Probably not the best example of our parenting...

I don’t actually watch a lot of TV… at least I don’t think I do. I guess it depends on who you are comparing me to. The TV is ON all the time, but I don’t usually pay attention. I DVR “Y&R” so I *always* watch it first thing in the morning. Then I usually put it in TLC or E! and watch a couple of things while I’m checking my email, getting a little work done, and waiting for the babies to get up.



In between my early morning shows and Willard’s nightly TV shows, I keep the TV on cartoons for Yuri and Gigi. It’s shocking how closely they pay attention to “our” shows. I’m embarrassed to admit this, and I hope DHR doesn’t read my blog, but Gigi’s favorite show in the world is “King of the Hill”. Yeah, seriously.


Willard has always been a big fan of “King of the Hill” and he DVRs every episode. If he’s home, you can bet that he’s either playing Black Ops or watching “King of the Hill”, “The Office” or something kind of swamp, logging, Big Foot show. (I am a HUGE fan of “Swamp People”, by the way. I will blog about my secret Swamp People crush on another day).


Anyway, before Gigi goes to bed at night, she crawls up in Willard’s lap and asks to watch her “fay-bret tartoon”. Instead of playing baby dolls or school like normal children, she wants to play “King of the Hill”. She’ll say, “I’m Bobby Hill. Mommy, you be Peggy Hill.” Geez, Louise. We’re trying to discourage it without making a big deal about it. It’s a cartoon to her and she doesn’t get the adult humor, of course, but it’s not something I want her getting attached to.


She also likes it when I watch “Extreme Home Makeover”. She makes me rewind it and watch the MOVE THAT BUS part over and over.

 
Ummm... oh yeah.  I forgot to mention she loves to watch babies being born on "The Baby Story". 
 
I'm going to stop this blog now.  I'm feeling pretty crappy about my parenting skills.  The more I type, the worse I feel. 

Wash Me!

We’re leaving for the beach in a couple of days and I have a problem. I really want to get my car cleaned up, but it’s a bigger job than I can handle. I’m pretty sure it’s a bigger job than anybody except Jesus can handle.

My poor Tahoe is a 2008 and it has 111,000 miles. I would guess that someone was eating McDonald’s or drinking Gatorade throughout at least 100,500 miles of it. When people say “I don’t allow my kids to eat in the car”, I’m amazed. So you don’t feed your kids? Between all our ballgames, it’s not humanly possible for us not to eat in the car. We would be perfect candidates if TLC ever decides to do a special car edition of “Hoarders”.

Close your eyes and imagine a concoction of red dirt, sweat, apple juice, all colors of Gatorade, French fries, chips, sunflower seeds and gummy worms all mixed and melted together. Now imagine it ground into the carpet. Now, take the picture in your head and realize that YOU’RE NOT EVEN CLOSE to how nasty and disgusting it is. And the smell… I don’t even want to go there. I carried two extra kids to bible school last month and one of them held his nose all the way there and back every day. So embarrassing. I bought some pretty good stuff at Wal-Mart (shhh…don’t tell my son I started shopping at Wal-Mart again) but it’s $10 for a bottle and I was only able to clean a little tiny square. By my calculations, I would have to spend approximately $580 dollars to do the entire car.

I wish there was a way I could anonymously drop my car off to someone who professionally details. They could clean it and then just park it somewhere with the keys in it and I could pick it up WAY after dark so nobody would see me. Ugh. I don’t know what to do. Any suggestions???

And the best BED HEAD Award goes to....

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “bed head”. I hear it sometimes on “America’s Next Top Model”. I guess it’s cool to have tousled, messy hair these days? Well, that’s actually VERY good news for Yuri. If she ever decides to model and they tell her they want the “bed head” look… well, let’s just say I think she has market cornered. Don’t you think?

Now, seriously?!?! What in the WORLD am I gonna do with this heap of hair? I’m glad it’s growing so we can eventually pull it in a ponytail, but it seems to be growing OUT instead of down!

She’s going to hate me for posting this picture on the internet for the world to see. Any future potential husbands with the idea that they’ll be waking up next to an exotic beauty will have that idea shot down with one peek at the blog. Sorry, sweetie. Hopefully this is a bad hair phase that will pass with age.

I thought I’d post the bad hair picture and then post a cute picture of her with her hair fixed, but with the humidity and the heat, that’s an ambitious thought! I told her to be still and let me take a picture and she started striking poses like she really is on ANTM!

Oh, and never one to be left out, Gigi wanted me to take her picture striking a pose too.

Trust me...you're going to love this!

I know some people follow a lot of different blogs. I read Bro. Jack’s and Joe David’s every day so I can keep up with the church happenings. I follow maybe 5 or 6 blogs other than that, and I typically only check them once a week or so and catch up on anything I’ve missed. I stumbled upon a blog a couple of months ago that I am absolutely loving. I have shared it privately with a couple of people, but I’ve decided that it’s so good, I just HAVE to give it a public shout out! The blogger’s name is Missy and she’s got a whole pile of kids (some biological and some adopted). Sound familiar?



