Marriage is Hard.

Marriage is hard.

Because you know someone so well that you know all the right things to say. You know what will make them happiest and what will defeat them. So then, once you know that person, it's a conscious decision whether or not you're going to do the right thing or the wrong thing. If I know without a doubt that the one thing that will make my husband happiest would be to get up right now and wash dishes, then why am I not doing it? Because I don't want to? Because I'm tired? Whatever the reason, I am consciously making the choice to do something that makes ME happy instead of making HIM happy. So it's hard.

Is the guilt I feel when I realize I've spent the whole day not doing things to make Matthew's life better justified? I don't know. Maybe. Should every choice I make in life be made as a spouse instead of as an individual? Probably. Since I am a spouse, after all, and I did make that decision, actively and joyously about a year and a half ago. Because I'll have me for the rest of my life no matter what happens along the way. I'll always, at least, understand my own motives and what makes me happy. But a marriage is a living, growing thing that will start to wilt if we start to ignore it. And take it for granted as something that will always be there. If I want it to always be there, I need to be ready to consciously choose Wife Decision over Individual Decision.

So I guess what that means is I've got to put the laptop down and wash some dishes.

One of the eggheads

Today, after spending my usual 1 to infinity hours in Dr. Hill's office, I tagged along to an academic lecture on Thomas Aquinas being delivered by a UTM philosophy professor. And boy oh boy did I feel smart. Well, at least, the language Dr. Brown used wasn't way over my head, I followed the Q's in the Q&A session, and my attention span gave out around the same time as the two professors with whom I had come to the lecutre. We all three gave up on listening after being there for an hour and fifteen minutes and instead focused on attaining the refreshments in the back of the room.

All in all, it was a very successful afternoon. I was glad that I lollygagged around after class for long enough to catch the local nerds heading over to the lecture; otherwise, I would have missed out on the opportunity to feel like I could actually someday maybe be these peeps' intellectual equals. In fact, I will officially be on an equal playing field (Sort of, sans PhD and whatever) as these very egg-headed men in just 88 days. But who's counting? Today I told someone that the day after graduation, I will be coming up to the university with a sole purpose of calling every professor by his or her first name and not feeling weird about it. Except maybe Hill and Glass...might still feel weird about them, but at least my family's cool with referring to their family by first name and the two of them as Dr. Lastname.

In other news, my dogs may kill each other before they can ever successfully procreate. Skippy is the most hapless courtier I have ever met...could have something to do with being a chihuahua.

Sleep is taking over my brain, and I apologize if this is incoherent. I didn't want to leave my friends and family hanging, now that I'm reintroducing the regular blog posts.

Summer Vacation!

Interesting how my vacation begins just as everyone else down here is going back to school. I'm not complaining. For the next two weeks exactly, I have no college class, no final, no worries, just making money to take up my time. Another fun college fact, I have a 4.0 at Martin. I know, I've only taken 3 classes, but by my third class at Penn...I had to withdraw from one in order to not fail my freshman fall. Yayyy for being invested in my education and yayyyy for not being in a cut-throat money-hungry college anymore! At the moment I'm in the top 25% at Martin, but I'm hoping to keep climbing as my Penn GPA gets tackled by the classes I take from now on. They don't have Phi Beta Kappa at a low-key school like this, or else that would be my goal by graduation. Hahaha

Anyway, I've been enjoying life for the past week. Not only did it feel super good to be finished with school, but I had a light work week and plenty of time to work on some Parrrrty things for Lara. Plenty of pre-purchasing has been done, but no true official crafting has begun. So continue to stay tuned. The sewing machine will eventually be kicking up dust, and things will be built. No, certainly not cryptic at all. Also last week, Thomas and Lara went back to school! Thomas' first day was Wednesday, and Lara's was Thursday. First grade and kindergarten! They are some big kids. And as if Lara weren't big enough, I took her with me to college on Friday; she didn't have school, and I needed to take two finals in order to pass my classes.

Lara and Pandy the Panda Bear being very studious in the library...playing games on pbskids.org..

Typical college student, passed out surrounded by snacks and study materials.

