She's 5. Like for real... I have a five year old. The frack?!

Whew we have some storms a comin! I was horrified by the news that came out of Oklahoma, like everyone else who saw the damage and the awful news about everyone who died. Jeezum... there are no words.

I have a very serious fear of tornados. I often dream of them and they scare me more than anything else on earth (drowning is a close second). So that would be my absolute worst nightmare.

We've recently had a heat wave where we found out our AC isn't working, again. shaking fists at the sky Instead of having it repaired for the umpteenth time, we're going to have it replaced. Of course, we'll be doing the furnace as well... because why not? Where's my sugar daddy?

Speaking of sugar daddy, Ava's birthday was yesterday. Mah baby girl is 15, I mean 5. I think her attitude grows with each year. I'm not even kidding. J and I always take the kid's actual birthday's off and do something special with just them.

Ava was up at 5 freakin 15 a to the m, yesterday. She was so excited the whole day, she didn't know what to do with all that energy. By the time she went to bed, she was sobbing that she neeeever gets to play with her Polly Pockets. Mommy and daddy are sooooo mean. uh huh.

We planned a lovely day at a place called Santa's Village. Apparently, Ava has the dumbest parents on the planet. It's only open on the weekends right now. We both looked at the website no less than 20 times each and still failed to notice that it wasn't open on Tuesday. Instead we went to Chuck E Cheese. omg.

However, it wasn't that bad. We didn't eat there, just played a lot of skeet ball and I'm shocked that we didn't walk out of there paying for all kinds of broken things. Ava has a wicked throwing arm that has no direction whatsoever. I never realized how hard those balls are until you cringe in fear as the ball's target isn't any where near the skeet ball holes.

She also got to pick out her birthday cake. We thought it'd be fun to get an ice cream cake this... holy freakin expensive batman!!! Why?! OMG. $25 for a cake?! Obviously we steered her to the tiniest cake ever. It was still super delicious! mmmm ice creammmmmmm

And yeah, that cake pop is all loaded up with artificial dyes. Sometimes you have a break a few rules on a special day. It was a very good day.

Our story.

I got MARRIED!!! Ten years ago today. Thank ya, thank ya. It's been quite a ride. Technically, J and I have been together for 16 years. I had to pull the calculator out for that one. Jeez. How can I even be that old?!

Our married life started off rockier than most but it was all about love and loss. You see, we got married in a hospital room. Four months later we had big hoopla wedding where many people had no idea that we were already married and we were missing one very important person.

It all started when we got engaged on Christmas morning, December 2002. It was just J and I. He gave me an ornament that was engraved with "will you marry me?" Being the planner that I am... it didn't take long for me to start buying the wedding magazines and setting a date. The date was set for September 6, 2003 in my home town but our plans were thwarted by stupid, stupid cancer.

In March of 2003 we were set to drive to my home town with J's parents to work on wedding plans. We show up at J's parents house and his dad was in his sweats. ?! Dude... we are leaving in like 10 mins... might wanna change. Except not. He sat us down and the cancer is back for round two.

Heartbroken was the feeling of that morning but then replaced by anger and the need to fight. Boy did he fight. Until, things just snowballed and he couldn't fight anymore. The morning of May 15th, J called me to tell me they were moving his dad to the Palliative Care unit at the hospital. He was in too much pain to be moved home with Hospice. There was a long pause. Then I asked J if he wanted to get married while his dad was still here. He said he wanted nothing more. He talked to his parents to be sure that they were ok with it. J told me his dad just cried when he talked him about bumping up the wedding. He said it would make him so happy to be present at the wedding. We made it so.

The whirlwind began, we quickly ran out to get our marriage license, talked with the priest about how to make this happen because Catholic priests can not marry outside the walls of the church... and outside their boundaries, which was going to have to happen so that we could get married with Jim present. Our priest pulled out all stops and made it happen. So, so grateful.

