Strawberry Tiramisu

Every year Jamey, Laura and I do our version of Iron Chef Alabama and fix a fabulous dinner to celebrate my parents' anniversary. 46 years and she hasn't killed him yet! Go Mom!

Anyway, this year, I ended up in charge of the desert. Bored with chocolate, we went hunting for inspiration and found a recipe by Giada de Whatsherface for raspberry tiramisu. Sounded yummy. Except that I hate raspberries. Bleck. But, one of the advantages to living in the South is that Florida is just a hop, skip and a jump away, and strawberries are coming into season in early February. Good strawberries just might be better than sex.
















So, strawberry tiramisu.

First, slice up about 16oz of strawberries. I quartered three-fourths of them and then halved the rest. The halves went on the top to look pretty. Sprinkle them with a couple of tablespoons of sugar and let them get happy while you work on the other stuff.
















Next, you're going to mix 1 cup of strawberry jam and 4 tblsp of orange liqueur. Something like Grand Marnier, only we used a knock off that Martin brought back from Puerto Rico because GM is $40 for the small bottle. Yikes.

















Mix 16 oz of marscopone cheese and 2 more tblsp orange liqueur.
















Then add 1/4 c of sugar and 1 tblsp of vanilla to 1 cup of heavy cream.














Whip until soft peaks form. Fold the whipped cream a little at a time into the marscapone.

Now put a layer of ladyfingers in the bottom of your dish. A trifle bowl works best, but we were too lazy to walk to Nanny's and get one, so we just used a pretty bowl.
Dab those ladyfingers with some more of that orange liqueur.
















Top with a layer of the jam...















then a layer of the whipped cream and marscapone...
















then a layer of those luscious strawberries. Try not to eat too many.
















Continue for two more layers.
Arrange some whole strawberries on top and sift on some powdered sugar to make it all pretty and.....Voila!
















Chill for a couple of hours or overnight before serving.

Just lovely.

















Yum!




















Aren't you jealous?

Reflections on a decade

On this first day of 2010, I've been thinking about how much has happened in my life in the last decade and hoping that the next ten years are just as wonderful. Ten years ago, I was newly engaged and trying to finish graduate school and plan a wedding. The wedding was lovely, the master's degree didn't get finished. That's my only real regret in life. But still, I've accomplished so much in the last ten years.

I have gotten married. Bought a house. Given birth to three gorgeous children. Written two books, even if they will never see the light of day again. Adopted pets. Buried pets. Buried a grandparent in law. Made new friends. Celebrated with old friends. Had fights. Made apologies. Gone on vacations. Sunk into depression. Lived life to the fullest.

In other words, I've lived and loved and mostly had a wonderful time doing it. I cherish every memory and hope the next ten years is packed just as full of laughter and life as the last ten years.

Happy 2010 everyone!

Man sick.

You know what that means, right? It's what we women call men who act like they're dying when they just have a little cold. They lay around on the couch and whimper and beg for sips of tea.

I have a confession to make. Bill is not the person in this house who gets man sick. When he's sick, he piles up in the recliner with his laptop and proceeds to work from home all day long. I offer medicine and tea and he usually refuses. He's pretty good at being sick.

Me, on the other hand, well, I'm the one who gets man sick. I hate being sick, so I get whiny. I curl up on the couch with books and tea and a blankie and try to get Bill to do all the work around here.

I have a cold right now and I'm moping around this morning whining to myself about how much my head hurts and my sinuses are on fire and whah whah whah whah whah.

Yep. The woman of our house is secretly the man as evidenced by the fact that I get man sick.

Autumn is for Apples

We eat tons of apples in our house. Quick, healthy, yummy snacks. Apple pancakes. Apple crumble. Fried apples. You name it, we probably like it. Ellie likes Granny Smiths, Emma likes Galas, Sam like Yellow Delicious and Galas. I like them all, but my absolute favorite is the elusive Honey Crisp. It is apple perfection. Crispy, juicy, sweet and crunchy. Not mealy or mushy or tart or dry. Honey Crisp apples are the greatest apple ever. And apparently the growers know it because it is rare to find them for less than $4 a lb. I won't buy them at that price, but last week Target had them in a 4lb box for $5. Heaven. I ate one on the way home and another once I got home. We'd eaten most of the box in less than 24 hrs. A box of Honey Crisp apples is better than a bowl of candy any day.