Lara did great at staying quiet while I took my tests, and of course everyone thought she was just the most beautiful person they'd ever seen. So it went pretty smoothly, I have to say.

The thing that has taken up most of my time in the last two weeks has actually been grocery shopping, believe it or not. I started reading a lot on this blog about meal planning and money saving, and it inspired me to not enter married life as the brokest housewife ever to cross the planet. The writer of that blog feeds her family of 5 on less than $200 a month, which just about blew my mind when I think about how much Matt and I can spend on a Sunday evening if we go grocery shopping together. It made me really stop to think what kinds of dinners I can make that aren't just heat n' serve frozen foods. The answer, two weeks ago, was really not that much. July 29th marked the first day of a two-week (TWO WEEK!) meal plan, for which I did all of the grocery shopping at the beginning of the time period. (Sunday's dinner, on the meal plan, was frozen pizza. I know, I was off to a great start on this whole "from scratch" thing. Haha but I knew it was in the freezer so I didn't see any point in not eating it! Especially because my plan was never to eat frozen pizza again for awhile!)

And can I just say, honestly, that grocery shopping trip where I bought all of the supplies for all of Matthew's, mine and the kids' dinners (just dinners are on the plan) came in at a cool subtotal of $76.00. I near enough fell over in Walmart. Meal plans for the win. $38 a week for dinner for four people. Anybody else excited? Okay good. Because I was really excited.

We've been a lot worried about money saving as we gear up for this here combination of finances taking place on May 25th, 2013. Mostly because there is a big long laundry list of "Stuff We Want to Do" in the next, oh, 5 years or so. And as things do, they all involve some large sum of money that we have no obvious way of obtaining. I guess we'll just pray about it and do those of the things on the list that we can!

I think that's most of my updates for right now! Next weekend we're going to an air show with lots of WW2 fighter planes and other stuff of that nature. So I'm sure history buffs will enjoy my pictures, but I'm sure most others won't. Something to look forward to! Hahahaha

See Y'all!
The future Mrs. McCaslin

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

Catching up on the Last Two Months

As a means of making up for lost time and there really being some things I think I just won't have time to dedicate a whole post to, I decided to just post all of the pictures that I haven't gotten to and give glorified captions for each. That way I can quit feeling guilty about leaving stuff out, and I can begin taking current pictures again so I'm not a week or two behind at all times.

Circa about 2 months ago, we watched a piano and a brother and a Nanny and a Jace ride down the street. This is just as terrifying as it sounds. It's strapped in at the bottom, and we were only going about a mile to our house, but the road was bumpy and we were RIGHT behind them watching its every move. The happy ending, of course, is that it made it to our house!

And now we have a new piano! A lovely lady who is now my hair stylist put up an ad on Craigslist and Matthew got me this little beauty. For those of you who didn't know, he had actually bought me a baby grand piano awhile back, but it was in such bad shape that we decided not to try and repair. This, my new pride and joy, will hopefully be a good start for teaching piano lessons and schooling my kids to be child prodigies. Yay! I love my fiance!

Moving on, here is the most delicious endeavor into Southern cooking I have made yet. A collaborative effort, we made sausage gravy and biscuits (and vegetables, to make sure we're not unhealthy, haha) The delicious idea, the biscuits, and the sausage were made by me, and turns out my Matthew is a gravy makin' fool! So he made the gravy and it was probably almost the most delicious thing we've ever made yet. Soooo good.

Proof that it was sooooooooo goood!

Hey - wait a minute, how'd he sneak in here? ;) Here is Prince Charming himself, looking I do believe very impressed with our cooking skills. He looks so happy ^_^ I like to think I may have had something to do with that smile!

The other man in my life at the moment - Teri's new baby Austin with his Aunt Amanda, Matthew's cousin's wife. In this picture we're all at Granddaddy's surprise 80th birthday party, which was a blast over the first weekend in May. Granddaddy was really touched by the number of people that came to pay tribute to a wonderful man. I can tell he's wonderful and I haven't known him nearly 80 years. But people say that Matthew's a lot like him and looks a lot like him...so I bet we can all say it's safe to assume I'd like him. Anyway, here's an adorable picture of a big ole sleepy baby.