We went to the mall to get wedding bands. I needed to find a dress and a coworker gave me a gift certificate to Express... that's where I got my very simple but pretty, white A-line dress. We bought a few flowers but kept it VERY minimal.

we were such babies

On May 17, 2003 at 10am J and I were officially married in J's dad's hospital room (he was too ill to go down to the chapel). My immediate family, J's immediate family, our best man and maid-of-honor were present.

One of the nurses moonlighted as a baker and made us a cake. All the nurses got together a cart of food to bring up for everyone. They also had a cake knife, balloons and garland for us. Oh, they even had a guest book for us and Jim's name is the first one in there. We were told we were the second wedding on that floor. The first one was a patient. The nurses were so amazing and just so happy for us.

A few weeks later, Jim's body could take no more and he passed on. Four months later we were once again surrounded by family and more friends for a huge celebration. Out of respect, I choose not post the family pictures of that day in the hospital room. I'm sure you understand. Jim was able to stand for pictures which I know meant the world for J but most importantly... our entire family was at our wedding.

wedding number two

our amazing friends who drove a long way for our 2nd wedding

It's J's dad that Ava is named after. Ava James. His name is actually Jim but we thought it was fitting to name our child, memorializing a great man.

So yeah. That's my story. It's been a rocky road but I wouldn't want to travel it with anyone other than Jason. Please don't think this a sad day for us. It's not at all. We are sad Jim is gone but it was an amazingly beautiful day. We didn't need all the glitz and glamor that comes with most weddings. We had our family and each other... that's all we needed. Ten years later, I wouldn't change a single thing (except one thing, of course...). With all my love, Happy Anniversary, J.

I grow LIVING THINGS!

Loooook!!! I GROW THINGS!!!! PRETTY, NO? Inside the cage there's tomatoes, garlic, broccoli and carrots (trying to grow those puppies from seed). I'm pretty good at growing tomatoes but I've never grown the other stuff, so we'll see how they fair. 

This is our extended garden. I have too much stuff to fit in the cage so we improvised and dug up our lawn. :) J just mowed the grass down really low because that stupid tarp didn't do diddley squat as far as killing grass goes. Kinda ghetto, I know.

I initially planted my zucchini and what I thought was yellow squash but since I lost my precious paper that told me what was what, I think I mixed the yellow squash and lettuce up. Because that poof of green in the middle down that has to be lettuce... right?

That dirt row will be beans... oh they WILL be beans, no matter if EZ tromped all over the freshly planted seeds. The round dirt piles will hopefully be watermelon. No doubt, all this is way too close together but that hasn't stopped me from trying!

I had one messily marigold left over from my flat of flowers. So I planted it next to the zucchini plant. It looks pretty sad all alone. He won't be lonely for long, I bought more today.

J has to drag that 4,000lb bag 'o dirt to the curb on garbage day. I didn't have anywhere else to put my grass scraps. You can see there's another dirt pile that is sitting on an empty bag of compost... that is also grass scraps that is about 2,000lbs and I don't really know what to do with it. Who knew grass was so damn heavy.

Eventually, we'll dig up all the dirt so it looks more like a real garden and less like a lazy man's kinda-sorta-looks-like-a-garden-but-clearly-they-don't-know-what-they-are-doing garden.


Finally, this here is Mr. Samualpoopikins. That's his official name. Often, he's referred to as shit head or old man. Not the most flattering picture but I did what I could with what I was given. I love him dearly. We need to stain our deck. Just add it to the list.

Ignore any little black splotches you might see on the white siding. That was when I sprayed my hair with black hair spray last Halloween. Who knew that shit would fly all over my white house!!! I cleaned it up the best I could... before J saw. There's still some there. :/

The best family pic, EVAH!

This is what makes my being a mother worthwhile... looking back on a picture taken at a company Christmas party where my daughter picked the green screen picture, my hair looks like I styled it with an electrical outlet, my husband looks drunk but didn't have a lick of liquor and my son is super pissed off about the whole thing. Happy belated Mother's Day, BITCHES!!!

Filters!

I've seen articles floating around the interwebs about how social media make us wanna be more like the Johnson's. People like to Instagram how fabulous their lives are and how perfect they are... pah-lease. We all know that's not true and I know I don't post the perfect things in my life.

