What the ????

Oliver Stone's new movie...Hmmmmm...

Where has summer gone?????

School starts in two and a half weeks. I'm in denial. I am so not ready for summer to be over. It has gone so fast. This has been a great summer. Full of fun outings and memories with our kids. It has also been very bittersweet. And full of hard life lessons. Losing our friend, Haley, has changed this summer forever for us. I don't think I will ever forget the impact this summer has had on me and my family. In the midst of all the fun and relaxation, sometimes the hard reality of life hits me and it is like jumping into an ice cold pool of real life. We will be going along, laughing and living and suddenly I remember...and I have to stop right where I am. The kids are asking me a lot of tough questions. It makes me reexamine everything in my life. My faith, my beliefs, my opinions on how we live. Sometimes I think you need someone to ask you the really tough questions. It is making me grow and stretch and get "out of my box" as Haley's mom would say.

And so life continues. And that means the start of school is upon us. Dum Dum Dum. (Sound of menacing piano music.) When we pass the school supplies aisle in any store or see any signs announcing the return of sharpened pencils and notebook paper my kids shriek and turn their heads as if holy water has been poured upon the sacred shrine of summertime! "Ewww! School supplies!" they cry making everyone around us turn to look.

We are going to have to give into the school shopping fever sooner rather than later, though. I hate to break the news to them!!!

We finally saw "The American Girl Movie". We had saved it for our special American Girl weekend, but had crammed so many activities into such a short period of time that it just never happened. So, Friday the girls and I, along with a van full of friends, had another American Girl day!!! Can't get enough.

Of course Molly had to dress the part. One of her many purchases on her birthday trip was one of Kit's matching outfits and naturally, she had to wear it to the movie. I mean, puh-lease.

Of course, I think she was much cuter than the real thing. But who's counting, right? I thought the movie was super duper fantastic and so like the books. I love it when movies try so hard to be accurate!!! I'm such a ridiculous fanatic that most of the time if I have read the book before I saw the movie, I just can't watch the movie without picking it to death. Like "Fried Green Tomatoes". One of my all-time favorite books. Of course they did a great job in the movie, but changed just enough to make me whine the entire time I watched it about all the little inaccuracies. And the "Little House on the Prairie" television show...forgettaboutit. I never was able to watch it because they deviated so much from the original books. I would wail and cry in outrage against the writers and producers of the show. I mean come on. But I loved this movie. Loved. It. And I hope they make more American Girl movies with such accuracy! Hopefully the Molly doll story will be next!!!


That night she had to wear Kit's jim jams too! Precious!

One of the unique attributes to my personality (read: annoying) is the fact that I store in my wildly diverse brain a wealth of useless knowledge. I really should be on a game show. If they had a show entitled "Useless crap!" I'd be the winner! For example, on a regular basis I thrill my husband (read: drive him freaking crazy) with my incredible ability to recall every word of the theme songs from television shows played in the 1980's. Yesterday we went to some friends' house for dinner and so the kids could watch the Hannah Montana concert on their big t.v. with surround sound sound and crank the music and jump on their furniture and sing at the top of their lungs while we hid outside in their gorgeous backyard (and we had SUCH a good time, Jenn, really-I NEED those recipes...Molly's already asking me to make the bbq pizza and it's 9:00 in the morning) and as I was making the dessert to go along with the fabulous dinner she prepared, I quizzed Jason..."Okay name any show. Any show at all and I'll sing you the song." Oh, how entertaining living with me must be. He's just enthralled from morning to night, you know! So he rolls his eyes and plays along. At first he names easy ones. Like "Who's the Boss"....remember that show??? And "Silver Spoons". I mean come on! How easy can you get. Ricky Shroeder? PUH-LEASE!!

"Here we are...face to face....a couple of Silver Spoons."

And "Different Strokes"

"Now, the world don't move to the beat of just one drum....What might be right for you, may not be right for some."

Oh! How the 80's taught us all about tolerance and diversity! Sigh. Now we have "Big Brother" and "The Real World" undoing all the good that that era of television did for us! And as he started picking what he thought were really hard shows that I wouldn't know (Oh, ho! Right? I cannot be defeated! Bwhahahahaha!) I started thinking about how life is like a theme song for a 1980's television show. And how if I could have a theme song for my life it would definitely be a mixture of "Different Strokes", "Bosom Buddies" (remember that show with Tom Hanks where he dressed up like a woman???), and "The Facts of Life".

So, now. I need you tell the blogging world what your theme song would be. Remember, 1980's only!!!! Ready...GO!

Comedic Relief

You simply MUST take five minutes to brighten your day by viewing these. Don't fast forward. Watch them all the way through. Trust me.

American Girl

We just returned from our birthday trip for Molly. To celebrate her 10th Birthday, we gave her a trip to the American Girl Store for her birthday.



