pink nostalgia

how to: get a teenager to dance

In the living room/kitchen with the family:

- Let him play his own music (the clean versions, of course).  

- Glance, don't look, and smile.  But a small smile, like the kind of smile you give when Alex pronounces it "mininnilem."

- Ask what he has that he'd pick for you.  Ariana Grande.  And then turn it up.  UP.  And twirl.

- Get him to show you "that one new dance."  Move the coffee table if you need to.

 - Give his little brother a few head nods to invite him to join the party whenever he's ready.

- Whoop and holler when his dad busts out with the sprinkler, the cabbage patch kid, and the you'd-better-watch-this-hand.

- DON'T take pictures.  : )

When he thinks no one is watching:

- Show him a mirror.  ; )

When he knows everyone is watching:

Okay, he got a hit.  Cool.

What?! He's not stopping at second?!?!

Get down, baby, get down!!

TRIPLE!!!!!

- Wait for him to hit a TRIPLE during a baseball tournament in which his team will go on to win first place.

 

 

 

So, this breaks the first rule, but in my defense, he was dancing on a baseball field.  Pictures are fair game.  Ha, punny!!

jason the handyman

I need to tell you how ridiculous Jason is, but in order to do that, I need to give you some background.

On our first Labor Day together, I had really high hopes.  I thought we'd sleep in and spend the majority of the day lazing around in bed.  Maybe find a "Love It or List It" marathon, eat donuts, and never change out of our jams.

Instead, we got up early and painted the exterior of his house.  On Labor Day.  We finished the siding, then he hits me with, "Should we go ahead and do the porch?"  Sighhhh, okay.  We finish the porch and he says, "Should we paint the window trim while we're at it?"  Sighhhhhhhhhhh, okay.

[In his defense, it WAS better to get it all done at once.  Also, we WERE preparing that house for sale so he could buy us a new house.  : )]

But about half-way through (the siding, ha), he says, "Hey.  It's really amazing that we're already half-way done and haven't gotten in a fight.  I've never had that before."

Awwwww.  Let's paint the porch and trim!!

So, painting went really well. 

It went so well that we thought we'd tackle replacing an interior and an exterior door.

Three days later, Jason said to me, "Babe.  If I EVER tell you that I want to do some kind of renovation, home remodeling ANYTHING, slap me across the face."

[We did finally get the two doors hung.]

Fast-forward to the current story: installing wood floors for the house.

J: We could save a lot of money if I figured out how to install the floors...
me: Which side do you want it on?

AND

me: Do you think we should replace the carpet in the closet with wood?
J: We need to do something.  We could replace it with new carpet.
me: But then we have to have them come back out to measure, cut...
J: Well, I can replace the carpet.
me: I'm going to slap you.
J: What?  Why??
me: Home improvement!!
J: Well, I think I can handle a square of carpet!!!!
me: Are you sure?!?!?!

[We had the floors professionally installed, including our closet.  But J did successfully remove the entry-way tile and thinset, and we ripped up ALL of the old carpet.]

the birdcage progression

My favorite feature of our master bathroom is not the double sinks (although I might change my mind if we didn't have those) or the jacuzzi tub (which sounds much better than the practicalities of it).   It's the separate room for the toilet...because, you know...PRIVACY.

I've been wanting a little shelf to go over the toilet to hold the spare toilet paper roll.  Fortunately, neither one of us has been in that jam where we have to pass the new roll through the door.  Yet.  So last week, I went shopping for a shelf. 

Below is an outline of J's response to said shelf.

Phase One: The Hard "No"
Day Zero, 7:42 p.m., via text (J in gray on left, me in blue on right)

[option/permission photos sent by me to J] 

Phase Two: The "Maybe"
Day Zero, 7:48 p.m., via text (J in gray on left, me in blue on right)

That sounded like a "yes" to me, so I bought the birdcage with a 50/50 shot of keeping it.  : )

Phase Three: The Acceptance
Day One, 2:16 p.m., via text (J in gray on left, me in blue on right), while the bird cage was still in the bag with its receipt

Day Two, 5:32 p.m.