We are not a picture perfect family. I have a friend who takes amazing pictures of my kids. I'm extremely lucky to know her because lawd... just look at my Instagram feed. You see the good AND the bad. My dirty kids, my messy house, tantrums, snot on my clothes, overflowing laundry, a frazzled mama... but I tell ya, those filters sure do make my life look fabulous! Okay. Maybe these pictures don't.

It's a SURPRISE!!!

This has been months worth of planning but we pulled it off. My bestie, Kelly, is knocked up with kid numero dos. SO she wasn't expecting this at all. Baby 2, 3, 4 or 19 doesn't usually get baby showers, just the first. Her friend, Katie, asked me to help plan a surprise baby shower. The kicker is that they live 6 hours away. However, the distance didn't deter us and we totally rocked the shit out of that baby shower.

I flew in Friday, Katie and I hustled our tail feathers off to pull off this party. Kelly and Katie live in the same neighborhood and we had to drive past Kelly's house to get to Katie's. We were sweating bullets and it seemed like everyone and their dog was in on it except Kelly. I swear on my life, I would have killed someone if we ran into her at the store!!

Kelly's husband, Dan, did everything in his power to steer Kelly this and that last weekend to make sure the surprise went off without a hitch. Katie sent me the bedding Kelly chose. I played dumb when Kelly showed me a couple weeks ago... I already knew... mwaaahahahahahaaaa. So that was the theme of the shower...

BEHOLD... a seriously cute surprise baby shower. I designed the invites based off the bedding and did all the decór and extra touches, while Katie came up with the menu and drinks. Thankya Pinterest!!! and washi tape. Amen.

invitation front

invitation back

NAILED IT!

You guys! I could have been kidnapped!!!

You know those moments in movies or TV shows where the girl gets thrown into the van that's parked near her car and kidnapped. Ya know, the one with the cute puppy in the back of the van. The puppy she pets as she chit chats with the scruffy owner of the van. The van that has it's sliding door open to the stupid woman's car? Stupid, stupid woman... don't try to get into your car! We all scream at the TV. We all know what's going to happen! Bitch, ya gonna die!!!

Ok well, it's kinda different in real life. ALL the same things happened to me except the kidnap part. It didn't even occur to me that hey that's weird, maybe I should go back inside the store. I didn't... I just kept on going to my car.

I know. WHAT was I thinking? I DON'T KNOW!!! OMG I realize now how easy it could have been for that man to just chuck me in the back of his van. Or sic his cute puppy that was kind of a big german shepard (super cute dog, btw). I don't know, you think about this stuff AFTER the fact. What is wrong with me?!

The guy was rambling how he was sorry he was blocking my driver side door. He said he was giving his dog some water... legitimately he was giving the dog water. That the poor thing had been cooped up in the van while he was picking up mulch... there really was mulch in his van. He said he felt so bad, that he wanted to stop to give his dog water. Then he told me he was going to get some Colonel Sanders. Which was right there as well. It struck me funny that he said Colonel Sanders instead of KFC.

The whole time, I had my phone in my hand. I was actually trying to call J at the same time I was walking out of the store. I think maybe the guy thought I was nervous and that it did look suspicious.  But then it made him nervous and he was rambling, basically telling me, without telling me, he's not a rapist/killer. He was actually very kind. I know all the serial killer are, right?

I got in my car without incident and yeah, I totally petted the dog. The guy didn't make me nervous at all. It was just a nice stranger. Way too close to my car. Giving his dog water. Out of his van. I realize now how fucking stupid and bad that could have been. At the same time, isn't it nice to actually run into people who are normal people, that don't want to rob or steal from you? It gives some faith in humanity.

I wouldn't know how to defend myself anyways. What am I going to do... throw my cell phone at him? Or my 400lb purse? Please. I would inadvertently hurt myself trying to defend myself. Oh, I could scream, no doubt I have a set of lungs on me. Next time, I'll be more careful... pinky swears!