A Photo-less Recap!

Finally we have had a weekend worth recapping! By the way, is the word "Recap" short for recapitulate? Recapitalize? Recapture? Recaptain? My spell check doesn't believe that "Recaptain" is a word, so I guess it's not that one. I think recapture sounds plausible. Or maybe recap is just a word on its own. Anyway, this last weekend. I finally didn't have to work, and the kids finally didn't have a million things we had to do with them. Yayyyy.

On Friday I skipped school and asked off work so that I could babysit the kids all day. That's something I haven't gotten to do in months and it was super fun. We went over to Toni's house to play with Jace and her friend's daughter Audrey for a little while. All of us enjoyed the chill out, no agenda time together. And I always love spending time with my future family-in-law. Toni's house always inspires me to come home and either clean or decorate, haha. Because hers is in better condition in both of those areas than here.

On Saturday morning we loaded up the family and embarked on a scavenge through a 17-mile yard sale. Probably 30 or 40 houses participate in a yard sale every summer on this 17 mile stretch of road. It's amazing that they still have stuff to give away year after year! But boy did we find some good stuff. Thomas and Lara both bought a few new toys, and I got 5 pieces of milk glass for my budding collection. It was awesome! Matthew hoped to maybe find a new lawnmower, but no cigar. If anyone has one they want to sell, let me know!

Saturday was the first anniversary of the day Matthew and I met. Jessica drove me to her house from Jacksonville airport, and he was sitting on the couch waiting patiently to meet his wife :-D. I still remember Jessica telling me that John's cousin was staying with them, and he was the best man in the wedding. And Jessica told me that John really wanted us to get together. Well I guess he made a pretty lucky guess, huh? In celebration of our Meet-a-versary, Matthew surprised me and took me out to eat some red Meat at Outback Steakhouse. Get it? Meet - Meat? No, just me. That's okay. So Matthew tried his very first Bloomin' Onion, which, as usual, did not disappoint. I ordered a steak, but I was so full from the bread and onion and salad that came before, I took my whole plate home in a carryout box. Haha isn't that the best way to go out to dinner? Get full before you ever get to the good stuff, and then take it all home for lunch the next day. We also had the pleasure of meeting a friend from Matt's work, Gene, and his family. They were super sweet, with two little daughters. And surprisingly enough, we were seated right next to them! So I got to play peekaboo with the toddler daughter for most of the night. Pretty, darn, fun. And at the end of the night, Gene and his wife left and bought us an ice cream sundae for dessert!!! It was really sweet of them (pun), and Matthew and I officially felt so full we thought we may both either explode or collapse before we made it to the car. If you ever read this, thank you Gene and Laurie for the awesome dessert!

Today was the day Matthew and I hung out at Jessica's reception and stayed up until 5 in the morning and went to the beach at midnight. Memories, memories :) I think tonight will be somewhat less exciting and more same old same old than that night. But that's okay, because that night was an exception in both of our lives.

Anyway! I have to start dinner and do some homework for class tomorrow. I hope everyone's enjoying their last few days of summer vacation OR their first few days of school! Thomas and Lara start tomorrow and you know I am more excited for them than they are for themselves :-P. As usual.

Enjoy your Monday!
See Y'all,
The Future Mrs. McCaslin

I Promise I'm Just Boring...

...And that's the only reason I haven't blogged. I'll tell you what I've done: school, driving, work. That's every day for me. Right now I'm sitting in the library at school because I finished a theatre test early and have 3.5 hours before I have to be at work. This and other similar moments are really the only available time to update, and even now my time would be better spent doing homework. I just don't have the motivation. So aqui estoy!

I would like to put out an open invitation to anyone that wants to come over and help me make some accessories for a one Miss Lara the Fair's Birthday Party. Further details will be disclosed after the party takes place...I don't want to let all the secrets out! ^_^ But the main point is, I'm going to be having a whole bunch of fun in the next 5 weeks, getting ready for what promises to be a really cool birthday theme. Trust Lara to come up with an awesome birthday theme all by herself. Hit me up if you want to be part of the crafting frenzy between now and then! There will be things to cook, bake, sew, draw, and anything else you could imagine. I'm pretty excited.

