To My Girl

To my beautiful daughter Kaylee-Beth.
Child, I love you so much it makes me weak in the knees sometimes. I want to write all of this down, so you can see it when you become older. You are so funny, you make daddy and I laugh all of the time with your humor and wit. You have the cutest blond hair, a huge smile, and a silly little laugh. You are a great mommy to your babies and you love to protect them. Some of the funny things you say right now are:
1)stunk/ this is your word for skunk- "Ew mommy, I smell a stunk and it is stinky winky."
2)snow wipe/ this is your name for your snow white doll.
3)hihena/ this would be your word for heyena.
4)mmmm. yummy to my tummy.
5)Docker Baker/ this would be your pediatrician. "Mommy, let's go see Docker Baker."
All of these funny little sayings make me laugh very much. You are a very very strong willed girl. You love to be outside running and jumping. You love gymnastics and whenever possible you'll do a "roll" for us. You love to stick out your booty and dance/dance/ dance. You like to help mommy or daddy with whatever they are doing too. You are growing up so fast, right before our eyes. You will be 3 soon, and before you know it, you'll be 30. So just because I haven't done it yet, I wanted to write to say how much I LOVE YOU.

Thankful!!!
I have so many things in my life to be thankful for. I shouldn't have waited this long to post them. Life is a journey that takes us up mountains and back down again, it is not until we are at the bottom looking up that we realize how thankful we are we made the climb back down from the very highest part. We must strive each day to remember that we all DO have things to be thankful for in life. Each and every one of us has great potential and promise and if we use it wisely we will see great outcomes.
1) I am thankful for my husband. I rant and rave about him alot, but without him, I would be a lost soul.
2) My daughter. She has brought such complete joy into my life that I cannot even imagine life before she was here. Even though she can bring me to my knees sometimes, she is my pride and joy.
3) My dogs. Yes one is a diabetic, blind, cripled retard (sometimes) but I still love him and even though he really gets on my nerves sometimes, I'd cry if he was gone.
4) My family away from me at the holidays. I know I shouldn't have put this after my dogs,remember, these are in no particular order :) I miss and love them dearly and without their love and support I don't know where I'd be right now.
5) My job. Oh yes, I said it. I do complain about this one alot, oh yes indeed. But needless to say, I am thankful that I have a job and have the ability to work at all.
6) My friends. My friends here, at work, at my old "hood", back home, out of town. I love em all. I don't think I could make it through life without having a few that can relate to my crazy insane self sometimes.
7) My home. As we venture into the building of our new home and we are now stuck in an apartment again (which I must admit is pretty nice for apartment life), I am thankful that I have shelter over my head.
8)My God and church. I know this should be first, remember, no particular order here. No but seriously, I lean on my bible alot and on God's word to strengthen me when I most need it. I am also thankful that I live in a country where I can worship freely.
9)My car. It may have over 100,000 miles on it, but the yota is still running strong and I hope it continues to do so for a long while.
10)My blog. This blogging thing is great. It has added so many laughs and joy to my life. Even if it is a of a voyeristic view into others lives, we post it so others can look.
Here's to another great year and hopefully many more things to be thankful for again next go round.

MIMI

My Number One Fan!!!
Have you ever had anyone in your life that you just know loves you so much that it causes your heart to ache? Well for me that would be my late grandmother, otherwise known as MIMI.

You see, in my eyes, Mimi is a superhero of sorts. The goddess of domestication. She could cook, clean like no tommorrow, sew and she was actually the only person I ever knew that ironed underwear. She had a garden in the summer (up at the lake where all of us grandkids spent most of our time), she canned the vegetables and fruit from the garden in the fall, she cooked the vegetables in the winter and she started getting ready for the garden again the next spring.
She raised 2 children when my mother and aunt were small, then came the grandkids, there were 5 of us. Most of the time we were all together at her house, as she kept us ALL, while our mothers went back to nursing school. She also cared for her mother at the time, who had fallen ill and was completely bed ridden from a stroke.