A Blessed Veteran's Day

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

Better late than never

We had a great Halloween. Kids had a blast, got tons of candy. Trick or treater numbers seemed to be down this year. I don't know if people were thinking it was going to rain and planned something else or if they were afraid of the piggie flu. But, we had fun.

In the spirit of the day

Be it Samhain or Halloween for you, I made pumpkin pancakes for breakfast. And the kids loved them. Ellie said they were better than my usual pancakes. Maybe I can come up with other things to do with pumpkin that she will eat.

So, Happy Halloween and a Blessed Samhain to you all!

Horse Show

Saturday we went to our first horse show. The kids from our barn seemed to be the youngest ones there. They all range from 7 yrs to 9 yrs old. There was one other little girl about that age that I saw and the rest seemed to be preteens and up. But we had a great time and all the older girls were just fabulously nice to our little girls, as were the staff of the hosting barn and the judges. They all made sure that our girls and one boy had a great time and a great first show experience.

I was very proud of my two. They rode well, did their best, didn't have any fits and came home with two ribbons each. A perfect day, in my opinion.

Emma placed 4th in the trail obstacle class and Ellie placed 3rd in the musical sacks class. They took a 6th place ribbon in the costume class.

I even entered one class. I was in the costume class as Bo Peep and Bonnie as the sheep. We took 2nd place in the farm category. lol

Old friends

I have to say, I love Facebook. I've reconnected with people that I haven't seen or talked to in 15 years. Some of us don't chat, just comment on each other's wall posts. But I love it. I know what people are doing, I know they are well. I've been delighted with how some of my high school friends have turned out and shocked by others. But, for the most part, everyone seems happy, healthy and content with life.

But, I recently found out one high school boyfriend/pal is not so healthy and well. He's been fighting lymphoma for several years and I had no idea. He's supposed to get a bone marrow transplant this week, and he's been in my thoughts all week.

It's also prompted me to go looking for a couple of people who have avoided the Facebook vortex (it's not just for us whippersnappers, you know). Found one with a little help from his sister, which is awesome, because they don't speak to each other.

So, since he can't view email attachments at work, some pics for him, if he ever checks out my blog.



















His highness, the future evil dictator of the world, Sam. Ellie and Emma riding the lesson ponies.
Emma on the monkey bars and Ellie on the monkey bars. And of course that's me up above.

Sin in a jar

AKA Nutella. If you don't know what this divine stuff is, then I'm very sorry for your taste buds. Nutella, for those of you who don't know, is a European delicacy that is a mix hazelnut spread (think peanut butter but with hazelnuts) and chocolate. It is a little thinner consistency than peanut butter and not as much stick to the roof of your mouth-ness. But it is divine. Or evil. I'm not sure which.

You see, not all that long ago, the only people in the US that knew about Nutella were those fortunate enough to have traveled to Europe or to have a European friend who could be their dealer, um, import agent. Americans traveled to Europe and discovered this deliteful little jar of sin and promptly tossed all their clothes and packed their suitcases full of Nutella to bring home. If they were really lucky, they had friends who either came to visit in the U.S. on a regular basis or who could be inticed into shipping a jar of Nutella to the States every so often.

You knew when you had one of those precious jars that you'd better savor it. Make it last. Ration it. Hide in the back of the cabinet to keep the kids out of it. After all, who could tell when you'd get another jar.

Then, the makers of Nutella hit on the brilliant idea of importing it to the U.S. Ah, veritable gold mine of Nutella starved people would flock to the stores and buy it. No more waiting for your European buddies to hook you up. Now you can just head down to the neighborhood grocery store and buy all you want.

But you know, I think I may have prefered it when Nutella was rare and came with labels printed in German or French. You enjoyed it and savored it and when it was gone, it was gone. You sighed over the memory and went on with life. And you couldn't read the nutrition label.

Now Nutella is available here and it comes with an English label. Honestly, if you are going to eat the stuff, you might as well just glue the jar to your ass. No, actually that wouldn't even do. You need to go get a 5 lb sack of flour and glue that to your ass. You see, the fat and calorie content of that little jar of divinity is hugely disporportionate to the size of the jar. There is a fat and calorie black hole in that jar and it sucks in way more fat grams and calories than should rightly fit in a jar of that size and then regurgitates them on your ass.

When Nutella lived in Europe, this wasn't a big deal. It was a rare treat. The calories didn't count, especially since you couldn't read the label (even if you spoke fluent German you could tell yourself you couldn't read the label). And you got to eat it once every couple of years. Not even as bad as birthday cake since you get that once a year.

