Obituaries

OK, so I know this is sort of morbid, but every so often I read through my hometown obituaries. My Gram does her best to keep me posted on who dies, but it seems I've reached a certain age where it's not just Grams friends and aquaintences that are dying. This activity invariably alerts me to one or two deaths that both surprise me and make me wish I had known soon enough to at least send a card. I'm not a good card sender. Ask anyone on my non-existant Chirstmas card list.

Reading through people's obituaries makes me wonder what people will say about me when I'm gone. Some obits are formal, just the facts and not even all of those. (Face it: People want to know how other people die. "Died at home" doesn't really cut it for me.) Others are as warm and generous as the people who they are about. I wonder which category I'll be in? Having the control issues I do, I can't pretend I'm not tempted to write my own obituary. Then the woman in me takes over and I want compliments and someone else has to GUESS at what I want to hear. Don't lie. We all do it. I'm pretty sure it's programmed into our DNA.

So I'm pretty much OK with someone else writing my obituary, but it has made me evaluate how I'm doing on life. We each leave our mark on the world as we pass through life, but it is up to us what that mark looks like and how long the impression lasts. More than anything, I want my children and family to know I love them and I'll try harder to spend each day erasing the mistakes I've made as I've interacted with them. I hope I can focus more on joy and less on circumstance. I want to be the kind of person that makes people feel better for having interacted with me. I think I've been guilty of letting my woes define me far too often. I've spent too much time wringing my hands over things I can't control and I'm afraid I almost let it change *ME*, the me I know I am, and the me I know I want to be.

I guess it's a good thing I've been given at least one more day.

What about you? How do you think your obituary will go down? Are you living your life in such a way that you will leave a lasting impression, worthy of warm rememberance?

E's Wedding

Well, the wedding was yesterday. It was very nice. Don't know what else to say about it. Someday, I swear I'm going to write a manual on navigating blended family gatherings and events. I swear people can be so tacky and thoughtless. Thank goodness the Second Wives Club was in attendance to keep this second wife together. As an aside, I ended up wearing the gold dress I purchased for the wedding rather than the other one. I finally decided that I needed and deserved the confidence boost I get from that dress and given the lack of communication about the wedding and the fact that I was excluded not only from the invitations, but also from every aspect of the preparations, I didn't really feel like I owed anyone any favors. LOL Note to First Wives #437 in the second wives manual: Don't piss off the second wife. She is younger, thinnner and cuter than you and she *can* make sure you notice. *grin*

Here are some highlights for the fam:

The Flower Girl



The Ring Bearer









I think he just spotted her! LOL




Hubster...looking dashing and SMILING...in a PHOTO!!! (for once!)


My favorite bride and groom shot. How gorgeous are my grandkids gonna be?




This one CRACKS ME UP!!! Check out D in the background! ROFL!!!


Brother and brother from another mother...so to speak! LOL E's best man is the boy who lived with us the year after I had J.


Wedding party

It's confirmed...

You know, traffic tickers are the source of much interesting information about those who visit the old bloggy. It's always fun to see the google searches that bring traffic to your page, that is, until they point to some information you were trying to conceal. Google the words, meanest mom of all. Yup. Numero dos on google. I guess if it says so on google, it must be true...right? At least I'm not "the" meanest mom of all, only the second. I, and my children, stand corrected.

Another Catch Up Post

I promised my Grandma G I'd post my fish taco recipe. They were so good I even took pictures! Cousin W would be PROUD I tell you, PROUD!


FISH TACOS:

Fish...duh. Well, OK, not quite so obvious, but really you can use any old white, firm fleshed fish you come across. I was after ultra easy so I used Gorton's beer batter fish fillets. Heat them up or cook fish.

Corn Tortilla's, heated in fry pan until nice and toasty.

Cabbage, cut up into julienne size pieces.

Pico de gallo:
2 Plum tomatoes, chopped coarse.
1 small white or yellow onion, chopped coarse.
Fresh cilantro, snipped into bits.
Mix together and squeeze juice from one lime over the top.

Cilantro Cream Sauce:
1 cup sour cream (I say that like I actually measure *snort*)
enough milk or water to thin sour cream to desired consistancy. (how thin? think cream soup at serving consistancy after you add the lime.)
Cilantro snipped into bits. About a half cup worth.
Juice from one lime.
Stir vigorously.

Assemble fish, cabbage, pico and sauce onto tortilla, then drizzle with a touch more lime juice. My kids ate these until they were sick.

I've also been up to all sorts of other adventures. Finals were a week ago, feels more like 3 weeks ago, but I digress...

Six Flags had a homeschool day so my good friend and I loaded up the kiddo's and took advantage of the savings.

The kids had a great time, B and K rode their first wooden roller coaster! J is going to be a dare devil too, she squealed and laughed like a maniac on the little kids coaster and rode the Cloud Bouncer until I couldn't take it any more. She didn't like the teacups much though, this is before the screaming commenced:



And you can't go to the carnival and not ride the carousel:

Just don't take the boy's picture on the carousel, take it on something manly like the swings:


The next day was haircut and color for mommy day:



I think I'm going to have a new profile pic out of that batch.



Maybe this one. Maybe not.

I turned this:


Into this:


Got that table for $7 at a yard sale, I have less than $30 in it finished. Love that. I'm now on a sofa table buying mission. I also bought and repainted two dressers for the kids, but you'll have to visit drop shots to see those.

Today I got the bug to do a little sewing, so I made two church dresses for J. K recently inherited the mother load of clothing, church dresses included, so J was looking like an orphan in comparison. I think these will remedy the problem some.



Does it look familiar? Maybe eerily like my laundry room curtains, perhaps? Yes, I heart toile.





I also took shots of the dress with the miracle shirt on underneath. You can visit drop shots to see them, and no, that's not a gratuitus boob shot, that was the best I could get to show the colors. I love the dress, only, now it seems that the mother of the bride, (I'm thinking she should have a name....how about, Mother-zilla? No? OK, I'll play nice.) has now chosen a different dress that is not so formal and it looks as though the horrid dress will have to be worn once more. I actually wore it to church last week with a white cardigan over the top and enjoyed wearing it...so here's the $10,000 question, can I wear the champagne colored dress with a white cardigan to the lion's den? Or will they rip me to shreds? I can't for the life of me find a tan or beige colored cardigan for it and I'm JUST about out of time.

So there's the last week in review. I'm going to post about the exciting changes we made to the homeschool program over the weekend too, but that will have to wait until another day.