PYHO {Never Enough}

Another Pour Your Heart Out with Shell at Things I Can't Say.

There is never enough. Never enough money, energy, sleep, time with Pie, hours in the day...you name it and it is likey in short supply at my house. Well, as long as you don't name bum size. That we have plenty of...

I'm still trying to figure out this whole mom/working full-time/school full-time thing. So far I'm not doing a great job. I'm stretched to the breaking point, exhausted beyond reason and feeling more and more guilty every day for the time it's taking away from my family.

I haven't found that place where I feel balanced. I'm not totally confident that place exists. Lots of things are falling by the wayside, namely my connection to the blog world. I haven't been able to post as often as I used to, I haven't been around commenting on other's blogs, I haven't been around for some friends who have big exciting things going on. And I have no idea how I'm going to resolve that.

I love my blog. I love having this space, and the community of bloggers I have found. I love the friends, yes real friends, I've made through this place. And I am feeling the lack of connection to them lately. I'm hoping that I can find a way to be present in my real life and my internet life. And while I struggle to figure that out, while I'm not around as much...I hope you all know I'm thinking of you and hope you'll stick with me until I get my Wonder Woman powers back and can do it all.

xoxo

Apple picking is a lot more fun...

...when you aren't terrified of the trees. Not sure what that's about, but Pie managed to rally for the petting zoo. Nothing like a pen full of bunnies or piggies to help get over your fears.

Flashback Friday {College Part 2}

Okay...so two weeks ago I showed you my scary eyebrows, big hair and beloved overalls. This week we're revisiting college, because after all it is a wealth of embarrassment.

Today we have my student ID, taken maybe a year after the other photo. But just so people didn't get confused about who I was, I was still rocking the big hair, the bigger eyebrows, and what's that? Yup, the overalls.

1. I'd like to point out a few of the greater tragedies here though: My hair is straight, yet still giant. I decided I was tired of fighting the crazy curls all the time and set out on a mission to destroy them. This picture is after I had it chemically straightened. It was essentially a reverse perm. And yes my hair was straight. What they failed to tell me was that it would maintain the same size and texture as my curly hair. So I spent quite awhile with triangle hair. Flat, triangle shaped hair. Bad news.
2. The necklace. Oh the necklace. It was actually a really uncomfortable anklet that I turned into a necklace. Big, chunky, and a couple of inches of random twine I found. There I go again with my cutting edge fashion choices.
3. I really can't say anything about the sunglasses on the head. I still do that. Or the no make-up. I still do that too. But I vividly remember having this picture taken and thinking I was so cool and alternative. What a total dork. Actually I can't say much about that either...I'm still a dork too.

Hope you all have a great weekend. I'm off to do a little apple picking. I think the overalls will be perfect...

No...But Really...

Yesterday I gave you the funny side of my anniversary. At least part of it...there's so much more madness. I could seriously do another 10 posts.

But today I wanted to tell you some of the great and wonderful. I am married to the man of my dreams (barring Ryan Reynolds deciding he's desperate for me of course). He is my best friend, my first love, and the only place I want to turn whether I'm happy or sad.

He's amazing. Seriously...I'm married to:

• my first official boyfriend. I dated, but no boyfriends before.
• the only man I've ever said I love you to who isn't a relative.
• a man who told his mom after our first date that he would marry me.
• a man who used to drive 3 hours each way on work days just to see me. He'd get to me about 8:00pm and would have to leave no later than 4:00am to get back to work.
• a man who showed up at my door with roses, movies and mashed potatoes when I was sick
• a man who left the only home he'd ever known to live with me (after just 3 months).
• a man who followed me to Atlanta after I left school. We had been apart only a few weeks and there was a knock at the door. He had quit his job, packed his life into the back of the truck and come to Atlanta because he couldn't stand being apart any longer. He didn't even have a place to stay.
• a man who put aside his terrible shyness to propose in front of my entire family because he knew how happy it would make me to have them there.
• a man who couldn't let our anniversary pass without doing something, despite being completely broke, so he came home with this.

I couldn't love him more.

George Clooney's Got Nothing On Me

Today is my anniversary. 14 years ago today, Husband and I decided we'd be together. That we were in it for the long haul. And 10 years ago today, we made it official.

I can't say those 14 years have all been sunshine and unicorns, but through it all I've had my best friend holding my hand. Here's to the next 14. I love you Pants.

***The rest of this post originally appeared in July 2010 on {Not} The Very Best Housewife. But the entertainment value is too great not to share again. So please enjoy the disaster that was my wedding.***

George Clooney's Got Nothing On Me

My wedding was a perfect storm of things gone wrong (not even counting the facts that it was two weeks after 9/11 and none of my extended family wanted to fly and didn't come or that my sister and co- maid of honor had only been out of the hospital after giving birth to her first child for about 3 days). It was a mess, but I was married at the end of the day so the rest was just material for stories later.

There is more crazy about that day, and the months leading up to it, than I could put in a hundred posts...so I'm just going to hit the highlights for you.

