Happy Anniversary to Me

Six years of wedded bliss...

Love you Luke

First School Picture--YIKES!

Well, I won't be buying this one...

I blame my co-worker Christa, who said only last week--and I quote: "That kid couldn't take a bad picture if he tried."

Oh really, Christa?

Survey of the Week

I could start a new blog just for surveys the way they're rolling in...
Anyway, Jennifer sent this one, and I have done it before on e-mail, and there are people *ahem, Sandi* who may never speak to me again if I pass it on. So this way I still get to talk about myself (my favorite topic), but y'all only have to pretend to care. Here goes...

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?

Becky Thatcher from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Interestingly enough, I am a sweet innocent girl who fell for a rascally country boy, just like my namesake. And you can bet if we were trapped in a cave together, I'd kiss him too.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
Yesterday when I said goodbye to Mandy I teared up a tiny bit...what? I'll miss her, okay?

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
no

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
Mesquite turkey

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
um...yeah!

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
Probably not because I wouldn't let me. I'm snobby like that.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT?
No. I am the most genuine, sincere person on the face of the earth.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Yes.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
Let me put it this way...a few weeks ago, I went mountain biking on a bike with very poor shocks. I could literally feel my brain jiggling around on its stem. It made me very conscious of my mortality and I don't ever want to feel it again. So no.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
Kashi GoLean. I've never tried the Crunch, Kara, because I've heard it's hard as a rock...but maybe now I will.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
Flip-flops do not require untying and such.

12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG?
Oh yeah...I'm an absolute beast.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?
Mocha flavored with chocolate pieces.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
Their hair, I guess.

15. RED OR PINK?
I like pink.

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
Non-flat tummy. It may have moved in permanently.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
I don't know. My brother, I think. I don't see him enough. But he's living the good life with Sandi and Matthew, so it makes me happy that he's happy.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU?
N/A

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
I'm wearing Victoria's Secret pajama's that Gigi got me when I was 17. She can say what she wants about that store, but they make quality stuff, that's for sure!

20.WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
A gelato milkshake.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
Luke is sleeping on the couch while Judge Mathis tells it like it is to all his homeboys.

22. IF YOU WHERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
I'm not answering any more crayon questions!!!

23. FAVORITE SMELLS?
Let's break it down by season, shall we? Spring--honeysuckle and wisteria, Summer--suntan lotion and salt in the air, Fall--pumpkin spice and cinnamon, Winter--evergreen and coffee

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
Some psycho parent at the school I work at. A piece of advice to all you parents of young-uns: just say no to micromanaging.

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
Yes, she rocks the hizz...and she found my new template for me.

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
That one where the inside of my eyelids compete to see how long they can stay closed.

27. HAIR COLOR?
Brown with highlights.

28. EYE COLOR?
Brown.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
No.

30. FAVORITE FOOD?
I love all foods, but my favorite thing really is my mom's chocolate chip cookie recipe, which I have mastered. It has a secret ingredient that makes it the best CC cookie ever. You think yours are good? Mine are better. Sorry.

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
Happy endings

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Little Miss Sunshine--yesterday with Mandy, and I'm still laughing.

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
Pink and white pajama top. Exactly how does this question help people to know me better? I'll be wearing something entirely different in the morning. Whatever.

34. SUMMER OR WINTER?
Summer is definitely more of a flip-flop season, don't you think?

35. HUGS OR KISSES?
Neck hugs from my kids.

36. FAVORITE DESSERT?
One that I made.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
N/A

38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
N/A

39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
I'm trying to decide which book to start--the last Harry Potter (I'm so ready for that to be over) or one called The Thirteenth Tale.

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
A beach in the Caribbean.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON T.V. LAST NIGHT?
The Fashion Review for the Emmys. It is my opinion that Sandra Oh looked the best. It's also my opinion that she's the only reason to watch that show anymore, besides McDreamy. Let's hope the writers don't ruin the last good thing they've got going for them this year.

42. FAVORITE SOUND?
My kids playing happily together. I catch it in bits and pieces.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
Monkees.

44. WHAT IS THE FURTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME?
Scotland or Italy, whichever is farthest

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
Yes...it's called surviving.

