Our first real tree since we’ve been together…and supporting the scouts! I really wanted a huge tree but we have very limited space for one. Also? There’s no way it was going in my new car—the days of hauling messy crap is over. 😂
We got rid of our fake tree last year because I was just tired of it…so we got a real tree this year! The plan was to get a fake tree in the after-Christmas clearance sales, but we might wait another year or two to see what house we have next. If we happen to get a house that will fit a 12′ tree…well, then I want a 12′ tree. 🙂 So this is the first time we have EVER had a real tree! (Note: the bummer? It doesn’t smell AT ALL.)
Happy Halloween! I had to get dressed early today because no one will be here this afternoon to help me zip into this dress and I have to be at Katie‘s school Halloween party at 1!! 😂
I also decided to have a little bit of fun with my eye make up today. It’s way outside my comfort zone (so I have more shadow on today than I normally do all week combined) but I think it turned out pretty well for not knowing what the hell I’m doing.
I got a new tiara… It’s for my Halloween costume, but still. Also, I obviously decided to dress up this year. Practice for this week when I am volunteering in Katie’s classroom for her party. It’s supposed to rain buckets today so fingers are crossed it holds off a bit.
Mal (from Disney’s Descendants) and Ash Ketchum (a Pokémon trainer).
(It ended up training right after we started out. We had umbrellas but the kids didn’t care. But they did tire more quickly and we only stayed out about an hour and a half.)
So as you now know, I had the Santa discussion with Owen this morning before school and my heart is currently broken. 💔 So, I needed to do something to take my mind off of that. It was either retail therapy…or makeup therapy. So in trying to conserve a little bit of money, I tried makeup therapy…copying something I’ve seen others do. So here’s my mask, done completely with SeneGence makeup!
It’s sooo not perfect but it’s way better than I thought it would turn out. (I learned there’s a very fine line between just pulling face fat and making it look like a mask. 😂) Also? If you squint just a bit, it looks even more mask-like.
What do y’all think? I’m not quitting my day job that’s for sure… 🥁
I was actually surprised by how many people thought it was a real mask! And this comment from my Sene-crush Siara made my day:
Well I certainly didn’t expect my morning with Owen to include the reveal that Santa is not real. 😳😢💔
I’ve known it’s been coming for a while and I’ve managed to keep pushing it off…and although you know the day will come and you can kind of prepare yourself for it…you are never really ready and I’m sure I didn’t handle it as well as I could have.
I did go over some major points that I had ready (Santa is the spirit of Christmas, he can be a Santa now, etc.) but he wasn’t having ANY of it and he was PISSED. 😭 There were a few tears and throwing things…and saying we lied to him for 10 years and he’s a stupid kid for believing us and that he was disappointed in us. 😭 (P.S. The Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy were included in this bargain of a conversation as well.)
I then had to talk him down from wanting to tell everyone (including Katie) and thankfully 45 minutes later by the time he left for school he was laughing about it and excited about being a Santa this year.
(The best news is that after school he seemed to be really okay and was even shopping for secret Santa gifts for Katie when we were out running errands that night (without her).)
But still, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be over here crying in my margarita because my kid is really growing up and I hate to think about it. And I’ll also be silently cursing the mean kids who ruined it for Owen (apparently) last year. 🤬
When you know you have a costume for your kid in the closet (that you bought at a resale shop last year) so you don’t worry about a costume this year and then you get it out and realize it’s a kid’s medium and you thought it was a men’s medium (because the picture on the package showed an adult plus the cardboard insert was folded so you couldn’t see the checked size box) and the tag just says Medium so now you have to buy or find a costume at the last minute (yes, this is last minute for me).
So you search Amazon and there really are no good kids costumes in the size he needs and men’s costumes are hella expensive so you end up spending $30 on a costume for him that is passable. Stay tuned.
But it was sooooo worth it. We tried a new place for my birthday dinner (recommended by a friend)! Wow. It’s delicious. Pig Candy Grilled Cheese and White Peach Sangria for the win! Oh yeah, and of course a margarita (Mango Chile).
When it’s your birthday and you can’t decide what color lipstick to wear.
First was too light. Second was too dark.
Also? Yes. You can bet your ass I’m wearing my tiara all over hell today!! 🙌🏻🙌🏻 Happy damn birthday to me! 😂
Tiara out to lunch, getting my nails done, and leaving my kid at a neighbor’s after school. Tiara on the go!!