Matthew and his little man checking out the fishing prospects at Granddaddy's pond.

Same ole sleepy baby, now in the arms of Matt's stepmother Candi, who is also now my BOSS. And let me tell ya, she's a  good one. We all have so much fun working in the bakery/deli and it is a great way to spend time with my Father- and Stepmother- in-law.

Thomas enjoying the fishing with his Aunt Shelby and Daddy's foot. 

Lara blowing some successful bubbles. I promise her  look would be a lot cuter if she hadn't had the liberty of choosing socks and wearing a clutch across her body all day. I honestly don't know where either of those ideas came from, but the rest of her sure was pretty!

There's my man again. Still sitting by the pond. Smelling something funky.

Oh wait no he musta just been making a funky face at ME. WHAT?! At least he's happy now ^_^ What a smile. I sure do love him.

Hey the baby woke up! Now in the arms of his mommy and being generally just  the cutest person in our family at the moment.

So...here is a picture I took of the cat...and my attempt to feed him that went somewhat awry. The food did eventually get onto his plate, but uh...it may have gone a few other places. I dunno how he ever got to eat the bits that landed on his back. I guess cats are pretty flexible :P I was just trying to keep him in shape.

Battle scars from my first week at work. 10 points for anyone that can figure out what these marks are actually from! Hint: They aren't bruises and they didn't hurt.

A closer up version of my battle scars, haha.

Just about the prettiest preschooler that you ever did see! So proud of her!  Kindergarten and 1st graders will be in our house from now on!

This cool guy enjoying a spinning flyer that was sent to him as a Grammy gift! We sure do love these!

Andddd kindergarten graduation: Thomas receiving a Science Award! Wooohoo, who's surprised? Not me! Haha

There you go guys. The next post I write up will actually be a little bit current, hopefully. But this will probably keep you entertained for awhile at least. Now you've met Sally and my Car, so we can get on with real life and real updates from now on! Yay!

I'll See Y'all on the flipperoo side!

TFMM

My Negative One Year Anniversary Present from Matthew

Um, and edit...as I published this post I realized I should maybe clarify the title - Nothing about my present was negative, and neither was our anniversary. I went around calling Memorial Day weekend our "Negative One Year Anniversary" it's a year before our wedding. In case anybody was a little worried. That's all it was about!! May 25th, 2013 everyone. By the way. In case you hadn't heard. :)

Two new family members have been adopted in the last few weeks, one of them has a tail and one has an engine. One has fur and one four wheels. I'll let you figure out which one is which.

This one doesn't have a name yet because I have not received my license plate with which to choose letters for a name. However, it is a Honda Fit and it is a present from my amazing fiance.

 Matthew just showed up at Food Rite on Memorial Day and took my car to Jackson. We had heard about an Altima available for trade and thought it might be a good, even trade for the Maxima, with better gas mileage. Matt sent me a text saying no on the Altima, but there might be something else there I would want. And then he shows up about 10 hours later with one of these. He's making payments on it, so I guess we have to get married now because that's a pretty serious commitment ^_^

Pennsylvania Seculeses: Watch this space! You'll be seeing this baby roll up at your front door in about 3 weeks!

The McCaslin family loves hatchbacks.

Plenty of room for two carseats PLUS lots of storage space whenever we need it! That third seat, where the carseat would normally go, folds up for underseat storage, the whole back seat folds flat, and the bigger backseat, where the two seats are in this picture, also can fold up to put stuff underneath. Super cool!

Oh, and I needn't mention the difference in gas mileage. Aside from only having a 10-gallon tank, making my gas fillups about a third cheaper every time than they were in the Maxima, it gets between 35 and 40 miles to a gallon. Which is a lot, considering it's basically a low-setting minivan. Sorry Mom, it's definitely not an Up Car. But there is LOTS of head room, giving it the illusion from the outside of being one! Haha.

