We cleaned out the attic a few weeks ago and I found a Collector’s Tin of Crayola crayons that I’d kept from when I was a kid. It was something I’d forgotten all about, having received the tin as a gift when I was just a little too old to care about crayons anymore and so it was put away in a box and moved from apartment to apartment and house to house.

When I found it, I was sure that they’d all be melted since they’d been in a box in the attic for over a decade. Surprisingly when I opened the tin, the crayons were fine.

As a kid, one of my favorite things in the ENTIRE WORLD was a brand new box of crayons. Their smell!  Their newness! All in tact, their paper unripped. We’ve survived on remnants of restaurant crayons for all these years, with the exception of the box of 16 crayons that was on Carson’s Kindergarten school supply list.  My poor, deprived children.

Since Carson has recently started to be interested in drawing and coloring, I showed him what I found in the attic.

This box of 64 crayons, complete with built-in sharpener, and this kid! MAN! His mind was BLOWN!  He couldn’t get over 64 CRAYONS! In ONE box!  With a sharpener! He studied each and every crayon for a good half hour.

“Look, Mom!  This one says, ‘sky blue,’ and this one says, ‘salmon!’ Have you ever even HEARD of that?!”

He doesn’t want his sister to even look in the direction of the crayons, with her bull-in-a-china-shop ways.  He wants to avoid any risk of the 64 perfect crayons getting broken.

And when I was at the grocery store yesterday, I saw that they now sell boxes of 96 crayons.  I guess they’ve been selling these boxes for awhile, but I just discovered their existence.

Guess what he’s getting for Valentine’s Day? He is going to FLIP OUT!

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Tate and I had a date set up for last Friday night, so despite feeling like crud-o-la, we packed the kids off to the trusty Parent’s Night Out program at one of the local churches.  This was the first time we’d been able to do this since August, Carson was actually sent off with the big, elementary age kids for the first time ever and Ella stayed with the other preschoolers.  The church makes you take a card with your child’s information on it and it must be used to get your child back.  No card-no kid.  I guess they send those to the dungeon at the church if the parents don’t have their card at the end of the night. I don’t want to find out!

The older kids only get signed in, no card was given when Carson was dropped off, which made Tate very nervous.  I’m protective of the kids, sure, but Tate is even more protective and he didn’t feel at all comfortable with the way it didn’t seem as secure for the older kids.  I brushed it off and assured him that he was being a little anal and to relax because it DATE NIGHT WOO HOO! (Cough, snort, where’s my cold medicine?!?!)

We ate at one of those Brazilian restaurants where the men come by with hunks of meat that they carve off for you.  Our date included three other couples- there was lots of laughing and wine sipping and general merriment.  It’s all fun and games until the bill shows up, amirite?!  HOLY $126 DINNER.  I mean, it was fun to hang out with friends and eat a lot of carved meat, but it wasn’t $126 fun.  This part of the post has nothing to do with anything-really it’s just a public service announcement:  BEWARE OF BILLS AT BRAZILIAN STEAKHOUSES.

You’re welcome!

So if you’re one of those sleuth types, you may have already realized that when we went to pick up the kids, we learned that the night didn’t go so well for Carson.  Somehow, not too long before we came to pick him up, Carson got separated from his class as they were leaving the movie room. He says that he went straight back to his classroom, but nobody was there.  Somehow he managed to make it all the way upstairs, where a volunteer eventually found him sobbing.

I have no idea what the actual timeline of events really is, I have no idea if his teacher ever even knew he was missing.  I’m confused how a child could get separated from his class and manage to make it past where I would have assumed adults would have been monitoring doors and up a set of stairs before he was found.  I don’t want to be alarmist or make a mountain out of a molehill, but you know-when you trust people to watch your child-and that is basically their SOLE responsibility, it’s a bit disconcerting that something like this could happen.

I hardly slept that night, waffling between being utterly FURIOUS and grateful that he was smart enough not to go outside or get lost in the church. (It’s one of those mega churches with a school attached, so he could have easily gotten lost in the building.)

I should have called the director of the Parent’s Night Out Program, but I was afraid that I’d cry and sound either like a blubbering mom or a maniac.  I did email the director, though, so that she’ll at least be aware that they LOST MY CHILD last Friday.  Obviously they need to put into place a better system for keeping track of kids.

