Women of Faith Wednesday -- Advice to Self

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I saw this on my friend Amanda's blog and had to follow the linky. As my oldest is growing up, I think all the time about things I wish I had known back then (or maybe it's things I wish I didn't know now!)

So, the question is ...

If you could go back in time and tell your teenage self one thing, what would you say?

(Just one? Really?)

Okay ... the main thing I would say is that when a person reveals their true character, believe them the first time. In other words - when someone shows you that they are a jerk, just trust them. Don't make them prove it over and over. Know that it's better to be alone than to hang out with someone who treats you badly. The Lord will bring good people into your life, trust Him to do so. :)

And because I would never really just say one thing, I have one more thought. Shaving your eyebrows? Never a good idea. Not that I ever did that, or ever would do that. I'm just sayin' ... so, to my teenage self? Put down that razor. Nothing good is going to come from that.

My Not So Interesting Life

Pin It I've been a little antsy lately. I've been wanting to update my blog but really haven't been able to come up with anything to share. The thing is, we've been RUNNING. It's not like we've been sitting around doing nothing. We've been doing tons of things.

We had our co-op end of the year open house. I have to giggle at this - every year, the kids are SO SAD for co-op to end and the moms all get together to do a group happy dance. (Which, to be honest, that's what needs to be recorded for posterity!) We love co-op and will be happy for it to restart in the fall, but there really is much rejoicing when it ends in the spring.

We loaded up and went to the zoo last week too, which was fun. After that, we went to visit my sister and nephew.

The girls also had their end of the year choir concert. This was FABULOUS, as always. Their leader does such a fabulous job with these kids! I had a special treat this year - both girls had small solos. Gabbi sings a lot so the novelty of her singing has worn off a little. Not really worn off, but we know what to expect when she sings. Madelyn though, this was her first. She sang "so, a needle pulling thread" (name that song) and did a great job! This concert is always such a treat. We refer to the choir as the best kept secret around here because it's always amazing that there aren't tons of kids involved. Gabbi has been there from the beginning and we have no intention of her aging out of it anytime soon!

(bored yet?)

I had a fabulous Mother's Day. My kids and hubby spoiled me, and it was nice. A friend called me and asked if she could come over and keep my kids so Jim and I could have a date. Um, YEAH. What a fabulous blessing! Jim and I had a very nice date. (We officially have old people dates now. We went to a really nice restaurant and then went to Target to buy dishwasher detergent. I am not even kidding. Woohoo at the romance.)

This week we've been kind of taking it easy. I'm finishing up our school plans for next year, along with working on my co-op plans for next year. Today we got our van back (WOOHOO!!) Brendan was quite sad to give the Tahoe back; he's such a boy. I was delighted to SIT in my car rather than CLIMB into my car.

(Okay, I'm even boring myself now.)

(and now there is a naked little boy tushie in my bedroom, so I suppose I need to close this anyway and get him a towel!)

And yet more Disney?

Pin It Tired of the Disney posts? I think this is the last one! For a little while, anyway! It just occurred to me to pull out the pics from the other times we've gone, and to do a little comparing.

Here we are in 2006. Brendan was a baby, it was Madelyn's 5th birthday, and Gabbi was 7.


Here we are in 2008. Brendan was 2, it was Madelyn's 7th birthday, and Gabbi was 9.


(No, I have no idea why on earth Brendan is insisting on touching Mickey's face in both pics!)

Now here we are with a 4 year old, an almost 9 year old, and an 11 year old.


Noticing that some of us have grown, some of us have grown a LOT, some of us have shrunk a little, and some of us have less hair ... I'm just sayin'. haha. (And um, yeah ... what kind of parents are we that we didn't get a pic of all five of us with Mickey this year? Oh yeah, the kind of parents who didn't want to stand in line for said pic!)

I wish my scanner didn't hate me so much. I'd love to scan in the pics from breakfast O'hana. They are the exact same pics, each two years apart. I'm a big fan of the picture comparing, so those are my favorite.

Bovineophobia

Pin It I made that up. You guessed that, didn't you? I thought it sounded better than heiferophobia or plain ole' cowophobia.