I love it, and Matthew knew I would. With as little as I know about cars, the Honda Fit is the one car I actually talk about seriously liking the look and driving ability. We see/hear about it a lot on Top Gear, our vice of choice (although lately he's been getting into Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters - no no no) but in England it's called the Honda Jazz. I'll be honest, I like that name a lot better. I kinda wanna change the little emblem on back to one that says Jazz. It's on the list of expenses :P

Stay tuned for my next post, which is about our other adopted family member ^_^ She came just a little bit later in the week after this girl arrived.

TTYL, TFMM.

:-D

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

Whatever is Wonderful Wednesday

Ignore the fact that I have probably failed to post this for the last 4 or 5 Wednesdays. I blame the internet. WHICH starts me off on my first most very wonderful thing that has ever happened to me ever:

1. The internet is back on, home skillets!!

This is how I felt yesterday when I finally sat down with the confidence that I could finish a blog post and a conversation with my brother without having to be interrupted by the worst internet ever. I asked the technician fellow what was wrong with it and he said, "What wasn't wrong with it is the better question." Apparently the wire going from our house to the nearby telephone pole was all sorts of beat up and had water in it and shorts in the wire. Well good! I like it when they can actually find a problem, not just keep fixing random things and "hoping it helps." But I am a little worried that someone took off their shorts on our property...;-)

2. It was Matthew's birthday and he is just the wunnerfullest. I sure do like him a lot. I think I may marry that guy. We both consume too much coffee for our young age, love Top Gear, and know all the words to a wide selection of Weird Al Yankovic songs. If that's not the ABC's for a happy marriage, then I don't know what is!

3. Need I say more? Well alrighty, I shall. On Sunday I got to be at church for like...4 hours. Which I kind of missed. When I get home on Sunday afternoon after morning service it's hard for me to not feel obligated to clean up the weekend messes from hanging out with T+L or work on the yard or something. (Or help Matt with the Datsun, since Sunday is normally his big day to do a good chunk of work on it) So it was sort of refreshing to know I could just go back to church at 4:00 PM this last week! I decided to try out choir practice, which is why I went back for an evening service which I do not normally attend. And I'm really glad I did! Between choir practice and evening service, they do Discipleship Training, which really goes back into the morning's sermon and picks it apart in a more scholarly fashion. I felt like I was actually learning the backstory of the sermon, which is pretty interesting to me. So I think I'll go again. Matt came with me and read a book during choir practice, and we stayed for the whole Discipleship Training and evening service. He said he liked it too, but I do feel bad that we would be taking such a huge chunk out of his day of rest/productivity if we made a regular thing out of it. :-) We'll see.

4.  I taught myself how to play Freecell while our internet was down, no big deal. :P

5. My wedding is in 1 month, 1 year, and 1 day. ^_^ Be there or be LAAAAAAAME, BRO.

Well there ya go!
See Y'all!
TFMM

The Next Wonderful Weekend Recap Taking Place on a Tuesday

I'm really doing poorly at this. I have an excuse. The internet in Dyer, TN is humiliatingly pathetic. Today I took the plunge and drove to the library to use the internet. We have an interesting routine in the house these days -  the internet working until about 10:00 AM (at which point I am starting my day and normally have already done the basic internet check-up and have started chores) and from then on out not working until about 7:00 or 8:00 PM. Makes it difficult to get much blogging done...because the motivation that comes from waiting for laundry to be done or taking a lunch break from chores/shopping/exercising fizzles by the time the internet comes back on. The root of the problem will hopefully be found in the next few weeks. Until then, it's the library for me, or late night blogs.

What have I been up to? Just chillaxin'. Wait no that's false. The last time I posted was Tuesday of last week, so guess what was wonderful about the rest of the week?

1. Wednesday: I subbed.
2. Thursday: I subbed.
3. Friday: I subbed.

Oh heck yes I did. 4th grade, Computer Lab, and Kindergarten in that order. Computer Lab was unbelievably easy, like mind-numbingly so. 4th grade was mega fun because the kids are young enough to have fun with and impress with stupid things (they really loved my wealth of knowledge about the Motherland, and also the accent that comes with it) but old enough to trust that they won't be misinformed about school procedures. I felt I could actually believe them when the entire class told me "This is what we do on this page," or someone volunteered to show me how to turn on some random hunk of technology that I didn't understand. By the way, Smart Boards or whatever you want to call them? We did have them in high school, and college (proving I'm not just an old-fashioned outdated technophobe), and I still don't like them. My nice handwriting doesn't look as nice on a smartboard, and there are numerous other reasons why I think the technology should be more finely tuned before being supplied to every teacher in an elementary school. Sigh. Perhaps if I work there longer they will begin to seem like a necessity to me.

