A rainy Tuesday...

Normally, a rainy Tuesday morning would be awesome. Lying in bed, listening to the sound of the rain pouring down against the roof, drifting in and out of consciousness, and relishing the snuggly feeling of I-don't-have-to-go-out-there merge to create a sense of perfection.

But on this particular morning, as the yellow/red on the doppler map passed over our house, my baby girl was up and straightening her hair, getting ready for her first behind-the-wheel session in Driver's Ed. I don't have any idea how that happened. I'm certain that a couple of weeks ago, she was three feet tall and I was waking to the startling sensation of a preschooler tickling my nose and whispering, "Mommy, are you still sleeping?" :)

Riding in the car with her and the instructor was a high school boy who had never before been behind the wheel of a car and evidently found a talent for running over trash cans. Kelsey took the wheel first, fearlessly in the torrential downpour. She loved every minute of it. I sat home and prayed.

She'll be out on the road again Wednesday and Thursday mornings. Who am I kidding? She's going to be out on the road from now on.

Gettin' jiggy with it in the summertime...

Heather started it with her "Summertime" post. She had to go and get all Will Smith on me. I think Will Smith could conceivably be the coolest person alive today. Of course, Will has ventured into the dramatic and shoulda-been-funny-but-is-just-a-little-too-much zones recently, but you cannot deny that the Independence Day and Men In Black Will Smith is... subzero in coolness. (That's a good thing folks.) Maybe it's Will+aliens that is cool. I don't know. What I DO know is that my all-time favorite music video is the one for Men In Black. Once you get to the 2:30 mark, you just gotta get up and dance. Go on... clear a space and get jiggy with it.

Cheeseburger in blender, diced...

If there's Harris Teeter cake, it must be birthday time! Yay! Earlier this week I celebrated my birthday. Isn't that a rockin' cake? Family tradition, you know. Gotta have the cake from the Teeter. I loved the colors. If I could decorate my whole house in bright colors like that and possibly get away with it, I most certainly would.



See how I'm switching it up on you? Last post I put the comments BELOW the photos. This post, I'm commenting ABOVE the photos. Ooooooohhhh... tricky! Trying to switch it up to keep your summer from being boring.

Jimmy brought me gorgeous roses. In this photo you can also see the new columns that are keeping our master bedroom from falling into our family room. They are still unpainted, as no one will let me paint them orange and blue like the cake. So now I have to decide whether we are going to keep the painted trim color we have now for the long haul or whether we're going to start the transition to white trim with these columns and the stained beams. Any suggestions? (I can hear my dad now... Why would we give you suggestions? You're going to do what you want to do anyway. Ultimately, true. But I do value counsel along the way!)

You can also see the mugs that go with our new dishes. Had to get new everyday dishes as the old ones were plastic and it was driving me and everyone else in the house crazy that we couldn't microwave in them. Didn't want any added toxins messin' up our dinner. So I ordered new dishes a couple of months ago. They're happy dishes. :)


And then there was the traditional take-out for birthday dinner. Last year, we got take-out from Kemps, which led to an anaphylatic reaction to shrimp on Zack's part. That was a little more excitement that we were up for this year, so we got Outback. No shrimp.

Who loves the cheeseburgers most? Kelsey-girl. And since she was a little less than 36 hours post oral surgery, she was bummed everyone else was eating her favorite. Poor, poor Kelsey! Quick... what can we do to include Kelsey in the birthday fun???

I know! Let's get her a cheeseburger and put it in the blender. A cheeseburger shake!!! So... per Kelsey's request, we blended the WHOLE think together: burger, cheese, bun, lettuce, onions, tomatoes.

And the end product looked not unlike Pepper's dinner. Bleh! But Kelsey said it tasted good. I hope so. I sat diagonally across the table from her and carefully avoided looking at her cheeseburger shake directly.

We made it through dinner to Harris Teeter cake time. Woo Hoo!!!

And EVERYONE was happy. Even Kelsey, who had to eat cake like ice cream. Ya know, eating utensils are usually not optional when eating cake that isn't cupcake. But for this birthday, we were adapting, improvising and overcoming.

Maybe next year we can have the most boring birthday dinner ever. That would be nice.

Nothin' like a little oral surgery to kick off the summer...

