My Piper

How did it happen so quickly? When did this little 7 lb. 4 oz. peanut

with these tiny feet

and these teensy hands


turn into such a big little girl?

My sassy silly sweetie. The precious little missy who I believe understood every word I spoke to her when she was just a tiny infant. The girly twirly angel who loves mayonnaisse on bread (no meat) and never has enough play phones or purses. Daddy's princess who can never wear enough pink and idolizes her big brothers.

My heart.

Happy birthday Piper T! I love you!

I gambled and lost

The chance of rain on Saturday was 50%. The chance of my alma mater moving forward with the LARGEST HOMECOMING PARADE IN HISTORY was 100%. The chance that three littles would be crushed if we didn't attend...well, I didn't even want to gamble with that one. Especially since Micah pronounced his undying love for Baylor Homecoming just the day before.

But Jason was out of town (See how carefully I guarded that secret by not posting until he returned? But he's home now. And he packs heat, so back off!), so it was just going to be the children and me.

Me. With three children. One of whom inevitably has to go to the bathroom, but none of whom I can trust to go alone. In a crowded outdoor area. Where you cannot leave your spot for ANY REASON WHATSOEVER or risk it being invaded by sugar-crazed children desperate to sacrifice life and limb for an oversized Tootsie Roll or a 2-pack of SweetTarts because their parents likely graduated from this universit.........

So you understand my predicament.

Whether it was lack of sleep (I tend not to sleep well when Jason isn't home. And by "not sleep well", I mean stay up with all the lights on until my eyes refuse to remain open a single millisecond longer) or a full-on attack of allergy symptoms that caused me to lose my mind, we'll never know. But I packed a container of cinnamon rolls, 3 thermoses full of drinks, 2 Nintendo DSs to pass the time, 1 camp chair for mamaw because my backside can't take the concrete, 1 Diet Pepsi for fuel, and a partridge in a pair tree, loaded up the van and we moved to Beverly.

And I thought, "If it starts raining, we'll just leave."

I believe the phrase you are looking for is, "Famous last words."

Since my brilliant rain plan was "just leave," I didn't see the use in packing any jackets. Or even an umbrella.

It turns out that there's a 0% chance of being able to "just leave" when you're on the opposite side of the parade route from where you parked your grocery-getter. And you're surrounded by thousands of spectators, not to mention that the other side of the parade route is about 10 families deep. And you have 3 littles, a large bag, and a camp chair in tow. No matter how spectacular the parade floats, we definitely would have been the bigger spectacle.

My stories are soooo predictable.

We reached our usual spot on campus about 8:00. The parade started in downtown at 8:30, but wasn't expected to reach campus until close to 9:00 (thus, the reason for the DSs). The skies were still cloudy, but the rain appeared to be holding off. As though God himself looked down upon our little celebration and held back the rain.

Then the swing dancers on campus of a Baptist University must have really ticked him off because it wasn't long before I felt a few sprinkles.

"It's only sprinkling," I thought wishfully.

And then it began to rain in earnest. But in the spirit of Homecoming, brotherhood, and all that jazz, the nice couple behind me moved forward just enough to cover me with their oversized golf umbrella. So I will forgive the husband for being Overly Obvious Commentary Man.

(Dude, we all have the same parade program as you. And we graduated from a fairly scholarly university, so I'm pretty sure our reading skills allow us to comprehend the written line-up. But if we can't follow the line-up, each entry/float is clearly labeled, so there's little opportunity for suspense. Thanks for your assistance, though.)

Piper made friends with the prepared-like-a-girl-scout college freshman (I know she was a freshman by the singular fact that she had no idea from which direction the parade would be coming) sitting next to us and promptly situated herself squarely in the unsuspecting girl's lap under the protection of the girl's umbrella.

The good news is I have a new babysitter.

The boys alternated between squeezing under our portion of borrowed rain cover and diving for subpar candy.

Thankfully the rain didn't last long. I'm guessing the swing dancers came to the end of the parade route.

My pants legs were a little damp, but in the end none of us were any worse for the wear. I wish that we had been able to go to the game, since Baylor won and is now bowl-eligible for the first time in 15 years!

Despite the rain and my rare form of genius, it was a great weekend for sports! The Rangers are going to the World Series! The Bears are eligible to play in a bowl game! The Hogs won (that's for you, mom)!

Here's hoping your week (and mine too!) is also full of wins! And well-laid plans. And dry pants legs.

I'm back with more of nothing

When Jason and I lived in a (much) smaller town, we used to visit our local "Super" Store. If we hit The Store on the wrong evening (usually Sundays), they often would be out of entire sections of food. Like bread. Or milk.

You know, the "extras."

We had some words to describe The Store and "super" was never one of them.

It probably goes without saying (but my writing is so phenomenal that I'm going to say it) that we often threw up our hands and wondered why we even bothered shopping there.

Well. It turns out that writing a blog is a lot like that. Seems that if you don't write often, you don't get much activity. No content = no visitors.

Fascinating. Who knew?

I don't consider myself a writer and I have no real ambition for my blog. I don't want a book deal or a big advertising account. Two things I do know: 1) I love reading great blogs and 2) I love it when people read mine.

Unfortunately sometimes I just don't have the words to put together to uphold any kind of commitment. But dang if I don't know where to start when I am ready to reenter the fray because so many things have happened. Which leads to feelings of being overwhelmed which then causes me to avoid blogging some more. Thus, a vicious cycle of blog avoidance ensues.

This same cycle often applies to housework and laundry.

I have some issues.

But today I'm ready to break the cycle, even though I still don't know where to start. Do I wrap up our summer that officially ended for me over 2 months ago? Do I throw the end of summer out the proverbial window and recap all our back to school shenanigans, including a story about the time I almost broke down into tears in the school supply aisle of The Store? Or do I synthesize all of it into bite-sized stories until I've caught up to present day?

Since a goldfish's memory is slightly better than mine, the latter is not going to happen. I guess I'll just start fresh from here. And when I count on this blog to help me reflect on the best times and favorite memories from 2010, August through October will pretty much be a blur.

Which is totally appropriate because I think September and October bought some funky Five Finger Shoes and challenged one another to some sort of sprint to see which month could fly by faster.

I'm keeping score and October is winning.