From 1926 to 2008 (Repost in honor of my grandfather who passed away last night)

***My grandfather passed away at the age of 92, last night.  It was time but it still hurts to let go.  I loved that stubborn old man!!**

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Yesterday I stepped out of my car and my foot landed on an artifact from 1926. Okay so its not quite that dramatic, it was a wheat penny. I flipped it over knowing it would be old, 1926 it read. Cool, then I started thinking, there is no telling where this penny has travelled since it was minted in one of the hmm five US mints or whatever you call them? No telling, it has seen several major world wars, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, been to a Sock hop maybe? Purchased penny candy in an old general store, maybe even my great grandfather's? Really cool, it survived Woodstock, the Cold War and Oh my gosh "Bush Economics," because you know of course that everything wrong with our economy can literally be blamed on one single man (big eye roll.)
The only thing that I know personally that is older than that penny is my grandaddy (okay so technically he is not a thing) who was born in 1919, he will turn 90 years old this February and he is doing just fine. Every year about this time, he likes to start reminding me that his birthday is coming up. The funny thing is, he doesn't want a thing. If you gave him a gift he would say thank you and tuck it away never to be seen again. He just wants to be acknowledged, to count, to get credit for that year. He is strong except for his old knees. He hates being unable to plow and plant his fields. He is the last member of his immediate family He too survived all those events and milestones in our U.S. history. He married at 17 had two daughters and went off to the Phillipines at the end of WWII. My dear sweet grandmother who has been gone for ten years now, really had her hands full with him. He had the curse of the Irish, except he wasn't Irish. But about 15 years ago he had one stint in Rehab and that was all it took. He hated it hated it and thought no one loved him since they sent him away. He has never taken a drink again. About 5 years ago he decided smoking was too expensive and just quit, no patches, gum, hypnotherapy, he didn't gain weight or have a nervous breakdown. He is tough and strong and stubborn and I love him dearly. I am so glad my children will have memories of him. I am so glad he has lived far enough into my adulthood that I know to really listen to him when he tells me something. He comes from a long line of long living stock. His mother whom I knew as Mama Addie Mae lived to be 98. Her grandfather lived to be 103. His name was Grandpa Beavers and my mother remembers him. How many people can say they knew their great great grandfather? I guess my point is to appreciate artifacts whether they are objects like wheat pennies or dear old grandpas, just don't let them know you call them an artifact. Both have lots to offer and stories to tell.

Go ahead, laugh at the big hair

Lisa, I promise I am not copying you but I wanted to let everyone laugh at the reality of my senior portrait after seeing your www.yearbookyourself.com pictures!
I cannot believe that I am almost 20 years older than when I took that picture! Wait, I seem to remember those photos being taken in the summer of 88 so yes, that photo is 20 years ago. I still feel like I am well not 17 but atleast 27 right? Where does the time go. Here's to all the former big hair girls out there, raise your Final Net cans and pollute the world with CFCs!

Happy Birthday to Me

I started a tradition a couple of years ago. I make myself a birthday cake. Weird maybe but getting older makes you realize you are responsible for your own happiness. I used to play the poor old mom nobody loves me because I didn't get a cake like everyone else song but then I realized, my husband doesn't cook unless it involves something he's killed, my mom lives too far away and the kids are not old enough. So I make this Strawberry cake that my mom and grandmother used to make for me every single year. It tastes exactly as I remember and it makes me feel special to get to eat it. I have been told it is the best homemade cake in the world and I consider myself to be an average cook. I don't really like store bought cake anyway and I am not a fan of the crisco icing! But don't let me mislead you, I would still eat the whole thing if someone didn't stop me, I mean we are talking about cake here right? So here is a picture of this beautiful pink cake before and after icing. The icing is made with butter instead of crisco. I may include the recipe, it isn't that hard and I say "homemade" because it does involve a box of cake mix. But to most of us that is still homemade. I am no Martha.
My friend Lisa makes the best cakes and is wonderful at decorating them. She inspired me to put up this picture of mine but here is one of hers (mine just tastes good, hers actually look good!)
So I had to pause for awhile before finishing this and the funniest thing happened. Totally unexpected too. My dear husband comes home with a beautiful cake from Publix! It was chocolate and vanilla with beautiful pink and purple balloons on it. Well two cakes means a few things:

I am certainly loved

I am going to have to clean up cake for the next two days

I am going to gain at least two pounds

and I am going to make sure I have people coming over to eat this cake later on this weekend!

My Wish List

Here is my list of things that would make my life fantanstic . . . (Besides the usual winning of the lottery wish!)

I wish my children were self-cleaning like my oven.

I wish school cafeteria lunches were mandatory and free!

I wish my dog would poop in one spot in the yard and then bury it like a cat.