We also did some other fun things like go to a huge waterpark and eat at some really fun places and stay in a super duper fancy hotel (Like warm cookies at check-in and mints on your pillow fancy hotel. Like you don't wear your shorts and ripped t-shirt to dinner because it's collars and creases only, hotel.) But the shopping trip was the main event. I won't tell you how much spending money this little girl had-it's almost obscene the way overindulgent parents and grandparents spoil their little girls these days-but I will tell you that she bought a lot. A. Lot. And I was loving every minute of it.


When you first walked up to the store they had this little playhouse outside that they were raffling away. It is a replica of Kit's house and since Kit is Molly's most special and most favorite doll, she freaked out right away. Kit was Molly's first American Girl doll and she has nearly everything Kit that there is. So when we saw this playhouse she turned to her daddy and said "Daddy. I want that." It was darling. You could go inside and it had a replica of Kit's little desk and bed and all kinds of ca-yute things in there. I could have stayed in there all day and played tea party with the girls and their dolls and been perfectly fine.


When we finally made our way inside the store, Molly was totally overwhelmed. She carried around Kit really close to her and just looked and didn't touch anything for about 30 minutes until we reminded her that she could, in fact, touch and buy. Then she snapped right out of her reverie and went nuts!!!


Jacy had no problem whatsoever finding exactly what she wanted and she walked right to it and picked it up and carried it around for the next three hours. She decided on the trip up that since Mommy and Daddy gave her some spending money too she was going to spend every drop. She calculated that she had just enough to get the Emily doll and that's what she did. Jacy has the Molly doll already and Emily is Molly's best friend and has been on her Christmas list since shortly after her last birthday, so she was so happy to get her.



They also had the ca-yutest doll salon. It was a long counter with big lights and about ten little salon chairs lined up in a row with a smocked and smiling attendant waiting behind each chair ready to style your dolls hair.

Jacy had her Molly doll's hair re-braided, of which it was in desperate need.




And Molly had Kit's hair done in pigtails. It was darling.

The girls were adorable with their little purses and their little wallets. Jason and I just sat back and let them count it out and pay the cashier on their own. All the ladies (and a few men) were sooooooo nice to all the girls. And wouldn't you be? They must work in the most fun place in America. Jacy told us she wanted to work there in the doll salon when she grew up. You go girl!


Then we went up the escalator to the ca-yutest little Bistro you've ever seen. All pink and white stripes with little bubbly chandeliers and a soda fountain! Ca-yute!!!! They escort you and your dollies to your table which is set with the cutest little place setting ever and they seat you and your dollies.


The menu is totally centered around the girls and you pick from a starter, a main, and a side and it's all things like heart-shaped ravioli, warm pretzel bread, cheese fondue. So. Fun.


Molly decided not to have the ca-yute polka dotted birthday cake that I had called ahead and asked them to make for her, so we boxed it up and took it back to the hotel. Instead, she had the warm cookies and milk and they even stuck a candle in that and sang to her. The cookies came with a little teensie milk bottle with a little square cup on the top-you can kind of see it in the picture. And the milk is really cold and they thought pouring into the cup, which was just right for dipping was TOO much!

Then, they sent the birthday girl and her birthday sister home with a tiny birthday favor bag just like a miniature American Girl shopping bag full of party favors like a bracelet, a little picture frame, a stamp, stickers and other fun goodies!

We had such a good time. I think it was the most fun thing I've ever done with my girls. Even Jason thought it was wonderful. And this little girl kicked her tenth year off with a bang!!!

Are you a Shabbee Chick?????

Thanks to Karen who recently challenged me to make her a direct link button, I am excited to announce that I have added yet another product to my website!!! Thanks Karen!

So, are you A Shabbee Chick? Grab your button from my sidebar column and post it in your sidebar if you are! Just shoot me an email if you grab one, so I can come visit you at your house, I mean blog!

Instructions for installation on Blogger:

Under Layout, Click on "Add new Page Element" and then "Add HTML". Paste the .html code into this area and save! Done!!!

Instructions for installation on Typepad:

Go to Typelists > Create New Typelist.
Choose Notes for the List Type and give it a name.
Click Create New List.
In the Note field type copy and paste the code.
Click Save.
Click the Publish tab and choose which pages you want to put the scroll box on.
Click Save Changes.

Now! Look how tech-savvy you are!!! And sooooo shabbee too!

SOooooooOOOooooo...of course, in honor of adding a new product...I'm giving one away!!! Yay for you! You can get a customized button to put in your sidebar PLUS the .html code for all your friends and neighbors to grab and paste in a handy, dandy little scroll box for your sidebar! And the best news is...you don't just have to be a blogger! You can be a business too! Just leave me a comment on this post or send me an email to enter! You have until NEXT Tuesday to enter!