This weekend we have a little bit more going on. I don't have to work and I get to hang out with the kids allllll day tomorrow (it's been too long since we got to have an all day long play date to ourselves). So maybe we'll all get to enjoy a little bit more of what's going on in my life, post-weekend. I may even do a Sunday weekend recap. Maybe not, though, because I do have several assignments to do for my classes next week. Starting August 10th, though, no more school until the end of the month! Do stay tuned for a bit more fun adventures! I promise that eventually life will slow down, and I'll catch up the way I was for awhile. Right now, though, I'm going to hit the road for Dyersburg and have a lunch date with my man candy before I have to go to work. Doesn't that sound fantastic? Agreed.

Side note: I somehow broke the zipper on my shorts this morning. Can I fix that? Or do I have to buy a new zipper and sew it on...? (Note: "somehow broke" could possibly be attributed to the fact that I bought them on Clearance at Wal-Mart for $4.00. Just sayin'.)

See that wasn't so measly of an update after all, was it?

See Y'all!
The Future Mrs. McCaslin

Well isn't that Eerie.

This was my devotional email for today. Brothers and sisters in California and Pennsylvania? A baby named Mary Lou?! It caught my eye, that's for sure. And it's fairly stream of consciousness, which I know everyone loves.


The Way Things Should Be

So Dad comes off the mountain that he was wintering on.  And big sister flies out on spring break from California.  And little sister and her husband fly out from Washington, and I walk over from my apartment four blocks away.

I don’t know when it happened, but sometime ago it became normal for a nuclear family to live in four different states.  Sure, sister’s in Cali, brother is in Pennsylvania.  Sure, we see each other every few years and shake hands like strangers who happen to be in the same compartment of a train.  I don’t know when it became the way things are, but I don’t like it.

Maybe it’s because twenty years ago the anchor of this family was buried in a Grand Rapids cemetery.

This February a little baby girl was born, name of Mary Lou, same as her grandma’s was.  And by March the far-flung clan was all here.  Dad was sleeping in my apartment; the girls were over with the baby.

The time passes fast and then it is the last night and with one sister already gone we go to dinner at a nice Italian place and there are two decent bottles of wine and it’s two weeks to Dad’s birthday so we sing happy birthday in the restaurant, like any family does, except we’ve never done this before.  We didn’t really do birthdays after a while.

Afterwards we go home and there is the lazy debate over what we should do, but we don’t really do anything.  We end up with the two blonde-haired girls and the dark-haired girl playing a banjo and a piano and singing old hymns, and Dad being Grandpa on the couch with Mary Lou on his knee, and the boys sitting around with books.

I’ve got Faulkner in my hand but I’m not really reading it; I’m listening to the beautiful voices and I take a sip of the wine and man, I feel good.  Like this is the way things are supposed to be.  Like this little miracle baby is what the family needs: a new heart, a fresh and pretty thing to gather around and to take that name, Mary Lou, and not make us forget, no never to forget, but change it around somehow so that the sorrow enhances the joy she brings, making it more true, more honest.  Not a joy of ignoring or naiveté or even innocence, but a joy of full-eyed measure.

Sitting there, I knew that things can get better, and I get an idea of what is meant by heaven.

"And the one sitting on the throne said, ‘Look, I am making everything new!'" (Revelation 21:5).

A Ketchup Post

Here's what I think we all need to do regarding mine and Matthew's life - we need to do some serious ketching up. You saw my last post where I grovelled for forgiveness from all of my friends and family. Well, the grovelling is over. I'm here. Not really - I have to go to work in about half an hour and I haven't gotten dressed yet so this is going to be a Speedy Gonzalez kind of post. Like usual. I gotta start setting aside writing time for when I get home and I'm not babysitting and I don't need to fix dinner right away. Today won't be one of those days because I'll be picking up T+L on the way home from work today.