Anyway! My subbing career is going swimmingly, and I plan to take a second job to round out the end of the school year/see me through the summer. It is further affirming my decision to teach upper grade levels, as the hardest ones for me to get through the days have been my 2nd grade and kindergarten classes. Big kids are easier to get through to, and I like being presented with problems that need real problem-solving skills to resolve. "He stole my crayon," vs. "I need help with long division" is not a difficult choice for me.

Let's see, what did I do over the weekend of note. We played outside a lotttt. On Saturday we used a water hose, shovels, and fingers to play in the mud, which was lots of fun for all four of us. And, because plain old mudpies aren't sophisticated enough for my fiance, he also got the kids a gift of a windowsill garden where we're growing radishes, carrots, and onions. We'll see how the growth goes! My first downfall is I don't know what dry soil looks like and am certain I'm going to overwater the plants. It's great that I have to take responsibility for it because I'm home most! I don't want to kill Thomas and Lara's science project! Haha say a little prayer for meeeee.

Photosynthesis for Five Year Olds

The less sophisticated dirt playing...it got more sophisticated than this though! We had a dam and two ponds connected by a river by the end of the day. Matthew likes aquaducts.

Playing with the Cool New Stuff Box! Chalk and books galore!

Just a pretty picture of Lara with no particular purpose.

We also wrote on the windows with window markers, played with sidewalk chalk, and watched Veggietales (the kids are obsessed. Matthew and I now know all the words to all the silly songs. There are worse things.) and went to Dyersburg to do some shopping and pick up tools so Matt could work on his car.

On Sunday after church, Matt and I did the same thing as the day before, sans kids. Well sorta. I washed the car, instead of playing in the mud. Little progress was made because I got tired and dinner needed to be started. Matt took me out on a date on his back porch. We had the most delicious food in the whole wide world, probably because we were so hungry and we had both contributed to the cooking which made us feel both productive and grateful to the other person. Andddd we went to Dyersburg again (we just so love it there) to dump trash in the dumpster and buy things needed for next Sunday.

So my weekend was pretty tame. I don't even have crazy stories to give ya! I hope this will keep you entertained for the next 24 hours while I accumulate some wonderfulness to send your way. Namely the fact that it is Spring Break, meaning I actually have time and energy to write a blog and think about topics for posting. Don't worry friends, I won't go anywhere. I have plenty of pent-up extroversion not being put to use by having no friends in Tennessee and Matt working until bumblefudge at night. Speaking of which, I think I'll probably get to see him in about 45 minutes! So I'd better go. Have a wonderful and blessed Good Friday, Easter, all that, on the off chance that you read my post today and don't return for another week!

See Y'all!
TFMM

Whatever is Wonderful about the Weekend which I will now Recap on a Tuesday.

Sorry guys, I have no excuse. Haha. Things have been wonderful, obvi, because when are they not in the life of a future McCaslin? Wonderful, but sickly and boring. I don't have a lot of updates! I'll go through, day by day, just to make sure I don't miss any hilarity. So when was the last post? About subbing on Monday, yes. So beginning with Tuesday....

