Posts tagged ‘celebration’

April 18th, 2012

shine on. it is, after all, a great day to be alive.

things aren’t perfect. that’s for sure.

but today, i have to say, it’s a great day to be alive.

travis tritt style even.

and yep. i totally just embedded a video of a mullet-clad country singer.
cause, to be honest, that’s how i role many days.

can i get a WHO-RA! new hampshire?

but for real. the sun’s been shining, my bare tootsies have been smiling, my children are covered in dirt and i’m singing.

also, we’ve been here a whole lot.

which a certain someone takes very seriously.

his sister, however, has bigger fish to fry; like the pebble variety that inevitably make their way into her shoes. harrumph.

not to worry, this wild one can’t be slowed for long.

except maybe for the occasional, life-sized, granny smith.
(rumor has it she even made it onto the live radio broadcast as the “little girl in the stands eating the enormous apple”.)

and in other news, we’ve been on a complete chocolate high the easter bunny came!

and we welcomed him/her with open arms.

and of course, the obligatory egg hunt.

next year, note to bunny self, do not mix candy with special rocks. funny how hard to distinguish the two can be.

and to be honest, the past few weeks have left me totally blissed out.

happy spring. i hope you all are finding your inner shine and letting it go buck wild.


(photo credit: bliss sisters)

January 2nd, 2012

aspire to incorporate. bring it awn 2012.

i’ve decided that this year is going to be one of my best yet.
afterall, it may be the last one ever so might as well go out with a bang, no?

i’ve never been one for new years resolutions. somehow they never seem to work for me (or the other 50 billion who try).

so this year i’m not making any specific, quantitative goals. i am not going to loose 3 or 5 or 7 pounds. i will not go to the gym 3 times per week. i will not limit my discretionary clothing fund to $35. i will not only buy one new pair of shoes.

but there are things i will do. things i am going to incorporate, not resolve to do.

they are, in no particular order:

breathe.

move.

dance.

be me. all the time, even when it feels easier to adapt and change.

make love to my husband. a lot.

eat less sugar.

watch my aunt beat breast cancer.

stop re-arranging furniture.

breathe.

run the cranberry race with my mom.

drink better wine.

skype with the distant loves in my life.

keep paco cinco alive.

resurrect our love fern.

create.

laugh.

execute.

see the hawks win. often.

not only understand that the answers i seek lie within but believe it.

let go.

enjoy.

there are probably a million more. but these are the most important, the most doable and will be the most rewarding; this i know.

in fact, speaking of letting go…

last night i had to spend some about-to-expire kohls cash. after perusing the aisles and coming up with a handful of towels, a shelf and a pillow i thought of a better plan.

pointing to the kids’ shoe aisle i heard a voice come up my throat and out my lips, ‘go ahead guys, pick out whatever you want’.

remember this gal?

well, move on over hannah.2011 the newer letting-go version has already arrived.

welcome hannah.2012. my kids really like her.

just to clear the air, yes they light up.

and even get special privileges like sleeping with ‘brawnya’ in her new crib.

and of course give you extra super special super hero powers. along with batman boxer briefs, of course. killer duo those two.

wishing you a joyous and present two thousand and twelve. i hope you resolve to do little and aspire to incorporate plenty.

and at the very least follow paolo nutini’s advice and put some new shoes on.

hey, i put some new shoes on
and suddenly everything is right
i said, hey, i put some new shoes on and everybody’s smiling
it’s so inviting

November 30th, 2011

’tis the season. for ugly sweaters and matching turtlenecks.

yesterday the first batch of holiday photo cards arrived. i just love getting them from all our friends and family. truly. and while i looked at the photo of our three neighbor children clad in red turtlenecks and matching red scarves alongside a forest of snow covered pine trees and reindeer, in the mall, it hit me. except for j’s first year when we used a photo from a portrait session, i’ve never put much thought into the holiday card photo.

h’s first christmas, in 2009 (holymotherhowisthatpossible), my mom snapped a wonderful photo of the kids snuggling. winner.

christmas 2009

and last year i picked three of my faves from the course of the year – this is one. note the totally precious toe-holding.

