Wickedly Delightful!
I had a real treat the other night that was two-fold.
First, I got to have dinner with my mom, just the two of us. Although we live in the same town and I see her frequently it is usually to pick up or drop off a kid or at a family gathering. We rarely get the opportunity to sit down just the two of us and catch up. We had a great time over a pizza and got caught up on life and I got to hear about the plans her and my dad have for a 5-week trip to England, Scotland and Ireland. I feel blessed to have such a great relationship with my mom. We have a lot of shared interests (secondhand furniture shopping) and I know that I can always get wise counsel from her. She’s a great sounding board and I love getting her perspective on things that are going on.
The second part of the evening was spent seeing "Wicked
"! It was a blast! I actually saw "Wicked" on Broadway about 2 years ago with my SIL Jenny and we loved it. Hands down, my favorite show. It’s funny, it’s creative and the music is spectacular. For those of you who have not heard about it, it is basically the prequel to "The Wizard of Oz".
"Long before Dorothy dropped in, two other girls meet in the Land of Oz. One, born with emerald-green skin, is smart, fiery and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious and very popular. How these two unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch makes for the most spellbinding new musical in years." –from the official web site
When I heard it was coming to town I told Stacey it was a must and we decided to take our moms too. If you get a chance to see this show don’t pass it up. And buy tickets early. They WILL sell out!
Mostly Right
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You are a Black Coffee |
 At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it Your caffeine addiction level: high |
What it doesn’t tell you is that I’m a seasonal coffee. I’m only good from Nov-Apr. Once the temperature reaches the 90s I get left for Diet Dr. Pepper.
Say What?
Tonight before putting Noah to bed I decided to look through his closet and see if there were any winter clothes that would no longer fit him so that I could send them to his cousins.
He also gets "bugged" by some clothes and refuses to wear them. He thought he should look to see if there were any clothes that bugged him.
So he pulls out a button up shirt in a very pale tan/blue small plaid pattern. It’s nice and soft and he’s worn it tons of times so I asked him "Why are you getting rid of this one? You wear it a lot."
"Mom, it’s too classic."
(While trying not to laugh) "Really, what do you mean it’s ‘classic’?"
"It’s soooo old-school mom." (with a look that said ‘duh’)
So into the pile it went.
Photo Hunt – Blue
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This Week’s Theme: Blue
Chose this picture obviously because of all the beautiful blues. My daughter is saying "No more pictures Mama!"
Cartoon Me
Okay, it’s kind of a weird experience having somebody draw a cartoon of you. An actual cartoon, not one of those HUGE head, tiny body drawings that you get at Disneyland for $20. What would the cartoon me look like? Well, here you go…my brand new header designed by Jules at EverydayMommy. It’s great fun and I hope you enjoy the new look.
For those of you who may have been wondering why I haven’t commented on YOUR blogs? Well I was on vacation and I actually managed to resist reading blogs for an entire 7 days. GASP! Thanks to Typepad I could still post. I have yet to log on to Bloglines. I’m a little scared to see how many posts I have to read much less 2 weeks of Works for Me Wednesday ideas I’ll need to sift through at Shannons. But I will persevere!
Um, duh!
A year or so ago we finally broke down and bought a DVD player for the car. Friends bought a set from Wal-Mart that had the two screens and the built in video games and had had good luck with it.
That summer my in-laws were taken my son on a road trip to Arkansas to see his cousins. They would be gone about 11 days. We figured the least we could do was send a DVD player along, so we made the purchase. We also bought and extended warranty from Wal-Mart which we usually don’t do.
When they got back from the trip my mother in law said that one of the screens had started playing in black and white instead of color. Over the next few months I observed it a couple of times. Sometimes it was in color, sometimes black and white. I looked through the manual to see if there were any troubleshooting tips but nothing regarding loss of color.