So ... the trip home ... and how it relates to bovineophobia:

We left the campsite at 10:00 on Sunday morning. Ideally, we would have left a little earlier, but it took a couple of hours to pry the baby out of the hands of my girls.

It was an 11 hour drive, which practically means 13 hours after stops for a couple of meals and a couple of bathroom visits. I always forget how the trip home stretches out! We were thinking about getting home at 11, so we ended up not meeting another friend along the way. We should have taken the time to do so. Maybe I would not have bovineophobia now if we had.

So ... 10:30 pm. I had just sent a facebook note that we were in TX and didn't have far to go. Kids were asleep and we were excited to be on familiar ground.

We turned onto the dark highway. Black cows. Black night. Black road. Shriek, crash, screaming.

900 miles driven. Half an hour from home and unfenced cows decided to cross the highway. There were three cows hit and we hit at least two of them. Each side of the car had damage, but (thankfully!) we didn't hit any of them with the middle of the car. Our airbags did not deploy and there were no cows across the hood or anything like that.

The sleeping kids were awakened ... by my screaming rather than the impact. I'm a little embarrassed by that now. Between my screaming and the fact that I threw up every time my eyes went into the vicinity of the cows, we learned that unless there is a need for screaming and throwing up, I'm probably not the best person to have around in an emergency. At least in an emergency involving livestock. There were no injuries to people at all. I was a little bit sore, but even that was minor. My car was repairable, thankfully. I'm very fond of my car and really did not want it to be totaled!

Because I strive for this to be a poop-free blog, and well, when you hit a cow driving at about 70 mph, there is poop involved, I'm just posting a couple of pics. I didn't even realize there were dents on the driver's side until I saw the pics. I knew the mirror was gone, but the dents were a surprise.



And now we're just waiting for my car to be finished. And we're still busy being thankful that the cows were small. Not calves, but not big huge 1500 lb cows either.

Oh - and get this - the DPS officer said that we were NUMBER SIX to hit cows on that road THAT WEEK. Oh my. Let's all hope some farmer fixes his fence before someone is killed!

For the rest of the night, my friend came and got the kids because we didn't know if the car was drivable or not (it was). We just let them keep the kids overnight because the next day was our last class day of co-op, and the kids all wanted to be there. Jim and I drove home ...

... and were pulled over for driving with a headlight missing. The officer said "um, I think this is probably the least of your problems." LOL Um, yeah ... pieces of the car are flying off as we drive, it's covered in poop ... go ahead and pull us over. Thankfully he just gave us a warning and said that he usually tells people to drive more carefully, but in our case, he'd just tell us to watch out for cows. Um, yeah, thanks for that.

It was still a fabulous vacation, and I can't wait to go back to Disney World! I think we'll drive straight through I-10 next time rather than cutting off though! At least if it's dark!

Trip, part 7

Pin It I can't believe I've dragged this out into so many posts. And to the poor people on my facebook, and especially my photobucket, you have to be tired of these same pictures! We're just about done though, I promise!

When we went to Disney World two years ago, I wanted to meet my friend Valerie, who lives in Florida. We decided to get together on our way home at a cabin at a campground on the way. We decided to do that again this year.

It was GORGEOUS and we had a fabulous time! The cabin was right on the Suwannee River. We went for a short walk down the river. Oh, so beautiful!



Then we went on a short drive to another part of the river, Madison Blue Spring. Absolutely gorgeous! Brendan really wanted to swim. Mommy was really nervous about that!


Madelyn was a little timid about it all. She did dunk her feet and wade a little, but mostly she stayed around the stairs. She kept acting like she was going to jump off the platform. She'd walk up there and look down and then change her mind. She did this no less than five times!


Gabbi, on the other hand, walked up and jumped. I was shocked! Look at how blue the water is!


As we were thinking about getting ready to leave, someone pointed out the snakes on the stairs. Yikes. Then Madelyn kicked one of Brendan's shoes off of the platform by the stairs. I was fully prepared to bid a fond farewell to the shoe; no way no how was I going to get close enough to water moccasins to rescue a shoe that's close to being too small. Valerie's husband saved the day and got Brendan's shoe. Bren was very glad, he loves those shoes! LOL So, we survived, shoes intact, and nobody was bitten by a snake!