I want to give you beautiful picture updates of everything we've done, I really do. Why am I not going to do that? Because this week just so happened to be Lara's graduation from Pre-School. No connection, you think. That's where you are mistaken. You see, Matthew and I both skipped out of work for an early lunch (really early, we left around 9:30 from our respective workplaces) in order to go to her graduation at 10. We arrived at the school (he picked me up because Food Rite is on the way from his work to her school, precious right?) just at 10:00 AM, and Lara's mommy told us that apparently the note sent home was wrong, and it didn't start until 10:30. This was a problem. We both had to be back at work pretty darn close to 10:30, and now it was looking more like we wouldn't be able to leave until like 11:00. Matt did some quick finagling and called up Nanny to come watch her graduate in our stead. We stayed justttt long enough to see Miss Adorable herself looking all kinds of cute and super excited about graduating, and then we had to skip out. We gave Nanny the camera, though, so all of my pictures that I've taken over the last 2 or 3 weeks are MIA until I get it from her. She has requested a date with her grandchildren tomorrow, though, so I'll make sure to exchange camera for babies tomorrow.

What else has happened? Hm..............................................

Here are some pictures that I owe from awhile back that never quite made it into posts. That's a bit of what has happened. :)

Lara - Look Mawy I can drive with my eyes closed!! She was very impressed with herself.

Lara inside of a set of tires being a ham as usual. We couldn't get Thomas to do the same...they have very different opinions of pictures being taken of them.

Lara the future mechanic learning from Daddy

This picture warrants some serious explanation. We are in the Walmart parking lot where we had to wait an hour for our pictures (Daddy's birthday present) to be done. The kids had gotten new umbrellas for Easter which they were obsessed with, but hadn't gotten to use for real since it hadn't rained yet. I promised to keep them in the trunk of the car so we could use them if it started to rain while we weren't at home. While we were waiting at Walmart, the rain started. For awhile we played in the empty part of the parking lot, over by the pharmacy. This didn't last long, though, because I didn't have an umbrella so I was cold and wet. I had the absolutely brilliant idea to get back in the car, recline the two front seats, and open the sun roof. My car became an instant April Wonderland. The next picture is also a very cute representation of what we got up to while we were waiting.

So happy that it finally started raining!

Thomas loves science projects. We found this one in a Family Fun magazine (Thanks Aunt Sue!) We created a balloon zipline where the air in the balloon is the force which carries a drinking straw down a line of dental floss. They loooved it. We kept it up all weekend and there are still balloons floating around! Not literally floating...I guess sitting. Sitting around.

Once the balloon is off, there is serious excitement in watching it fly 10 feet by itself. See here - excitement. I'm not entirely sure what Lara is grabbing onto. I guess maybe the balloon. She caught it mid-flight!

So there ya go. A little bit of all the fun we've gotten up to. But wait, there's more! More to come whenever I get the camera back from Nanny.

See Y'all!
TFMM

Fantabblyastic News!

When I typed out that ridiculous title, the post was actually going to be about my Tennessee residency for college this summer. In the last 30 seconds since typing that, however, I realized I have other fantabblyastic (now that I had to type it twice I just feel stupid for even thinking of it the first time...) news: My big brother Johnny has lived for a whole 23 years! That's a lot of years without getting struck by lightning or anything else crazy like that! So I'm very happy that it was his birthday yesterday. Whenever it's a loved one's birthday, I always smile and feel the need to tell everyone why that day is special, every time that I write down the date. Which, when you work in a deli that needs to keep track of expiration dates and stuff, is quite a lot.

So, Ynnohj, although neither of us are as cute or stylish as we were in this picture, I still hope you had a great one. We haven't been together to celebrate in awhile so I have no idea what all you got up to yesterday. Hopefully somebody made you a cake :) If not, I'll make one for you this weekend for Mother's Day.

Moving on!

After all of the stress and trips to the library and searching for a notary public in the nearby vicinity on Monday, everything worked out. The college wrote me an email on Tuesday afternoon saying that I had been granted in-state residency. Holla holla! This means that I will be starting classes in the first week of July and not stopping until I have a degree. Hopefully. If I, say, get married or have kids or something...I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Until then, college. Because minimum wage is very difficult to live on, especially when your car gets 19 miles to a gallon and you live 20 minutes away from your minimum wage job and have to like, pay for stuff.

Anyway chitlins, that's my good news for the day. And I know, I know there is more going on in my life. I haven't told you about any of the cool stuff that we got up to last weekend. I didn't even tell you what was Wonderful about Yesterday. It's rough going. I will be stuck in an airport for enormous quantities of tomorrow afternoon so expect updates tomorrow night (maybe earlier, it depends on if Houston has free wi-fi in the airport.)

I must go get ready for work at 9:00. It's been lovely.

See Y'all!

TFMM