Dear Tooth Fairy

Dear Tooth Fairy,

Hi, my name is Reese. I know you're usually pretty busy forking over dimes and quarters when big kids lose their teeth, but I was wondering if you had anything to do with those teeth before they actually fall out.... like as they are cutting through my gums?!?

At this point I'm thinking of re-writing a very popular Christmas song, and calling it

"All I Want for Thanksgiving (is My Two Front Teeth)"

It would save me buckets of drool.

It would save my runny nose from getting anymore raw from Mama wiping it all day.

It would probaby take away my cough.

but more importantly

It would save my Mama's sanity... because I must admit I have been the crankiest, whiniest child on the face of the planet today.

Lucky for me, I somehow found some patience during dinner tonight and made my Mama feel really sorry for me... to the point that I got to eat an entire chocolate chip cookie all by myself after dinner tonight.

And boy did I enjoy it. :)

So tooth fairy, since I'm sure you'll be in the area tonight('cause a big majority of the kids in the world live within a 10 mile radius of me...) feel free to stop by and help these things on through.

My Mama will thank you, and probably leave a quarter or two under my pillow for you to pick up.

Since I'm pretty sure my grandma will never ever ever read my blog...

...then let me just tell you that this is sooooooooooooooo her in a few months. :)

Click here...

It's Fall Festivus For the Rest of Us

When and how did my sweet little baby girl go from this...

...to this?

(please pardon the interruption for a moment while I express my frustration at myself due to the fact that I brought along my nice new camera and left the memory card stuck in the card reader at home... thus leaving the shutterbug mama with less than satisfactory pictures of our fun fall festival night.)

OK... now that I've got that out of my system.

Thanks to her awesome Aunt Alicia , our Reese Cup was the sweetest little china doll at the party. (and yes, sister, it actually fit her pretty well!) :)

And boy did she get the hang of it quickly. Didn't take her anytime at all to figure out that a."I play a game, (which means I either throw a ball at someone, Daddy pushes me around on a tricycle, or I splash around like a fish in the duck pond for as long as Mama will let me soak myself and anyone within 2 feet of me), b. "I figure out the nice people think I'm funny and cute, so I play it up even more until I'm invited to dig through the big bin of sugar heaven... and yes I know exactly what's in that bin", and c. "I try to eat the candy, paper and all... and when that doesn't work, I drop it in my bag."

Reese got to see and play with all her favorite people tonight. Here's a little video of our fun! :)

A couple of pictures worth special note... I felt my overseas sister needed to know that indeed I did get a couple of buns held together with "chopsticks" (tiny as they may be) out of this head of hair. :)

Needless to say, all that fun wore her right out... she didn't even last the whole three minutes it took us to get home.Happy Fall Festivus, y'all. :)

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far

I'm starting to think that Reese has been watching her Mama...

I found her in her room last night doing this.

Look Out Mr. Obama... Mama's on the Warpath

So tonight Reagan and I made the familiar trip up to my hometown in Ohio to #1. pick up our baby girl from her two week stint with Papaw and Mia and #2. spend Friday night with all of my mom's cousins and their families at the family farm for a fall barn dance.

As I've written about before, my parents live on a busy state route in one of the many po-dunk-ville's that make up the great battleground state of Ohio. Being as it is election time, yards are filled to the max with the little plastic signs promoting their choice for President.

Allow me to pause for a moment and show you something that has become a great conversation piece in our circle of family and friends... the fact that since the announcement of Sarah Palin as the VP choice for John McCain, my mother has more than once been mistaken for the Governor of Alaska. It's just a small resemblance, especially if my mom is wearing her glasses, but a resemblance nonetheless. See for yourself...

Not that my mom needed a look-a-like for her to jump on the McCain-Palin bandwagon (no pun intended) I remember throughout my life her always being one of the first to get involved when an election year rolled around. Beyond attending rallies and things like that, she's been known to collect books, calendars, and anything else she can get her hands on for President's Reagan and the 2nd President Bush. (She's already attended two Palin rallies in this area in the past several weeks.) Raised with strong morals and an even stronger work ethic, firmly believing in a person's right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, (and of course the right to bear arms) my mom is more than proud to call herself a licensed gun-toting all-American woman. This, I'm sure contributes to the fact that, (along with her palin t-shirt) of all the souvenirs she could've chosen at the Palin rallies she went to, she chose this one...

Autographed, of course.

So why should it surprise me that in such a critical time in our nation's history that she would want to shout it out to the state of Ohio her choice for our next President and Vice President?
As a matter of fact, one of the last things she said to me on the phone tonight during our drive up was... "I can't wait for you to see the sign in our yard." I'm thinking... "oh it's one of those cute little pink ones, or maybe it has lipstick on it to match her t-shirt..."