Missy’s blog makes me literally laugh out loud. I believe the term “LOL” is grossly overused. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually been reading something or writing something and “laughed out loud” (although I’m as guilty as anybody as far as using it goes). This blog truly makes me laugh out loud sometimes. I read one this morning about her husband “planking” and I believe my entire day is going to be better because I laughed so early in the morning!


Just go check it out. When you have time, read some of her older blogs (there’s a “BEST OF” section). And read about the journey her family is enduring right now while trying to adopt a baby girl from Ethiopia. I promise you that this blog is going to touch you in some way… she’s funny, she’s crazy, she’s honest, and she’s HUMAN. Enjoy!!!


http://itsalmostnaptime.blogspot.com/   

Facebook or Fakebook?

As most of you have probably figured out, I love Facebook. I’m more connected to friends and relatives now than I’ve ever been and it’s mostly due to FB. I have never been good at keeping photo albums or baby books or scrapbooks, so my Facebook and my blog are basically where I keep memories. I do admit that I’m not an equal opportunity poster. I generally only post when I’m having a good day or something funny happens. I get annoyed when people post all their private drama (and believe me, some people have PLENTY of that) so I try to keep my posts fairly light. I don’t like it when people (especially adults) put something as their status that is some kind of encrypted, veiled message meant to intimidate or threaten someone else. If you have a problem with a particular person, let them know. Don’t post it to the world so we can all try to figure out who you’re talking about.


Because I have teens in the house, I am friends with lots of teenagers. I try not to befriend anybody younger than Karlie, and I really don’t have many younger than Haley, but I still have quite a few teens on my friend list. Have you noticed them playing the “truth is..” game? Well, of course you have. In case you’re living under a rock, here’s how it works. You put “Truth is…” on your status and for every person who “likes” it, you have to post something truthful about them on their wall. (At least that’s how I THINK it works… I’m not a player, just an observer).

I will agree that this game is a confidence booster, but I’m not sure it’s really all that truthful. A typical comment is “You’re so prettyyyyyyy! I love your hair! And I miss you. We need to hang out soon”. (Except 99.999% of the time, they type “your” instead of “you’re”. Eeek. That may well be the subject of a future blog)

If they were being completely honest and writing what is truly going through their heads, they’d comment “You’re not dog ugly, but you’re not as pretty as me. I really hope we don’t have to sit together in the lunchroom again next year because you chew with your mouth open and it grosses me out”.

Okay, so maybe honesty is not always the best way to go! Maybe instead of FACEBOOK, we should call it FAKEBOOK. ?

I personally wouldn’t ever play the “truth is” game. I can’t take the truth. If 100 people commented to me and 99 of them said something really, really nice, I would still have that ONE negative comment in my head. It would eat at me, hurt my feelings, and bring out serious insecurity.

The moral of this story is that sometimes it’s okay to lie…. at least to me. If you have nice things to say, bring it on. If you don’t, shhhhhh.

Garnett randomness...

I had a special request for a “random Garnett story” today, so here goes.



(This is not fiction – all things mentioned below happened in the past 24 hours)




My Gigi story –


ME: Babies, mommy HAS to finish payroll so you need to watch TV in your room. Try not to bother me for just a little while, PLEASE.


GIGI/YURI: OKAY!


(5 minutes later…)


GIGI: Guess what, Mommy!?!? You pee-pee, you don’t need help… you poo-poo, you need help. I hadda pee-pee. I didn’t poo-poo. You pee-pee, you don’t need help. I didn’t poo-poo. I wiped myself. But your toilet paper didn’t work. So I wiped myself with Sloan’s shorts.


Nice. Sloan was so excited.






My Yuri story –


We were driving down the road this morning and a deer jumped RIGHT out in front of me. This, by the way, happens all the time. Any of you deer hunters out there who want to kill a deer just need to ride shotgun with me. Anyway, so I slam on the brakes. (And yes, I know you aren’t supposed to swerve or slam on brakes, but it’s just instinct!)


YURI: MOMMM! Why you always try to kill animals???


ME: I don’t!


YURI: Yes, you do. You ran over a rabbit last morning. And you killed a bird with your car.


ME: Well, yeah, okay. They need to stay out of my way.


YURI: Now that bird is in HEAVEN. How long before he can come back?


ME: Ummm. Well, once you go to Heaven, you don’t come back. You get to stay and live with Jesus forever.


YURI: Is the bird’s momma in Heaven?


ME: She might be.


YURI: Is the bird’s teacher in Heaven?


ME: Ummm… probably.


YURI: What if he changes his mind and wants to come back?


ME: Oh, listen… I love this song. (I was trying to change the subject but she didn’t fall for it)


YURI: When am I going to Heaven?


ME: When you die. But that will be a long time from now.


YURI: How do you know?


ME: I just know. (what would YOU say???)


YURI: Will Jesus have a SpongeBob blanket?


ME: I… I doubt it.


YURI (in her whiney voice): But WHY??? I want to take my SpongeBob blanket!!






Luckily for me, we reached our destination and she got distracted. While I seriously doubt Jesus has a SpongeBob blanket, I think I’ll tell her that he *might*. That word always seems to pacify their questions. You never know… He might!

The fam... Gigi's eyes were closed, but it's nearly impossible to get a glam shot of everybody at the same time.  Haley Rae and Karlie have veto power, so they delete anything that's not flattering to them.