Snowy Weekend

We were at Grandma and Grandaddy Lucas's house Friday night when the snow started falling. When the flakes started coming down, Drew took Joseph on the back porch and he started yelling, "BUBBLES! BUBBBLES! BUBBLES!" while stomping his feet and clapping his hands. We spent all day Saturday snowed in...reading, watching tons of TV, making soup. I made some bread but it turned out gosh awful. I think the flour had turned. We did a fair amount of playing in the snow although it was not great play snow. It was fine and dusty and wouldn't make a snow man or even a snow ball. Sunday we made the trek to the Fairview Dairy Bar (Joseph's heaven on earth) to get out of the house. We decided it was safer to drive than walk and the roads looked awful, but we had no trouble. It's only a couple of blocks away and I'm not sure I would have wanted to venture further. J tore up some chicken salad (odd, i thought), creamed potatoes and country style steak. My goal this week is to find a good recipe and make this child some country style steak. It's his favorite thing.

Shoes

Joseph's second favorite thing right now, other than his car, are shoes. His shoes, my shoes, Drew's shoes, any shoes. He's always bringing us shoes and trying to push them on our feet. Drew captured this on camera. The first time he's tried to wear someone else's shoes. This movie makes me laugh every time. Happy Friday!

Holiday Recap Part Three

Finally some Christmas pictures!

I suppose our chimney was not big enough for Joseph's enormous Christmas haul and he had to leave things unassembled in the carport. Thank goodness for elves!

Here's the booty. I think we're going to have to scale it back next year when he's old enough to be spoiled.


This here was the Christmas gift of all Christmas gifts. A car from Grandmommy and Grandaddy Straughan. Joseph was obsessed. O-B-S-E-S-S-E-D. And still is. He gets in and out, like, 50,000 times a day and goes, "Ride! Ride!" Meaning, someone get off your fat rump and push me around while making loud obnoxious "vroom" sounds.



And the big Santa gift was a house with a little slide and climbing wall, which greatly paled in comparison to the car. Again, Santa couldn't be bothered to have his elves put it together.

I regret that I didn't get more/better pictures of Joseph on Christmas. You see, the child has a thing about technological devices (phones, cameras, remotes, etc.) Every time the camera comes out he runs to me and shrieks like a Teradactyl until I give in and let him hold it. Which is problematic, obviously. And we have a dearth of pictures.

Holiday Recap Part Two

Gotta make this a fast one. Joseph's daycare was on a two hour delay (for no reason) and I have to bust a move to get to court before anyone realizes I'm not there.

I am notorious for "checking on" Joseph while he's asleep. If I can't hear him breathing on the monitor, I'll go upstairs and listen by his crib. I sit on the fence between responsible parent and overprotective psycho mom in this regard. Every now and then during one of my "checking" expeditions, I'll find Joseph sound asleep with his rear end saluting the moon. This picture was taken after we returned home from our Sunday School class Christmas party and put Joseph to bed after he partied with friends until 9:00.

My favorite babes. Joseph's kind of obsessed with Chesley's pacifier. He has his own, but he'll take his out, gingerly place it on the floor or a table, take hers out of her mouth, and give it a few sucks before returning it. She just kind of looks at him, like I really wish you would quit doing that.

Alas, J and his gilfriend, Macie. These two are something. To say that it's difficult to get them together in a picture is an understatement.

Here they are same time the year before.

Holiday Recap Part One

I feel like the month of December picked me up by the seat of my pants, threw me into the eye of a hurricane, and has finally set me down safe and warm in my living room. I think this whole holiday thing needs to be rethunked. Or maybe we just need to do a better job deciding what's important and what we can politely decline. Nevertheless, every day and evening of the past month was filled to the brim with holiday get togethers, work deadlines, meetings, trying to get ready for Christmas, cooking, you name it. It got to a point the week before Christmas that I had to make a list of things that had to get done each day. If it wasn't on the list, it didn't get done and was saved for after Christmas. It didn't help that I had numerous deadlines at work that week. But we harriedly survived it. It was busy, frantic, exhausting at times. And it was wonderful. I decided to do a big recap blog post of the holidays and then start anew with blogging in 2010. I'm going to have to do it in more than one installment.





This is my latest attempt to embarass my husband. Here we are going to the Lee County Bar Association christmas party. We have a small bar and about 30 of us show up to imbibe and tell war stories. Just the day before I came across this fabulous hair in my attic and decided it deserved to be worn. Drew very tactfully attempted to talk me out of it. The goal was to attempt to have my colleagues believe I had actually done this to my hair. It only worked on one person, who was suprised to see me the following Monday morning as a brunette. Drew finally came around when the general consensus was that the hair was a good look and needed to be worn to court. Like a superhero. I could put on my wig right in the elevator right before stepping into the courtroom and sweep in to fight the evil of oppressive governmental interference. Before leaving I would stand up on the defense table and shout, "Justice for all!!!!" I could have a sidekick who carried a gilded scroll of the Constitution with which he would thump those who sought to undermine the protections so briliantly afforded to us by our forefathers. He could wear a wig too, a powdered one. I think this will be my business plan for 2010.





We were forced to do some yard work one Saturday in early December. It's dark by the time we get home from work and so weekends must bear the burden of raking up leaves. Do you recall that it rained almost every weekend the whole month November? I won't even get into the disaster of when I tried to pay a 12 year old to rake up our yard (an acre). It didn't so much work out, but he cashed in anyway. On Saturday morning it decided for once not to rain but was freezing cold, hence the snowsuit. We raked the leaves onto the blue plastic tarp and we put Joseph in the middle of the pile and Drew would drag it down the driveway to the road. A poor man's Disneyworld. At one point I decided to "ride" with him. However, my rear end is quite a bit heavier than little Joseph's and sunk to the bottom of the leaves, resting directly on the tarp. So the ride starts and we're having fun, when all the sudden my rear end starts to feel hot, then hotter, then "Oh! Oh! Stop!" The weight of my hind end had caused a hole to wear in the tarp as it dragged across the driveway. The hole did not stop with the tarp. My favorite black work out pants were ruined and the unfortunate situation did not stop there. I'd be willing to bet my house, law practice and maybe my dog that no one else who has walked the earth has ever chaffed their behind by sitting in leaves on a plastic tarp as it's being drug up the driveway.


Here's me and my best little friend before church. I think this was taken the day after the tarp incident. (Although this is mere speculation, as I appear to be sitting comfortably). Note the bruise on Joseph's forehead. There is almost always a little bruise on that same exact spot. About once a week I get an "incident report" from daycare, always along these lines, "Joseph fell and bumped his head on a toy . . . Joseph was pushed into the wall by another child and bumped his head . . . Joseph fell into the toy shelf and bumped his head . . . Joseph was running and tripped. He bumped his head on the floor." The wierd thing is that its always the exact same spot. He has been bruiseless recently, leaving me to wonder who this strange child is wandering through my house.