Our Big Guy is 11 !

T, it's been a year since we sat in that restaurant and you wrote down what you wanted to happen during your 10th year. I hope we accomplished some of them and that your 11th year is even better. You are so fun to have in our family and I know I rely a lot on your help! I have loved being able to have you watch your siblings and being able to trust in how responsible you are. I love so many things about you but here are 11 since you are 11 today!

1) I have always loved your smile and eyes. Even when you were really little someone at church commented on how your smile reaches your eyes. It does...you can light up a room when you are happy!

2) You will try new things. Even if it doesn't turn out to be your favorite...you always try.

3) You like to learn new things. I think that is why you enjoy school so much and do so well.

4) I love how excited you get about what you are reading and want to share it with me.

5) Last year I got to be your Webelos leader for awhile. It was so fun getting to see you with your friends and watching you be a leader with them. I'm so proud that you have earned your Arrow of Light!

6) You are a great babysitter! We have loved slowly allowing you to watch your siblings a little more each time. It's gone great and you take the job seriously and allow us to get a break once in a while!

7) You were on a hard basketball team last year. The kids were all older, all taller, and had played ball much longer than you. It wasn't a fair or fun situation. I know you didn't want to go. I'm proud that you stuck it out and realized you can do hard things.

8) You have a great sense of humor and are always trying to get others to laugh!

9) You are a great friend! You seem to be the kid everyone gets a long with and everyone wants to be by and that can be tiring sometimes but you even handle that well.

10) Once a couple of years ago, one of your primary teachers came up to me. She was getting ready to move out of the area and wouldn't be your teacher anymore. She got all teary eyed as she expressed how much she would miss getting to teach you. Both church and school teachers have all had the same opinion. In their eyes, you stand out as someone who is responsible, kind to others, easy to please, happy to learn, and a joy to be around. Your teacher this year asked if we could clone you.

I like that idea. I think everyone's family could benefit from having a "T" in their family.

Well...I know I could be just a little bit biased. :) Happy Birthday T! We love you soooo much!!

Love, Dad, Mom, and crew!

Gym Class

So I have some friends and they all belong to this particular gym. I belonged to a gym years ago but it's been awhile to say the least. They told me it was a great gym and that I should join. I decided to go check it out and found out they have free kid care....as in FREE! One of the biggest reasons I haven't gone in years past is I hate the idea of trying to get to a gym by 5am or going at 9pm but this way I can take little T and she is watched by other work out moms and she LOVES it! I can even work in the kid care for two hours a week and my membership is then FREE too!! Such a deal! I also love the classes. I have been trying a bunch of them and usually with other friends and it has been hilarious!

First I did a weight lifting class done to music for an hour and I couldn't move the next three days after. Awesome. I took the class again and it wasn't nearly as bad. Progress.

Second one I took was a spin class. I should have worn a helmet. That thing is dangerous! Well...not really but my shoe kept coming out of the harness and my legs were so shaky when we were going up hill that I would just start to fall off the bike. Again...awesome. Again I was with a friend and we couldn't stop laughing or crying..a mixture of both. After that one I couldn't sit down for days. Awesome. Haven't been back to that one. Still can't sit down.

Next one was a Zumba class. Two friends showed up to that and we danced our little Latin hearts out. We may not have stayed with the rest of the group but hey we had fun and I will definitely be hitting that one again! No pain either after that one. Me likey!

Last one I took was today. It was supposed to be a 30 minute power step class. It was a 45 minute spinning, step, disaster!! I talked my friend into joining me. We both joined the gym recently so it was new to both of us. Thirty minutes..how hard could it be, right? Um...let's just say that the teacher was sooo fast and all over the place that we literally were going the opposite direction than the entire class almost the entire time! I was getting dizzy. I was tripping over the step. I was laughing SOOOO hard that my stomach hurt watching my friend do the same thing with her big eyes staring at me, mouthing "what in the heck are we doing here!!???" Awesome. The teacher actually came over to us after class to let us know there was an easier step class on Thursday nights. Um..we were we just told to not come back because we sucked? Um..yep. Awesome!

I will say with all the pain and not knowing how to do all the steps, I still love it. I love having a place to go that I don't have to spend out of pocket money each day, a place where I can have some kid free time and a place that is making me healthier....one painful class at a time.

Goal.....Be healthy skinny by summer 2012 twenty high school reunion or bust!

