In The Quiet

Garner has a new park, and it is SO COOL. The one of the playgrounds looks like it was made out of tree logs and the other one has the NEATEST balance, climbing, and spinning toys. Super fun! There are great walking trails and fun classes in the nature center, too. I'm excited for some of those to start and I am hoping Garner has some Winter kid classes coming soon; I'd love to get Little Dude involved in some kind of activity without spending a lot of money.

The weather has been so lovely, so we have been spending tons of time outside, just playing and having fun. Being outside has been great for keeping the house clean, too.

I think one of the hardest parts of being a "single mom", while Bill is working in AL still, is keeping up with everything. The kids, my job, inside house cleaning, outside house cleaning, oh my goodness! So much to do and just never ever enough time.

And at times, I find myself just wanting to sit in the quiet and not do anything, though that only gets me more behind.

Halloween Photos

Thomas the Tank Engine and a Lovely Rainbow helped pass out candy.
Mickey Mouse was armed and ready to get candy.
Snow White and her Hockey Player
A lovely fairy and Mr Gilly, the trash man, checked each other out.

Shopping Therapy

Sometimes it is nice to get away from the family. Two weeks of just me and the kids lead to me really wishing for some ME time once Bill got here and my sweet husband was amazing and said I could go do some "shopping therapy".

So, with my super sweet shopping master (and fellow mom), Andrea in tow, we hit up Crabtree Valley Mall this past Saturday, before we needed to be back home for Halloween fun.


*Warning, shopping recap below; skip if you find that stuff boring*

And OH was shopping with her fun! Mostly we window browsed and ooh and ahhed over the way-too-expensive-for-us jewelry at Belk. Seriously, I really liked a big ring I saw, but was thinking it would be a fun thing to wear around the house, with my Halloween costume, or just when I felt like adding sparkle to a boring mom outfit.I really had thought it would be $5 dollars, tops, since it was just out on a hanging rack. Oh no, make that more like $100.00-whoa. I quickly put it back before I could break it....

We did splurge and get ourselves some perfume. I so rarely wear perfume (I'm really lucky if I have time for makeup now, let alone perfume) BUT this D&G perfume smelled so amazing and the rep for the company was there giving tons of it away if you bought one bottle of the new scent, so I did.

And all the perfume from D&G can be mixed and layered to create new scents-oooohhhh I have been having fun with that!

Though I have to admit, I had thought I was getting large bottles of all the scents, but instead it was one large bottle of the new one, then a TON of half ounce sizes of the other 5 scents-but for the price I should have known better, we really paid a cheap price for the ton of perfume we got. I think all together I ended up with 3 oz each of the other scents, plus my huge bottle, plus two more huge bottles of other scents, PLUS matching lotions-so I am super happy!

AND I got all the other D&G perfumes and lotions for free. (Light Blue? I dunno, Andrea is my perfume/makeup/shopping Sensai and she was going crazy over what a great deal it was, so I went with her judgment).

*Shopping story over*

Anyways, that was SO FUN to get some girl time, chat about everything and anything (and mostly NOT talk about kid stuff) and on top of it, now I smell SO GOOD!

Halloween was A BLAST-the kids had so much fun and we had a great time over at the neighbor's drinking wine while the kids played. Little Dude was SO cute as a trash man and scored some great candy for us, er, him. Beth and Emily came over, too and Emily was the loveliest fairy ever. My sister was a rainbow and her friend, Ed, was Thomas the Tank Engine (he did that since Little Dude and JR both love Thomas-amazing guy, eh?) Ed was so great with the kids. He and Lisa passed out candy while the rest of us did our trick or treating; then they headed off to another friend's party.

Alright, I must go, this is getting way too long; photos will come tomorrow.

My Home Is Full Of Ghosts

Oh how I love the Ghosts in my home. They don't show themselves often, but when they do, my heart stops, I take a quick breath, and my eyes tear up for only a moment as the little Ghosts I am surrounded by flit in and out of view.

I saw one today, as my son studied his toy train, in the way he tilted his head, lowered his lashes and studied his toy. A Ghost from his infanthood flashed across his face, and my heart swelled up, thinking of how, not so long ago, that beautiful look was one I saw everyday. And then it dashed away, as he glanced up at me I saw, instead of that lovely infant face, the beautiful, mischievous face of my son.

As the days number, and my sons grow older, I see more and more Ghosts. Little baby ballet hand gestures that have all but faded away, come out every so often to visit me. Sometimes I see a little laugh that reminds me of those first baby smiles, before it fades into the bigger and louder laughing fits of older children. Little tumbling waddles sneak out every so often to visit, before bursting into the full on runs my son now loves.

Yes, I am surrounded by many Ghosts. Some are Ghosts of the past, that spring into view every so often, through a look, a sigh, a snore and some are Ghosts of the future, breaking into my present world.

Those future Ghosts I am glad and sad to see, because they mean I will only have more Ghosts of the past to visit me, and some past Ghosts might start to fade completely from my view, as my sons travel further and further to their exciting futures and adulthood.

I am so joyful to see my sons accomplish new things, reach new goals, exclaim proudly, "I DID IT!!!" To meet their futures as strong, confident men, loving husbands, adoring fathers-I enjoy all these days leading to those events in their lives.

But I know, that even when they are fathers of their own, there will be Ghosts haunting me, bringing me back to the past. A look, a sigh, a laugh, somewhere at some point, the little Ghost I know so well will pop out, and I will recognize my sweet infant in the face of a strong man.

My heart will stop, I'll take a deep breath, and I'll want to cry because I am so grateful to be surrounded by so many Ghosts.

Orignally posted on 10/17/08 and submitted to Scribbit's October Write-Away Contest.

Happy Halloween!!

Becoming A Kid

My little JR is getting bigger by the minute, and I really can't believe so much time has passed. JR is 16 months now, and I really don't know how that happened. It is cliche, but true: kids grow much too quickly.

He went from this:



To this:



And all I did was blink.

Mr. Gilly is a Trashman

My oldest son is obsessed with the trash men that come every Tuesday. He LOVES trash trucks, helping me put things in the trash, finding items he thinks should go in the trash, and waiting for the trash truck to come.

So, when I asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween, I wasn't very surprised when he passionately declared he wanted to be Mr.Gilly, the trash man character from his favorite book, Trashy Town.

But where do you find a trash man costume? Those aren't exactly on store racks, so I had to get a little creative. Oh, and I had to make Little Dude's outfit green, because, well Waste Management (who picks up our home trash) is green.

Well, after digging around our house and doing some creative moves, this is the costume I came up with:

He is in his pj bottoms, but he will wear real pants on Halloween. JR was excited to get in the picture, too.
I made the "safety vest" out of an old towel.
Added the writing to a green shirt I found in his closet.
And put "Trash Man" on his vest, just to help out everyone that meets him. He will also be carrying a small garbage bag of paper, some black gloves and his baseball cap (Mr Gilly wears one in the book) to help complete the ensemble. Pretty cool, eh?

We Were Here

We went to the science museum in Raleigh with some really great friends and had a BLAST. Little Dude, AJ, Kip and Sada had the greatest time meeting some animals at the Science classroom (they got to pet a bunny!). The biggest hit though, was the dinosaurs:
JR is so big, yet so small at the same time.
JR and Sada fit in a dinosaur footprint.
His footprints may not inspire as much awe, but they sure are cute.