We thoroughly enjoyed Valerie and Clif and their family! I was a little concerned, as was Valerie, that the girls might try to stow her sweet baby away into our car!

Okay, so that's it for the vacation. I do have one more post regarding the *interesting* trip home. Drive 900 miles and get within about ten of home ... and ...

to be continued!

Trip, part 6

Pin It Day 7, our last day in the park. We went to Animal Kingdom.

We started out at Tusker House with a breakfast with Donald Duck. This was our first time to do this breakfast and we all really enjoyed it.


Another required pic of kids with Mickey.


Brendan REALLY wanted to get his face painted. He told me earlier in the week that he wanted to, but it was raining so I told him we'd talk about it later. He saw the face painters and asked "Can we talk about it now?" So sweet! He was a very cute little pirate!


Madelyn had to have hers done too. She chose tiger eyes. This was her first time seeing herself in the mirror.


Just a cute pic of the two of them showing off their newly painted faces.


When Animal Kingdom closed, we went back to the resort. The kids went swimming for a while, then we went to one of the resort's programs - a campfire and singalong, plus an outdoor movie theater. We made s'mores and ate popcorn and just enjoyed the night. Unfortunately, one of us was way too tired to stay for the whole movie ... that would be ME, and Gabbi. So, we went back kind of early. The two little ones wanted to watch the movie and then got distracted by the pool, so they stayed and went swimming again.

We had every intention of going back to the Magic Kingdom the next morning before heading out, but then we woke up. We were all tired, and it was Saturday and we just couldn't handle more waiting in lines. We'd already spent seven days in the parks and had sucked out all the fun we could handle, I think. So, we went back to the pool for a little while. It was nice to just relax before heading back home.

It's funny, we always start planning a trip to Disney with the attitude that this will be our last one. We kind of did that again this time, but I guess it was mostly half-hearted. We know that we very much want to go back. We've kind of picked a date and a savings plan and can't wait to go back. There's just something that happens there. Disney magic, pixie dust, I have no idea. It's nice though, and I want to hold onto it! Funny that looking at long time financial goals and knowing how CHEAP I can be that family vacations are a priority. They are though, I wouldn't trade the memories we're making for anything!

I have a couple more vacation posts to come! You're waiting by the edge of your seat, I know. ;)

Trip, part 5

Pin It And now for day 6!

We spent this day at Epcot. We spent the morning being lazy and then going swimming. It was nice and a little relaxing.

Then we met our friends at Epcot. Brendan went on a date after we got off Test Track. LOL


Then we were attacked by sharks.


We got all the kids good and caffeinated. These two, with the little one added in, were deep in conversation pretty much every moment we were together, as were the older two.


We had supper at Akershus. It occurred to me just a little bit ago that this was probably our last princess meal. Kind of sad. Brendan already wasn't terribly interested in the princesses. Gabbi played along for the benefit of her parents (good girl!) and Madelyn still enjoyed them quite a bit. It cracked me up that Madelyn loves Snow White. Wanna know why? Snow White has a squeaky voice, which apparently appeals to my squeaky voiced small child. Brendan wouldn't take a picture with Snow White or Aurora, but he did decide that Ariel was kind of cool, and that he would get in a pic with her.


I thought this was a good look for Mad.


Then the sad part of the evening. We had to say goodbye to our friends. And this is the only pic I took of that. I can't believe I didn't take a pic with Becky, or get Gabbi to take a pic with Jim and me with Dan and Becky. Oh well. I did get a cute pic of the older kids.
(Note to Becky -- I am SO GLAD y'all joined us for several days of this trip! We were all blessed to have time to spend with y'all. It was great having Tour Guide Dan to show us some things we would have missed. We love y'all, and I thank God for giving us friends with whom we can just pick up like no time has passed. I really hope it won't be too long before we see y'all again. Love you guys, every one of you!)