things they say

reed is my grocery shopping partner most of the time.  he knows where everything is, and he has opinions about what we should get and what we shouldn't.  a few mornings ago we were in the dairy department picking up some eggs.  he likes to open them and "push" on them to make sure they are ok. i picked up a dozen and opened it to find about 6 busted eggs.

reed:  "oh no!  some of those are crappin'!" (cracking?)

so i picked up about five different cartons and all had cracked eggs in them.  

reed:  "they all have eggs that are crap-ted." (cracked?)
me:  "yeah.  we should tell somebody that works here that they have an egg problem, shouldn't we?"

wrong thing to say.  i was just talking.  he took it literally.  so as we passed a skinny, young guy on the way out with a blue kroger shirt on....

reed:  "hey.  y-y-you got some crappin' eggs!!"

i bet that's the first time in his life that he's ever had somebody tell him that!


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in the middle of a wrestling match in the den, i overhear from the kitchen:

william:  "get your phalanges off of me, wes!"
wes:  "you get your phalanges off!"
william:  "do you even know what phalanges are?"
wes:  "no.  but i don't want them on me!"


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now imagine the following said in a 5 year old, southern drawl.  (sin = seeyun)

dear god,
we all just sin and sin and sin.  and if you didn't send somebody to take it away from us, we would all just go to hell.  but....you sent us jesus.  so.....thanks.
amen.

this was wes' prayer a few nights ago.  i've never heard the word "hell" come out of a 5 year old before.  but, he used it correctly, and it makes my heart happy that he at least somewhat understands the concept.  now i've just got to work on the 3 year old saying "crap" to the kroger boy!

in case you were wondering....

mississippi state is not good at ice hockey.  at all.  not even a little bit.  even though we could not even get the puck on our end of the floor (court? rink?)....we definitely had the cutest fans!

i don't know anything about hockey, but i found myself doing the same thing as everybody else around us....hoping for a fight!  i guess if you can't score, the next best thing is seeing somebody get tossed into the wall.  in other news, our tennis team won this weekend.  so....we're just going to forget about hockey over here and cheer on our tennis boys!!  go dawgs!

a whole lot of randomness

i don't think it's ever going to quit raining.  i have forgotten what sunshine looks like!  william got a telescope for christmas, and we have not had one single non-cloudy night since christmas for him to use it.  poor kid.  however, you can see straight into the neighbor's kitchen and even identify what they are eating for supper!!  :)  ha!  i was the one that discovered that.  i didn't let him in on that little secret.  i'd rather him sit around and wait on the stars to come out!!

speaking of rain, doesn't everybody's back door look like this?  muddy, wet piles of clothes are normal, right?

and since there is no sunshine or dry ground to play on while william swims, we have taken to doing homework in the front seat while we wait.  he's not a fan.  go ahead and start praying for me now.  please.  thanks.

we found out on friday night that fried ice cream isn't all it's cracked up to be.

reed just decided to take an extra basket of chips for his own instead of eating dessert.  smart boy.

wes' class celebrates their 100th day of school this week.  he hates to dress up, but he was pumped about bringing 100 of something to school.  especially since he chose 100 gumballs.  so....he won't be dressed as an old timey person, but he will have enough gum for an army!

i don't know why we even try to have order in this house.  when the furniture is all over everywhere because the room is about to be painted, the little people prefer it that way.

in this case, they were the judges making up new laws.  let's be honest...they would more than likely do a better job at that than the elected people we've got doing it now.  sheesh.

in other news, chase is the new face of mississippi state.  wait....neither of us gave permission to use his likeness.  we should demand royalties, right?!?!?

hope you were able to stay with me while i bounced all over the place here.  maybe i'll be a little more organized once the sun makes an appearance and all the little people get back outside and out of my house!  hurry up, sunshine!  we miss you!

routine

this morning was the first day of 2013 back in the routine.  and by routine i mean dragging people out of bed, telling them to eat their breakfast 14 times while they continue to stare at it, and searching for the inevitable missing shoe!!  hello, 2nd semester!!!

two were ready to go!

one was not!

oh well...2 out of 3 ain't bad!!  :)

grateful

it was early afternoon this weekend as i rolled down valley hill.  it was still cold and windy, but the sun was starting to peek through the clouds.  the delta is usually a dreary, desolate place in the winter with the seas of green and snowy white having given way to an ugly brown that seems to go on forever.  but the past week's rain had left the now empty rows of the fields filled with water.  my kids thought it was some sort of cool maze, and with the sunshine dancing on the water it was a really pretty sight!