Then, I got birthday calls from my mom and David (as well as a handful of friends who were all in Maine together!) and dad and Linda (who, when I saw they were calling, wondered why).
Then, what better way to end my birthday than a margarita with a new friend (we met at the Paint & Sip a few months ago).
No, wait. THIS is the best way to end my birthday. 💕
Katie was invited to a birthday party for a friend from first grade. I dropped her off since it was at the same time as Owen’s baseball game…and because I didn’t know the mom at all and staying at a four-hour party where I don’t know a single person is one of my personal hells. That said, the mom seemed super cool and I did promise to come back after the game and hang out because it was also a party for the adults if you catch my drift. I can get behind that kind of party for sure.
Fast forward to post-game and I really didn’t want to go because, you know, personal hell. But I went. Walked up to a garage of strangers. Made funny small talk, they laughed, okay maybe this won’t be hell. First room of strangers… Second room of strangers. Ugh. Deck full of strangers. I wanted to grab Katie and run out. I head into the tent to get Katie and leave early and she’s having an absolute blast making an unholy mess with paint, glitter, glue, and assorted craft paraphernalia. (They had already done paintings and were on to photo frames.)
There was so. much. glitter. Another personal hell to be honest.
So I talked to Katie for a minute, she obviously wanted to stay, so I just kind of hung around until I ran into a mom that I’d met before and chatted with briefly…and we did the somewhat uncomfortable chit chat for a bit (she’s PERFECTLY lovely, it just felt a bit weird). Then I finally found the host and we started talking and…y’all?? I found a new friend. We really hit it off, literally chatted for almost two hours straight, and planned a morning hangout in a few days!
This is the kind of party it was and the people they are. Can you see why we might have hit it off? SIX FLAVORS OF MARGARITAS Y’ALL. SIX.
Kafie decided to combine her two projects into one. It’s pretty cute but there’s so much glitter…
Wow. Eighteen years (22 if you count since day one). And there’s no one I’d rather have by my side in this crazy thing called life. 💕
So, we weren’t planning on doing anything to celebrate, then we realized today was our golden anniversary (18th on the 18th). So we decided to take the kids to The Chocolate Sanctuary for a chocolate fountain!!
One thing I love about our family is our traditions. Today we’ve spent the day together celebrating Christmas in July—something we started about six years ago when we got tired of the hustle and bustle during December.
We eat lots of food (Aunt Marilyn always brings german potato salad, Lisa T brings a corn salad, Lori brings taco salad, Aunt Marge brings shrimp and pizza lasagna, and there’s lots of grilling of brats, burgers and ribs—we all have meat sweats by late afternoon since we just can’t stop eating).
We do a white elephant gift exchange—and without fail, one of the women somehow ends up with a tool and ends up just giving it away after trading is over.
We take a family photo—and everyone gives my mom grief—but because of her, we have family photos dating back a loooong time. And I take a cousin photo.
Depending on the location, there’s a fishing contest or turtle races or both, there are lawn games, sometimes there are fireworks and a campfire and s’mores.
There’s always cards (euchre, of course, since we’re midwest people).
And eventually a game of Cooties breaks out and we relive the best stories from the glory days when we all played Cooties for a week when we camped together (Greg was a master from a young age, and today he proved he still has it).
So we all got to wondering…is our family the only one that plays Cooties? Do you have any idea what Cooties even is? I asked on Facebook and predicted 90% would have no idea, and I was dead on. If you don’t count the people directly associated with our family, 91% of the people didn’t know what I was talking about…and most of them thought I was talking about the box game Cootie. (To be honest, I totally forgot the box game was even a thing when I initially posted!!)
So what IS our cooties? I went to Google to see if I could find a succinct definition and I really couldn’t find anything. What? Google failed me? Eventually I found this, which is the basis of our game:
It’s an infection tag game, whereby one person has the cooties and must try to pass it on to someone else. You can’t get the cooties if your fingers are crossed. So if you are the one with cooties, you must catch someone who isn’t paying attention (hence my fingers crossed in the photo). There are lots of good stories, but the best one (and is the aforementioned one with my cousin Greg), is as follows.
