My Macy Ann:

Beautiful. Deep dark red. Faithful. Friendly. Loving. Stubborn. Relentless. Spunky. Playful. Energetic and so much more. We miss you baby girl more than anyone can imagine, more than anyone will ever know. If I could turn back time…

We all still miss you Macy in our own way. It’s hard to believe that you have been gone now for 2 months, but yet it seems longer.

The kids miss you running with them outside, giving you treats and chews because you were always so excited to get one! They miss taking you on car rides because the way you would hang your head out the window reminded them of ‘Wonder Dog.’ Daddy misses you because you were so loyal to him and stayed by his side when he was home. He misses you lying in between his legs at bedtime (even though after he was fast asleep you would come join me in the living room watching t.v.) Chunky misses you in a way that he can not tell us. He mourns you more than anyone I’m sure. He has lost his best friend and his mother. His eyes often stay wet with tears. He doesn’t care to chew his chews or to mess with any toys. He still eats from his bowl the same way he did when the two of you shared it; grabbing a mouthful of kibble and dropping it on the carpet to eat (because you hogged the bowl). Piper now has no one to try to pick a fight with as Chunky’s just too laid back to do that.

I long to see you run to the pile of clothes in the floor freshly warm from the dryer burrowing in them and to hear the squeak of your favorite duck toy that is now safely put away in my dresser drawer. I miss my cuddle buddy at bedtime. It is awfully lonely now as Chunky doesn’t like to lay with anyone. I miss hearing your bark, even though at times I found it annoying. I miss how happy you were to see me when I would come home.

I’m sorry Macy Ann that this happened to you. It wasn’t supposed to be like this and I am so regretful everyday. I blame myself a lot and sometimes I can’t hardly stand it.

I know how you were with critters though. You loved to chase them and were relentless when you found one. Not letting up on leaving it alone. I remember when you found that big toad and tried to play with it in your mouth. I knew you weren’t going to eat it, but it didn’t know that. He gave you a taste of some nasty stuff but you still wouldn’t give up on making him hop as fast as he could go and trying to carry him off. Frothing at the mouth was nothing to you!

Then came the day, August 3rd , that you came across something far more dangerous than a little toad. We have never found the snake that killed you Macy but we do still look for it as Chunky & Piper act funny around the area of the shop, growling and their hair standing up. I can only imagine that you were really letting that thing have it.

I’m so sorry baby girl that I didn’t find you sooner. I’m sorry that the first asshole we took you to turned us away. I believe you would have made it if he had seen you. I’m sorry the second selfish bastard wanted his money before he would help you live. I’m sorry I didn’t grab my wallet or my cell phone when we left to take you to a doctor. All I could think of was saving your life. I’m sorry that he made me leave you there. I’m sorry that I missed his call on my cell even though I TOLD him I didn’t have it and we lived almost an hour away. I’m sorry that Mommy wasn’t there to hold you at the end of your life. This has been the hardest thing for me; knowing that you were in a strange place, in so much pain and I wasn’t there to hold you and talk to you. To hear that we had lost you…..just didn’t seem real. It felt like….I was watching myself go through all this and it just was a dream of some sort.

All we have left of you are the memories; from when you were just a tiny little 5 week old pup to when you were entering your senior years at 7 ½. You were cremated as I couldn’t bear the thought of burying you. It was hard to let them have you knowing that all we would get back was ashes. The girls picked your urn, a pretty little cherry box with paw prints on it. You now sit on the end table in the living room because I know how you loved to be where everyone was. Ashlyn has placed some tiny silk flowers on top and wrote a little book about you. Your collar still sits where it was the last time I took it off of you.

McKinnley believes that you have become a beautiful butterfly as they are always fluttering around the truck when we get ready to go on short rides and are taking Chunky. We like to think that is you telling us that you are here with us.

Until we see each other again my little fat girl, Macy Ann, I love you and miss you terribly.

Rest in Peace baby girl.

Well, well, well. It’s been a while since my last blog. Of course I have good reasons as to why I haven’t blogged in a bit. This blog will fill you in on all the changes in mine and my family’s life. So read on!

My blog originally went under construction back in July. It was a mess to say the least! The template I had selected was apparently just a big clusterf@ck and didn’t want to cooperate. Poor Lisa. Try as she might, it just wasn’t going to work! Thanks for trying though Lis! Sharon was nice enough to fix this one up and it looks quite lovely if I do say so myself!! Thank you Sharon! Now if I can just figure out the Photoshop Brent got me for my birthday I’ll be good to go!

We have moved. It seems that this was the longest move in our history of moving and we didn’t go far! Maybe 10 minutes up the road, but it still took us 2 weeks to get completely moved from one house to the other. Ugh. Unpacking boxes sucks as anyone that has moved a time or three can tell ya!