The Help

I just finished the book on Thursday. I loved it! I had heard it was good and I had some friends going to see the movie that night and I wanted to make sure I was done. I loved the movie too! The actors they got to play each character was exactly how I pictured them! I made fried chicken while I read it. I thought about getting Crisco out and using it to clean some things. I had this sense of wanting to hang out with the help the whole time I was reading it. I like order. I like having a day to do things. "It's sheets washing day". I have made job calendars and tried to follow them and usually I keep to them for about a month but then life gets in the way and it doesn't happen anymore. I want to read the Ms. Myrna column. I would love to know all their cool tricks to domestic cleaning.

What's interesting is to read the back of the book where the author tells of her own life experiences. Where she grew up with a maid and loved her like a mother and never really knew how the maid felt about everything because she never thought to ask her. I don't know why, but looking at the picture I was shocked to realize she close to my age. I suppose that could have been me had I been born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi (and yes I just did the elementary school trick to spell out that dang state!) Why do I feel like this time period in our history was soooo long ago when it was my generation if you lived in the deep south.

I didn't however live in the deep south. I was born in Utah. I don't remember seeing anyone of any other race than white until I moved to the east when I was six. In 1981,we moved to a suburb of D.C. and my world changed. Not only was this area known for having a lot of African Americans, but it was international. Any country you could think of was represented almost in this area. Or at least it seemed to me. We would rudely point out the different color of people in the grocery store much to the dismay of my parents. Picture it, five white little girls following their mother around the grocery store pointing to this person and that person "mom, why does she look like that?" "mom, she is so dark!" "why does that man have a turban on his head?" Awesome, I'm sure my mom loved it.

I started having friends in the neighborhood and at school that were from lots of different places. I think it changed me and my sisters. I think it broadened our horizons and experiences. I don't think my parents ever planned to stay there. It was a four year assignment and yet my parents still live there today. I do however think it surprised my parents just how much it would change their daughters, their outlooks on society and who they would hang out with.

Well anyway...those were some of my thoughts after I read the book. When I was walking out of the movie theater, I was right behind a black woman. I immediately thought," I wonder what she thought of the movie?" Does she look at me as a white woman and think I'm more like Skeeter and can see all the injustice or does she look at me and think I'm more like Hilly. I chatted with some of my friends that I rode with about it. They all seemed to think that of course she would have known that we hated all the injustice just like she did.

I guess my experiences has taught me that maybe things aren't always so black and white.

What did you all think?

Babies and Growing Up

I love this picture with K and a baby on his chest. This is how all our babies slept when they were newborns. K would come home from work and plop those babies on his chest and they would just melt and sleep there for hours.














This baby however is not mine. This is the newest addition to K's family. His younger sister just had her first and she is adorable. We love that they don't live too far away and she is only 10 days old and we have seen her twice.











What I can't help but notice in this picture with little T and her newest cousin is that little T isn't so little anymore. She is getting to be quite a big girl. She decided to prove it to me this week. A couple of days ago I was in my room which is next to her room. I could hear that she was awake so I went in to get her out of her crib. The crib that has a tent over it so she can't get out. When I walk in, she not only isn't in her crib, but she is calmly sitting in her rocking chair looking at a book and says "Good Morning Mama!" She had figured out how to unzip the tent with her little finger, climbed out of her crib without any noise, and climbed into the rocking chair to look at a book.

I couldn't believe it! But I guess when you are ready...you are ready! It was trash day and they would be here in a couple of hours. I called my husband to ask if he could think of any reason why I shouldn't take the crib out to the curb. I think this shocked him. We have had that crib up in our house for ELEVEN years! It has cradled all of our four kids. My in-laws bought it exactly 11 years ago for 50$ and that included a matching changing table! It had been owned by some grandparents that had decided to sell it because it never got used by their grand kids so it was basically new.

We didn't feel like we could give the crib to anyone without feeling liable if anything went wrong...it was an old crib. Still it was weird to see the trash truck eat it up when my baby was just sleeping in there and hour ago! But alas....she wants to be a big girl and her bed was already in the room waiting so we took the plunge.

So far so good! If you put her in her bed, she doesn't get out. Very weird since I have had boys immediately climb out and walk out the door. If you put her in her rocking chair to look at books, she doesn't climb out of that either. She will fall asleep in the chair. The first night I put her in the bed, she just went to sleep and stayed in the same position for 12 hours. Last night was a little more normal with her moving around (yes I check on her much more now...I guess I'm afraid she will fall out) but she still slept like a dream and even took a 2 1/2 hr nap yesterday in her bed. I'm starting to wonder why we didn't do this sooner!

Since she is determined to be such a big girl, at least I can go hold my cute little niece to get my baby fill!

Next on to potty training!....yikes!