So on Monday, Kelsey had her wisdom teeth extracted by an oral surgeon. Four of those babies. All impacted. Nice. She will attest that surgery is a breeze. Recovery, on the other hand, well... not so simple.

Under the heading of hilarious was the ride over to the appointment. During the consultation, they asked Kelsey is she was nervous about having oral surgery. Sheesh... what do you say to that? Heck yeah, I'm nervous! And bam! In addition to the scripts for antibiotics and steroids and pain pills, Kelsey got one for Valium. No one asked ME is I was nervous about her oral surgery. I suppose they figured someone had to drive.

Oh yeah... the ride. At one point, Kelsey looked at me and said, "For some reason all I can think of to say is, 'I want a pony.'" So I told the nurse/assistant (what do you call them in an oral surgeon's office?) that if she asked for a pony, tell her she'll get one later, but they aren't allowed in the office. I'm still dealing with the fallout from Chauncy the imaginary unicorn who lives in our backyard.

Normally I hate meds of any kind. I scoff at notion of better-living-through-chemistry. But on Monday, I was good with it, and I have been ever since.

Why? Well... take a look...


We had just gotten home and gotten a little food into Kelsey so she could take her pain med. Facebooking all the way. Still under sedation from the procedure.

Still on Facebook on her iTouch. Pepper sensed something had happened to Kelsey and was absolutely set on sitting as close to Kelsey's face as possible. I think she was taking care of Kels in her own little sweet doggie way.

With a mouthful of gauze, Kelsey sat up and posed for a picture. She wanted to capture her chipmunk cheeks. Sadly, they weren't very swollen at the time.

I mean, I totally admit I'm biased, but I think she looks pretty cute in this picture. It was still early in the afternoon. She'd had a nap. We were just rolling along...

Then around dinnertime, she ran out of gas. Bless her heart, she fell asleep sitting up at the table. That's a chocolate milkshake. Her throat hurt something fierce after the surgery, so milkshake = good.

Is that the most pitiful look you've seen in a while or what? She woke up and not long after this picture, she headed for bed with her ice packs.

And that's about how the whole adventure has gone. She wakes up. She's feeling pretty good once the meds kick in. She interacts with the world for a little while. She crashes. She wakes up. She's feeling pretty good. She interacts with the world for a little while. She crashes.

There was one moment on Monday where I would have regrown my own wisdom teeth and had them removed again if I could have saved her the pain she was in. I sat on the stoop outside and cried. Then I got my act together and came in and made another chocolate milkshake. I think I made four that day.

Thanks for the prayers. There are great moments and not-so-great moments in her recovery, but overall she's getting better and better each day.

Desperately seeking summer...

I am tired. Thursday was our last day of school. It started with awards day. Kelsey won the hardest-earned AB Honor Roll she's ever gotten. We are not math people. Zane got AB Honor Roll and the Timothy Award for his grade. The Timothy Award is the only one the students vote on; they choose the boy and girl in each grade whose lives are examples of what it means to be a young believer. Zack got perfect attendance, though we are still not quite sure how we managed that. So we are thankful -- for the end of a long, rigorous school year, for the Lord's protection and provision, and for summer!!!

We left school and headed for the party... a little fun time playing putt putt and laser tag.

Although we have a bunch of summer projects underway at our home -- a ladies' Summer Bible Study each Wednesday night, Fun Fridays for high schoolers and middle schoolers every other Friday night, Impact Camp, volleyball team camp, mega-landscaping and fence repair, editing for the 4th issue of the school magazine, and planning for brand new classes next year -- we plan to extract every ounce of summer fun we can out of every endeavor we try.

We'll let you know how it goes...

Daddy, you'll never believe what we saw at the BB&T drive-thru...

Being the city girl I am, I had to ask some questions and then come home and do a Google images search. But if I've got a lick of sense in poultry-identification, I believe this is a guinea hen. Yes?

I researched it a little on the regular Google. Evidently, more and more areas are using guinea hens for tick control, of all things! I guess she didn't read the city ordinance about not having free-range poultry within the city limits. I have no idea how she'll pay the fine. She was in the drive-thru lane when we spotted her, but she squawked away... without even making a deposit. ;-)

Dinner Fail...

It was supposed to be a pizza roll. Something went very wrong and it came out looking like an entree from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.