And today, in honor of my oldest child's 10th birthday (I'm hyperventilating, here people!!! 10!!!! It seems like she should still be 3 years old!) I'm reminiscing so either bear with me or skip over....

Molly. You are my baby.



I was young and nervous when I had you, and yet I thought I knew it all. Your daddy and I thought that after 3 years of marriage we were ready to have you and that we could teach you all about the world, but it was you who taught us! I was overly cautious with you and wanted to wrap you up in bubble wrap and protect you from everything that was nasty in the world. But who knew that you would show the world beauty and love and vivacity and innocence. Thank goodness the world has you in it! What would it do without you!?!

You adore your little sister even though she gets on your nerves and makes you sigh and roll your eyes. You hold her hand and love her and pinch her little cheeks. She worships the ground you walk on. And who can blame her?





You are such a social butterfly, Molly! Wonder where you get that???? You love to be around friends and it's no wonder that everyone fights for your attention! You are adored by your two best friends, Shelby and Madi! You want to be around them all the time and you talk on the phone to them constantly so I am already yelling "Molly!!! Get off the phone!!!!" and you're just now ten!!!



You are still a little girl but yet a big girl all rolled into one. You love your beloved Sheepie and your dolls and sometimes you read the baby books just for fun. You still sit on my lap and like me to read to you and sing you songs at bedtime.



You LOVE to read and read all the time. Even when you eat!



You LOVE animals and want to be a vet when you grow up! And you want to live with Jacy so Jacy can stay home and take care of all the kids so the kids don't have to go to daycare while you go to your vet's office! Don't know where the husbands factor into all that...




You are a delightful, precocious, funny, innocent girl and I'm so glad I get to be your mommy! Happy birthday!!!

New Blog

Shameless self-promotion!!! Go here to visit my new bloggie! Just a weekly thing, nothing special! My attempt at a more positive view since I mostly bitch and blather about stupid tripe on this blog! This is a way to make myself feel I'm off the hook in the karma department! And I'm taking a cue from Sally Jean who does this once a month and I l-o-v-e her for it! Oh, and don't you worry your pretty little heads. this most assuredly does not mean that I will be posting less here. I know you were concerned.

Shabbee Tip of the Week

Make your own linen spray!

For GAWD's sake don't buy Febreeze...do you know how bad it is for your lungs??? Instead, spritz away with a much sweeter smelling solution of 3 1/2 cups distilled or filtered water, a teaspoon of essential oil (I love Lavendar and Cedarwood mixed together) and just a smidge (1/4 cup) of unflavored vodka for a natural preservative, although I will admit to not keeping vodka on hand in my pantry...(I must drink it up too quickly-you know-drinky housewife eating bon bons and watching her stories on tv and all...) so I usually omit this little ingredient and make a smaller amount. I use mine up within the week anyhoo, so I don't have to worry about a preservative.

Spread those sheets and sprtiz away. Remember, lavendar encourages sweet dreams!!!!

Aw, shucks!

Steph over at "It's Toile Ya'll" just gave me a ca-yute little blogger award.

"This award is for those bloggers who are nice people, good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also, for those who have a positive influence on our blogging world. Once you've been awarded, please pass on to seven others who you feel are deserving of this award!"

Aw, shucks. Okay, so I guess I'm supposed to pick seven (just seven?) people to pass this on to??? I pick, Kellie, of course. And Ash, duh. And Ruthann. Hmmm...this is hard. Only 7, huh? Okay, so then I also pick Tina. And Susan. This is so hard. Have to pick The Mumma. And definitely Kate.

Whew! Okay, I am obviously a blog addict because it just took me about 20 minutes to decide who to pick. It should have said "Pick your favorite 70 blogs" and then I would have been fine.

So, what a whirlwind last couple of weeks we have had. We are just having the best summer and packing it full of fun and activities. Molly's birthday party was great.

They forecast rain for that day and so I spent the entire afternoon wringing my hands and looking up at the sky. But fortunately it held off!!! Lightning drove us inside at about 10:00 that night, but it was time to go in anyway. But nary a drop of rain fell. The girls had a great time playing in the tent, roasting hot dogs and making s'mores. Swimming and playing flashlight tag. We then headed inside for a game of Guess Who....I printed out the names of a bunch of famous people like Simon Cowell and Hannah Montana and Kermit the Frog and Taylor Swift and then each girl got a person taped onto her back. She had to go around the room and ask yes and no questions to find out who her person was. They couldn't get enough of this game and played it for over an hour until I ran out of famous people. They also played Telephone. Remember that game?
I printed off a bunch of silly phrases and sat them in a circle and it was a faaaaaab-ooooooo quiet game to wind down ten giggly, rowdy girls. Then they crammed into their sleeping bags to watch "Camp Rock". It was great. Look at my little cupcakes I made for them.