Unrelated to any of this, my cold is almost gone!  So that’s good, right?

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

I know that watching too much TV is bad, but I also know that movies and shows have inspired their love for not only reenacting the stories, but extending the stories with their own imaginations into epic adventures.

Our Saturday mornings are usually devoted to pajamas, waffle consumption, and cartoons. I somehow slept through the waffle portion of the morning and awoke to find Carson and Ella absorbed in the pages of a Tintin comic book instead of staring at the TV screen. While Ella and I enjoyed a girls weekend away several weeks ago, Carson and Tate had a boys weekend complete with pizza and a trip to the movie theater to see The Adventures of Tintin-where Carson has found new source of inspiration.

After school last week, I could hear them in the other room playing, caught up in an elaborate scheme to find the clues while getting away from the bad guys.

“Come on,” Carson yelled to Ella, “we can hide in here.”

“Tintin!” Ella called to Carson, “the bad guy has me!  Save me, Tintin!”

They went on like this, replaying scenes over and over, changing the details to include sword fights and capes. Running and hiding, they laughed and yelled and pretended to be in great distress.  I stealthily peeked in on them and they immediately froze when they spotted me, too shy to continue their acting.  I begged them to go on, to show me what it’s like to be the good guys.

But it’s not the same with someone watching, so I left them and listened around the corner as they picked up right where they left off in their Tintin adventure, defeating the bad guys with great gusto.

::

I’m so excited to be partnering with Hallmark for their Life is a Special Occasion campaign this year.  I will finally be forced to learn that there is only one “s” in “occasion!”  Of course, I am also so excited for the chance to share the stories from our life.

Hallmark is compensating me for participation in this campaign. As always-all opinions expressed are my own.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve just recently signed on with Hallmark as part of their Life is a Special Occasion campaign.  I’m really excited because I will now have no excuse to not write here in this space and talk about the little, big, and everything in between events happening ’round these, here parts.  I’m also excited because, well, it’s Hallmark!

Continuing with the theme of: Talking About Myself, here’s what I’ve been talking about on my Babble Voices blog, Southern By Proxy…(I’d be so honored if you’d visit me there.  Yes, of course I realize that it’s a lot to ask.  It’s just that, I miss you, my regular blog readers, and I feel like I’m fumbling around over there trying to find my voice and the type of post that “works.”)

* Carson has nightly homework in Kindergarten-yes, KINDERGARTEN-and I’m just trying to figure out what the point of busy work really is.

* I got grazed by the sleepover bullet and I’m hoping that I don’t get hit with it again any time soon.

* Don’t get your panties in a bunch, but I don’t really think it’s that horrible when someone says to you, “you sure have your hands full!”

And now to the more selfless portion of the program: I want to start a feature on either Thursdays or Fridays…or you know, whenever the mood strikes, to feature great posts I’ve read around the Internets.  With the share function gone from Google Reader, I just feel like I never get to tell the world what they should be reading.  It was one place I could be totally bossy and get away with it.

Jennie’s posts are always thoughtful and insightful, but I love this post-it’s romantic in a the very best of ways.  Eight.

Having devoted a good portion of January to unsubscribing to EVERYTHING in an effort to manage my email better, this post by Marinka had me chuckling out loud (COL).

I love reading birth stories, I think in another life I’d like to be a doula, and I loved Emily’s birth story about her precious fourth baby, Paul Richard.

And that’s all I’ve got for now, folks.  Any good news to share?

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

“There’s not really enough snow for playing. It’s just a dusting. You can see most of the grass, for goodness sakes!”

“No, Mommy, see?” Carson pointed out the window. “There’s snow all over the driveway!”

Well, they did cancel school.  I guess it wouldn’t have been a real snow day if we hadn’t:

1. Taken 45 minutes to find all the hats, mittens, and boots.

2. Taken another 45 minutes to get dressed in double layers.

3. Made a snow angel in what little snow there was

4. Played for two minutes outside before:
a. Someone needed to pee
b. Someone complained of being freezing cold

5. Came inside and undressed, leaving a pile of wet clothes in a heap on the floor

6. Had hot chocolate:
a. With marshmallows

Truth? I love these days as much as they do.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

You can bet that I won’t be playing around on Pinterest today.  I certainly don’t need anymore reason to feel inferior.

