Down Memory Lane

Friday (2-14-14):

It's Valentine's day, which means I have an excuse to feed my kids chocolate and eat some myself. That's a win-win!  Parenting is tricky.  I want to give them everything, but I also don't want them to be spoiled, think they are entitled or generally be a nightmare.  So, in the short term, giving them everything they want might seem fun, but in the end, it's doing them such a disservice.  It's a balancing act, I know, first world problems.  So when days like Valentine's day come around, it's a fun day to not be so strict and eat chocolate first thing in the morning.  It doesn't happen often, so it's that much more fun when it does!!!

Our kids were quadruply spoiled, Gramee and Grampa had a bag of goodies for them, and so did Doug and I. Later in the week Grandpa Boo and Ginny gave them chocolates and then Grandma Sheryl. Note to self, other people will do the spoiling, save your money for shoes. :)

After a little Valentine celebration, we headed back over to storage.  Doug was a bit of a crank to me about how I was looking at every single photo and not getting any work done.  He also tried to tell me that I should TRASH my yearbooks.  Who is this person?!  He hugged me later and sort of apologized. I still don't think he's thrilled about my yearbooks, but he's gonna compromise on this one.  So all in all, just a tiny fight on the day of love, and we ended up finishing the sorting!  Success!

And, Doug took me and the kids to Sonic and also bought me 3 chocolate bars! We were planning to go to the steak dinner at church the next night, so this was a perfect family outing.  I very much appreciate Doug taking me on this particular day, it felt like such a celebration.  He's a sweetie, even if he did have the audacity to suggest I throw away my yearbooks. I think I'll keep him.

I spent the afternoon looking through old photos, here's a few:

Left is from our wedding, the two on the right side are from our wedding shower in Fort Worth.

Trip to visit Kristee in Bolivia (December 2003).

Mom in Bolivia

Our wedding invitation picture:

My first car, 1999 (I think)

I have a picture of Kees like this somewhere....

Kristee's bridal portraits, I was the assistant.

With my cousin Lacee and our baby boys, 2009:

Senior prom 2001, with my friend Rachael

We had an after prom party at church, we switched things up, I learned to play exactly one song on the bass, and there's no way I could do it now!

That's the last of the old pics, for now...

We had burgers for dinner and peach cobbler for dessert! 

After dinner, the kids and I went over to the church to help Grampa put the "Traeger" together. It's a large smoker. They ended up running three of them to get all the steaks cooked at the Valentine banquet!

Back at Gramee and Grampa's:

Saturday (2-15-14):

I have issues, like serious procrastination/distractability issues.  Now that the storage stuff was sorted, I needed to get all of our stuff segregated from my mom's stuff.  Easier said than done.  I spent quite a bit of time looking at my mom's photo albums.  How did that happen? Well, let me tell you, but I probably won't get right to the point because my brain is most definitely not linear or logical, so yeah..

I was getting all our books off Gramee's bookshelf.  I thought I had "pressed" some of our papers in between her books. I ended up looking between a few things.  And the photo albums LEAPT off the shelf.  It started with her wedding album, and what happened next couldn't be avoided, promise.  I did get quite a bit done, but not enough, not nearly enough. 

More old pictures (round 2):

Leaving for their honeymoon 1977:

Young love:

My dad's parents, Mamaw and Papaw:

My mom's mom, Moma T., didn't find any of her with Grandpa! Maybe next time.

Various family photos:

Sisters!!!

13 years old, Glamour Shots, big crazy hair...

We were supposed to be getting all dolled up for the Valentine's banquet AND I was supposed to be getting us packed to spend the week at Grandma's. We were planning to leave after the banquet. I basically swept through the house like a tiny fiesty tornado, and left quite a path of junk throughout the house.  My mother will be sainted shortly. Instead of griping about the mess, she kept saying, "Don't think about what you didn't get done, just think about all you did get done."  I didn't have the heart to tell her that I hadn't gotten anything done, she still hasn't figured out that sometimes I just look busy, but my productivity level is quite low.  Shhhh! Don't tell her. (I feel the need to say, because sometimes people don't get my humor, my mom reads the blog, so don't stress yourself out about keeping my secrets.)

My mom helped the kids build a plane in the yard! I think she was wanting to get out of the messy house.

While Kora was napping Gramee spent HOURS doing a Highlights puzzle book with Kees. 

In the past 7 months, I'm pretty sure this is the only mess we didn't make! Gramee did it!

So we sort of managed to look presentable, dropped Kora off at the nursery, and ate the yummiest steak I've ever had.  They had 3 Traeger's going!!!