You know me, I have to have a theme, so I went with the whole campfire thing. They are supposed to be tiny campfires, but it looked better in my head than it does in reality. They were delicious, though!

We spent a very quiet 4th of July at home. We swam and cooked hamburgers and shot off a ton of fireworks and then collapsed into bed with birthday party hangovers.

Okay, so I'm waaaaay behind the bandwagon on Rachel Anne's Small Things. I just discovered her and she is soooooo great and really has a good thing going with her Company Girls. It's always so nice to see someone who values their homelife and creating a sanctuary for their family as much as I do. It make me feel less like I was born into the wrong generation and more like a normal woman who values all things domestic. She has created a teensy program designed to encourage women to do one small thing a day to make their homes into a sanctuary, a refuge, a haven for themselves, their husbands and their children. I. Love. It. I'm a Company Girl. See my sidebar???? Wanna be a Company Girl? Head on over to her ca-yute blog and join up. It's so fun. Today is grocery store day at my house. So my small thing is to buy the snacks that my husband and kids request. Not a ton of junk, but just that one thing they ask for. I normally veto it. Nope. Too junky. You don't need that crap. But today, my small thing is stocking the pantry for them so they open it and got "Sa-weeet! She got Funyuns!" or something else equally junky.

What is your small thing?

Happy 4th!!!

Happy Fourth of July! Enjoy your holiday today! Have a picnic, shoot off fireworks, drink lemonade, catch fireflies, sit in lawn chairs under umbrellas, eat cherries and watermelon, cook burgers on the grill, swim, play with your kids.

Front Porch Living

Porch Society. Taken from the book "Etiquette Along the Mississippi" by Gaylor Gibbon.

"The backyard is for privacy. Only people walking in the alley will bother you, and they're the sort who would anyway. the porch is sociable, but certain rules apply:

• Even if you're screened from public view, it's polite to call out hello to passers-by you know. It's up to them to stop or not. It's up to you to invite them in or not. The porch is a room of your house, not part of the yard. Only peddlers or certain ministers would barge right in.
• If you say, "Why don't you come up and sit for a bit?," it is customary for them to decline politely. If the invite was legit, it should then be repeated.
• An invite to the porch is not an invite to the house. Its terms are limited to a brief visit on the porch, no refreshments necessarily provided unless the occupants have such at hand.
• When the host stands up and stretches or says, "Well-," the visitor should need no further signal that the visit has ended. Only an oaf would remain longer. If the host says, "You don't have to run, do you?," this is not a question but a pleasantry.

Humankind knows no finer amenity than the porch. It is the temple of family life, and the sacred preserve of the luxurious custom known as "visiting." Compare it to the barbarity of the "business lunch," the hideous conversational burden of the cocktail party, and the prison that is the formal dinner, then porch visit shines with civility."

I wish I had a front porch. We have a little front stoop, barely a block of concrete with three steps leading down to the yard. It is just to keep us from stepping out the front door and falling off into the yard like heathens. There is room only for two potted trees and a welcome mat. Not the long sloping porch with the blue ceiling and white wicker furniture of my dreams. In my mind's eye I see oodles of cushions and plants and hanging ferns. Two porch swings and a little table that would hold my coffee and books or iced tea and trashy magazines. Whichever would pertain to the correct time of day.

I see the kids sitting on the steps coloring with sidewalk chalk while Jason turns the handle of the old fashioned ice cream churn (Okay, am I reaching here or what? Hang in there with me..) and me fanning myself on the porch swing with one of those printed paper fans they hand out at church revivals. I see my neighbors walking down the sidewalk and saying hello and stopping in to "shoot the breeze" with Jason and poke fun at him for churning while I fan myself. I see the lightning bugs coming out and the kids catching them and putting them in a blue Mason Jar and I hear the creak of the swing as I only move my chubby foot just a few inches to gently swing back and forth. My pwecious poochie would be curled up on the beaded board floor and there would be, of course, no mosquitos.

Why don't we have big front porches anymore? No one does. Except my mother, but she lives off on 10 acres of land and the only neighbor that comes by to say hello is the cat that lives on the ajoining ten acres. Neighborhoods today don't encourage socializing on the porch. Everyone has a pittance of a porch with the occasional elongated concrete slab, but bushes usually cover this area to hide onesself from the neighbor.

My grandmother still sits on her front porch. She does. Every day. Especially in the afternoon when the kids are getting out of school. The school is just a few blocks from her house and she likes to watch the buses go by and the kids who walk home. She waves at them. And she still follows visitors out to the front porch and walks them to their car. She also stands there talking for about another 20 minutes so the visit hasn't actually concluded until said visitor runs to the car for dear life waving a hanky out the crack in their rolled down window. Women in our family like to talk.

We spend most of our time on the back deck with the fireflies and the swing and, sadly, the mosquitos.

I wish we had a front porch. I think the world might be a little better place if everyone did.