We have lost 2 pets since moving. I will talk about that in another blog because they are more to me than a paragraph in an update. It has been very hard and we are all still very much mourning the losses.

The rugrats have started another year of school. Summer went by way too fast for us all. The boy is in the 4th grade this year and LOVING it! He loves his teacher and is doing fabulous with his grades. The girls are now in the 3rd grade and are also doing brilliant! It makes the school year so much easier when your kids like their teachers and actually enjoy going to school. Knock on wood ;)

With much thought and consideration, I brought a new furball into the clan. More to come on this addition later.

I must close for now as the little princess is acting like a diva!

“…So don’t do it like me….I see you tryna do it like me…. Man that shit was ugly….”

This is the song that popped into my head while listening to McKinnley and Bailee play a video game recently. I was actually waiting for McKinnley to bust into song, seeing how he does that often. However, he was more focused on the game at hand and how his little sister was narrowing in on his score.

So he did his best to psyche her out.

“You can’t grind like me, you tried but failed,” “You missed that now you’ll never catch my score,” “Man, you’re really bad at this,” “You should give it up now,” “It’s okay to quit ya know,” etc., etc., etc.

Bailee did not give up. Nothing would please her more than to beat her older brother at a skate game. Not only could she rub it in his face at any time she felt necessary, she would have beaten him at his own game so to speak. See the boy wonder got a board for his birthday (much to the girls dismay because they didn’t get one- I foresee Christmas presents this year) and has since thought he was Ryan Sheckler or something.

These two couldn’t be more different in their playing “styles” if you will. Bailee is quiet and focused on the goal at hand. That goal of course is to beat her opponent which just so happened to be her older brother. She doesn’t like talking much or anyone talking to her while she’s playing because it distracts her from her game. While watching the other, she does at times talk trash (who doesn’t?!) and laughs at the flub ups. She is not a sore loser however. She can handle being defeated, but will demand a rematch in which she will “take you down;” all done while batting her eyelashes and flashing a smile (I have taught her well!).

McKinnley on the other hand will talk during his game play; tell you what he’s going to do and how he’s going to do it. He doesn’t mind the questions from onlookers as long as they are held at the most dire segments in a game. He is also a very determined yet dirty player. He will win at all costs; he will lie, cheat and steal his way to the top. When he watches someone play a game he does all he can to make you lose focus; more trash talk than his uncle (who is a hardcore gamer & in the picture with the 2 taken almost 3 yrs. ago), he takes jeers and jabs at your skill level. His ‘know-it-all’ attitude is taken to a WHOLE new level; one that makes you wanna smack him silly. He IS a sore loser and it usually ends with the games being taken away.

I have come to believe that this is simply encoded into him as a male. The ubber competitive side that comes out of him is just short of obnoxious. My ‘research’ was short & sloppy in coming to this conclusion: his father and uncle are both like this when playing anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a video game or an actual sport such as basketball. Neither of which the kids are around for due to the extreme foul mouthed, aggressive boys they turn into. I’m calling it a testosterone overload, one that is so great it completely clouds the brain of anything else but the words “MUST WIN.”

I’m assuming all boys are doomed from conception because somewhere inside at some point, the obnoxious, competitive testosterone monster will rear its ugly head and turn your sweet little Mama’s boy into this hideous beast.

Is never an easy thing to do. You can’t “prepare” for it even when you know its coming. You really can’t say how you’ll react until it actually happens.

In the last two weeks, I have had my fair share of good byes. So many that I don’t want to ever have another, but that’s just not realistic. In fact, I will have to say good bye yet again next month. Am I ready for it? At first I thought I was, but now after this evening, I know I am not.

You see, the tearful good byes started when my mom had a family dog put down on July 1st. He was supposed to be going for a check up to the vet office. Little did poor Copper know (or anyone for that matter) that it would be his last car ride. Copper was very old and began to have problems so instead of him suffering, my mom decided to have him put down. Which was very hard for her to do, I know. It was very hard for all of us to say good bye to the little bugger and he is missed daily.

The next crying session took place on July 3rd when I had say good bye to my sister-in-law, 7 year old niece & 2 ½ year old nephew. Due to the ‘shit happens’ factor in life, they were moving (moved) to Arkansas where she is from and where her family still lives. I was actually quite proud of myself during this one. I kept telling myself to not cry because I didn’t want to upset my niece as she had just said good bye to her daddy. My sister-in-law apparently could see that I was getting ready to wail so she added the “No crying! We’ll see you when you come to Arkansas!” I was a trooper and held it in until they were down the road….then I cried like a baby.

An expected yet unexpected good bye took place late this afternoon when I got to my mom’s. My sister had found a home for Little Man. Little Man is my ‘grand dog;’ he is the son of my Macy and the brother of my Chunky. I grew very attached to him. I wanted to take him so badly and hold him until they could have him again, but things don’t always work out the way we would like for them to. I’m sure the teenager that was holding him thought I was off my rocker as I cried, kissed his little face and told him that I would always love him. Then again, maybe he understood.