But now, it's invaded the U.S. It's in our stores. And sometimes it leaps off the shelf into the grocery cart when I'm on the peanut butter aisle. I hold firm and only give in to the tempation a few times a year, though.

But oh my, the things you can do with a jar of Nutella, especially when you know there is more for the easy taking back at the store. Nutella smeared on a cookie. Nutella on cinnimon toaste. Nutella on ice cream. Cookies made with Nutella with more Nutella schmeared in the middles. Nutella on a freaking spoon with you look furtively around to see if the kids noticed you opening the jar because you don't want to share.

Even the knowlegde that I can't get my blue jeans past my hips didn't keep me from indulging in a Nutella crowned cookie or 12. The kids and I had managed to eat half the jar in just 24 hrs. # days later, the jar is almost empty. And I am sadly contemplating buying more right away because the girls like it on toast for breakfast and they are actually eating and getting some freaking calories in them before school. Yeah. Uh-uhn. That's the reason why.

I may never fit in those jeans again.

Prozac Nation

I have submitted my request for citizenship. Celexa nation, actually. So far, I'm liking it just fine. Am I happy that I've reached a point in life where I need medication to deal with things? No, I'm not. But I am. And I'm glad it's there. Because the way I've been feeling, the way I've been reacting to everydamnthing isn't normal. Or if it is, I don't want to be normal. And apparently my doctor agreed that it wasn't normal because he wrote the prescription.

But I haven't screamed at my children in four days. I've been happy to give and recieve hugs and kisses from them. I've played with them. Saturday night, we were having dinner at my parents with some other family members and I got tickled at something my cousin said and I laughed. I laughed out loud, for several minutes. I haven't done that in months.

Am I happy I need pills? No, I'm not. But I'm happy I'm finding myself again. Happy that I'm enjoying my family again. Happy I can laugh again. And one day I won't need the pills to do all of that stuff, and I'm happy about that, too.

I hate August

August is the one month of the year that I simply loath. Despise. Hate with a passion. Oh sure, my girls' birthday is in August, and that's something happy. And the first day of school is in August. That's always a cause for celebration. But those happen early in the month, leaving nothing else to look forward to except the cooler breezes of September.

Every year when the girls start back to school, I think I'll start back to my walking routine. This year, I'm dragging the dogs along. We headed out about 9am and walked for about 35 minutes. About halfway through, I was drenched with sweat and the dogs were panting like we'd been running. Now it was only about 75F. Not that hot, right? Ah, but you forget the unpleasant pea soup that posses for an atmosphere around here in August. Sweat doesn't evaporate, you can't get a deep breath and climbing a hill makes you feel like you're going to pass out.

The dogs were glaring at me and I could tell they were thinking "Hey, do you see this fur coat? Huh? Didja? Well, why don't you wear it? I'm hot. I want to go home. You try walking around on hot pavement in the middle of freaking August with a fur coat on and see how enthusiastic you are about the idea. Stupid human."

But we did it, and will be doing it again several days a week because my pants are all tight and I refuse to go buy more in a bigger size. My dear friend Toni has reminded me that I'd prefer to spend most of my 30s basking in my hotness, when I'm aware enough of my sexuality to enjoy it. Especially since when I was young and slender and actually was hot, I was too dumb to realize it and enjoy it. Thus, I am determined to fight the ravages of being fat, getting pregnant with twins while fat, and then getting pregnant with a fat baby while slightly less fat. I may never be a Playboy bunny, but I can damned well get to the point where I look hot with clothes on.

So, bring it on August. I'll be back out there tomorrow. But don't bring it on too much, because I really hate August.

How many have you read?

This is making the rounds on FB, so I thought I'd play along.

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles DickensX

Total: 8

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas HardyX
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare Does it count if I've read most of them?
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger I started this when I was about 20 and thought it was horrible, so I didn't finish it.
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 3

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens X
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy I've read part of this, but not the whole thing.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 6

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X

Total: 4

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 6

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martels
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 3

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 1

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce X
76 The Inferno – Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession - AS Byatt

Total: 6

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles DickensX
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 5

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total: 2

Grand total: 44

I've read more of the classics than the modern works. A lot of the modern books have reputations as tear jerkers and I try to avoid that kind of book.