christmas 2010

so this year, although the thought of hauling the kids to the mall, parking 5.2 miles from the entrance and lugging two toddlers into jcpenny while wearing red scarves and not smiling for the camera did seem lovely, i opted for an impromptu photo session in our backyard.

i didn’t dress the kids in anything cute or matching. in fact, the skorts that h is wearing she put on herself, backwards.
no scrubbing of the faces. no jeans. we are in full on sweats mode. (i should be glad j is wearing any pants at all, really.)

we went outside to eat lunch and enjoy our finally finished deck (now i know why justin chuckled when i asked if it would be done in time for h’s birthday party. on september 4th) and the mid-60′s november weather. side note, i’m sure that the ants on my kitchen floor and random mosquitoes everywhere are in no way part of global warming. december, july they’re all the same.

after lunch the kids were crazy goofy. really? hard to imagine, i know. i snuck inside, grabbed my camera and followed their goofiness around the yard.

and because i’ve learned that one can spend the better part of five days choosing the perfect photo card design, layout and photo, i logged onto snapfish (or was that shutterfly? hard to tell.) entered the cyber monday discount code of 50% off and hit add to cart.

i can’t share the winning photo with you…yet. but i will share a few of the ah, out-takes.

oye. the faces. seriously?

better…

then back to the goofies.

this is really cute. in a merry christmas! we’re hoping our children will grow up and marry each-other kind of way.
in our defense, they were doing ‘noses’. which actually is really cute but hard to explain in the 24 characters worth of space you have to work with.

happy holiday card adventures to you and yours. we can’t wait to see them all.

{i’ll share our 2011 winner after they’ve all been mailed. sometime between now and december 24th, that is.}

June 15th, 2011

carpe diem, wild one.

the thought that my daughter would be anything other than a smaller, younger version of myself just never dawned on me.

even during my pregnancy, long before i really knew she was a she i assumed that she would be me. just 28 years later.

and i should have known, right from the start – with her small body, dainty little head and button nose, her long, lean starfish fingers that there was a chance she could be her own person, not her mother at all. (gasp). (for those of you who don’t know me or didn’t when i was small young, i was 10 lbs 6oz at birth and more closely resembled a line backer four month old than a just days old.)

i don’t remember myself as a newborn, a crawling infant or a toddling one year old. but i have pictures and the many memories of friends and family and suffice it to say, this little lady is for sure her own unique individual. and i’m quite sure, from what i can tell, just about the opposite of everything i was. except for the brown eyes. and maybe the nose, hard to tell yet.

she has developed from a smiley, easy-going mama’s babe into a confident, funny, and wildly clever toddler. she is goofy. she is sweet. she is hell on wheels.

if you call her name while she is walking away from you, her lips will form the biggest, slyest grin imaginable and she will run like hell. straight into the road, a neighbor’s pool, a pack of hungry wolves…doesn’t really matter.

last week i gave her my (usually up and out of the way) iphone to play with when an important call came in on the house phone and i couldn’t quite get her and her accompanying hurricane to slow or hush. it was locked. within 12 seconds she had pushed the center button and slid the “slide to unlock” section exactly as intended.

within 30 seconds she had sent an email to a group called “co-workers” which is, ah, funny because i left that job several weeks ago (i’m sure they’re now assuming life as a stay at home mom is going swimmingly) and had purchased the free trial of fruit ninja i had installed. awesome.

which reminds me of the interesting chinese folklore my mom brought back from a trip to asia – after showing her korean business partners a photo of her grand daughter one of them remarked, “ohhhh clever girl”. and to answer my mom’s quizzical expression, “the tops of her ears are higher than her eyebrows. sign of clever girl”. why, yes. yes, she is.

so today, as i guide her away from oncoming traffic, push her “unner dog” in her tree swing and lead her to time out after the longest one…….two…….threeeee i can muster i am reminded of her passion, the zest for life she carries on her sleeve.

to all those parents of wild ones out there, we are lucky. really lucky. and also really, really, on the verge of loosing it; perhaps even more than most.
here’s to embracing the wild spirit within, helping to channel and encourage whenever possible and keeping large quantities of alcohol handy at all times.

oh, and in celebration of surviving 38 of the last 41 days as a solo parent (with the exception of help from my totally rad friends and family) i have to post this video.

it was taken on a random week-day night last week. post bath time. for daddy.

it’s not overly funny, or cute. it’s not my kid dancing to a beyonce video or laughing uncontrollably for some obscure reason. it’s just a very normal day in our lives which to me, takes the cake on anything YouTube’s most viewed can dish out.

carpe diem, folks.

