Hold your babies tight
They grow up overnight
You may think I'm kidding
But soon they're out of sight.
That baby on the right is off to school this fall.
His acceptance letter came in and made this mama bawl.
Hunter is bound for Tennessee.
It was only yesterday he was sleeping with me.
You know I'm proud as punch,
But Lord Almighty, I'll miss him so much!
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Congratulations Hunter man!!
She beats the daylights out of him now, but for awhile there he could kiss on her without getting smacked.
There is a deeply ingrained thing in me. It's DEEP and it's not going away. I am not frugal. I am not thrifty. And I am sure as hell not cheap.
This realization occurred today in Mcdonald's drive-thru. We had to go to Mcdonalds today to get an ice cream cone for Parker, because for 53 minutes, he had on a shirt and shorts. This feat deserved an ice cream.
Anyway-
Brandon orders a sausage McMuffin without the sausage. So I go, isn't a sausage McMuffin without the sausage just an egg McMuffin? We look at the menu and figure out that an egg McMuffin has ham, so he could in fact order an egg McMuffin without the ham, but it costs ten cents more than the sausage one. He has been ordering his breakfast this way for years because it's cheaper.
I called him a cheap bastard. I said it with love.
This isn't the first time I have called him that. He is a deal shopper. He will buy things he doesn't need because they are ON SALE. His Ex is the coupon queen of Utah. She has her own segment on the news and everything. If that right there doesn't make us polar opposites I don't know what does. Not the being on the news part, the coupon part. I think she may have rubbed off on him… but that sentence is so disturbing it makes me want to vomit.
ANYWAY…. back to my story….
Brandon is a cheap bastard.
I am mortified if I have coupons. I feel like I have a note from the newspaper saying, "This woman can't afford full price so she'll need you to take a little money off the total." When Brandon calls to order Pizza he goes, "any deals today?" and I want to die! When we buy something expensive like all the furniture in our house and we hear the total, he always makes a comment like, "you better deliver it for that price." Or "Are you throwing in a TV with that?" And I want to die.
My blackberry is TRASHED. I want to go to the verizon store and buy a new one. Brandon insists its cheaper to buy online. I could go on and on and on with money stories. They are long and there are many and they happen daily. We love each other in spite them.
We have come a long way working through our money differences, but the McMuffin saga brought it front and center.
I wondered for a moment where I had developed this strong opinion about getting a deal….
I remember being eleven or twelve in the mini-van with my three younger brothers and both parents. We were sitting in the drive-thru at Arby's. My mom was telling my dad what to order. At the end of the instructions to my dad, she said, and you have to say, "I'm burned out on burgers" so we get a free roast-beef. To which my dad replied HELL NO. I will pay for the roast beef before I ever say something so stupid. All of us kids, being the fools that we are, jumped on my mom's bandwagon. If for no other reason than to hear dad say, " I AM BURNED OUT ON BURGERS."
"Come on dad," we chanted… and the more we insisted, the more irritated he became.
Mom continued to harp on him and we continued to beg and when we finally pulled up to the speaker, against his better judgement, Dad said, "I am burned out on burgers." The voice in the speaker said, " I am sorry sir, we are no longer doing that promotion."
My dad has a vein in his forehead, I have watched it my whole life to see how much trouble I am in, because when he is mad, you can see it pulse. Not a pretty sight. Well, Dad's vein was bulging in that drive-thru. It looked like he had a vienna sausage on his forehead.
Dad was mortified.
Embarrassed, pissed off, and fuming mad he drove us home. It was a very silent ride home with our curly fries.
My mom was a deal shopper and coupon clipper. She is SMART with her money. My dad is a money maker and a money spender. In my opinion just as smart. He works to earn it, so he can spend it.
While my mom will have money in the bank when she dies, I think my dad will have more memories. I am clearly my father's daughter.
I shared the "burned out on burgers" story with Brandon yesterday on the way home from McDonalds. He laughed so hard he damn near ran off the road. In fact, he laughed all day long about it. Last night he couldn't contain himself any longer. He phoned my dad and asked him if he would mind stopping on the way home from work at Arby's. He said something along the lines of, because we have so many kids to feed, I need you to get the best deal you can. They have a promotion right now, all you have to say is I AM BURNED OUT ON BURGERS.
And with his stern dad voice, my dad said, "VERY FUNNY BRANDON!" I know his vein was growing just thinking about it!
They grow up too fast.
Bronson is ten in this picture.
Ty is six.
It seems like yesterday,
but it was a lifetime ago…..
Isn't she the cutest little pot? The thing I love the very most about this picture is that she had to bring her bunny to the photo shoot, and she had to have her in the picture.
Friends, meet "Bunny"
Bunny was a big part of our family for a few years. She traveled everywhere with Hadley, and then one day, she didn't. She didn't need her to sleep with any more. She was DONE. I'll admit, I was kinda sad when it happened. I wasn't ready for the weaning of the rabbit, (say that ten times.) but Hadley was.
I found these two pictures in a very old folder the other day. Because Hadley took bunny everywhere, bunny required washing often. This little "operation wash the bunny," was absolute horror. It brought on extremely strong emotions, as I am sure any of us mothers would feel upon seeing our "babies" in the washing machine. I only made this mistake once, after this moment, bunny was washed at night.
Poor Bunny.
Poor Hadley.
Here's hoping you all have a great weekend and none of your loved ones end up in the washer.
Parker and Hunter
My beautiful boys.
They grow up so fast.
They are both still beautiful.
They are just so damn opinionated lately.
One or both of them could be the death of me.
Even though this is "our family" story, I have to go back when it was just "my story" so you can appreciate the meeting and the timing of it all. The timing was both a blessing and a curse. The meeting was nothing short of fate.
I left my marriage of almost 15 years on April 1st 2005. I wasn't happy. I had spent the majority of my marriage being mom and nothing else. Even with 13 kids in the house, a busy career and countless friends, I was empty. I made mistakes. BIG ones. I went outside my marriage to find my happiness. What I found was even more emptiness, more heartache and finally, myself alone in a houseful of kids.
The ex and I may not have had the perfect marriage, but we had history, and HISTORY is a powerful thing to ignore. So after six weeks of begging for forgiveness and begging for the ex to come home. I gave up and set out on the path of my new life. "Single parenthood". Single, Single, Single. I had never been single in my entire life. I had a boyfriend in Kindergarten. I always belonged to somebody. I didn't know how to do it alone.
I now had in my possession all of his information. Name, birth date, address, DL number, insurance, make and model of car……. This is gold to me. I can check this guy out without him even knowing. I wasn't two miles away from the accident and my cell phone rang. After the car accident, I went about my busy day. I came home that night and had a very short email in my inbox from Brandon. He had sent me pictures of my car for the insurance company and a quick hello and to see how I was feeling. I also had about ten emails from Mr. Match begging to continue our relationship. He promised we could take it down a notch and even see other people, he just wanted to remain in my life in some way.