We were all packing up and rolling out after a week of camping (pretty sure it was the annual trip to Harrisville). I don’t know how old I was, but it was before my parents divorced, so it was before 4th grade—I’d guess I was maybe 7 or 8? We were in the Oldsmobile ’88 pulling our popup camper, slowly driving out towards the campground exit when we see Greg (who is 4 years older than me, so right about pre-teen) FLAT OUT RUNNING towards us waving his arms crazily. Of course we stopped, assuming we had forgotten something or there was some other emergency (he had cut through the woods to get to us). My mom rolled down her window (was it my mom? how is this part hazy?) and Greg came right up to the car, reached out, and smacked her arm while yelling COOTIES! And there was much laughter on his part and much confusion and damnation on our part!! We had been sooooo close to escaping! And obviously cooties were the last thing on our minds. Well played, Greg, well played. The fact that we’re still talking about it almost 40 years later really says something.
When you learn awesome party tricks from your elders: Tequila-infused watermelon with salted limes. Aunt Rose, you rock!
The annual cousin lineup, by age: 7, 10½, 11, 12 (almost 13), 14 (almost 15).
And Nick is pulling away, which is okay since he is almost five years older!!
Adding older cousin Alex (17) to the mix (Jess was working).
I introduced Lisa to a few new products.
Unfortunately, it was a stormy day so we had to dodge rain and lightning for most of the afternoon…but, on the plus side, it wasn’t 100° with 95% humidity! My hair kinda grew throughout the day.
There was a fishing contest… Aubrey is a Master Fisher so she helped my kids. I was surprised at how long they kept at it! (Of course Tom was out there, too.)
Darrell caught the biggest one:
And then this happened…
Someone started the cooties!! (I think that will be a blog post in itself!) So for the last two hours we all had to keep our fingers crossed! We reminisced about the old days and learned Greg still has what it takes!
The big bummer? Lisa and Alex left pretty early and with the rain throwing things off, we totally forgot to take our group photo!
So let me preface this announcement by asking if you remember what one of my business goals was? Anyone? Bueller?
Yes, it was a family cruise. (I think I specifically said Disney, but realistically any cruise would suffice.) And we hoped the grandparents would tag along—I mean, what a great experience for the kids, right? And we’d all get an amazing vacation where no one has to cook or clean, we all get to relax and have fun with the kids, and hopefully escape some yucky Midwest weather.
So we forewarned the grandparents (they weren’t quite as excited as we were but they promised to think about it) and let our travel agent know we were looking for a good deal on a cruise. But then life takes over and you don’t think about it and time passes and you know that if you don’t actively engage, nothing will ever happen. And then something happens out of the blue and before you know it, you have put down a deposit on a cruise and it’s convenient to wait a few days to tell the kids after their party!
So what happened in an instant? New friends of ours (from baseball) that we’ve been hanging around with (and the kids love) were talking about a cruise they’re going on this fall. And not having any idea that a family cruise was actually in the back of our minds, she (possibly mostly in jest) said “You guys should come with us!” So I took a breath and said “You know, that might just work!”
It was the cruise line we just went on last year (almost the same ship, too) so that was a plus. A quick check of the calendar and with Tom (who pretty much gave an immediate and unequivocal YES!), and a few quick messages with our travel agent…and the cruise was booked! (Our TA even said he’s never booked a cruise that fast before!)
Long multiple-day story short, my dad and stepmom decided to go, too, so that’s awesome and we’re super excited. (We really tried to convince my mom and stepdad to go but weren’t successful.)
In the meantime, Tom started watching YouTube videos about the ship, pretending we were just showing the kids examples of cruises. We reaffirmed that we would be going on a cruise before we moved again, but that still left us two years.
We honestly didn’t think too much about how we were going to tell them, so after the party I rushed to the basement and cobbled together a card with the cruise info on it so they’d read it and hopefully we’d get a great video reaction.
Well, as usual, things didn’t go quite as we’d thought…
Katie’s birthday is obviously today and Owen’s was back in February, but both kids love a pool party so we decided to celebrate both birthdays together! (Owen also begged for another pool party!) So we had a 7th birthday and 10.5 birthday!!
The party officially started at 3:30 but we got to the park when it opened at noon so the kids could get in as much playing as possible (and to stake out the best shade seats, as is my usual). I didn’t take many pics because, well, I rarely take pics at the pool… And once people started arriving and the party started it was crazy busy—we had 15 adults and 27 kids!!!