Carson went to bed last night without stories because he yelled at me one time too many.  Tate went to bed at 9 pm, silently.  I wasn’t particularly proud of my parenting or my wife-ing last night, but to be fair, there were two other people who shouldn’t be proud of their behavior either. Punks.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.  It’s the unresolved wrongs that invade dreams with streaky, anxiety-filled, nonsensical scenes that leave you bleary eyed in the morning.

“Never go to bed angry,” they say.  Well THEY are right, but THEY are also not practical.  Sometimes there’s really nothing left to be said.  You just have to be angry and decide to get over it.

I guess the same should be said for my mood.

I think today needs the fancy body wash, extra mascara, and waffles.  Definitely waffles.  They’re scientifically proven to be mood perker-uppers.  It’s true.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

I ran miles and miles and miles.  I started a business. I got paid as a freelance writer. I sent my baby to Kindergarten.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I actually feel pretty good about my resolutions from last year. I mean, I didn’t get all of them accomplished, but I still feel like I put a rather sizeable dent in my list.

Last year’s goals (2011):

Personal:

1.  Continue to work on being more calm, less rushed, less prone to yelling
**I am still working on this.  I think I will always be working on this. I try to remember the quote from Ann Voskamp, “Life is not an emergency,” particularly when I’m practically a damn ringmaster with a whip, freaking out about how NOT QUICKLY the children are moving when it’s time to go somewhere.
2.  Lose two pants sizes DONE! (Actually it was 3 pants sizes, but whose counting?!)
3.  Drink at least 64 ounces of water everyday
**I–I just am unable to remember to drink water, or any liquids, except when I’m suddenly dying of thirst.  I’m keeping this on my list for next year.
4.  Bake bread from scratch
**Nope.  Not really feeling this one for 2012 either.
5.  Run two 5K’s DONE! (I think I ran 4 5K races and 1 10K race.)
6.  Have an email/social media/computer free day per week
**I did such a good job on this for the first few months of 2011, but then I just didn’t.  I do try and and reduce my computer time on the weekends, but I just can’t have completely email/social media/computer free days.
7.  Read a whole bunch-a books (again) Mostly done.  Will try to read 40 books this year!
8.  Help teach my children to be kinder and more thoughtful by doing random acts of kindness.
**What kind of a loser sets this as a goal and doesn’t do any of it?!  This kind right here. I’ll admit that this one feels uncomfortable to me, which is probably why I SHOULD do this.
9.  Get a passport and travel somewhere out of the country with Tate for our 10th wedding anniversary.  DONE-ish! We went to Hilton Head, SC for our anniversary. I was…disappointed when we initially set up the vacation there.  I wanted tropical, all-inclusive resort in a foreign paradise. Tate wanted safe, familiar US soil.  Hilton Head was such a lovely place, though. I just fell in love with it that I hope we can go back there every summer.
10.  Keep in touch better with my extended family members
**I suck at this.
11.  Initiate more with friends, be the one to call, the one to invite out for dinner…
**I suck at this, too.
12.  Catch up on Mad Men DONE! Also got caught up on Friday Night Lights.  This year’s plan includes Breaking Bad.
13.  Organize our basement and attic
**Ha! Ha ha ha ha, ha.  No.
14.  Have a garage sale and/or donate to a worthy organization (any suggestions?) (DONE!)
15.  Buy all new make-up with the help of a friend to tell me what to buy DONE!
16.  Be a better blog commenter (comment on at least 10 blog posts per week)
**I’m keeping this one for next year.  My blog commenting got even worse this year.
17.  Take more risks even if it means that I might look stupid or embarrass myself I guess starting a business counts as taking a risk?  It feels like a risk. It feels like I look stupid quite often.