After I had my daughter and there was only one of her, I asked my grandmother "With all of the grandkids and your sick mother here, how did you not jump out of a window", she just laughed and told me she was just made to do that kind of thing and that she wouldn't have had it any other way.

Mimi told me once "Love is not sex or money or thinking he's cute, love is sitting side by side on your porch when your older and looking back at all the crazy things life has thrown at you and being able to look into your spouses eyes and say Can you believe we've made it through all of this together, the ups, the downs the goods and the bads." And as I've gotten older and been married for almost eight years, I've realized she was right.

Mimi also taught me to always look someone in the eye when you talk to them, and to this day I still have trouble not looking at someone dead on when we talk. She taught me how to cook, I always called her when I had a question about this or that. She and Martha Stewart were on a first name basis, every day at 11 sharp she'd say, "Oh, I've gotta go tape Martha", this was the older show, pre-prison. The day "Martha" got in trouble I called Mimi and asked her what she thought. She told me that although what "Martha" did was wrong, she wasn't doing anything everyone else was doing, she just got caught."

This lady was such a great cook that preachers spoke of her sour cream pound cake on the pulpit. I know I'll probably never taste food like she cooked again. I have a pressure cooker that I use alot (she gave me my first one) and she always used one at her house, to this day I can't hear that thing chugging without thinking of her. Also her grandfather clock at her house. I've never heard that chime anywhere else in the world and I probably won't. It's still at Mimi and Grandaddy's house, with my Grandaddy (who loved and cherished her until her final hours).

So basically this is just a little tribute to her. I've really been thinking about her lately, her birthday was October 25th, she has been gone 6 months on November 26th. She was an intricate part of my life as well as my whole family. She was the glue that bound us together. I'll miss and love her forever. Here's to you Mimi.

Eye to eye with a Buffalo

So we took it upon ourselves to go to a birthday party at what is known as Lazy 5 Ranch, a farm of sorts with animals you would not expect to see up close and personal. Needless to say my daughter got to have a new experience and I got to see what the inside of a buffalo's mouth really looks like.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, as many of you probably didn't know a buffalo only has teeth on the bottom. I must admit, when the tour guide told us to only DROP food into their mouth's otherwise they may bite off one of your limbs, I did get a little concerned. Not that they don't already smell bad enough, I guess they feel like they need a whiff of something new of sorts to clean their palats.
So they decided to go sniff the hineys of the caraige next to ours. I could not resist taking that picture.
Next it was off to see the giraffe. Once we were comfortably seated in front of these tall odd, but beautiful creatures, the guide says "I need two brave souls to raise their hands." The words had not been uttered for more than one second and my 2 year old raises her hand. He picks her, like she's a 20 year old lady that actually understands what he just said, to feed the giraffe's. Now I know most of you are probably thinking big deal, however you must understand, the whole hay ride we had heard nothing from him except for "don't feed this animal, it will bite your fingers off, don't feed that animal, it will bite your limbs off, don't get off the wagon, the animals will see you as food etc., etc." So I am imagining one of those awful videos you see where the kid is in the lion cage at the zoo somewhere in Japan and the lion is ripping it's clothes off. I hesitated you see because I, her mother, the lady that carried her in my womb, was to pick her up and feed her, I mean let her feed leaves to the giraffe. So, as visions of Michael Jackson hanging his child over a balcony go through my mind, I lift her up, she stretches out her arm, as I am closing my eye, and the next thing I hear is laughter.
She was being licked by the giraffe.
After I realized that she would live, and I would not go down in shame as the "worst mother of the year", I breathed a sigh of relief. And even though the rest of the ride was still smelly and cold, I hugged my baby girl and breathed her scent deep into my soul and realized, sometimes you gotta just take the plunge and go for it.

Funny

So I went back to Alabama a couple of weekends ago and while I was there a funny thing happened. My sister called and was asking my father (who is 61 years old) what they were doing for halloween. He replied "I think we are going to the church to the "Junk in the Trunk" thing. He meant "Trunk or Treat". I thought it was so funny. I proceded to explain the differences to him and he turned beet red. How cute.