i think you have to be from the delta to understand the delta.  and if you are from the delta, you don't really understand how unique of a place it is until you leave.  i went home for a wedding this weekend, and it had been a while since i had been home.  driving through our small town, i was reminded how blessed i was to grow up in a small town.  small town....no stoplight.  doors remain unlocked.  directions sound something like, "turn left between the cotton fields, head straight toward the water tower, and go past the church to the second house."  you know who lives in every house.  you can walk in those houses unannounced.  you have to drive to the next town to go to the grocery store, get a haircut, or do anything.  kids ride their bikes all over town, not just around their cul-de-sac.  and parents don't have to worry because everybody else in town knows that kid too.  if she decides to pick all the flowers out of a neighbor's garden because it seemed like a good idea at the moment, the parents will know about it before she even gets home.  (hypothetically, speaking!!  :)) you can roam with bb guns in the woods beside the old railroad track.  the cars in the street will stop and wait while you retrieve your kickball or football that went out of bounds.  you can load yourself down with firecrackers and blow up ant piles or have bottle rocket wars without anyone thinking you are a crazy lunatic.  it's just a simple place.  a mayberry of sorts.

and it's sad when you come back after a while to see that things have changed.  a gas station torn down.  an empty lot where the house of an older lady that i used to go visit and play cards with as a kid once stood.  the tree where our neighborhood tree house used to be is not there anymore.  and so forth and so on.  but as much as things change, they soooooo stay the same.  the delta and those small towns aren't what they are because of the landscape or the buildings.  don't get me wrong, we have some pretty awesome buildings....

but there's only one thing that makes that place what it is.  it's the people.

you typically think that the bride's family puts on the wedding.  and that might be true in most cases.  but this weekend, i watched this entire town put on this wedding.  people bending over backward to help in any way that they could.  from driving vans and golf carts to transport people because of the muddy conditions to getting the "big house" decorated just right.  from directing the wedding to cutting the cake.  i'm talking about the parents of childhood friends, old teachers, old coaches, kindergarten friends, high school friends, college friends, the guy that lives across the street.  i realize that this happened at my wedding, but i guess i didn't see it from this view!  but this weekend, it was a cool thing to see it all unfold, and it just made me even more proud to be from that stop sign on a blacktop.  everybody should get to experience being small town kid at least for a little while!

so thank you, jane anna and whit, for bringing me home and making me even more grateful as we enter the new year.  while my kids are ringing in the new year with y'all's cowbells...

i'll be busy writing thank you notes to the entire town for putting on that wedding of mine 10 years ago!!  :)

happy new year, y'all!  bring on 2013!

christmas!

christmas is over!  can i get a high five?!?!  everybody is always talking about how this is their favorite time of year.  not me.  i think we need to skip everything and just make it a religious holiday.  call me scrooge if you like, but our tree came down christmas night.  i'm excited that the radio stations are back to playing regular music.  wal-mart will go back to being just plain horrible instead of super duper horrible.  and i won't have to try to remember to move that durn elf every night.  i will, however, miss those christmas m&ms!!  :)

we started out with parties at school last week.  i only managed to get pictures of wes' party.  he built a gingerbread house with his daddy.  i'm thinking all the creative/artistic genes must have gone to aunt holly.

wes and sam

i came back after walking over to william's party and found these two snuggled up in the reading center!

shortly afterwards, we made our way to madison for the henson christmas.  we were sad the jackson hensons missed out on the festivities due to the flu, and reed really missed his playmate!  but we survived.  presents helped!  and somehow i got no pictures of all the cousins.

and it didn't take long for the first of the lego creations to get put together!

back at our house on christmas eve, we worked hard on some slice and bake cookies.

and then we went outside for what may be the craziest thing i've ever seen.  my mom saved three paper lanterns from one of her recent weddings.  paper lanterns.  you light an attached piece of tar on fire.  it somehow fills up the paper lantern and floats off.  paper lantern.  on fire.  i was certain that we were going to burn somebody's house or yard up.  once they got on up into the sky, i felt a little better.  and i laughed thinking what the cars on the road must have been thinking while looking at these fire balls floating through the air!  i was surprised we didn't wake up to a picture of it on the front page of the paper asking if anyone saw the unidentified floating object on christmas eve!  it was pretty cool, though, and they did get super high before they eventually disappeared!

when all that relief that we didn't catch our neighborhood on fire excitement was over, we opened our christmas eve present and went to bed with christmas ninjago pjs.

despite the fact that william said the "nighttime takes forever," christmas morning came, and they were all ready.

well...not really.  reed would have been happy to sleep for a few more hours, but the other two weren't going to let that happen!  he perked up when he saw presents!

yes.  the 5 year old is obsessed with the titanic, and the light sabers are a big hit!!  after reed finished his annual christmas breakfast of a box of whoppers....

they had to go on a scavenger hunt and find clues that lead them to their last present!

and they got to ride them for about 30 seconds before the monsoon came through!  so the rest of the day was spent inside playing with the rest of the new loot!

so that about wraps up christmas over here.  it was fun while it lasted, and my house is still a disaster to prove it!  but now let's bring on the new year!!