Photography:

1.  Take photos of at least 3 families Kinda done! I took photos of one family and one newborn, plus a wedding.  Photography is a lot of work and I’m pretty sure that it’s not something I want to pursue as a profession.
2.  Get more photos printed DONE! They are in a box, though, not displayed. *shrugs shoulders*
3.  Make a photo book of my favorite shots
**Nope.  Didn’t get this done.  Maybe this year.  Probably not, though
4.  Get better with photographing and editing shots taken in artificial light. I’m calling this one DONE, even though I still have a lot to learn.  Lightroom has been a big help with fixing white balance, as well as the Clickin’ Moms class I took.
5.  Learn to use my external flash (affiliate link) Another one that I’m calling DONE, but still have SO, SO MUCH to learn.
6.  Shoot a wedding DONE! NEVER AGAIN.
7.  Instead of Project 365, complete a Project 52, choosing the best photos from each week in 2011.
**I need a photography project for this year because I’m going weeks without even picking up my camera.  I don’t want to lose everything I’ve learned, but I also don’t need yet another thing to make me feel overwhelmed.

Spiritual:

1.  Write one post about my faith that explains how much it means to me DONE!
2.  Read books about other faiths
**I need suggestions.
3.  Remember to pray before every meal
**I’m usually so hungry and ready to get dinner over with, cleaned up, and the kids to bed that I forget to pray.  (See above regarding my goal to stop rushing.)
4.  Lead a prayer outloud DONE.  It was semi-awful the three times I did it. I don’t feel confident in HOW you are supposed to pray outloud.  I usually just talk to God like he’s my dad sitting next to me on the couch, except silently and in incomplete thoughts, and I don’t know how to do that outloud with other people listening.
5.  Lead a study in my women’s group at church DONE! (Actually I co-lead a study, but I’m counting it!)

This year’s goals (2012):

Personal:

1.  Calm, patient, less yelling.  Yadda yadda yadda. Same ol’, same ol’.
2.  Drink more water!
3.  Work with my kids to figure out how to serve others, maybe through donations, projects, volunteering, and/or random acts of kindness.
4.  Call family and friends.  On the phone.  Just to say hi.
5.  Organize the basement and attic.
6.  Be a better blog commenter.
7.  Run a half-marathon.
8.  Run a 5K in under 30 minutes.
9.  Laugh more.
10. Catch up on Harry Potter movies
11.  Read 40 books this year!
12.  Find a TV show that Tate and I can watch together.

Business:

1.  Set up my business as an LLC.
2.  Grow my business, increase pageviews to the website and get more Facebook fans.
3.  Sell advertising for my business and create campaigns with local companies that are mutually beneficial.

Spiritual:

1.  Figure out how God wants to use me and then do it.
2. Read books about other faiths
3. Read the Bible

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

My neighbor had the cutest baby boy ever.  Besides Carson, of course.  I think this link will work to see the newborn pictures I took of him.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No, thank God.

5. What countries did you visit?

None.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

A clean house.  Organized papers.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

October 8-13, our trip to Disney!  Everything about the trip was just so MAGICAL.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Losing weight, sticking with running for longer than a month, and starting my business.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I feel like I lost my funny this year.  I read every post I wrote here in 2011 and I had nothing funny to say at all.  I feel so bogged down with work and life and school and everything else, that I notice that I don’t find things as funny as I used to.  I want my funny back.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

No.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Our vacations.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Everyone I know who did something kind for others.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Too many people.  Jerry Sandusky and everyone who covered up for him definitely stands out.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Mortgage, our new car, vacations, and Kroger.  I should never complain about my life.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

God, Running, Friday Night Lights, Hilton Head, Disney World

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

Life is a Highway by Rascal Flatts.  My kids were obsessed with this song and we listened to it over and over and over.  Also, You are My Sunshine.  I sang that to Ella many nights this year before bed.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:  a) happier or sadder?  b) thinner or fatter?  c) richer or poorer?

Happier and sadder, thinner, richer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Spending quality time alone with Tate.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Being so serious.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

We spent Christmas here at home with my parents.  Christmas day was relaxing and lazy.  The weekend before Christmas we enjoyed a visit with Tate’s family.  Our holiday season was wonderful as always. Except for all the new stuff that I have no idea where it will go and the lack of Christmas spirit I felt this year.  Other than that, it was GREAT.  Just great.

21. Did you fall in love with 2011?

I did re-fall in love with Tate after our anniversary trip and trip to Disney.