46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Hartford, CT

Extra Credit : Mc Steamy or Mc Dreamy? See #41!!!

Goodbye to Mandy

First off, I have to give a shout-out to Jennifer for finding my new template for me! HOLLA! I love it. I'll get around to adding the links back in...uh, whenever.

Today Mandy came to visit me one last time before she embarks on her great Mexican adventure. As she told me, she's leaving on Monday for Colorado to go through a training program for three weeks, then she'll be back for a brief time and then she's headed south of the border for two years. But her brief layover back home will probably be very busy with last minute arrangements and business, so it was a good call to get together today.

We had a good day--started off by playing a little tennis, always fun! We both discovered fairly quickly that we were a tad rusty (like, we wouldn't want to take Katie on or anything like that!!), but after a little mini-tennis warm-up, our strokes were looking pretty much back to normal and we had some good rallies going on. After that we went to get Ben and rented Little Miss Sunshine...VERY funny movie if you can overlook the f-bomb being dropped like oh, every two minutes. Hilarious, though. And then after we picked up Patrick we packed a picnic and took the kids to the park to eat and play in the gorgeous weather.














Patrick with his "Aunt Mandy". He so did not get the whole leaving for two years thing, and it makes me sad that he won't see her for that long. She's been around since day one for him. We gave him the camera and told him to shoot away. It was an interesting experience and I hope that by me grouping all the pictures together, you'll fail to notice that he could not manage to get one good shot of us. But hey, this is no makeup, after playing tennis and lounging all day. What can we expect?


















I've known Mandy since college and she's been my classmate, my roommate, my partner in crime, my maid of honor, my confidant, my husband's informant, and my dear friend. Even though we don't get to hang out all too often these days, she's always been nearby just in case. I'll miss her so much while she's in Mexico, but I think what she's doing is really neat, and I'm glad she's following her dreams. And as she said, we'll always have the blog!

Where did the weekend go?

Well, we had quite busy weekend around here...Luke's schedule fell so his 2 days off coincided with ours, which happens once every three weeks, but I feel like I hardly saw him at all. He and Patrick and Pa went to the air show all day yesterday, and even though I sent the camera with him, he came home without a single presentable picture for the blog. Took pictures of airplanes instead. ??? Just what I always felt was missing from our family photo albums. Well, if you want to see pictures from last year's air show, which was the same thing only colder, look here. Otherwise, I gots nothing.

So Ben and I spent our morning with Ma at a "crack" show (otherwise known as a craft show), helping her with her booth. She makes awesome quilts from T-shirts and picks up a lot of business this time of year by showing what she's got at fall festivals and the likes. I always enjoy walking around and seeing what kind of crappy jewelry and artwork people are trying to sell. I did pick up some yummy pepper jelly and a mix for lime cilantro dip, so I'm looking forward to chowing down on that. Here's Ben gettin' down with his typical festival fare: hot dog and a bag of chips.

Last night Luke and I went to Brian and Jenny's to eat and watch some football game with a bunch of people from their church. We had a great time...but no pix, because I'm not whipping out my camera for strangers like some kind of freak. Again, Luke and I didn't really cross paths the whole night because the girls tired rather quickly of that whole "football" thing and went downstairs to tear up a Reese Witherspoon flick.

And today I had to work...it was our Annual Fund Drive kickoff party, the one time of year where I get to rub elbows with the hoi polloi. Good food, incredible house...you know the drill. And yet it's now 10:00 and I still need to catch up with my hubby.

One more thing though...as I mentioned before, last weekend we went to an outdoor concert downtown and some of Patrick's buddies were there. Well, I saw Wyatt's mom at the party today and she brought me these (and a few more) adorable pics of the kids. Be still my heart...they're so darn cute!

Let me just say that it's become part of our daily routine to remind Patrick to remain close buddies with Wyatt. How often do you get a great kid with a great set of parents??? We know them from church and Luke's old job, plus Wyatt's mom and I had our babies at the exact same time--all boys. Cha-ching! We know we hit the jackpot, and it's our main focus to cultivate this friendship to its maximum potential. Wyatt's little bro Henry was absent last weekend, but we will sic Ben on him as soon as possible. We'd like for them to enter Pre-K in a few years with Ben having cornered the market on Henry's friendship. ;)

Have a great week everyone!