June 1st, 2011

onward and upward.

hellooooooo out there.

weird.

yep, weird.

took me a good four tries until i got the password right on this wordpress login. yikes.

it’s been a while my friends.

from time to time the thoughts typically flowing wildly in my head come to a hasty halt. why, i’m not really sure.

i can speculate, from living inside this here skin for THIRTY years now, that my brain has a threshold. a limit that once exceeded ceases to run on overdrive.
instead it goes into only-things-completely-necessary-auto pilot. like keeping children alive and healthy and happy and thriving.

like going to the grocery store once a week, making mortgage payments and a million and three other minute but all encompassing tasks.

throw in weeks of single parenting, a string of migraines, medicinal meltdowns and major career changes and, welp, here we are.

but last night as i lay in bed, clean sheets, freshly showered with the wind from a fan lapping my legs, i started to type in my head. and i knew that today i would write again. about what, hard to say. but here i am.

first and foremost the thing that, right now, i am most excited to share with you is that i have found a cure for the eczema destroying my hands! (ok, yes i have and i’ll get to that in a minute) my husband just landed a super kick-ass job and i am so seriously proud of him.

the most modest, hard working, talented and loving person i know. i am honored and humbled to be married to, and raising children, with such a man. congrats babe, i love you and i’ll always back you up. can’t wait to see you make those hawks soar.

and yeah. i found a cure for the incredibly annoying and totally icky eczema that has been plaguing my hands for the last year. and, of course, in the most unexpected of places.

i’d given it time. i’d retired my wedding rings to my jewelry box and walked around feeling single and doubly knocked up totally naked. i’d chalked it up to stress and time will heal. i did, at one point, get a prescription for a steriod cream which was the consistency of petroleum jelly (with exactly the same, lack of, absorption ability) with instructions to NOT GET ON FACE and use only for two weeks at a time. for eight days i slabbed the stuff on my fingers, crawled into bed, propped my hands up and out the way of anyone or anything else and did a few hail mary’s that my hands would steer clear.

it worked. for three days. and then the worst ever case bubbled and spread it’s way devilishly across my hands.

and then last week, while visiting family in NH my mom and i happened across a jewelry store and a woman who told us to go see george at the apothecary. he had a special serum that would work.

so we did.

the apothecary, keene, nh

and my mom bought me a little vat of formula #219 for $20.

and it goes on smoothly and soaks right into my skin and smells like peppermint. and oh yeah, it worked. like really worked. after only a few nights i am once again hitched, toting two flawless, you’re a pissa work decorated, fingers.

you see, it’s all about the little things these days. eczema you are officially checked off the list of things to figure out.

and in keeping with new jobs…i am starting to really fall into a rhythm with mine.


in all honesty, it did take a couple of weeks to loosen up. to not feel like every second has to be spent doing something of measured value.

to sit, guilt-free amongst pots and pans and spatulas on the floor in the kitchen with my band not worrying about time or emails or phone calls.

my children are my biggest accomplishments. the best parts of me. and i have the chance to truly soak them up. to teach them and show them and learn from them the things that are most important in this world. all day long.

yes, even when it’s really hard and there are no breaks and i’ve somehow found yet another answer to the four hundredth and fifty eighth “why?” of the day.

truly, there have been many more momentous happenings. like my son turning three and his mama turning thirty. like an amazing girls’ weekend with some of my favorites on a lake in new hampshire. all things that really are worthy of their own post. and just might be given the opportunity if this auto-pilot continues to stay off.

i hope you have all blissfully exited spring. onward and upward to summer.


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