The longest post in the day of my life.

Or did I mean the longest day in my life post? Or both? You be the judge. My day started off like this...


Yep, the big green monster (my ten year old Land Rover) has fallen apart on me again. If you want to read a much more entertaining story of my car troubles, read my previous post "I don't speak car." Anyway, yesterday's trouble began when I was in the car taking my boys to school. We only made it one block from our house.

Then I spent all day at my part time nanny job, where I spent eight hours taking care of these little adorable hooligans.

I get off work the same time the boys are finished with school for the day, so we had a brief hour to hurry home (or, have someone give us a ride home) where my mom had left HER car for me to drive temporarily. We then had to gather all the baseball gear in the bat bags and head out to baseball games.

Both boys had games last night. Remy's was first. Here he is in the outfield...I don't think this position is called "baseball ready." hehe I think his eyes need to be open and his glove out in front of his body...and in a ready crouched position...

Then he was up to bat. Here he is "on deck", practice swinging while he waits his turn. Good batter form. His right elbow is up, he's looking where he swinging and he has a good stance.

Now he's up at the plate..and this is NOT a good batter's stance. Elbow's down...and he's not looking at the pitcher!!
Despite that, he made it to first base. Whew. I can now breathe again and unbite my lips. Unbite, I'm not sure that's a real word...you get the point.
He makes it to second base...wait a minute, this is not good "baseball ready" form again!
Ok, there we go, much better. Good stance, he's alert and ready to run home.
The next batter hits the ball, CRACK, and Remy's off....running to home base. He'd kill me if he knew I shared this photo. His facial expression is priceless...

And, yes, he made it home!! SCORE, Remy!! My picture of this was too blurry, so can't share. Then, we all piled back in the car and headed to a different baseball field for my older son's game. Remy's games are a quick affair...less than an hour long. Donny's on the other hand are an hour and forty-five minutes long! So, while I'm really into them, and really enjoying them...I sometimes get distracted by the sky...and it was just about sunset and I saw some really amazing clouds. Lots of whispy things going on...
Then the sun started going down (ok, wrong terminology, I know, the Earth rotates, so the sun doesn't really go down...we're moving away from the sun, but you know what I mean)...and the clouds look darker. Very moody looking.
See, there's the sun going down...moving away...shoot, we're the ones moving away, it doesn't move at all.
Then, wowser, some pretty soft colors show up! I don't know how that happens...well, ok, scientifically I learned how, but it's still amazingly pretty...

and then bam...the magic really happens. Look at that dramitic lighting! As you can see from the power lines or telephone lines, I'm kind of far away...

So, here's a close up....wow, huh?! AMAZING lighting. I'm loving it (and watching Donny's baseball game, of course, how could you imagine otherwise?!)
It was a close game, but our team won! It was super exciting. They're getting really good at this age, lots of double and triple plays, amazing team work. Really fun games, despite all my cloud pictures, I promise!! And, here's Donny right after the game for the team pow-wow. He's flushed, he tired, he's exhilerated, ,all at the same time.
And, then we make it home and the little munchkin, who played nonstop on a playscape with other kids during his older brother's game, crashed in my bed...with sweet Annie!


Adorable, aren't they?

And, please, voting is still going on through the end of today (Saturday), so if you have time (and more than one computer to vote from!) stop by Darcy's blog Graphically Designing and vote for me!! It's super easy, takes less than 30 seconds! And, you should check out her work. She has designed some awesome websites, and I'd love for her to do mine!

Speaking car

You never really learn to swear until you have to fix a car.

As you know, my car was broken for FOUR months, my husband The Barrister fixed it, I had it back for 24 hours, and then it broke again. I had thrown some clothes on to take the kids to school, stopped real quick at the grocery store and then the car wouldn't start back up again! So, I grabbed my groceries and my dog (who likes to ride in the car when I take the boys to school) and walked home. Luckily I don't live too far from the grocery store.

I then proceed to call The Barrister and my mother...no, I wasn't crying but I was very frustrated. The Barrister was in court in Dallas, so he couldn't help. My mom drove right over. We got the car to start again and brought it home. Then we figured out the problem was with the alternator, through a quick diagnostic test my stepfather talked us through on the cell phone. See exhibit A below, my mom on the phone with my stepfather:

The next picture shows my car's guts. Lovely, old, dirty insides that keep breaking.