So here Reagan and I come, down the road, past the spaceships, (again... see here) and what should we see several houses before we reach Mom and Dad, but this...

You can see measuring by the tree behind it, that this ain't no 2 foot plastic yard sign. And there aren't one, but two... one on each side of the driveway and in lights no less. "Booooo" I said as we drove by it. "How horrible... why would a person do such a th..."

And then I saw it. The next words out of my mouth went something like this...

"Ohhhhh. Shuuuuuuuut. Uuuuuuuup. They didn't!" Followed by several outbursts of uncontrollable laughter. "Reagan!!! What did she do? (I think I hit him in the arm about then...) Where did they get that thing? No way! No stinkin' way!" And then a little more laughter...

What was no more than the size of a small pin head at first sight grew larger and larger as we pulled into view.


Y'all... this. thing. is. HUGE. I promise. Ten feet tall at least... maybe a little more. And no- that doesn't include the flags on top of it.

Now c'mon... you're either laughing, or your mouth is gaping open, but you know you wish you would've thought of it first. And only my mom. Don't get me wrong... my dad is all about him some conversative moral leadership... mom's just always had a little bigger mouth than he has is all. :) (Unless it's at one of my brother's soccer games... but that'd be a different post now, wouldn't it?)

You'd have to know this Christian comedian Mark Lowry sketch I grew up listening to to really understand the meaning of what I was thinking as we stepped out of the car to see this sign, the yellow made of sturdy metal holding the wooden sign up with chains. All I could think was "GET IT MAMA!!!!!!" I immediately walked into her room and said "You told me you couldn't wait for me to see your yard sign... you didn't tell me it was ten feet tall and BULLETPROOF!"

Turns out that the Obama supporter down the street took these metal pieces in to my brother in laws tool shop to have 'em welded together, but never implied what they were for. When my brother-in-law's boss saw that Obama sign pieced together between those pieces he'd welded, he was pretty ticked off. Turns out he went right back to that metal shop and built him up a nice little bigger-and-better and parked it right in my parents front yard for all to see... including any undecided astronauts currently working on the space station.

So there you have it, oh great Buckeye State... vote for who you may... if I were you though, I'd make sure my Mama wasn't looking over your shoulder when you cast your ballot.

Consider yourself warned.

Question of the day... well my day anyway.

Q: What do you call it when you come home from a trip, jump in your tub for a nice hot soak, wash your hair, decide you're just too tired for anything else so you go to sleep on it wet, and then wake up to remember your hair dryer exploded when you tried to plug it in at the Asianese hotel?!?




A: Hat day...

Who's Next???

You know, I never have considered myself racist or above or better than those that I might consider less fortunate than myself... I still don't, let's just clear that up right now... after reading this book however, I think oblivious may be a good word for what I discovered about myself as my plane hovered somewhere over the Pacific last Saturday.

God used this read to overhaul the way I would see the teachers and children that I would be blessed to spend my time with in the days that would follow. Instead of just seeing a people lost in complete ignorance... devoid of the knowledge that there is Savior that loves them... who were ignorant to my "better" way of life... living a life that was forced on them by Communism and poverty... instead of just seeing them as sad, poor little people that needed my big wonderful American-ness to come in and save their day... to do them a favor by donating my time for the week... I saw that each of them, the teachers especially, had a history... a childhood... a life that they were living, most of them a spouse that they were loving, a person they were trying to be a friend to, and a future they were trying to provide for their families... just like me. I began to understand that I wasn't taking the message of Jesus to them just because they were pitiful and less fortunate and needed His help to make it through their difficult lives. They were just like me. A husband or a wife, mother or a father, living the same kind of life, facing the same kind of issues... just like me. Human, sinful, and in need of a Savior. That's it. Oh, our lives may be exponentially different in the houses we live in, our means of transportation, the food that we eat and the clothes that we wear. None of that really matters when you look at them through the eyes of Jesus, though. That's sounds like such a cliche I know, but it is a huge reality to me right now. Puts us all on the same lost, in need of a Savior playing field. Before I only pitied them because of their place in this world... as if I had something to offer in my own rite. Now I view these people, one woman in particular, as an intellegent, compassionate people, full of goals and dreams and the energy and ability to accomplish them. They're missing out on the most important thing, though. Not due to their rejection... they just have never heard of Him.

So here's the book... you can watch a video about it here. I watched it after I read it and think it will spoil part of the story if you watch it before you read. You can suit yourself though... you should know that in parts I bawled my eyes out. Sobbed, actually. Consider yourself warned. Thanks to Melissa and that little contest of hers. Let me know who wants it next. I'll put your names in a hat and send it on down the road!