clothes on and my mommy haricut, and my twenty-something sister and we were belting out the soundtrack to Newsies. Although I must admit that we didn't know the all words to any one song, we did know some of the words to all of the songs. It was so great, I felt like all of a sudden we had just gone back in time ten years (ok maybe 15).

So this post is dedicated to the Newsies, and all of the joy that they brought droves of thriteen year olds girls, and also to my dear friends, which is I guess what this post is really about, because as I was thinking about the newsies I also thought about one of my dearest friends who watched Newsies with me many a time on many a late night sugar enriched sleep over. It seems that adolesence is steadily becoming a more and more frightening stage of life, but mine was not so bad. I came out the other side of adolesence pretty much unscathed, and without having made any major detrimental decisions. Once Shane asked me why my teenage years were so good, and after thinking about it, I really do believe that it was my friends, I was truly blessed with good people to be friends with, and I still am...I can honestly say that my best friend from adolesence is still my best friend, even though she lives on the other side of the country, and we only talk to each other once in awhile during our babies' naptimes. How wonderful it is to share so much history with someone that you know that even if you didn't talk for ten years; even if you became the most important person on the planet. You would still have someone that wanted to eat doritos, drink soda (I think Mtn Dew was the drug of choice in those days), watch Newsies and sing all of the songs with you, until the wee hours of the morning. Even now I know my friend Sara is reading this and hearing the newsies sing "The King of New York" in the back of her head.

MUSH:
A pair of new shoes with matchin' laces!

RACETRACK:
A permanent box at Sheepshead races!

SPOT CONLON:
A porcelain tub with boilin' water!

KID BLINK:
A Saturday night with the mayor's daughter!

RACETRACK:
Look at me
I'm the king of New York
Suddenly
I'm respectable
Starin' right at 'cha
Lousy with stature

Come on go ahead sing it out loud I know you want to...

Been awhile

I know, I konw, Its been a while and I knoe you all (well the two of you that actually read this thing have probably missed me, but I'm back. I don't know how all you bloggers out there do it. Its so hard to keep this baby up.

Here's the deal. The Song Bird got here first real order this week. Woohoo! sure it was for my cousin, and sure I'm not actually making any money on it, but she did ask me to build a photo announcement for her instead of the other way around. So all week I have been busy with that and let me tell you what, it was so fun to do. I love the new job that I built for myself, I hope that someday soon I will actually have more real orders. I just can't wait anyway. Anyway here is the finished project:

This is the front


and this is the back:

Just a Quick Note

Finished this layout today and I wanted to post it on the blog.
My friend Tim made us this inscribed rock when Mason was born. I put it in the picture to show how far he has come.

Journaling reads: "On this day I wanted to show how far you have come. You started so small and so helpless. Even when you were only a few weeks old your dad and I were so proud of how you had worked to grow your own little self. Now that I see this picture I know that the truly special thing about it is not showing how far you’ve come, but realizing that your adventure is...Just getting started."

Myrtle and the Whoopee Cushion

SO the other day I Blog surfing and I stumbled onto Rachelle's blog and she had this great idea to idea to write an enrty about your life every Monday. Well I thought that this was a great idea, but I was way too busy Monday. So today finally the Masonator is on hour two of his nap and I finally have time to blog (of course he could wake at anytime, so lets just cross our fingers and hope that our luck holds).