3/20 - The Jace Man came over to my house to play because his babysitter was sick. Talk about some fun times. He is just one of the best behaved toddlers I've ever met. I can't believe he's two! If these are Jace's attempt at the Terrible Two's...I might kidnap him around age 5. He was just so sweet. He napped twice, ate all his lunch and breakfast, played by himself when I needed him to, and got bored of watching TV after about half an hour. He's a wonder child. We kicked around a soccer ball and read every book in the house, not to mention swung on the swing and played with Blue, the cat. There was a wasp in the house all day and we both chose to ignore it. I was really worried that it would come out from its hiding spot while Jace was napping and wake him up, and/or scare him and/or me to death. By the way, did you know I almost never kill bugs? There's a fun piece of Mary Lou trivia. On the surface, I'm really not afraid of bugs...I can handle them if I have to. You've seen my Critters posts and heard the story of the enormo cricket in my bed. I don't, however, enjoy getting close to bugs if I can help it. I kill them from a distance if I can, and if I can't, well, I'll probably just ignore them and hope they go away. Depending on the potential harm they pose me. Anything with stingers? I'm probably just going to let them run the house and hope they find an open window or the hole they came in. Last week there was a wasp inside, and I just left the house for two hours hoping it would die or leave in that space of time. I'm not a fan of angering the critters that could potentially hurt me. Wasps are the boss of me and I'm not afraid to say it! Eventually the one in the house committed suicide in a flourescent kitchen light, thank heavens!

We did some of this...

A lot of this...

And even an occasional smile! He likes me! He really really likes me!

3/21 - Jace Man again, and equally as fun on Day Two. Same activities, except this time we also drew pictures and threw a baseball in the backyard. I was amazed he could manage to nap twice in such a noisy house. There were roofers fixing some wind damage to the roof all day, but he slept right through all the banging and hammering. He could, but the house sure couldn't! At one point the roofers hammered so hard that a light fixture came clattering to the floor in my bathroom. Luckily it was a light fixture that doesn't work, so there wasn't much of a loss there. Still! Crazy hammering fools! Also, my boyfriend took me out to dinner in Dyersburg and we got two free cookies and had lots of fun together. It's been so boring this week and last not seeing him! Matt just started a 2nd job (hopefully short-lived, because 60-70 hours a week is crazy talk) and it meant I didn't see him until 10:00 every night, except Wednesday! Thus it became date night.

3/22 + 23 - Thursday and Friday were both uneventful. Friday was yet another sick day for Miss Lara, who spent the whole weekend on medication to keep her fever and coughing at bay. Here's what's tough, putting the kids to bed all by myself three nights in a row. It was really sad. Thomas and Lara weren't sad about me putting them to bed, but it's just not something I feel is my job...for this reason, I made them stay up late enough to say goodnight to Daddy on Friday and Saturday, when sleep mattered less. It was pretty doggone late, but I just felt lonely tucking them in all by myself. I hope it doesn't become a regular occurence!

Digging the St. Patty's day gift from Gram and Granddad Secules!

Oh also, we made one heck of a tent in the den.

The McCaslin family is serious about tenting. Lara models the comfortable seating arrangements inside the front door.

There was even a secret compartment behind a wall of couch cushions where the kids could hide...from I don't know what!

3/24 - Was a fun day out for the kids, although I think the lack of sleep made them pretty darn testy. Also, Lara still wasn't 100% healthy, making the whole day a bit strenuous on her little body. We went to a wonderful place in Yorkville called Todd Family Fun Farm for an Easter Egg Hunt, and let me tell you...it was a great place. It was too cold for an outdoor Easter Egg Hunt, and it kept looking like rain, but we still had fun and got free food and candy! The only serious problem with it was that there were prize drawings for collecting a certain number of eggs...and Thomas was the very last of the prize-winners to choose a prize. Would have been totally fine, except there were only two very girly stuffed animals available to choose from. It ended in tears, justifiably. I wouldn't have been able to cope if I waited that long thinking I'd get a cool prize as well. After that we played on the playground, which took everyone's minds off the lame prize giveaway and was crazy fun. We went from Todd Farm to Nanny's house for play time for los bambinos and Look at Baby Pictures of Matthew for the adults of the crowd. Isn't that everyone's favorite hobby? Yes, I think so. Especially when your fiance was so cute as a tot.

Taking pictures of Thomas is a study in disappearing feet.

The best part was our next stop, McDonald's to see Daddy on his lunch break. It was lots of fun and made up for the fact that I didn't get to spend any time with him the whole whole day long. He had to leave pretty much as soon as we got there to go back to work, but at least we got to see him! And the kids got non-stupid Happy Meal toys, which is always a bonus!

