A Flea has Infiltrated Our Home

Remember when I mentioned blogging has filled my life with people I hope never to lose contact with?

One of those people just sent Miss Ky a package...


My long-lost separated-at-birth sister can sew! She can smock! Which makes me wonder if we should have our dna tested since I absolutely can do neither, and she's generous.
Flea (the lady behind Fred and Bessie) felt bad that my poor daughter is being reared in a home where she would never have a handcrafted dress and made this just for her.

I have a very happy little girl.

See this bag of pears?
She decided she wanted one, so I told her she has to take the dress off (it's intended for her as a size three, she was only trying it on for a picture), but she refused saying, "No.... pretty".

I think she likes it Flea! Thank you!

Sunday's Refections of the Week

Our holiday to the Midlands began early despite having to shoe-horn four kids and luggage (packed the same morning since I was stricken with a severe allergy attack from some older lady's perfume at church the day before) into our car.



With my trusty English Heritage Sites book in hand,
I detoured us off our path to see this, The Rushton Triangular Lodge (this link will open a second window to tell you about the building). Constructed between 1593 and 1597, it was strong enough to withstand my family.

The greatest thing about seeing these sites is that nothing is roped off. You can drag your hands along stone that was carved hundreds of years ago. You can walk on tiled floors laid before King Henry VIII began destroying all things beautiful.

At this site, my kids sat in the windows, put their faces up to old stonework and crawled into crevices that seemed to be custom made for their little bodies.
J2 peeking in.



Beautiful place. My kids left laughing. Not having the parents shout, "Don't touch!" "Get off!" "Keep your hands to yourself" every two seconds will do wonders for a child's willingness to learn history.

Google, Rescue Me!

It's officially the National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), are you an inny or an outy?

It also marks my blogiversary.

One night when I thought I couldn't handle anymore that life wanted to spew at me, I got on the internet and did a couple of searches.
One was something in the way of, "I hate being a wife" and the other was "Why are my kids pooping their pants?" Believe it or not, I got hits for both.

With the second search, I discovered that what was currently happening to my boys was stress related (Dad was deployed to the desert) and could affect them for years after the fact.
So I'm here to tell you now, if out of the blue your normally potty trained, no-issues kid begins leaving deposits in his underwear resulting in your hands becoming cracked and your motivation to get up in the morning less than positive, don't freak out. It can begin with a constipation problem and result in the inability to recognize when those muscles are working. Ours began when I was too stressed to take on another thing, so I started buying cheaper underpants and threw the highly offensive ones out. One less thing for my hands to deal with.

The first search found me a few blogs. Mostly women who were in unrewarding relationships (that's an understatement), and since my relationship was fine other than the fact I was essentially a single mom, I refined my search to "military wife" and found Jen from Get in The Car! I laughed out loud for the first time in months. Clicking through her place took me to NaBloPoMo.

It was after the first week of November, so I knew I couldn't technically post every day for the month, but I thought I'd try to do as many as I could. I knew NOTHING about making my own blog, but met nice people along the way willing to teach me everything from linking to meme etiquette. I still see those people commenting on other blogs, they're still out here.

That's my beginning, and it's been a wild ride since. I have made connections that I hope I never lose. I know more about some of you than I know about my own family members and believe it or not, I'd much rather meet up one day with some of you than some of my family members (Disney World 2009 anyone?).
Again, I am coming up on the same stress that sent me out here and I approach it with dread (because I remember too clearly how close I came to that proverbial edge). But-- I have a different support system now (as opposed to NONE), and as Painted Maypole pointed out, "...but YOU... you have a BLOG. bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Yes. Yes I do. We'll be o.k.

So my nosy questions for you today are (feel free to answer any one or all-- notice how you weren't given the option of "none" hah!):

Why did you start blogging? Were you technology challenged, or was this like breathing to you? Do you remember the first blog that really hooked you?

This May Be Your Only Warning

We're back from our holiday to the midlands, and I have 485 photos to share. That's the first warning.

We saw and did loads of wonderful English things that will have to be recorded here in my very public journal... your second warning.

I am terribly behind on blog reading and responding to emails now ("Poor You! That's what you get for playing hookie", you say?) and I agreed to NaBloPoMo again this year (third warning), despite watching Chris go a little whacky on his 31-day stint (whacky, but VERY entertaining).

I am warning you that you may come here to an empty blog (I mean no post, not empty-headed, that's a given) because Mr. Mac is mad at me for going away.
When I hopped in here to spread my holiday joy with him, he shut down-- mid email load. I lost 15 emails. gone. floating in cyber space. Then as I was reading number 38 or so, he shut down again.

Since yesterday, it's a hit or miss how much he'll let me do before turning himself completely off.
He's really miffed.

You will either be hearing from me every day for the next 30 days....

or you won't.

Don't say you haven't been warned.

They're Baaaack!

The final day of our holiday...

...we have one hour to see Kennilworth Castle before they close, so we go into crazed-tourist mode. We have exactly fifteen minutes to get to the gatehouse before it closes, and that's the exact time each child decides he needs the toilet-- of course, not all at once.

Our revolving bathroom break behind us, we run towards the gatehouse, open map flapping in the ice-chilled wind...
only to find the employee working the gatehouse must have a really hot date because she has locked that building up tight.

It's ok. It only houses the last letter that Queen Elizabeth I kept (written to her by Robert Dudley) by her bedside until her death.

It was only just recently restored after a multi-million pound investment.

It is only the sole reason I convinced the Hubby that Kenilworth was indeed on our way home from CADBURY WORLD (it was on the way home if you were planning to drive east on country roads before heading south).

I am undaunted.
Staring at me is majestic castle ruins, just beckoning for photos.

Within fifteen minutes of arriving, the skies open up and
the rain begins to painfully slam us.

I knew my lens would get wet.
I knew the shot would probably be
rubbish.
I didn't care.


Welcome to England.




HaPpY HalLoWeEn!



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