But first, lunch. Of course the kids hadn’t eaten lunch before we left, so they were hungry pretty much as soon as we got there. We asked if we could have some of our party food early and that wasn’t a problem, so the kids had hot dogs and popcorn! (Our party package came with 20 cafe meals but we were bringing in pizza so technically didn’t need all the meals, so we snagged them for lunch! Brilliant!)
The arrival of the pizza!
Once we got it set up it was like a feeding frenzy. You’d think these kids hadn’t eaten in days. For a moment I wasn’t sure we’d bought enough pizza as the boxes were emptying at an alarming rate, but in the end it was perfect and we ended up with about 1.5 pizzas to take home.
Cupcake time came shortly after…
Of course we had way too many. I figured with 42 total guests, 60 would be just right because some kids would have two. But apparently most adults don’t eat cupcakes… So we literally had an entire tray left! I walked around handing out cupcakes to random people then took the rest to the manager’s office (they were happy to get them)!
We left just a little bit of garbage…
Sooo happy to see these guys together again!!
Tom and I went back to the water to cool off (it was still like 85°) and relax and two of our friends snapped pics of us. 😄
Katie was actually done before Owen so she went home with Daddy a little early.
All in all a great day… The weather was hot (I think it got to 94°) but it was perfect around the pool. Everyone had a great time. No one got hurt. Well, I take that back…Tom tweaked his back a bit but he powered through. And I lost my sunglasses on the waterslide—I had them tucked in my suit but they still came out…but they totally disappeared. They weren’t in the pool with me and we couldn’t see them in the pool anywhere. It’s a mystery.
Even though I may complain about my kids and how much they drive me insane in the summer, I obviously still love them. But maybe today I loved them just a little bit more since Tom took them on a bike ride and let me have a good hour to myself…and then they played together—without fighting or drama—for a good 3-4 hours…and then we went to a friend’s house and they played with other kids for hours. 💕😜
Technically speaking this is my third, if you count the “margarita-esque” punch I had with lunch and the margarita-flavored Jelly Bellys I taste-tested at the factory today on our date afternoon. 😂
So as I’ve grown older I have come to the realization that I’m not an April Fool’s person. I just don’t like being made a fool of and/or making other people unnecessarily uncomfortable. I’m also not very good at it and it’s just another thing to suck my time at Pinterest. 😂
That said, I love the fake ads or commercials that companies usually come out with—because I like clever (but I’ve been busy all day and haven’t seen any today). I feel kind of badly that I don’t even do anything fun for my kids like “jello juice” or frozen milk for their breakfast. But I guess there’s still time, right? They’re only 10 and 6.
So do you DO April Fool’s Day? Or are you a curmudgeon like me?
Um guys…did you know today is my day?! It really needs to be in the summer, though, right? Anyhoo, I’m looking forward to having a few sips tonight—I can’t have much more since I’m being super strict on Naturally Slim, but I can’t NOT have one today!
ROW 1: Lemon margarita!? Yes. I NEED a slushie machine.
ROW 2: YES! YES! Two bottles.
ROW 3: Always. NyQuil margarita? I believe.
ROW 4: Combine them! Nothing. There is on Facebook!
Y’all—I don’t mess around.
He’s not a margarita fan so I have to drink enough for the both of us. #FirstWorldProblems
So I came downstairs and gave Owen a big birthday hug or four and we talked about his birthday and his sleepover that afternoon… I took a casual birthday picture.
I wore his baby face necklace and took a birthday picture with him.
I posted a happy birthday post on Facebook.
While he was at another birthday party, Tom and I gave some cuddles to Katie because we knew the rest of the day would be about Owen.
And it wasn’t until we were all eating dinner (with his friends!) that I realized it wasn’t his birthday. OMG, am I a bad mom or what?! I asked Owen why he hadn’t said anything and he just shrugged his shoulders and said it wasn’t a big deal.
That said, I knocked it out of of the park with his gift: 900 Pokémon cards. He couldn’t believe his eyes and was practically vibrating with excitement. 🙂
This is what it looks like to be the mom of a 10-year-old with two 10-year-old boys over for a sleepover. #thirdmargarita #soloud #thankheavensforbasements
I think we only had to go in about five times to tell them to quiet down, and they were out by 11:30.