Here is my mom performing the diagnostic test, where we hooked up jumper cables between our cars, then my mom had to undo a bolt...and the car promptly died, therefore identifying the most likely suspect as the alternator. She is removing the bolt below:

See this pretty, colorful little information sticker on the battery where my mom was removing the bolt? I don't know about you, but all I could focus on where the words "danger" and "poison" and my favorite, "explosive." Now you see why I was taking the pictures...

This sticker also caught my eye. Not sure what it was trying to warn me of...or maybe it was in a different language...see why I'm taking pictures with my zoom lense and backing away from the car?

So, I get a little distracted at this point. Look at the pretty red bird in the tree next to my driveway? Pretty bird...

Oh, and look at the park across the street! Look at ALL those birds in that tree. A little freaky. I had no idea so many birds hung out there.

Oh, I guess I need to help my mom as she busts her knuckles on the guts of my car and handles explosive, very dangerous insides. Look, this is the alternator, which converts power from a gas engine to electrical energy for the battery. Pretty important little doodad. It took us a while, but together (ok, my mom did more work than I did, but I did climb up and help!) we got it out!!

And, this is the pretty, shiny NEW alternator we got at Autozone, where they were very helpful. I think they might have been laughing at us as we shared the story of how we removed the ugly alternator next to the dangerous stickers and busted our poor knuckles...Oh, and I somehow managed to touch one cable to a metal thingy and shoot sparks everywhere...not sure what I did but I backed away again at this point and started taking more pictures. :o) I'm so helpful!

The moral of this story is: Women CAN do car things (with a little guidance) but we would prefer the men do them, because it's awfully messy work, and I still can't get the word "explosive" out of my mind...I just don't speak car very well.

DISCLAIMER: This story is told tongue-in-cheek. Seriously. Where else would my tongue be?

This post is not complete without the requisite car joke:

Four Engineers and a Broken Car

There are four engineers travelling in a car; a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, an electrical engineer and a computer engineer. The car breaks down. "Sounds to me as if the pistons have seized. We'll have to strip down the engine before we can get the car working again", says the mechanical engineer. "Well", says the chemical engineer, "it sounded to me as if the fuel might be contaminated. I think we should clear out the fuel system." "I thought it might be an grounding problem", says the electrical engineer, "or maybe a faulty plug lead." They all turn to the computer engineer who has said nothing and say: "Well, what do you think?" "Ummm - perhaps if we all get out of the car and get back in again?"

It died...again.

It was ALIVE...

It's Alive! Easter barf and a bride.

It's ALIVE!! My poor Land Rover (which is about 10 years old) has been out of commission for four months. Yes, FOUR MONTHS!! It blew a head gasket or something technical like that. I don't speak car, but my husband does, and he took on his monsterous project. It took him a while (have I mentioned he's an attorney, not a mechanic by trade?), and I drove the gnome mobile during that time but as of now, my Land Rover is alive again and ready to go! YAY! I've missed it. Yes, it's a gas guzzler, some of the windows don't work so well, the locks stick, the headliner's starting to fall, and the kids have done their best to trash the insides, but I love being high up and, most importantly, it's paid off!


Does your house look like this? Mine does...every room has a small pile of Easter-looking barf; broken plastic eggs, plastic grass, chocolate and candy wrappers. Colorful but messy.

Our sweet Annie, whom we adopted from DFW Lab Rescue this summer, is the love of our life. We spoil her and love her so much. This is her cushy couch-bed she got for Christmas...although she sleeps with my older son in HIS bed every night. So, maybe this is her daybed...

I had to share this next picture, because it is something I look at every day and can't live without. I had lap-band surgery back in November and have lost 30lbs so far. I still have more weight to lose, but it's a huge start. Anyway, I have to take in lots of protein every day, and the way I most enjoy doing this is with protein powder in my homemade smoothies. I'll have to share the recipe sometime soon, ,although it's super simple. Here is one, below, in my favorite Target cup:

Finally, I just couldn't resist sharing this portrait of me, in my wedding dress, taken almost 12 years ago! I can't believe it's been that long.

If you've made it this far down into the post, congrats! This was a long and random post today. The boys' Spring Break ended and they went back to school today. It was hard waking up early this morning. I worked all day as well, so I'm beat and trying to overcome a bad headache. I also banged my head on a cabinet trying to take a picture of the car in the garage. Sigh. The price I pay for my blog. lol