Project 365 - All about Red

I was browsing my friend Kellie's site yesterday when I saw this idea that I am borrowing for this week's Project 365. I picked one of my favorite colors, red, and then snapped pictures of random things around the house.

I like it because it shows such a diverse scattering of things, and it represents exactly where we are in life right now.

Some are things that I love - candles, red goblets, picture frames. A card from my hubby. Some are all about Savannah - books and barrettes.

And no picture collage is complete without the random can of tomato paste, which reminds me, I still need to put away the groceries from my shopping trip...from last night. Oops.






And to brighten your day...

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Sara, thank you for hosting!

10 on the 10th: Easy Button

Things that make my life a whole lot easier (idea shamelessly stolen from H-Mama):



1. Pampered Chef Garlic Press. I am a firm believer that a little garlic should be added to everything (well, anything savory, that is), and so this gets used almost daily in my kitchen.

2. Flat Iron. You would only need to glimpse my hair anytime during the 90's to know how absolutely true this is. Maybe one day I'll get brave and post a pic from this unfortuante hair era. Or not.

3. Refrigerated Air Conditioning. On a day where it is supposed to get close to 100 degrees, and where we spent the morning outside at the aquarium, this is a big, big deal to me. Thank you Jesus.

4. Portable DVD player. Yes, yes, a total non-essential, I know. But on long car rides, what a life-saver for Savannah. Even here at home, when I don't think I can listen to Dora's VERY VERY LOUD VOICE for another second, she just plugs in her headphones and away she goes.

5. Mac Select Cover-up. The circles under my eyes thank me.

6. Magic Erasers. I have no idea how or why these work so well, but they do. They even removed the ink pen from my kitchen floor (somebody got in big trouble for that one) and they are the sole reason why I even attempt to clean my shower.

7. Oscillating fans. Hmmmm....I guess this would be the second thing in my list that pertains to keeping me cool, but did I mention it's hot? And also, I love fans not only for their cooling properties, but for the white noise they provide. My husband doth scoff.

8. Uncle Ben's Instant Brown Rice. In the ingredients list, the only thing listed is Parboiled Whole Grain Brown Rice. So I'm hoping that it is just as nutritionally sound as regular brown rice that I could cook myself if I actually remembered more than 40 minutes before dinner that, Hey! I need to make the rice!

9. My hubby. I realized again this week how very handy and wonderful he is. Door handle falls off in my car? No problem...he runs to the auto parts place and fixes it in an hour. Termites infest my walk-in bedroom closet, totally grossing me out and causing much involuntary shuddering? He's all over it - I don't even have to go in there. Gigantic van runs into the back of my car? He files the police report for me, and goes and gets all the quotes.

Which allows me more time to recline on the couch at home watching soap operas and eating bonbons....the life of every stay-at-home mom.

I know this is only 9, but Hubby counts for at least two.

So...what's something on your Easy Button list?

And thanks to Meredith at Life at 7000 Feet for hosting!

The game that might drive me to.....cheat

Last week, due to the mild case of chicken pox that Savannah came down with, we were cooped up inside the house. All week, every. single. day.

And because my hubby was gone the majority of last week as well, I was her sole entertainment.

I dearly, dearly love her, but can I just admit that I was ready to throw Chutes and Ladders in the trash?

Now Candyland, I can take. Candyland doesn't take forever. You can romp your little plastic figure across the red and purple and yellow squares in no time. There are, like, maybe 5 cards that you can draw that will send you backwards.

But not so with Chutes and Ladders. I can't tell you how tempted I was to cheat...."A 6? That will send me down the very longest slide and back into the oblivion of the bottom half of the board? I didn't spin a 6....surely it was a 5...."

I didn't do it. I just thought about it really hard. But y'all, that truly is the game that never ends.

So Daddy came home on Thursday night, and her spots had all but disappeared by then, so all was right in my world.

The next day Ricardo was moving some cardboard boxes out of our walk-in closet where we had been storing some things. I will spare you the details, but to sum it up in one word....dun dun dun...

Termites.

I have never been so grossed out in my life. Ricardo, on the other hand, felt the need to turn this catastrophe into something fun, so he took a box crawling with the despicable things out to the yard, and watched some ants pounce on them. That really seemed to brighten up the situation for him.

Boys. I guess they'll always be boys.

The 4th was wonderful, relaxing, full of grilled foods and fireworks. Just the way it should be.

This second set of pictures is going back a few weeks, when Savannah was still in swimming lessons. On the day of her last lesson, we came outside, and a young girl, maybe 18, came up to us and told me that she had backed into my truck with her very long Community Center van.

The damage looked pretty minimal to me, but Ricardo took it for an estimate this week. The most expensive estimate was $1800 and the cheapest was $1200.

