Loaded Question

Mommy to Brody: Who's my good boy?
Brody: Sis?
Molly: I'm not a boy! Brody, don't you know I'm a girl?
Mommy: I don't think Brody realizes the difference between boys and girls yet.
Molly: I know the difference between boys and girls!
Mommy: Oh really? What IS the difference between boys and girls?


Molly (without hesitation): That's easy Mommy... Boys drool and girls rule.

She gets her brains from me.
: )

One Decade Down...

Ten years ago today I walked down the aisle and married the man of my dreams. After all these years, he still makes my heart race when I see him across a room. I still wait anxiously at the door for him to come home in the evening. I still look forward to cuddling up next to him every night. And I still can't keep my hands off him (probably a little TMI but it's true.)

Happy Anniversary Drew... thank you for loving me, not because you have to, but because you still choose to every day.

How much would you pay?

The scene: Our house, this morning, 7:25 AM

The Characters:

Molly: Sound asleep in her room.

Brody: Happily reading books in the playroom.

Me: Standing in the bathroom quietly thanking God for the 10 minutes of peace it appeared I was going to get to ready myself for the day.

As I finish brushing my teeth, I lean out of the bathroom to listen for any noises that would indicate that all was not well. No sound. I continue to get ready and take a few extra moments laboring over my outfit, a luxury usually reserved for the weekends when Drew is home to monitor and survey.

Pleased that I was as good as I was going to get, I venture to the playroom to check on my darling baby boy.

He was not there.

And then I hear the slightest creaking sound from the attic. I race up the stairs (as if running was going to stop what was already done) and this is what I find:

The only paint that he could get into was the pink because it is was the only color not in a spill proof container. So the entire room was pink. He was pink. It was a Pepto Bismol nightmare. The pictures don't really do the mess justice. They don't show all the walls that he painted and the carpet that he spilt on as he went on his artistic rampage. They do show however how truly pleased he was with himself.

So how much did my 10 minutes of uninterrupted mommy time cost me? Forty five minutes of clean up time. Not a fair trade in my opinion.

My Life... An Update

The past year of my life has been nothing if not exciting. Some of it so much so that I haven't even blogged about it because life was changing on a daily basis and I was not doing daily updates. I think the time has come however for an update... in pencil.

1. I am training for 2 more triathlons: the Lake Wylie on July 25th and the Ramblin' Rose in September. As part of my training, Drew and I ran the Lake Wylie 5k this past Saturday on a course that can only be described as "mountainous" and came in in 29 minutes flat. Not bad for a nonrunner. (Drew ran it in 23:32 while pushing both children in the double jogging stroller... sigh.) I've been biking with Nicola every week in the Palisades (Hi Nic!) and have just started back in the pool now that the neighborhood pool is open for the summer. Now if it would just stop raining long enough for me to get in!

2. I officially end my reign as president of the Steele Creek MOMS Club at the end of this month. It's been A LOT of work, but I'll never regret giving my time to such a wonderful organization. When you are a SAHM the other moms in your life become your daytime family... I couldn't have asked for a better group of women to share my time with.

3. Drew is no longer working for Wachovia. He was displaced in May and we decided to go full steam ahead with our plan for Drew to go to Wake Forest full time to law school. Then out of nowhere Drew was offered a position by his former boss with Wells Fargo. So on to Plan C? Drew happily accepted the position with Wells and will be attending Charlotte School of Law part time in the fall to persue the law degree. I am not looking forward to the long days (and nights) as a single parent while he is at work and school, but we believe the long term benefits of going outway the short term struggles, so on we march.

4. After much soul searching and wakeful nights, we have decided to send Molly to Gaston Christian School in the fall. We weighed the pros and cons for Gaston and the new neighborhood school, and in the end went with what felt "right." Molly is so excited to start school in the fall and we know that she will be happy spending kindergarten at Gaston Christian.

5. Our home is still on the market, but we intend only to keep it listed for the rest of the summer and if we have no bites by then, we will take it off until the market looks better. I recently read an article in the paper that discuss sluggish home sales and the fact that the homes that are selling seem mostly to be foreclosures. We truly love our home and not moving onto the lake property at this time is not the end of the world. We know at some point that things will turn around and our time will come. Until then, we will enjoy the wonderful home we have now.

That's all I can think of for now. Hopefully everything I've written today will still be true tomorrow!!

Technology, I Loathe You.

In previous posts I have voiced my displeasure of technology. It's not that I don't appreciate it because I do. The fact that I don't have to wash my family's clothes in a pot of water that I dragged from a stream and heated with a wood burning fire is not lost on me. I love my LG washer and dryer. It just seems to me that most technology that is supposed to be saving me boatloads of time and effort ends up doing just the opposite. Case and point:

My laptop is 4 years old. That's like being a 25 year old model or a 19 year old gymnist. It's just too old to be effective. However, since new laptops are not in the budget right now, I'm on to plan B... dumping everything off and starting over. So easy to say. So hard to actually follow through with.

So this weekend I began the arduous task of compling all my picture, documents, and music into files to be downloaded onto my external harddrive. It took hours, but I was able to do it. Then I started making a list of all the programs that will need to be reinstalled after the "wipeout." I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon on the phone with half the population of India discussing ways to replace Norton, Napster and, Itunes among others.

Itunes proved to be the largest pain in my rear. Long story short, Itunes will let you sync the computer to the player but not the player to the computer. I know this is probably not news to most people, but I am not most people. So I had to buy "third party software" (like some hooker in a back ally) in order to transfer the stuff on the ipod back to the computer after the dump. And then it took Drew until 10:30 PM Sunday night to actually get the program to work. What a mess. (And yes, there were tears.)

So forgive me if I sit here at my computer tonight nostalgic for the days when I would sit at my Sony tape deck happily compiling a "mix tape" of all my favorite songs. Sure, the sound quality was tinny and there was a good chance that the after market tape deck in my car would eventually eat it, but it only took about an hour, not an entire weekend. So much for technology.

Open Letter

Dear Jon and Kate,
Turn off the damn cameras, get real jobs like the rest of us, and raise your family. Oh, and Kate, your hair is ridiculous.

Sincerely,
Elaine