I have been wanting to write about one of my best childhood memories which isn't really one memory, but sort of a conglomerate of memories surroinding one person...My grandma Myrtle. Now I know what you are thinking 'Oh great another weepy story about somebody's grandma' but just listen, because my grandma really was pretty amazing. When I was about 7 or 8 my grandparents came to live with me my five brothers and sisters, my two parents, our two cats, one enormous dog, and one little parakeet. Needless to say we were a full house. My grandma had multiple sclerousis and could not walk, or even get out of bed. She lived with us for four years before she died and in that time I never heard her complain once, I mean it not ONCE. I did however hear her tell many jokes. She and I hung out all the time...um, maybe that was becuase she was literally a captive audience to my jabber. I really did talk alot as a child, and I think everyone else eventually got tired of it, but grandma was pretty darn patient with me and listened to my stories. My cousins would come to visit all the time in those days (its a wonder our house didn't burst at the seams) and we would put on elaborate shows for our grandma. We just knew that she really loved them and felt so proud of ourselves for doing her such a service, we didn't know then that it was really she who was doing us the service, by making us feel valued and talented when she clapped at the end of the show. My gradma was amazing, but there is one that stick out to me today that I want to write about. It was on her birthday...Like always all of the aunts and uncles and cousins came to visit and brought with them cards and presents and cake and such, but when my cousin Sara gave my grandma her gift the party really got rolling. From Sara my grandma unwrapped a brand new fully functional Whoopee Cushion. Yes you read that right to my grandmother was given a Whoopee Cushion. If I remember right we had to show her how it worked, at its first successful deflation my grandma laughed heartily, and then asked that it be reinflated and carefully directed us where in the room to place it. I remember that it was placed under the cushion in the orange chair and that the next person to walk in the room was my uncle Reid. We were all very excited when we saw that he was going to sit in the very chair where the joke was planted, we all waited expectantly, but nothing happened...we waited and waited and finally Reid shifted his weighted and the ongoing conversation was brought to a screeching hault by the loud expulsion of air from the whoopee cushion. The only way to describe what happened next is to paint you a picture of what I remember about that next few moments. Just imagine my grandma unable to even lift herself out of bed, laughing so hard that she had tears coming out of her eyes. Laughing so hard that we all worried that she might truly hurt herself. Needless to say the whoopee cushoin was a hit. And my grandma was a truly amazing woman. I am so gald that got so much time to know her.

He Thinks I'm Funny

Once upon a time when I was younger and could stay awake past ten o'clock I was talking to a college roomate about some boy she was dating. The conversation inevitably turned to the real question which was, 'do you like him or not?' After the questioned was posed there was a great deal of rationalizing, and such and finally she said to me as if it was truly the answer to it all "He doesn't think I'm funny." And in that conversation it was the answer and unfortunately for the unexpectant fellow the end of the short lived relationship.

So this weekend I am driving down the road with Shane and we had a close encounter with a mini van. Well to show how clever I am I quipped out what I thought was a rather funny joke about the mini van (please do not direct any hate mail to me I know there are many happy mini van drivers out there, I just am not one of them), and my dear one he laughed quite heartily, and then rattled off his own brand of joke, and we had a good laugh. And in that moment I thought to myself how great it is to have someone who thinks that I am funny. I think if you have someone to laugh at your jokes and in return tell you some I think there is something truly fabulous about that. It seems like a little thing, but in the end isn't it the little things that really matter?

Back Again

Ok I know all you faithful readers (oh wait...) ok I know I really missed my blogging, but luckily I am back again. Newly resolved to start writing about my daily adventures in my blog. You see I haven't written as of late because I have been on a quest. Let me chronicle it for you...You might want to pull up a chair for this one.

Ok so about ten months ago I am having major mommy guilt because my little baby doesn't have a scrapbook, with cute little cute cut out pictures and such. I have about a million pictures of him, but honestly, and try not to judge me, I hate scrapbooking. I am not good at it and it takes FOR-EV-ER to do, and for those of you that know me you will lovingly nod your heads when I say that patience is not one of my virtues. So I am looking on the web for another option when I stumble upon digital scrapbooking. Oh I love this! No paper scraps, no glue, just me and my computer, how fabulous is this! So I read about a million tutorials, and I actually over the course of a few months become somewhat proficient at Photoshop, this is a major accomplishment for me and I feel very proud of myself. It is then that I notice that every digi scrapper whose anybody has a blog, so I build one of those too. Ok I'm really on a role now, I even learn a little html so that I can put links on my blog, and then it happens...my friend brings to me a picture of her little boy and says, "do you think that you could make this into an invitation for his birthday party?" No problem! I think, but then that invitation turns out to be really, really cute, and I start thinking wouldn't it be great if you could send someone your adorable kids pictures and they could make you a cute baby announcement, or birthday card, or Christmas card? And then I keep thinking and I think wouldn't it be great if people sent me their adorable kids pictures and I made then into cute announcements and cards. "Oh if only I knew how to build myself a website," I lament to my husband (who has two degrees in Computer Science), and much to my surprise he says,"html isn't that hard you can do it." WHAT!?! I think as I was actually expecting him to say "Sure love, I'll get right on that." So I pout for a few days lamenting over my lack of website for my fabulous business idea, and then I google 'html tutorials' and what do you know, its not that hard...Ok I take that back. Its a little tricky and it takes several weeks of very hard work, and I have learned a ton, but I built myself a website. I am so proud of it. I am still waiting patiently for that first order, but I know it will come, one of these days, it will come.

So that is where I've been the last few months, working away on my fabulous new business venture. I know you all have missed me, but I am back now, and ready to blog faithfully, ok semi-faithfully.