I was blown away...$1200? Really??? Unbelieveable. Fortunately it will all be taken care of, and I even get a rental while it's getting fixed. So it could be fun after all.

And I can guarantee you that Savananh will just LOVE the rental car and be "so, so sad, Mama" when we have to return it.

My little drama queen.

Princess for a day...

Savannah saw a wedding picture of us the other day, and I think for the first time she realized it was us, her Daddy and Mommy. She gazed at it with something akin to awe, and then whispered, "Mama...were you a princess? Is that your crown?"

7 years ago, on June 1, 2002, I got to be a princess for a day.

We planned an evening outdoor wedding, thinking how romantic it would be to get married as the sun set.

There was just one tiny little problem. That morning, the skies opened up and it poured rain. Water pooled in the yard, and everything turned to soggy mush. We thought about implementing plan B and moving it to a church somewhere, but I just didn't want to.

So we prayed. A lot. And sometime in the afternoon, the sun came out.

The day turned out to be so gorgeous. It wasn't without flaws, or course - it was a little too breezy, and so we weren't able to do the unity candle. And we had two huge flower bouquets that were supposed to grace the sides of the arch where we stood to say our vows, and it was even too windy for that - they kept blowing over.

But none of that mattered. What mattered was this:

And this:



And this:


And all of that crazy rain produced this amazing sunset....








He's still my Prince Charming. And I'm still his princess, even if I don't get the chance to don my "princess crown" much these days.

(On a side note...Savannah is looking over my shoulder as I type this, and keeps asking, "But where am I, Mama?")

I missed doing an anniversary post this year on June 1, so I'm making up for it now and participating in Rachel's Wedding Photo Carnival. Thanks, Rachel!

Swimsuit dilemmas and spots

For the past two weeks, Savannah's been in swimming lessons.

Excitement was at an all time high as we got ready for the first lesson, due in large part to the fact that she discovered she had three different swimsuits to wear.Because goodness knows one isn't enough when you're 3 years old.

We've been very blessed with various people showering 3T swimsuits upon us.

We had a slight hiccup in the swimsuit rotation on the 3rd day, however, when she went to pull on her Dora swimsuit. Wearing the purple suit and the red suit on the previous days had been just fine, but Dora was most definitely the icing on the cake.

Except that, as she paraded around the house in it, I noticed that Dora Swimsuit was sort of falling down on the job.

I know they say that you are supposed to get a high-cut leg on your swimsuit to make your legs look longer and leaner. But I didn't know that applied to toddlers, too. Seriously, this swimsuit rode up so high on her legs, and there wasn't enough material in the back to cover the little tush.

I happen to think that little baby tush is about the cutest thing in the world, but I am not necessarily a fan of showing it off at the public pool. And I knew her daddy would most definitely have a thing or two to say about it.

So we got an impromptu lesson in modesty when I told her that too much tush was showing. To make it a little less painful, I told her she could run around the house in it all she wanted.

That was good enough for her.

So (switching gears here, lest you think the previous story is continuing....)last Thursday, as I was getting her out of the bath, I noticed a sprinkling of peculiar spots on her tummy and chest. She had fallen at the park that night, and face-planted into a pile of wood chips, so I thought maybe it was from that.

Being a good mama, I did the whole 20 questions thing..."Did you fall on your tummy? And your chest, too? Does it itch? Does it hurt? Are you sure? It doesn't itch? For sure??"

She finally sighed a big dramatic sigh, and said, "Mama, you don't ask me that anymore, ok?"

Alrighty then.

So I chalked it up to a bunch of little wood chips having impaled her, until the next morning when the spots seemed to have multiplied overnight. Which is when I began to channel my inner doctor, via Google, and realized that it had nothing to do with wood chips.

I'm pretty sure my baby has chicken pox. A very mild case, but still. Pretty sure it's the pox. So far it has followed the exact progression that Google promised that it would.

My hubby is out of town this week, and so we are going to be cooped up in the house for at least 5 days straight while we wait for these awful little things to run their course.

However, I am very, very thankful that they aren't itchy and painful, like I remember them to be when I had them, oh, 26 years ago or so.

But enough about that...

I am weeks and week behind in my Project 365 endeavor. So here's two collages - the first is from Memorial Day and our trip to the mountains. Notice the two cannisters of Pringles, a very, very rare treat at the Moments and Memories household, being held in Savannah's death grip.She refused to put them down for the entire 2 hours that it took to get to our picnic site.





The second is from our Indiana trip. My brother turned 30, and Savannah had the honor of picking out what kind of cake he should have. She picked guitar. That made them both happy.




Sara, thank you so much for hosting!