Well, before a 6 hr plane ride with my 3 year old, during which I knew I would lose my mind if I did not have the DVD player, I knew I needed to get it fixed. I called the warranty company and they sent me a nice postage-paid label to use. I carefully packed it up with a note about what was wrong. They said they would either fix it or replace it.
A couple of weeks later the unit came back with this note.
"Unit tested. Works fine. Owner can adjust color with "Color" knob on side of screen."
Oh.
Duh.
They should really put that in the manual 
Build A Bear, Break a Budget
It’s McDonald’s fault. Back in the spring they had Build-A-Bear as their Happy Meal toy. Okay, so maybe it’s my fault for making too many trips to McDonalds. Regardless, neither of my children had ever asked for a trip to Build-A-Bear until then.
Lest you be unaware of the BAB idea you go into the store pick an unstuffed animal, then you can choose a sound to go in him if you want (cost extra). Then they fill it with stuff according to your "squishness" factor (included). And then the true shopping begins. Different outfits line the walls. Everything you can possibly imagine for their little animal. At an additional cost of course. And then there’s the shoes, and the hats and the sunglasses. And even furniture, seriously. It’s unbelievable.
When you’ve picked out appropriate clothes you get to go to the computer, name your animal and either print out a story or a birth certificate.
Noah’s new friend is Patch, in a Batman outfit. Natalie’s is a koala bear named Superman in a firefighter outfit (can you say tomboy?).
I plunked down my $65 and was not two feet out the store when Noah said. "Mom, Patch really needs roller skates. Can we get roller skates?"
Um, doesn’t Batman fly????
Photo Hunt – Youth
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Grab the Scavenger Hunt code. Photo Theme. Join the blogroll. Visit participants. |
This Week’s Theme: Youth
Remember when you were little and you’d run and run until you couldn’t breathe any more and then you’d flop down on the ground – wherever you were. Didn’t matter what you were wearing or what you were flopping on?
Well this is my daughter and niece at my brother’s wedding. They’d been running around in circles on the dance floor until they couldn’t take it anymore. So they plopped down on the floor in time to watch the bride and groom dance. I wondered what was going through these little girls minds as they watched Trish and Phil. Are they already dreaming of their wedding?
‘World Trade Center’
When I first heard of Oliver Stone’s film "World Trade Center" I wasn’t sure if it was something I wanted to see. It’s not that I felt like it was too soon to see, or to real. It’s that it was Oliver Stone. I’ve never been a huge Oliver Stone fan and I somehow doubted that I would want to see his interpretation of the events.
But then I read a few reviews that were actually pretty favorable. A couple of them mentioned specifically how Stone left in several "faith" elements.
So we went to see it the other day and I was actually pretty impressed. It was an interesting take on the day because it’s told from the side of the Port Authority. It tells the story of 2 PAPD officers rescued from the rubble when the first tower collapsed (they were numbers 18 and 19 of 20 people found alive).
The "faith" element refered to Sgt. Kearns, an ex-marine who feels God calling him to go to NYC and help in the efforts there. It also includes a scene of him talking to his pastor before he goes to NYC and then is responsible for finding the two PAPD officers.
If you’ve been wavering about seeing it, I would recommend it. It did make you remember that day very vividly and I doubt anyone can see the film without remembering exactly where they were that morning. When the movie ended it was so silent in the theatre as people left…a very weird experience.
Now is also a good time to remind you of the the 9/11 blogging memorial…2,996. Go to DC’s site to sign up.
Daddy’s Girl
In the category of "Things That Melt Your Heart". This is daughter and daddy dancing at my brother’s wedding. I have a whole series of shots that are just so sweet. She so loves her daddy and boy is she lucky to have a daddy like him.
Our pastor is speaking on parenting and he was talking this weekend about how big an influence a daddy is on a young girl’s life. My husband will be the one that shapes little Natalie’s vision of what a husband should be and how a man should treat a woman. If she’s watching and learns anything, she will wind up with a wonderful man of her own.