At the banquet:

Doug's dad and stepmom did the entertainment. 

Singing!

My Valentine!

About halfway through the banquet, I realized I hadn't fed Kora much dinner and I still had 12 hours worth of packing to do. So, Kees and I left to go pick her up. I bathed the kids right away, stupid mistake!  Cause right as I got everything sprawled out ALL. OVER. THE. FLOOR, Doug's dad and step mom came over.  I'm not sure who was more mortified, me or my mom.  I'm sure my mom's house is never as clean as she'd like it while we're here, but this was quite possibly the worst it has ever looked....standing room only.  What's worse than mortified...google told me "abashed" is a synonym, still doesn't cover it!  So here's my formal apology, first to my mother, who is a good housekeeper and secondly to my in-laws, who may never believe that is true.  I'm sorry, to all y'all!

Bath time 

Remember how excited I was about the mess that wasn't ours, well Kora did this...

Grandpa Boo hand delivering the kids chocolates. Kora approves!

We eventually made it to Grandma's, our heads barely hit the pillow and then we were up and at 'em headed to church. 

Storage Wars

Wednesday (2-12-14):

(My apologies for lack of details, my memory is fuzzy and when I take less pictures, I remember less, so here's what I got...)

I heard singing, walked around the corner, and found Kora singing her little heart out, sitting in the kitchen by herself.

We may have crushed this box.

Our last official speaking engagement was at Liberty Morris.  It's a bit of a drive, so we decided to head that way early so we could pick up dinner.

TACO BELL!!

After we left Taco Bell, I looked back and saw Kora with her fingers in her ears, Kees thought it was funny and joined in.

At Liberty!

Thursday (2-13-14):

And so it began, the sorting, organizing, and packing.  We have a storage unit we've been using, plus there's stuff in my parents garage (in real time 3-1-14, we survived and fit more stuff in the van than I was expecting...more on that later).

Notice we've been at the storage unit less than 5 minutes and Kora has lost a boot.

Some of our stuff from Thailand.  Less than 10 minutes in, and I was crying. It is so overwhelming when your WHOLE life is seemingly reduced to a few boxes.  That's what happened, when we left Thailand we had eight 50 lb pieces of luggage. That's it, some clothes, home school supplies, toys, and oh, so many memories.  These past months have been quite a roller coaster of emotions, but re-opening those boxes was hard. Final.  We're not going back, this meager collection will be assimilated with whatever we accumulate over the next few years.  It'll get mixed with the old and the new and that part of my life isn't MY LIFE anymore.  Poor Doug, he just wanted to "get er done" and I fell apart.  Thankfully, I pulled it together relatively quickly, but geeze, when does this get "easy",  I guess when I die. :)

More pieces of my past, from the early early years.  A puff paint shirt Mamaw made, and Iceland shirt my dad brought me back from Iceland, a Native American pillow case outfit, and my brownie uniform.  I may have taken pictures because I was getting rid of these things, but please, whatever you do, do NOT tell my mother.  She'd kill me!

I realized I hadn't seen or heard Kora in a bit.  I found her like this.  My first thought was, "Thank you Lord she is not writing on the van, I don't care where she got that paper, I'm just glad it is, in fact paper and not her face."

Kees found a badge, awesome.

 

Golf clubs, and various other toys.

Doug scared Kora, but he also scared me, I think he should destroy that mask, just sayin'.

This is what they do....

Reading with Gramee, Kora needed her own book.  She has to be in charge.

Kora wanted to put some make up on, so we tried a bunch of little lip gloss samples we found.

Then we put make up on her baby. She was putting it on the baby's face at first, but then she saw Kees drawing hair on his baby, so she did too.

Kees drew hair on the baby's head and facial hair...such a boy.

Helpers!

This cake, is only slightly famous now. The men's bible study at church was fasting to pray for our youth pastor who was going to be preaching the following Sunday, then Erlir was going to bring pizza. Around 5, when Doug was starving, I said, "Hey, is anyone bringing dessert?"  They didn't think so, and I love baking, so yeah...this cake.  It's not a recipe I invented and it's shamefully simple, but the guys loved it so much, it's already been requested again (twice!).  It's just a chocolate cake baked per the instructions, then you poke holes in it, top it with one can of sweetened condensed milk, on jar of caramel ice cream topping, then you spread a regular sized tub of whipped cream on top, and sprinkle with whatever candy you may have handy. The original recipe is for toffee bits, but I didn't have any and used crushed peanut butter cups...also yummy!

Kora drawing. She loves drawing!