seriously?!?!

I am just a little upset about what happened to my family after leaving church this morning. And I think that it should upset us all!

Today when we got to church apparently my husband left the Sirius, satellite radio, on while we were in church. Not a biggie right? Well, we came out, started the car up and left. Turned into the gas station to fill up and left the Sirius on again, because it was one of lil sis's favorite songs, Kings of Leon-use somebody. Well, after filling up and running inside to get a Sunday paper the car was dead. Dead as a doornail....where does that expression come from anyway?

Still, not a big deal, I grabbed my jumper cables out of the back of the car. (My momma raised me to always be prepared.) As I come back up to the front of the car, Jeff has the hood popped open and is heading over to this other car that has pulled in to get gas. It is a Cadillac and filled with two elderly gentlemen and two elderly ladies. As Jeff is asking them to politely pull their car over to ours to jump it the one old man says,"well, my car doesn't jump and I don't think this one does either." HUH?!?!? Since when do Cadillacs not have batteries in them? Seriously? The old man then walks over to the driver of the car, whispers something to him and I swear if that car could have thrown rocks when they drove off it would have caught on fire from all the sparks!

Wow, I am still in a daze about that. Is Jeff really that intimidating or me for that matter?

So then, as the Cadillac is speeding away, a nice older lady pulls up to the pump right next to us. No, she can't help out either, she isn't that car knowledgeable and plus it is an acura, you have to have special jumper cables to do that. Okay, if that is your story, stick to it. Amazing, I didn't know that about acura's, darn foreign cars!

So then, we walk over to this van, with "normal" looking people and they are more than happy to help us out. They are from Indiana and traveling back home from vacation down in Branson. They aren't even from here and they are nice.

I am just befuddled and don't know what to think. I always have my jumper cables with me, and I don't know how many times I have helped people out. Are there really that kind of people out there in the world? Apparently, because I ran into two different sets of them today, after church. Nice christian people, eh?!?!?

Homemade suckers!!!

Okay, so I found this really cool and easy way to make suckers out of "Jolly Ranchers". They turned out super cute and they really are super easy to make. Anyone can do it! I promise!

First, I just bought a pound bag of regular "Jolly Ranchers", I have also made these with lifesavers and they work pretty good also. You will also need popsicle or sucker sticks.


Next, you pick three candies to melt together. I chose to make mine with stripes, but you can do them all the same flavor if you like.


Unwrap the candies! Sorry, I need to put that, sometimes the obvious gets ignored.


Next, lay the candies onto a foil covered cookie sheet. I would recommend only putting 4 or 6 suckers per sheet at a time into the oven.

Heat your oven to 275 degrees. Once oven is warm, place cookie sheet into the oven for 6 minutes. The candies will melt into one another and form some pretty funky shapes.
As soon as you remove the cookie sheet you need to stick the sticks into the melted candy. Make sure to roll the stick to cover it with the melted candy.

Let it cool to room temperature then you can wrap it and it is ready to go. I found this recipe
here http://chiccookiekits.blogspot.com/search/label/hard%20candy. And apparently, after re-reading the blog, I over cooked my suckers. That didn't seem to stop anyone from eating them. I kind of like the funky shapes anyway! Enjoy!

Wienies

We recently ventured to Silver Dollar City as part of our family vacation. We thought that the children would absolutely have a blast there and since it had been several years since either Jeff or I had been, we thought that it would be a perfect fit for the vacation this year. Needless did we know that our children are wienies! Yep, wienies!
We couldn't have picked a more perfect day for the park. It had rained the day before and it was supposed to rain again that day, but we braved it anyway. There weren't as many people there as I had expected. (Don't get me wrong, there were still hundreds of people there!) We didn't have to wait in line for much of anything except the second ride that we went on, and that should have been our warning sign!

If you've never been to "steal" your dollar city, than you won't know what I am talking about, but the second ride that we went on was the "water toboggan". Hence, the name water, never really soaked in quite the way it should have.

Once we finally got onto the ride and they pushed us down the slide it all started to soak in, literally. I have to admit, I was cursing my husband in my head as I am sitting in the front of my two children and him thinking, he better be just as wet as I am or I am going to raise some hell! My shorts were wet before we even got pushed down the slide.

As soon as we stopped I jumped out and saw Jeff drenched from head to toe, except for where his hat was on his head and I started to feel better about myself. Then I looked to my babies and noticed that they looked like little drowned rats. I couldn't help myself, I laughed and laughed at them.