Mental health issues, parenting and other desiderata

Mental health issues. Why do they have such a stigma in our culture? No one thinks badly of a diabetic needing insulin and nutrition counseling or an asthmatic needing an inhaler. Why then is there a stigma to mental health issues. They are just as real, just as debilitating as a physical disease left untreated. And yet, we think that we should just shake off the depression, talk ourselves out of the anxiety that we know is out of proportion.

Besides that, everyone is a little bit crazy at times. Everyone needs a sympathetic ear, a sounding board. Marriages can always benefit from an outside viewpoint, especially since communication skills aren't something we learn is school. Even if your parents are great at communicating with each other, it doesn't mean you will be, or that your spouse won't feeling like clobbering you if you say something like "And how does that make you feel?"

I think as a parent, mental health is even more important. If parents go off the deep end, we risk passing our issues on to our kids. Case in point, my entire freaking family. Hello, they have more issues than the New York Times. But god forbid you actually try to deal with them. Oh no, that gets you shunned and accused of breaking of the family. "Why can't you just forget about all that?" might be wailed at you.

Still, it is the brave ones who admit they have problems, that get their asses in therapy and work on being as healthy mentally as they are physically. My mother was one of the brave ones. Hell, she ended up becoming a counselor herself, although she never practiced. So you would think that perhaps I would not be afraid of the stigma, would have sense enough to realize that I can't pull myself out of this funk. But no. I suffered through postpartum depression without ever saying a word because I stupidly told myself I had to suck it up and take care of my babies by myself, like a big girl. And now, I find myself dealing with it again. Well, not postpartum depression as I haven't grown a watermelon or two in my stomach for a while.

This time, it seems more like anxiety issues. I've always known I had some weird triggers. Telephones and people being late are biggies. But more and more it is carrying over into other things.
The state of my house (which I can sanely state isn't that bad). But the kids' rooms just make me want to sit down in the floor and cry. I cannot even stand to stay in the girls' room long enough to put up laundry. And yet, I feel anxious when I'm playing on the computer instead of cleaning.
My writing. Can't write if I won't even open the damned document. But I feel like I'm neglecting something else, something that might be more important. Like scrubbing a fucking toilet. After all, I'm not getting paid to write and might not ever see a paycheck for it.
My horse. I can barely stand to look at her right now. I don't know if I'll ever be able to ride her again. Or any horse, for that matter. And I'm avoiding the issue by not even going over there. But if it dries out, I'll be riding the lesson horse on Sat., even if all I do is sit there and cry.
Money. Huge issue. The idea of going shopping makes me want to hyperventilate. The girls' birthday is coming up and I haven't done a damned thing to get ready for it.
My kids and the noise and messes they make. Which leads us to my second topic.

Parenting. If someone had said to me before I had kids "You know kids make messes and scream and yell and carry on like heathens most of the time, don't you?" I would have looked at them like they were an idiot and replied "Of course I know that. It's part of having kids. They scream and yell and drive you crazy and leave crap all over the place. You deal with it. That's part of being a parent."

So, my kids scream and yell and act like heathens and leave messes. And it's driving me crazy. But I'm not dealing with it. I scream and yell and tell them to clean up or I'm going to throw everything away. I tell them to go outside if they want to be loud. The worst of it is that I've realized in the last few days that I can't even enjoy them laughing and being silly. The sound of your child's laughter is supposed to be a joyful one, right? Well, it just gets on my nerves. I just want them to hush.

I want to wake up to something besides the sound of them fighting. I want to eat a meal without them laughing over fart jokes. I want them to be able to pet the damned dogs without screeching "Whose a good girl?" at the top of their lungs. But most of all, I want to be able to enjoy the sound of their laughter again. I know parents are never happy about the mess and the noise, but I'd like to be able to at least deal with it without feeling like I'm going to lose it.

I don't want to listen to the chaos and wish I was back in my college apartment with just me and the cat again. After all, I spent many a lonely Friday night wishing that I wasn't alone, that I had found The One and had kids and messes and noise. I know being alone is worse than this. I don't want to be alone again. I want to enjoy my family again.

So, what am I doing about it? Um. Well, I've looked up some phone numbers for therapists. I even found one that has horses. Having a phone phobia kind of sucks at times like this.

I'll keep you posted.

St. John's Wort

It works. Really it does. Just saying.

It's as easy as falling off a horse

You know, falling off a horse is surprisingly easy. It's the hitting the ground part that is hard. Actually, even hitting the ground isn't that bad. Hitting other stuff on the way to the ground is rather painful, though.