1) Months before the wedding, maybe even before the engagement, I found the dress. THE DRESS. I cut it out of magazines, made a folder exclusively for it, and hunted it down within a 3 hour radius of where I lived. I got the dress. The only hitch was that the dress had been discontinued by that point and the store only had one left. It was a size or two too small. I fit into it, but only if I didn't breathe. I bought the dress certain that before any alterations had to be done I would really fit into it. A month before the wedding we went for alterations. I had a small panic attack when the dress still didn't fit. I had not lost the weight. They could not alter it so that circulation would continue in the lower half of my body. I had to buy a new dress. I bought a second dress that day. It fit. Looking back it was not me at all. This pic is the second dress...

So new dress in hand I start the alteration process again. We went through the first round, I went back to try it, a few more tweaks were needed. I went back after the second alterations, the day before the wedding, and the sleeves had been altered to the point that I could not raise my arms more than about 15 degrees away from my body. We had so much to do that day...rehearsals, rehearsal dinner, gathering out-of-town guests...that I could not address it.

This is my mother cutting said sleeves off my dress the day of the wedding. You read that right. The DAY OF THE WEDDING. I was headed out the door to get my hair and make-up done when this picture was snapped. That's my uncle sitting with her. He was an industrial engineer so he felt certain between the two of them they could fashion some sort of new sleeves out of the random yard of fabric they found in my parent's laundry room. Surprisingly they did.

2) As I left my mom, my uncle and my dismantled dress behind, mere hours before the wedding, and headed to my beautifying it started to rain. Really rain. We were getting married outside. Good times.

3) Once we got to the wedding site...still in the rain...we found that the man who was marrying us was not there. He was late. And I don't just mean that he was later than we expected. I mean we started the wedding half an hour later than intended because he was not there. I never did find out what his hold-up was...

4) While we were waiting, I decided to go to the bathroom one more time. Anyone who has tried to do this in a wedding dress knows it's no easy feat. It took awhile. Apparently everyone arrived during this time and they decided to start the wedding. I came out of the bathroom to find that all of the families and half of the wedding party had already gone down the aisle. Guess they didn't think the bride was worth waiting for...

5) The rain did eventually stop, a few minutes before the ceremony. Something in the aisle runner when mixed with water became extremely sticky. I ended up walking out of my shoes completely, having to stop, back up and peel them off the runner.

6) The ceremony itself went along with no major issues. Once we started taking pictures afterward though I noticed something on Husband's face. I reached for it and he jerked away. He had cut himself shaving that morning. Pretty badly. So he had put a piece of toilet paper on his face to stop the bleeding. It was stuck there. We got married while he had toilet paper stuck to his face.

Seriously people...I could do this all day.

7) I'll just do one more though. My soon to be father-in law, who almost didn't come to the wedding because it was during hunting season...awesome, apparently lost his regular glasses the day before they left for the wedding. In a crafty move he grabbed the only other glasses he had that were prescription. They were safety goggles. My FIL wore safety goggles to our wedding. Don't believe me? Here's photographic evidence...note the plastic side walls to protect from any stray wedding shrapnel.

As many things as went crazy wrong, I still ended up Mrs. Husband at the end of the day. That's all I wanted. And along the way there were some beyond fantastic moments...lots of laughing and lots of love. There are so many things that are forever imprinted in the memories of our family. So many things that we still laugh about.

Especially great was dancing with my dad to James Taylor's Mexico. It's a fast song, an unexpected father-daughter dance song, but one with lots of history. My dad and I used to dance to it when I was little, with my small feet on top of his grown-up ones. Then we took dance lessons and choreographed something for the wedding, we were hysterical through the whole thing. By the time the song was over my side ached from laughing. And then last week, on my vacation, my dad danced to it with my daughter...talk about full circle.


So all of that boils down to my advice for anyone who is getting married...the wedding is just that...a wedding. It's a very expensive party. The important part is what comes after. If you take the things that will inevitably go wrong on that day with a grain of salt, it will help put you in the right frame of mind to start your marriage. No matter what, if you're married to your best friend at the end of the day, then it was a success.

The Baby Whisperer

My little Pie has been doing speech therapy for awhile now and I can't begin to tell you the difference it has made. Her therapist is seriously the baby whisperer. There just aren't enough good words to describe her and the progress she has made with Pie.

Going in, Pie could say: Dada, Mama, occasionally outside and a handful of animal noises.

Now she says: Poppy, in, on, shoe, outside, school, uh-oh, ouch, stuck, one, two, three, a, b, c, o, q, z, jump, go, bubble, din-din (dinner), nie-nie (night-night), bye bye, and a bunch more I can't think of right now.

She can also sign: more, please, milk, eat, and sometimes thank you.

And can make the animal noises for: horse, cow, kitten, puppy, pig, chicken, cuckoo bird, owl, giraffe, whale, dinosaur, and I think I'm forgetting a few here too.

After every session she comes home with new skills and it never fails to amaze me. It was absolutely the right decision for her. Plus she practices the mouth positions for different words and that by itself is cute enough for it all to be worthwhile!

Hey, I Put Some New Shoes On...

...and suddenly everything is right.

Pie has decided to go through a crazy growth spurt and now officially has nothing that fits. I've been running into the store on the way home to get pjs and socks and whatever else I can grab to get her through the next day. I'm going to have to do a massive shop for all the basics.

This weekend though we took care of the most important thing...new shoes!