That's when the wienies kicked into gear. "I'm ready to go back to the condo now! I'm wet, I don't want to be wet! I want to leave!" and all in that real whiny, high pitched voice that kids do! Are you really serious!?!??! You have got to be kidding me! Almost all the rides there include water as some aspect of them. It was only noon and we had only been on two rides!

Jeff and I told them to buck up and deal. I even had to buck up and deal. When we left at 7 that night, my clothes were still soaked! Even my undies!

The onset of reality

Tonight Jeff and I had parent orientation for CX. He is starting kindergarten in a few days and we finally got to meet his teacher and go over ALL of the forms and things that need to be done before the first day of school. I actually handled myself pretty well, but I know it is coming; the crying.

I know, I know, it's not like I'm moving away and never going to see him again or anything like that. But this is a big change in my life. For the past 6 years of my life I have had him by my side everyday. I know that it is just part of life, but I don't want my baby to grow up so fast. I'm crying right now if you don't know. I can't help it. I can't let him see me like this, I have to put on a strong face for him. I'm mom, I'm supposed to be able to handle anything, right?

After Jeff and I got back from the orientation and we were all back home, CX finally admitted to me that he is scared to start school. I know that, I am scared for you too, but I sure didn't tell him that. I didn't have the best of times at school, although I did enjoy the actual learning part, the friendship part I totally flunked out on. I want him to be so much more confident than I ever was. I don't want him to get walked all over, I want him to stand up for himself when it is needed, but I don't want him to be a bully either. How do you instill the confidence into your child without them becoming conceited?

CX cried and told me how he was scared of riding the bus, that he didn't know his teacher or anyone in his class. I tried to explain to him that everyone else is going thru pretty much the exact same thing as him, but it didn't make him feel any better. Hopefully after we attend the "Meet the Teacher" event, he will feel better about it all. I sure hope so, I don't know if I can handle him crying on the first day of school.

I need to find my box of tissues. I'll catch you up later.

All-Star Game

The title is a little miss leading, I actually didn't make it to the All-Star Game in St. Louis this past July, but I actually did make it to the Future Stars baseball game, the Celebrity and Legends Softball game and the Home-Run Derby.

The Future Stars game was going to be pretty good, because you actually get a chance to watch some of the "future" baseball stars play. At least I thought that it was going to be good, man was I wrong. It poured and poured and poured during the game. We walked into the stadium, my brother, his girl, Jeff and myself and found a beer and our seats. We sit down and watch the top of the first inning, it is sprinkling, not much then it keeps coming and coming. They pull out the tarps and here we sit for over an hour like a bunch of dumb asses. Granted our seats were sheltered, but you should have seen the storm roll thru that stadium. It was so bad that at one time you couldn't see the other side of the stadium. There was lightening and some really bright ones were holding onto the "metal" fences on the sides of the stadium, hello! I have actually never sat in a storm of that magnitude before, but it is something I won't soon forget.

Okay, so we finally get to watch the game, like 5 hours later, but at least we could dry off beforehand. The celebrity & legends game was pretty funny. It would have been a whole lot funner if we had actually been able to hear what the players were saying to one another. They were mic-ed up but we couldn't hear anything except for Mike and Mike, from Mike and Mike in the morning. I tell you what though, that Nelly sure can play some ball! He had to represent, yo! =p

The home run derby was pretty cool, we had tickets to a luxury box, so all the food and drinks you could want! Man I would have loved to have had that for the futures game during all that rain! I would have gotten my money's worth and then some. But Jeff tried his darnedest to make up for it during the derby. I ate and ate and ate, it was some pretty good food!

Okay, and now to top it all off, I actually broke my big toe on my left foot that Saturday before we even left town for the games. Yes, I am totally serious and let me share with you just have graceful I am. I was pumping gas into my car and I stepped over the hose to throw something away and as I am stepping back over my foot gets caught in the hose and down I go. Oh yes, I am grace! Then I try to stop myself by grabbing onto the vehicle, but no, that doesn't work so I try to stop myself on the concrete block that is next to the pump and I end up scraping my left boob. Yes, you read that correctly! I actually still have a scare on it. But to add insult to injury there is a guy pumping on the other side of the pump and has two people in the cab of his truck with him. He comes over to help me up and I feel like a total imbecile! Yep, if you need someone to do something totally dumb, you have found your girl! I had to walk around the Lou with a broken toe all weekend. It was this really nice purple and green color. I should have taken a picture to share with you all!