Then there was this evening; saying good bye to my sister and her family (7 & 3 year old nieces). With my brother-in-law being stationed in Georgia, I honestly thought I’d be okay with this one. Georgia isn’t very far away, the drive is only like 6 hours and I knew that they’d be back to visit often. As the evening came to a close and all the kids were giving out their hugs & kisses, my sister and I exchanged glances. I think we were both thinking the same thing only neither one of us wanted to say it- “This is it.” We hugged and cried and hugged and cried and hugged and cried some more.

My final good bye will be to my older sister next month whose husband has been stationed in Germany. Although she lives in Colorado right now, she will come ‘home’ before the big move and I’m sure the waterworks will be in full effect.

Whether saying good bye means the loss of a loved one or a move out of the area, it’s really never an easy thing to do.

First and foremost I’d like to say thanks to the douche bag that inspired this blog…so… thanks Summer’s Eve. You will never know what it truly meant to me.

I wish I could send out some sort of bulletin to all the male species out there on the World Wide Web. One that lets them all know that shirtless pictures of their (non-existent) bodies will get them no where with me. I wouldn’t be too harsh, just truthful in my message to the desperate and clueless. Since I can’t figure out how to do it on the ‘Space, I’ll do it here in my blog. Maybe the word will get out!

Please, before you post up a picture of your chest do 2 things for me. The first is to go work out some more. Until your chest (or entire body) looks like Gerry Butler’s in ‘300,’ I don’t wanna see it. The second is to go hit the tanning beds or a beach or your backyard. Of course there are such things as SPRAY ON TANS these days. This would probably be your best bet.

Now, aside from the pictures of your oh-so yummy body (ha!) when I get that invite sent my way, know that I’m going to ask how you know me. I do this because I have tons of pictures up of my kiddos and I don’t want some sick freak stealing them for his own personal use. When you get that message, don’t reply back with a “I’m ___ _____ and I love to live large.” WTF is THAT about? Dude, who are you trying to impress with that? Not I. I actually got a good belly laugh from the response so yeah, thanks for that!

Let me clarify in all this that I am not a woman that requires her man to have a ‘body.’ Personality, looks, sense of humor, looks and sensitivity is what I go on. (You can say looks don’t matter, but you know they do!) I am also a married woman but should I ever decide to be a dirty girl, this wouldn’t cut it to get my attention.

So please, fellas, before you hit that ‘Enter’ button, think about what message you’re really sending out with your response.

Rant over!

My twins girls are 8. They love being eight. They love even more being twins. They understand that it's a very special thing they have together, something that NO ONE can take from them. While they love doing things together (and excluding others on purpose because they aren't a "twin") they also do plenty on their own. Sometimes A will want to play with B and she's busy doing her own thing and can't be bothered.

This is when the "twin negotiations" come in. Yes, on any given occasion it seems my girls have perfected the "when in crisis" situation and can talk the other one into things. Sometimes this is a good thing...more times than not, trouble soon follows!

The other night as I was cooking dinner I hear Ashlyn ask Bailee if she wanted to go play 'Justice League' in their room. Bailee was waiting for her turn to play some PS2 and declined with a "No, that's okay." That was simply not good enough for Miss A and she continued to harass her other half.

The voices turn to whispers and then I suddenly hear A asking B if she would "pick up a thousand feathers for it?" "Yes...." "Would you 'twin wrestle' for it?" "Yep..." "Would you...dance 'til your feet hurt?" "*SIGH* Yeah..." "Would you...kill yourself for it?" "Uh, NO. You know we can't do that. Mom'll get mad."

Even though I was laughing inside at Bailee's response to this, I had to interrupt and question Ashlyn as to why she would ask something like that. She did the typical thing every kid does- she shrugged her shoulders and said "I don't know." Once upon a time, I answered my parents the same way.

So I had a little chat with the girls about things, nothing too heavy, I don't want to be the sourpuss Mom that ruins the fun and off they went to the bedroom to play 'Justice League.' It seems Ashlyn had won that round of negotiations!

That's right. We all know the scene this line belongs to; a kid having a meltdown in a public. Everyone stares and comments as if it's their duty to do so.

Since the arrival of the terrible two's (actually starting at roughly 10 months & continuing into age 3 thus far) in my little one, this scene has become all too familiar to me. That's right. I'm the woman you see on occasion in the store with the toddler screaming bloody murder. Why? Well let's see....I won't get her a balloon, I won't let her throw things out of the shopping cart, she can't stand up while riding in the cart, just for basically telling her "NO." We all that's a toddler's worst enemy, the word "NO."