3/24 - We ended up skipping church to attend a birthday party for Matthew's stepbrother at his dad's house. We gave him a homemade gift certificate for a free oil change, which everyone thought was very clever. Matt's idea, my handiwork and coloring expertise. We make a good team ^_^ So I think we're going to get married.

3/25 Yesterday I went on a three mile walk and got bitten by a dog. Also Matthew went to the doctor for his leg and they put him back on another nerve medication to see if this helps any better than the last million things the doctors have tried to take away his pain. Man oh man. Those were really the only notable things that happened yesterday. Also, my FMIL had a successful surgery and made it home. Also, my dad turned [old] and got a cool cake from my sister! And homemade cards from his stepgrandchildren (mouthhhh full, we're going to have to just go with plain old grandchildren) and hopefully a card from his daughter will be arriving today?

Last but not least of the tent pictures, a foot going inside to explore!

Goodness. Now I've updated everybody on the last million years in which I haven't had internet access at the right time so couldn't post anything. 

Whatever is Wonderful...Thursday

Sorry folks, again I am a day late on my hardly regular Wednesday post. This time I have a better excuse, though, because the internet was down litttt-er-all-y all day. Sounds incredibly frustrating (trust me, it was...especially with the job and college applications on which I spend most of my productive hours working), but really it spurred on the wonderfulness of yesterday:
1. The lack of productivity inside the house kept pushing me outside and outside and outside! Oh boy was it ever worth it! Just now I am watching the sunrise outside the back of the house on the back porch. The whole weather and look of things reminds me very much of this:

Which is great.

2. I got a sunburn yesterday. This is one of my tricky ones that doesn't sound all that wonderful until the explanatory process is finished. Here's why it was wonderful: it was March 14th. In the middle of March, I was able to go on a walk at 11:30 AM in 80 degree weather with a gentle breeze. My walk lasted a bit longer than an hour...I think about 3 or 4 miles, and I have a nice bit of color on my cheeks and shoulders. It feels great. Also, I made a new friend on my walk!

He stuck around with me for about 1/2 a mile before he stopped in the middle of the road and watched me keep on walking. He said he was very sorry, but he's not allowed to go any further from his house, so enjoy my walk and have a great day. Haha, I have another closer picture of him, but I don't want to embarrass him...he was using the facilities when I got around to getting my camera out.

Today I doubt I'll be adding to the summertime skin, since it's forecasted to thunderstorm (again, March. Schwa?) but I hope to continue the walking thing regularly until it's too hot to step outside for that long. I know those days are coming!

3. None of us fell victim to the Dreaded Pink Eye, miraculously! Not even I, who lacked the caution one night to wash my hands after administering eye drops to the invalid's eyes (Matt pointed this out when I started to rub my eye about half an hour later), or who hung out with her a whole day alone on Friday. In fact, it seems she managed only to infect her little brother Hudson since Sunday at Mommy's house, and he's doing much better. Hooray for jumping that hurdle! Let's hope it stays jumped. Also, on that note, did you know that kids are prescribed Amoxicillin for pink eye nowadays? Isn't that weird? I mean, in our family, half of us developed an immunity to Amox* by the time we were 10 because it was prescribed for every little thing, but now pink eye? Isn't that just going to further immunize kids against it? I was a little confused. Especially because Lara was given this ginormo bottle and only takes a tsp. twice a day. If she stayed on the bottle until it was finished, it would take months! All for pink eye? Perhaps this is totally normal. It seems extreme to me.

4. Coffee is. Enough said :D

5. It's Thursday! Which are always wonderful when they come around every 7 days or so becausseeee...Matt gets to start his weekend with the kids! And I have lots of babysitting this weekend because Matt has to get orientated to Walmart on Saturday, plus I'll probably pick them up from school today and tomorrow. :) Hooway!

This is what it looks like outside right now. I'm so blessed!

Now I'm going to head inside because the sun started to come up...and now is hiding behind clouds, presumably for the rest of the day. And it's cold.

See Y'all!
TFMM