22. What was your favorite TV program?

Mad Men and Friday Night Lights. 

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

I really don’t like to use that word, hate.  But no, there is not.

24. What was the best book you read?

I feel like I didn’t really read that many good books this year.  If I had to pick the best, it would be Cutting for Stone. (affiliate link)

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Mumford and Sons

26. What did you want and get?

Thinner thighs and hips so that I could wear skinny jeans with tall boots.

27. What did you want and not get?

I can’t think of anything, I’m a very lucky girl.

28. What was your favorite film of 2011?

I really enjoyed Inception and The Social Network.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was 36 and my in laws came into town to watch the kids so that Tate and I could go to Nashville for the weekend.  It was perfect.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

More laughing and having a better handle on juggling working with parenting and wife-ing.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept of 2011?

Trying hard not to look frumpy. Always avoiding the frump.

32. What kept you sane?

Saturday and Sunday.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?

That Rick Perry video sure was disturbing.

34. Who did you miss?

Family and friends who live far away

35. Who was the best new person you met?

Heather from TheMommyhood.com

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

Trust your instincts. Pray. You can do anything you put your mind to.  Kindness always wins.

37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

See?  I can’t think of a single song lyric when put on the spot like this.

********

Happy New Year, everybody!  Hope 2012 will be a great year for all of us!

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Today is Tate’s 25th* birthday! I know that people who have Christmas babies swear that they’ll always take care to separate Christmas from the birthday, present and attention wise. When I married Tate, I even told myself that I’d never fall into the habit of glossing over his birthday so close to Christmas, or tell him that his Christmas present was also his birthday gift.  Merry Christmas AND Happy Birthday!  Sorry I’m too cheap to get you another gift, sucker!

So here I sit feeling guilty this December 29th because the Christmas gift I bought for him also counts as his birthday gift. It was a really expensive gift, though, and my PayPal account is now empty. So…

I like for people to fuss over me on my birthday, make like it’s an important day. Maybe that makes me silly or childish, but I like feeling that I’m special to other people.

As much as I complain about my husband, he is a pretty good guy.  Actually, he’s a really good guy.  I wish that putting Christmas together didn’t overwhelm me, then drain me of my enthusiasm to celebrate.

I will make him carne asada for dinner and Ella is going to whip up a delicious Devil’s food whoopie pie with her Easy Bake Oven. He’ll open his card from me and maybe if I can convince the kids to sit down long enough, they’ll even draw him a picture or color something for him from their SpongeBob or My Little Pony coloring books.

Maybe his present could be that I won’t complain even once about what he chooses to watch on TV tonight.

Happy birthday, Tate. I’m sorry I stink at post-Christmas birthdays.

*He’s not really 25.  Let’s just pretend, okay?  It’s just that every year that HE gets older means that I also get older.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

It’s amazing that a holiday that for centuries has been on December 25th, can completely floor us with it’s arrival.  If there wasn’t so much to do to prepare for this one twenty-four hour period, maybe we would feel better prepared for it’s arrival?

The good news is that I am 100% done with shopping. (Imagine that I’m doing the Arsenio Hall arm pump thingy accompanied by some hooting.)  However, I’m not done wrapping, meal planning, or cleaning.  I was kinda sorta hoping for your help, kind reader, with the meal planning part.

We have already had one Christmas with Tate’s side of the family where we served turkey AND we had turkey at Thanksgiving AND I’m plain sick of turkey.  One of our Christmas guests doesn’t eat ham.  I’m completely baffled about what I should make for our Christmas dinner! My husband suggested venison.  I suggested he stop talking nonsense.

Do you have any good ideas for what I could serve?  Please and THANK YOU.

(photo source)

:::

If you’re one of those people who’s already done with cookingcleaningshoppingwrapping and are looking for some most excellent reads, here are a few to keep you busy.  No, no…YOU’RE welcome.

Answering the door, scantily clad, for the delivery man was at least better than Ella answering the door without me around.

We discussed eggnog here a few years back, but it’s a very, VERY important subject, yes? My son had some very pointed words to say about eggnog.

I was interviewed at Care.com regarding my thoughts on New Year’s resolutions.  I think your early resolution could be to click RIGHT HERE.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.