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

Blue needs a little sister.

Yes he does, and here she is!

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

I'm Sorry.

I feel awful. Never yet did you receive all of those adorable pictures I took with updates to go with them. And I'm not even going to give them to you yet. Because I want to prioritize cleaning the house on my day off of work, my job that you didn't even know about yet because I haven't posted about it since I was hired. Sheesh. If any people were calling me a friend exclusively based on my posting habits, I would probably be off their list by now. Luckily I'm pretty sure the only people that read this have other connections to me besides this blog.

So, my dears, I will be back. I promise you. I will write a gosh darn blog post. And it will be a good one. It might be long. Get your waters and orange slices ready. But right now, I'm going to clean the house. And go grocery shopping, because I have priorities and they mostly revolve around cockroaches not crawling around my house and also not starving to death.

But after those two things, definitely blogging. That's definitely what comes after those two. My priorities are logical and practical, thankyouverymuch.

Loves!
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

Low on Time, So I'll Just Give A Topical Update

Here I am at 4:55 AM, sitting at my computer with a cup of coffee. I thought it would be more painful than it was to wake up at 4:30, which probably has something to do with being sleepy enough to get ready for bed at 9:00 last night.

The reason that I am on this computer at 4:55, however, is the point of this blog post. I finally got a real, regularly-paid paycheck at Food Rite working with my future stepmother-in-law, and I am scheduled for 6:00 AM today. Yawn. But it's a job! And I can get the right hours to pick up Thomas and Lara from school on Fridays and most Thursdays. So that's all I'm asking for.

In slightly other news, I have to fax a bunch of forms over to UT Martin this morning, quick fast and in a hurry, in order to prove that I deserve in-state tuition. I sure do hope that it all gets in on time! If that doesn't work out, it may have to be one more semester of working instead of taking classes. I thought I was through with all that, but perhaps not.

Right, it is now 5:00 AM on the dot, and I must get ready to leave. Newbern Food-Rite is about a 20 minute drive and I like to get there early, ESPECIALLY if it's early and I'm sleepy and will take a long time to get around. :-)

Stay tuned for updates on all kinds of things. We're going to have a big ole time! Although I must warn you, I may prioritize laundry and dishes over the blog this week. When I get home around lunch time, it feels more than a little sinful to hop on the computer (because it was $800! That would be dangerous and irresponsible!) than to eliminate the dishes in the sink or, I dunno, vacuum something.

So you just keep your ears peeled okay kids? I promise you won't go unupdated. I have birthday parties, graduation parties, throw up, car trouble, and subbing to talk to you about. It may take awhile to get it all out, but just you wait okay?

See Y'all!
Although I can't see any of y'all right now because it's 5:00 AM and the sun hasn't come up yet ;)
TFMM