About Me (no crayon questions allowed)

So Katie called on all her blogger buds to play along, and I am happy to oblige...because I always (correctly) assume that everyone is dying to know everything about me. So here goes...complete honesty...

1. Tell me something you really like about yourself.
This one's hard, because for everything I think of, there's a flip-side that makes me think "oh, well...that's not so great." So maybe I'm not the awesome person I thought I was. But surely there's go to be something! Let me think...okay, got it! This answer may be sub-par, but I like that I'm okay with my life being less than perfect...far less. What I mean is, I live in an environment where it could be very very easy for me to get swept up with "keeping up with the Joneses". I could easily spend my whole day focusing on having the kitchen redone in my perfect, treeless McHouse and getting the latest in stainless appliances and making sure the dining room is the perfect shade of red. I could obsess over the latest Volvo SUV and getting my adorable kids photographed every six months in their brand spanking new duds from a children's boutique. I could make sure I always have a steaming latte from Starbucks in my hand and a hot Louis Vuitton on my shoulder, and I could get dressed to the nines for my monthly MOPS meeting and lunch dates in order to show everyone how sleek my wardrobe is. I could do all these things, but thank God my mother gave me enough sense to realize what's important. And for me, part-time worker and full-time mommy, with a firefighter for a husband, most of these things fall by the wayside. And I can live with it...happily! I'm not saying I don't want things. I love getting new clothes. I'd give my right arm for new carpet and flooring all through my house, because whoever lived here before us obviously confused "carpet" with "litterbox" on a regular basis. But that will have to wait, and I'm cool with waiting. The truth is, I'm also cool with getting my handbags from Target and my clothes from Old Navy, I sometimes take my kids to Wal-mart to get their pictures taken, I live in a really small house that I prefer to think of as a cottage (but it has big beautiful trees), I don't even have a dining room and I pretty much hate coffee. But I love myself and all my crappy stuff. So there.

2. If life gave "do-overs", would you have many? Tell me one.
I would have oh so many. At least five pop into my head as I read the question. For most of them at least I can say I didn't know better. But for one I can't say that, and I feel a rush of shame every time I think of it. I've never told anyone, and I don't think I can bring myself to share now. I was a grown-up and I behaved very childishly, then I never came clean. Maybe one day I can, but not today...sorry folks. Just know that nobody got hurt. I just have to live with the guilt of having lied to someone for no reason...someone I see on a regular basis. And no it's not Mom, Chris, Mandy or anyone else that reads this blog, so you can all relax.

3. What would you like to be remembered for after you're gone?
Recipes. I want my descendants to stand in their kitchens and talk about me while they're making a dish that I've yet to perfect, but will someday. Like how my mom and I talk about my great-grandmother Meme for her awesomely good green apple stuffing. Or how my Gram could make a mustard vinaigrette better than anyone else on God's green earth, and we called it her "invisible dressing". Occasionally Luke's mom and I will bake together when there's a big family event coming up and a lot to be made, and she tells me about her Grandma Sokol who was a whiz in the kitchen, and that stuff is cool to hear. I want to be talked about like that when I'm gone, because being in the kitchen is like meditation or prayer for me. It relaxes me and at the same time excites me because I've realized that I can make really good stuff. And I want my family and all its future members to enjoy the product of my hobby as much as I do, so to have my name on a recipe, to have my granddaughter learning to make "Becky's pumpkin muffins" or something so that she can enjoy it too...well, that's a great way to be remembered.

4. Knowing what you know now, what one piece of wisdom would you like to pass on to future generations?
I have no wisdom, I'm young and stupid and a work in progress myself. I'll pull from the previous three questions, how about that? Three tidbits of advice are: the best things in life don't carry a price tag, honesty is always the best policy, and when making drop cookies, make sure you stir in the dry ingredients a little at a time for the best consistency.

5. Is your life
a.) harlequin romance
b.) an atlas
c.) a mystery
d. ) sci-fi
e.) other.
EXPLAIN your choice.
Other. My life is a cookbook. See #3 for your explanation. :)

Rescuers R Us

It's been a pretty fun weekend so far. Last night when I got home from work, Luke and I were itching to get outside and do something, and then we remembered that there was a free concert downtown, so off we went. When we got there, half of Patrick's class was hanging around, plus a few neighbors and church friends, so we ended up chit-chatting a lot of the night while the kids drew all over the sidewalk with chalk, and we missed most of the show. But hey, I'd rather be socializing anyway, so it was all good.