I wish my husband suddenly decided he hated hunting and told me it was time I took up an expensive and fun, time consuming hobby for weekends between now and Jan 1st.

I wish my rednecks-with-money neighbors would remove all the yard art, Do they really need another concrete angel statue to go along with the giant fountain and the 5 concrete deer? (I am not usually a snob but it is getting on my nerves :)

I wish my children would remember to poop more than once a week saving me hours of repeating "well it wouldn't hurt so bad if you would go everyday or two!"

I wish my parents would suddenly decide to move close by and become 10 years younger so they could chase my kids around.

I wish my best friends on the other side of Atlanta would decide to move to Loganville.

I wish my church would tithe to me for being a member!

I wish Obama would stop saying the word CHANGE.

I wish Lost would start up before January.

I wish I had a remote control with a mute button for children.

I wish someone would find a cure for Cancer and Autism NOW!

I wish my new car had automatic headlights so the cops would quit bugging me about driving without my lights on! GEE GIVE ME A BREAK! he he

I wish it was against the law to give me a speeding ticket.

I feel a lot of pressure here to end this on a high note so I wish that pressure was gone.
I wish my husband would put the toilet seat down (he wishes I would leave it up)

I wish C sections came with free lipo (they're already in there so why not?)

I wish my baby would smile and say, you take a nap mom. I will feed myself.

I wish my lap top had all the keys it came with.

I wish I got paid to blog.

I wish I had a giant vacuum that I could put in my front door and it would magically suck all the dust from every surface in my house.

and finally,

I wish I could just appreciate how fun my life is and stop wishing for things that are never going to happen!!!!

Wishing anyone who reads this a great day!!

My little hair clip

I have this little, tiny, metal hair clip that I love. Its about the size of a dime. Its heavy and strong but tiny and so easy to lose. I have probably had it for 10 years. I can't believe I haven't lost it. I have been careless with it at times and lost sight of it for a while. It always resurfaces. It always turns up again when I am not even looking for it. I lose dozens of my daughters barretts never to be seen again. Why does this hairclip stay with me? I loaned it out once and it took the better part of a year to come back to me but it did come back. So it got me to thinking, what else in my life is like this hairclip, in fact its been bugging me all day when I was trying to think about my next blog. I think its my faith. I have always had faith. Even though it is not the in-your-face-come-to-Jesus kind of faith. It is always with me too. Its strong and reliable. It seems to disappear at times but always makes its way back to me. It always turns up again even when I have ignored it for a time. God is so patient. So patient and reliable, always there waiting for us to find him again. Someone told me once, and it has always stuck with me, that when you feel separated from God its because you have taken a step or two or a hundred away from him. He never steps away from us, never. And he will always take us back. When I get to feeling that separation, I ask God to pull me back and he always does.

Watching a baby grow

I love my baby. Yes I mean I LOVE him. I love all my children of course but if you know me you know that I didn't get the luxury of falling in love with each of my children individually and yes I now know what I was missing and man its a pretty big thing. Moms of triplets and quads who don't have a singleton are always wondering what its like to be a "normal" mom with just one baby. It makes me sad for them if they don't get to experience it and it makes me sad for all the moments I lost or missed out on with each of my older babies. I missed them because I was exhausted to the point of tears. Stessed beyond belief and wondering what God was thinking when he picked me to undergo this enormous task. Yes I know that I chose to use fertility medication but its not like quads are all that common even with the medicine. God still directed the whole thing. I wouldn't change a thing unless it would help my little Pauli. (She's doing great though all things considered. Anyone who has spare prayer time please remember her and her struggles with autism.) It seems like Jack is growing at warp speed and I am always amazed when he hits another mile stone or a new month rolls around and all of a sudden now he has two teeth? He can sit up and has added some new sounds to his vocab, He is really good at Dada, yaya and aduh. No mama yet. But I just LOVE having a baby and everyone thinks I'm crazy but everything he does is a gift and I am so glad we decided to add #5 to the pack. I don't think there has ever been a happier baby. He may not be the best sleeper but he is happy almost all the time. He looks just like his daddy's baby pictures. Right now I am his first love and it breaks my heart that those days are numbered. My other kids were never particular who held them or comforted them or showed a mom/dad preference. I think that was a product of being in the NICU for five weeks and then being passed around to anyone who could help me hold them and change their diapers for the first year. They have always comforted and looked out for each other so there was little one on one time with mom. They never had separation anxiety or clung to my legs like so many toddlers. Jack is all mine though and I feel like I deserve it. He melts my heart when someone else is holding him and he cranes his neck around to find me in the room, then seeing me, cracks into the widest grin I have ever seen like he has just spotted a million dollars. What a gift. I adore that little fat munchkin and his older siblings who love him too.