I fell off my horse yesterday and I hit the gate on the way to the ground. I have a bruise on my ass the shape and size of one of the gate rails and another bruise on my arm that I just found this morning. My entire left side hurts, and that's not the side that hit the ground. That's the side that hit the gate. Some of it seems to be pulled muscles from fighting to stay on, too. The only thing on my right side that hurts is my jaw. I have a bruise along it. I must have bounced it off the ground.

I've discovered something, though. The worse has happened, and I survived. I'm not even really hurt. It wasn't that bad. Sure, I cried. It hurt like a motherfucker at the time. I've got bruises and sore muscles. But I'm ok. Hell, the side that actually hit the ground isn't even sore.

When I got back into riding a year ago, I found I had developed a fear of falling off the horse. It made me nervous all the time. I've got this fear of failure in other parts of my life, too. It shows up most noticeably in my writing. I'm afraid of failing, so I avoid actually writing. If I never finish, I can't get rejections, can I? But I have gotten a rejection, and it wasn't that bad. All that bruised was my ego, and not even that much because I knew that the manuscript I submitted wasn't all that fabulous since it was one of the first ones I'd ever written.

I got back on the horse, though. She freaked again but I landed on my feet that time. I've kept writing, and I'll land on my feet with that, too.

Don't be afraid to do the things you love. There are worse things than falling, like never getting on in the first place.

I'm happy to report

We are married after all! Mother was able to get us a copy of our marriage certificate. Yay Mom!
It is still a mystery as to what I showed the SS people all those years ago, but there you go.

Are we married, or not?

It seems that the manwhore's employer wants to see proof of our marriage so that I can stay on his health insurance plan. Something about saving money. Just a copy of your marriage certificate, they said. Ok, we said. So, we started looking for it. After going through files of 15 yr old bank statements, even older traffic tickets (his, not mine), old research papers and college notes, we haven't managed to find hide nor hair of a marriage certificate.

Neither one of us can actually remember getting one or sending off for it when we got back from our honeymoon. But I somehow managed to change my name on my Social Security card, and I do remember having to show them some proof that we were married. You would think that proof would have been a marriage certificate. I don't know what we showed to the human resources people way back then, either. Maybe they didn't ask. But if we had a copy of our marriage certificate, it has disappeared into the black hole of missing things, likely to never be seen again.

Fortunately for me, the State of Alabama seems to be lackadaisical about who they give them out to, so long as the person has all the right info. So, I've sweet talked my mother into going to get us one on Mon. If she fails in this task, I will have to make the trip down there and get it myself, which I really don't want to do. So much easier to have Mother to it for me and stick it in the mail.

But, are we married without the proof? Maybe. Maybe the kids are proof enough. That and the ball and chain around his ankle...

Some Mother's Day thoughts from my daughters

They did these at school with the help of their teacher, who laminated them. Of course, they will go in the cedar chest. Mrs. S had them answer questions about their mom and fill in the blanks. I put their answers in quotes because I can't figure out how to do underlining in blogger.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! by Ellie

My mom's name is "Amanda." I call her "Mommy." I think she is "30" years old. Her hair is "brown." My mom is pretty as "a flower" and smells as sweet as "a flower." She can do many things. I think she is best at "cooking." My mom is very smart! She even know "2+2." If I had a million dollars, I would buy my mom "flowers." I love my mom because "she kisses me ever night!"

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! by Emma

My mom's name is "Amanda." I call her "Mommy." I think she is "32" years old. Her hair is "blond." My mom is pretty as "a princess" and smells as sweet as "a cherry." She can do many things. I think she's best at "writing books." My mom is very smart! She even knows "how to ride a horse." If I had a million dollars, I would buy my mom "roses." I love my mom because "she kisses me every night."

A little poetry for a Sunday afternoon

"Some Wishes for You" by Charles Stephens

I wish for you...The thrill of knowing
Who you are,
Where you stand,
And why.
Especially why.

I wish for you...Not great prosperity, but great dreams;
Not riches, but a sense of your own worth,
These are what I wish for you.

Not even long life - however proud I'd be to have it so -
Instead, I wish for you...A life that is crammed with living,
Hour by hour.

I wish for you...an occasional troubled heart
To know and feel and change the woes and injustice
of a world that keeps you sleepless.

I wish for you...Solitude in the midst of company,
And a mind full of company within your quiet times.

I wish for you...Full todays and full tomorrows.

And love...I do wish for you...a bounty of precious love.
May you have it, and give it away frequently and abundantly.