A couple hours after he went to work this morning, Luke called me and said that he really thought the boys should come visit, because they were having an "Emergency Expo" of sorts at the outlet mall across the street from the fire station. So having nothing better to do, we got in the car and hauled our cookies into the next county to ogle the assortment of rescue vehicles. The boys did love it, though. They were especially stoked about the helicopters from Emory and Erlanger that flew in. Two of them landed while we were there...and I don't care who you are, that's always a cool experience.

The special ops unit was there with their tricked-out truck and Patrick was very into that. The guy showed him all his super high-tech stuff and answered all of his questions just like your friendly neighborhood swat team member should...except that he told Patrick that his guns were for shooting dogs. At that point I read Patrick's thoughts as only a mom can do, and saw that he was getting sick with fear over the fate of poor Weewee and Savannah, and I assured him that the guns were for shooting people, not dogs...and for some reason that was a major relief to him.

Our school secretary Angie was doing a little shopping at the outlets and she saw us and came over. Angie is the coolest chick in school, as you can see by this picture. Patrick thinks she is all that because she gets to talk over the intercom and that is almost as cool as Daddy's firefighter radio. Sometimes he comes home after school and calls out names for the carpool line, just like Angie does. We *heart* Angie. Oh, and her birthday is tomorrow. Happy birthday Angie!

Ben was completely smitten with the helicopters, or "planes" as he called them. He liked the fire trucks too of course, but we've gotten up close and personal with them a few times now, so the choppers were something new and exciting. I love that front pic...I was trying to get a shot of them in front of the truck, but Ben would have nothing to do with it--he was completely focused on the helicopter landing behind the truck. So be it. They had a good time.

Tomorrow we're headed out to Ma and Pa's house to swim one last time and then help them close up the pool for the year. Boo. Sad times. As much as I enjoy fall and the holidays, it's always with a sense of gloom for the dark, freezing months that are just around the corner. And as miserably hot as it's been for the past month, I am always sad to see summer go. I just love the swimming and the sunshine and the picnics and the beach trips too much. Oh well. Time waits for no man, right? Hope everyone had a good weekend. See ya!

Little Comfort

Today Mary Kate came over to stay with us while Jenny ran some errands...

Me: Mary Kate, say bye-bye to Mommy!

Jenny: Bye Mary Kate! See you soon.

Patrick: Don't worry Jenny--we'll make sure her face doesn't get slammed into the floor!!!!!



It didn't...in case any of you are wondering.

Summer's Over Y'all

Hope everyone had a great Labor Day Weekend! So even though the temps are still toasty and I will be wearing flip-flops for at least six more weeks, we "officially" said good-bye to summer today. So now we sit back and wait for our two weeks' worth of beautiful fall weather-- whenever that may come.

Anyway, the kiddies paid a visit to Gigi and Grandpa's house for the long weekend...without us!! Apparently they had a big time, but since I wasn't there, I can't really provide commentary. But here are some pictures Gigi took during their long day at Stone Mountain Park:

Waiting for the train ride to begin. Mom said Ben loved it, but that every time the whistle blew, he would pull his hat down over his face and wait for the danger to pass. Who knows with this kid?

Nothing special going on here, but this is the cutest picture ever of Ben, dont'cha think?

Riverboat ride.

Checking out the view at the top of the mountain with Gigi. They rode the skylift up, which was a almost too much for Patrick to take. He lives and dies for the skylift.

So Luke and I had a great weekend too. We both worked yesterday, which means we got today (and tomorrow!) off to spend together as a family. When Luke got home this morning, we went for a long bike ride and then came home and cooked a killer lunch for everyone when they returned from their adventures. After which Gigi proceeded to pass out on my bed. And of course I took a picture, but I chose not to post it. It's been a long time since she's had to spend three days with two preschoolers so I'll be nice to her. Plus, we all had a great weekend, so I'm appreciative of that. Thanks Gigi and Grandpa!