Destructible Dell....

When Morgan was a few months old, Shane had a work conference in San Destin, Florida so we packed up every baby gadget in the entire house and brought it to Florida.  While Shane was in meetings, Morgan and I played in the pool, took naps, strolled around and one afternoon I let her fall off of the sofa onto the tile floor... Naturally I was hysterical and certain that my neglect had allowed a severe brain injury.  She cried, I cried, I called Shane and admitted my neglect, and an hour later, she was fine.  A little ice cream, a few kisses, and she was good as new.  It was at this point that I realized I made a pretty indestructible product.  I grew her...  And she would probably survive the numerous scrapes and bruises, falls and bumps she would encounter during her lifetime...

This is not the case for my laptop... But I think if I can make a durable "product" (and don't blast me for calling my child a "product"), why can't Dell? Let me explain.... Last week my laptop was in the protective computer bag sitting on a bench in my house.  Naturally there was "kid crap" on the bench, so the bag wasn't exactly level and the bag fell off... Big deal, right?  Morgan survived her fall, I was sure my computer would...WRONG!  NOTHING was recoverable from the hard drive...Luckily I only lost a few months of pictures and I'm purposely not figuring out which ones they were, oh my Christmas Card address list is gone too, so I'll be playing the game, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" this year... I'm just moving on, but I'm really upset about this whole broken hard drive thing in the first place...  Doesn't Dell make enough money and employ enough engineers to figure out how to put more padding inside the laptop?  Like the amount of padding that Morgan has... It think that should be enough...

But like I said, after a little public ranting, I'm officially moving on...My Walmart started carrying SMASH products, oh it makes grocery shopping just a little more enjoyable...and it was so neat and organized and since my scrapbook style leans toward "piling crap on top of crap", these things were perfect...

some vintage and some girly, just perfect...

I saw Magic Mike last night and it just confirmed that I never need to see a Chippendale's show in my life because there is NOTHING attractive about greasy naked gyrating men...and I mean NOTHING!  Six packs abs are nice, but not when they are accompanied by greasy hair, thongs and very bad acting.  But I am glad that I saw it, otherwise I would have been the only woman in America who hadn't...and there was ONE man in the audience...disturbing...

Now for a few layouts...Avery's 7th birthday last November with the sweetest friends a girl could have...

For Avery's birthday, the girls got Coco "The Dog that Cancer Bought"...Shane and I promised ourselves that once the girls made it through cancer, there would be a dog...just another thing I have to thank cancer for...When people ask me if I love Coco, I say "I love that my girls love Coco...."

Last Mother's Day I took the wig off...and never put it back on...it was a fantastic celebration!!

I never in a million years growing up in NOLA imagined that my girls would be going to 4H festivals...helloooo Dutchtown!!

Mia looked beautiful at her Baptism, but the picture that cracks me up is the one of Hannah, Morgan and Avery studying the prayer books - as if THAT is going to help!!

I could have an album each year dedicated just to the Christmas season.  I collect Christmas paper and embellishments all year long.  Here are my cute girls...

That's it for today...Shane and I went to a friend's wedding recently and on each table was a plaque that said "It's never too late to live happily ever after" and I thought it was just perfect.  Hope you are laughing this weekend!

Summer Livin'

So here we are at 120 degrees at 7am...I love when I break a sweat inside my house as I'm getting dressed...gotta love the South...

We have already faced the dreaded green pool hair...It only took a few times at the neighborhood pool and the Y pool for Avery's white hair to go green.  I tried to play it off and tell her it was really cool and looked highlighted, but the sound of her hysterical crying drowned me out.  Naturally we were heading out to a family Triathlon picnic and my anxiety was at an all time high with the thought of being surrounded by insanely fit women and men for the afternoon, and then we added the 7 year old green hair meltdown...I was secretly relieved that Avery and I might be able to skip the Fit Fest due the Green Hair Epidemic, but when she realized she would miss the crawfish she told me to braid the green hair and get in the car...damnit, I was SO close...

I survived Fit Fest by telling myself that even though the skinny tan girls are A-mazing in their shorts and tank tops...I was FORCED to be tough, and they just choose to be tough triathletes, so I'm really tougher....and I have better skin...less leathery and sun damaged...none of this is actually true, but these are the lies I tell myself when I am surrounded by hoards of triathletes in social settings...

Back to the green hair...Baking soda in Dawn does remove the green....the power of Google, Ironman, a hysterical daughter and an iPhone...and it's really fun to make your child wear a hair net (I only had a shower cap, but a hair net would have been so much better)...

I went to the ENT this week because for the last 6 weeks I thought I had fluid in my ear and I am was ready to face the steroids to dry it up...Nope, not fluid...Hearing loss...Are you kidding me?? and the doctor's only comment was "Nothing can be easy with you, can it?"  I'm pretty sure when I rolled my eyes he got the point that doctors stopped surprising me about 18 months ago...So I'm just enjoying the muffled sound of the girl's fighting...Apparently it might repair itself, steroids might help repair it, it might be a benign tumor, it might be removed, it might...............so I'll just wait and see for a little while and enjoy the muffledness....

I did a little scrapbooking, nothing magazine worthy, but I am slowly using up this crazy hoard of mine... This is an adventure last summer in NOLA, on the streetcar, the steps of One Shell Square, the Audubon Zoo, the Cool Zoo and the corner of Carrollton and St. Charles...we might not live in NOLA anymore, but I sure wish we would hurry up and win the Powerball and buy a condo there....

here's my sister and her family last Christmas....don't know about all that "white space" on the left page, but once it's done, I'm not going back....

here's the New Orleans Bowl in December...

so Ironman is in NOLA tonight for a race tomorrow morning and each precious angel has a friend sleeping over.  The sleepover is a completely selfish move on my part because then they mostly leave me alone in my scraproom so I can blog and shuffle scrapbook paper...delightful...and I get the king size bed to myself...SWEET!!!  Hope you are finding some time to relax and LAUGH this weekend....