Phase Four: The Accession
Day Three, 7:36 p.m., while browsing in a boutique store killing time for our Papa John's pizza to be ready

J: Hey, babe.  Do you think we should add more birdcages to the house?
me: What?
J (pointing to several large birdcages hanging from the ceiling): Yeah, like maybe one in every room?
me: Ummmm...

random thursday stuff

I just (at lunch today) finished the third of three books that I read back-to-back-to-back (The Thirteenth Tale, Sharp Objects, The Lovely Bones).  All were intelligent, a little suspenseful, tragic, and surprising.  It felt really good to have that reading bug again.

We just (yesterday) had wood floors installed throughout most of the house.  They look amazing.  I don't really want to put furniture back in the pink room because I don't want to cover up the floors.

Did I mention that J tore up the tile and thinset by himself??

I love the wood floors.  I also love that we checked out 48,212 stores and websites to make sure we were getting exactly what we wanted.  I am not being sarcastic, but I am exaggerating.

In the middle of all of the construction dust, I got this pic from J:

A construction dust love proclamation??  Who else gets that??  Be still my pounding heart!

We went to dinner with (almost) all of J's family last night.  Pappy was on a roll with one-liners.

"She [our server] talks too fast.  She needs to slow down!  I'm from Buckholts!"

Pappy: Alex, no beer for you tonight.
Alex [grinning]: Okay.
me: What about Ethen?
Pappy: No whiskey!

Pappy [talking about his wife, Diddy]: After 62 years, I still ain't got her trained!
Diddy: What'd you say?
Pappy: I said we've been married for 62 years!
me: What about the rest of what you said?!
Pappy: Don't worry about that!

Diddy: I want to go to the pound and look at getting a new kitty.
Pappy: We might get a puppy, too. 
Mia: Daddy, I'm not sure that's a good idea.
Pappy: We'll raise them together so they get along.
Mia: You should really think about it if you want to get a puppy.
Pappy: Okay.  We probably won't get one.

The weather is getting just warm enough and staying just cool enough for the hammock.  The boys fixed it yesterday.

Back in...January?  We had a few sunny days in the 70s.  J and I ran errands allllllllll day Saturday, got home late afternoon, and had the same hammock thought.  He attached the hammock to the tree straps while I grabbed the hammock pillow and Baylor quilt.  We were all snuggled up, my head on his shoulder.  I had just entered that awesome sleepy state where I was starting to dream but still hearing the leaves rustle.  Then I heard, "Rrrrrrrreeeeeee," got halfway through my drowsy, "What wa..." when DOOOOFF!  We crashed to the ground.  There were about four seconds of looking at each other through stunned silence, then four minutes of laughter.  And that's why I say "fixed."

I'll leave you with a magical double rainbow on my way out of work yesterday.  The photo is pretty good considering I was carrying my purse AND an umbrella.

behind the photo: ten things

Obviously this is not a posed photo.  It's not even staged.  I literally got up, took it, and sat right back down.  The boys didn't even know I snuck it with my phone.  I kind of love this photo because it truly is an honest look at an honest moment, and it tells so much story.

1. the flowers that J gave me for my birthday.  Each year, he buys my flowers, and each year, the arrangement has at least quadrupled in size. 

2. peanut butter Reese's pieces cookies.  There are 12 in a package, and this one was the only one left an hour later.  It was gone before bedtime.  We were literally passing the plate around as we were playing...

3. Monopoly Empire, received from my Uncle Jeff and cousin Kristen for Christmas.  Such a great family game.  It goes really fast, it can change really fast, and there's room to make the rules up as you go.  BTW, the standing rule in our house is: if you roll the dice off the table, you lose a turn.  Alex asked to play it as we were finishing up dinner, E replied, "I can do that," and blam, J won.

4. E's Muscle Milk on the ground, his pick from a run to the convenient store down the street.  To give you perspective, everyone else picked ice cream.

5. the ottoman I was leaning against as I was texting with Rita, seconds before and after this photo was taken.

6. the carpet we're professionally getting rid of.   J considered...you know what, this is a separate post.  : )

7. the couches we're professionally getting rid of.

8. tossing the football [dive catch], not unusual at all except it's usually Al & E running/tagging/juking down the hall and into the living room.

9. E playing with his hair, phone in his lap playing music through the sound bar via Bluetooth

10. E's Sting baseball jersey that he wears to school.  He likes it because it's pink.

You can read what happened an hour before the photo here.