Now let me clarify that my little one, is kid #4 for me. My older 3, ages 9 & twin 8 year olds, are very well behaved when we are out and about. They never did things that the latest bundle of trouble does. NEVER. So I'm new to this scene and I'm not likin' it!

Princess Payten's first "official" full blown meltdown happened while I was trying to check out after getting groceries. Oh boy, I was so NOT prepared for this! A meltdown all because she couldn't have candy. You know how they stick all that damn candy and crap toys right there at the registers? Yeah...I curse the Gods above for that!

It starts out as a "Mommy, yook. Tan I hab dis?" I do what all mom's do the first time they're asked something...I ignored the question at hand. I instead try to get her attention on something else...like the funny hat on the lady walking by or the cute little baby behind us. The whole while thinking in my head, "Could this cashier BE any more slower?" I'm asked again. Again, I try to redirect her focus, it worked! Just as I'm swiping my card and thinking I'm in the clear about the candy, she asks again. I tell her no not today, maybe another day.

And she was off. Actually, she went down...in the floor and started crying and kicking her feet. Oh. My. God what do I do?! I was mortified!! My initial reaction is to pick her up and smack her bum. Instead, I pick her up, start pushing the cart, with the older 3 in tow (I wanted to get the hell outta dodge as quickly as possible!) and try to put her in the front of the cart. It was like trying to give a cat a bath! She did NOT want in that cart and she was fighting me on it! In passing, one woman, who could see how frustrated I was getting, offered some kind words: "It's okay Mom. We've all been there." My response: "No, it's NOT okay. They didn't do it and she is NOT going to do this."

Of course, my older 3 are in shock themselves and they don't know whether to snicker or snort. Yes, they found it quite amusing. They seem to get a kick out of PJ's temper tantrums and even egg it on. Imagine that.

What really sucked, was that the register we were at, was in the middle of the store. So we still had 5,6,7,8 more to go before hitting the double doors. That was like the walk of shame. I could feel the stares burning holes into me. The whispers, echoed in my ears. Her cry, seemed amplified. Until finally, I could bear no more.

"WHAT?? Have you never seen a kid cry? What's UP?? Mind your business!"

This of course made my son, who is a self proclaimed know-it-all, inform me that "people are so nosy" and his twin sisters made sure they chimed in with the "Yeahs." All the while they are snickering and snorting it up about Mom telling people to mind their 'bees wax.' In fact this did make everyone go about their business as if there wasn't a toddler meltdown passing by.

I have learned a little since this first 'incident.' We have managed to get away with only one other major, I did say "major," meltdown (Damn you Barbie Mariposa!!). What have I learned you wonder?

#1: Park at Lawn & Garden Center , it's the quickest escape route
#2: Check out at Lawn & Garden Center, there's no blasted candy (or toys) at registers and finally
#3: Don't be afraid to look like an ass, you have kids...it's gonna happen!

Sometime ago I got a wild hair and decided that I needed an exercise ball and some weights. Off to the nearest store I went. I selected the best deal they had: a ball (complete with pump), a DVD, and 2 3 lb. hand weights for 20 bucks. Couldn't beat that I told myself. Along with that, I also picked up 2 8 lb. weights because I didn't think the 3 pounders would cut it. I wanted a serious work out here.

When I got home and got the ball blown up, my kids were in awe at the size of it. "WOW," was all I heard for days. All they heard for days was, "It's not a play toy!"

At first I couldn't find the time to put my exercise ball to good use. I wanted to use it, really I did. I would catch it staring at me as I was surfing MySpace, calling me as I was watching the newest episode of 'Top Chef.' However, it wasn't until I caught an episode of 'Work Out' did a fire get lit under my arse.....for all of about 30 minutes.

My ball is neglected, I admit. Since that fateful night, it has been brought out one other time. I feel horrible about this because my intentions weren't to buy it and then not touch it. I really do plan on working out on it but I'd rather do it alone and it seems I always have a critter of some kind (be it a kid, cat or dog) underneath my feet at any given hour on any given day.

The kids have since found many great uses for my exercise ball. (Yeah I got over the "Don't touch" thing real quick) Let's see...there's the obvious- basketball (of course with no net seeing how this is done indoors), dodge ball (again, indoors), using it as a chair, propping their feet on it while watching a movie or playing a video game, rolling it after the cats and dogs. This, I will say, was funny the very first time it was done. The cats ran for cover as fast as their little paws would carry them! After that, they got in trouble for aggravating the animals.

The best use for the ball (and my favorite so far) has been when my son, McKinnley and one of my twins, Bailee, tried to recreate a scene from the 'Rob & Big' show. Anyone catch that episode?! If not, watch the video provided. If you have, watch it anyways because it's hilarious!



They have perfected this to the best of their ability so that Bailee doesn't get hurt. What can I say? Kids will be kids!

I'm just glad my exercise ball isn't sitting in a corner somewhere collecting dust. The kids are getting my 20 bucks worth!