I already have all I need . . .

So today I have an unprecedented hour or so to myself. Yayuh, I know unbelievable. So I try to take a nap, which I desperately needed,no go. I just can't do it. Can't force myself to get sleepy and shut out the world. My body won't let me. So I decide to get up and do something constructive (don't you hate that word? As if the other things we do are what, destructive? No that's what my kids do.) So I think, "I am going to clean out these drawers in my bathroom vanity." We moved into this house a week before my quads turned two and I remember throwing some things in the drawers thinking, "I'll just stuff this in here for now and organize it later." Well my kids will be 6 this April so you do the math. So there I am pitching expired drugs and samples of lotion that no longer smell like rasberries, they smell rancid, travel size stuff uhh when was the last time I need that? Visine drops from when I was a teacher (pre-children) dried up face clothes and old mascara, I find about a hundred elastic hairbands from when I had long hair and wore ponytails 24/7, I was just thinking of buying a new pack too because my daughters are always needing them and I can never find any! I find 5 packs of dental floss because everytime I decide to start up the habit again it has been so long that I forgot I had any at home. Does that make me gross? and 6 bottles of eye make up remover (I don't wear eye make up, okay maybe mascara a couple times a month.) Random tangent - whenever I take the time to put on mascara or brush my hair people really notice and it is makes me think - I must really look like something out of a swamp if they compliment me on mascara. Back to the issue at hand, and my point which I promise exists, I threw out two thirds of the drawers contents. I found a box of tooth whitening strips which were hugely expensive when I first purchased them, didn't use them because they were messy and made your mouth taste like blech, nastiness there are no adjectives adequate to capture, and I start thinking hmm why didn't I use these and should I throw it out? So I try them on and suddenly remember why I quit using them. The phone rings and I answer but I don't take them out because I have to wait ten minutes and I can't waste the strips! So it is one of my dear friends telling me she can't meet me for dinner and I continue to have a conversation with her forgetting that I have a bleach induced speech impediment until the drool from trying not to swallow the blech-bleach starts running down my chin, gross. My friend doesn't mind. That is why I know she loves me! So I go back to my drawer-cleaning thinking dang I wanted to see her but look at my nice drawers! I have beautiful drawers, have finished a project I started almost 4 years ago, a friend or two who loves me and a family that is amazing. There maybe a recession going on but when you have all that plus 5 spools of dental floss, what more can you ask for? By the way, anyone need any eye make up remover?

My life in a nutshell

So today I realized for the first time that no one has a clue what my life looks like from the inside, okay maybe that women in California with the 5 year old quads, one of whom has autism and the 8 month old baby and the husband who is a high school administrator, the mother in law with breast cancer and the crazy Golden Retriever who was supposed to be a therapy dog but turned out to be a great big pain in the a**. Oh yep wait, she doesn't exist! But I also know that no one knows what anyones life looks like from the inside because well, we aren't inside. Sometimes I have to remind myself that what looks like rudeness, nosiness, annoying lameness on the part of someone outside my life looking in, is just plain ole innocent ignorance. I mean that in a kind way (sortof.) So when school officials screw up things that have to do with getting my special needs daughters papers and plans in order do I pitch a big redneck fit? No, because well, firstly I am not a redneck. I grew up west of the Snellville line. (Understand I now live in Loganville and the line has most definitely moved east say to Monroe, sorry Monroe - we all know you've gotten a Starbucks but you ain't quite there yet.) And Secondly, I understand the world is not ending because said school official's blunder will only cause me a few hours worth of unnecessary waiting at another Dr's office to prove that my perfect-visioned daughter can, in fact, see. Isn't she cute by the way? I call this one Queen of the McNuggets.

Ducks in a row

Here is the Chili and the happy family eating it, well Roy and I ate it and the kids picked at it and put tons of cheese on top and ate the cheese. The picture of Jack mad is the result of my ignoring him in order to cook and photograph my meal. How in the world do people do the supermom thing? I can't figure it out. If I do well on the housekeeping/cooking thing, I feel guilty that my kids aren't getting help with school work and reading time or bonding time with me. If I spend a lot of time with the kids I feel a list of things I need to do running through my head and the house looks like crap. Where do people find the balance. I can't seem to get my ducks in a row

This is me trying to be funny

Okay so I have been looking at these fancy lifestyle blogs and I saw an episode of Martha on them. I looked at a couple and one had pictures of beautiful foods this woman made everyday and so I decided, I want to make that bread. I have been craving some homemade bread and I am making chili for dinner so that would go perfect with that. I took my laptop into the kitchen, followed the directions and it turned out pretty darn good. The kids liked it and dad too so I thought I will take pictures and try to put it on my blog I never use. Here is my first attempt.