It's our Fifth and Sixth Fourth

This is Korbins fifth Fourth of July and Tayton's sixth. Its also their second one without their daddy in that short time. We had a wonderful time despite that. We went to a good friends house where they cooked all of my favorite foods! Ribeye's, cheesy potatoes and orange salad YUM! Then we went with those same friends and Amber and Brandy's families to the Soldier Show.

We got our chairs set up and watched the kids play while we waited for the show to start. We were fairly close to the stage but on the side. I had this conversation with Nicholas, Brandy's ten year old:

Nicholas: What are we sitting here for?

Me: The Soldier Show will be starting soon.

Nicholas: What's a Soldier Show?

Me: It's soldiers who sing and dance for us.

Nicholas: *with a freaked out look on his little face* Ummm...I've heard my dad sing and I've seen my dad dance and it's not good.

Me: *smacks him in the back of the head playfully* No goof ball these are soldiers who really can sing and dance!

He looked at me like I was crazy for wanting to watch a soldier show when he knows very well his dad can't sing or dance! It was funny. It'll be sad when he loses that innocent naivety. It cracks me up the way these kids process information with what little bit of information they've picked up over their few years on Earth!

We enjoyed the soldier show and OUR little ones danced and danced! I took tons of videos. The problem with my videos is that, well, I'm retarded. I use my regular camera for everything and I take a lot of pictures with the camera turned sideways to cut out more of the background. Well when I take videos it's often on a whim so I just flip the button to video and go on about my business taking videos. Then I get home and realize all of my video's are sideways and cant be turned! GRRR! So for your viewing pleasure I'm going to let you all turn your heads sideways and watch the kids dance.



The soldiers came out and did Thriller and I loved it! It was so funny. Here's the video I got of that:



I love when the soldier comes out at the end with his/her weapon and all the zombies are down.



The last song they did was really great. Then they played the Army Song and Korbin did this little march.



We had a good time despite the stupidity of this post and the way they spoil the privates. The most important thing is that we got our ZZ Top tickets! I over heard someone say "ZZ Top? Shouldn't they be retired by now?" I suppose they could be but what fun would that be for me? This post function didn't bring out the weirdo's that Ft Knox did when they had the ZZ Top concert but I'm expecting much of the same KY style mullets and old ladies in teenage clothes at that concert. Here are a few of the weirdest things I saw on the fourth.

Seriously? You wrote that on your chair? Come on people!!


I love this picture!



This lady just creeped me out.

Then of course there's this. I loved it when they were singing and dancing in their ACU's with their weapons!

Korbin cracks me up!

I have this way with my brats boys when I want to know what they want/need. I usually will ask a question followed by "yes or no". For example: "Korbin do you want some lemonade? Yes or no?" This prevents a whole discussion about his socks and how his toes like lemonade but his ears aren't in the mood and blah blah blah blah blah.

The boys have picked up on this technique because I also have a tendency to ramble on endlessly before getting around to an answer. They will say: "mom can we go ride our bikes? Yes or no?" It saves time really.

Well Korbin has decided to shorten the process even more. He just ran up to me and said "say yes". I looked at him puzzled for a second and then I did what any lazy logical mom would do and said "Yes".

Korbin ran back to the kitchen and I hear him say "see I told you mom said you have to wash your hands before you eat!"

Thank god it wasn't something like "see I told you mom said we could dance on the table around a fire".

I'm going to have to avoid the impulse to just say yes or no and find out the what he's up to first!



Oh and this just in from the mouth of Korbin:

Excuse me mom?

Me: Yes?

I think I have diarhea.

Me: ok why?

Cause it left some water black and some water clear and it was a soft feel.

Me: umm ok

I already flushed though so you can't see.

Me: Oh good, thank you!

Kids are gross!! And since I had to hear it you should too! So HA!

Happy Fourth Of July

We had a fantastic day yesterday! We started out the day driving to Springfield over an hour away to have our blood syphoned out of us, cycled through an apheresis machine and separated so that they could keep our platelets and plasma and we got our red and white blood cells returned to us in an anticoagulant solution. It was super fun!

Actually it was really nice. We sat in these super comfy heated chairs and laughed a lot and raced to the finish. Brandy got up first but dang it all I only took 51 minutes and she took 56! So there! She got the fancy fast machine. Hers mixed the platelets and plasma into one bag so she actually got to donate 5.3 and Amber and I only got to do 4.0 on our old antique machines that bagged the platelets and plasma separately. Not that I know what those numbers represent but I know that 5.3 is way bigger than 4.0.

Platelets are used for many different types of patients. When you donate whole blood it takes the blood of six donors to accumulate enough platelets for the recipients tranfusion. When you donate platelets that donation can be delivered immediately to the recipient. This means they recieve the transfusion from one donor instead of six different donors. Platelets can only be stored for five days. Click here to learn more about how you can help!


I think the workers found it strange that I wanted to see my platelets and have my picture taken with them but they went with it. The most amazing woman entertained our children, 6 of them came with us! She gave them little stuffed "platelet buddies" and played hide the platelet buddy and even built a hotel a house and something else out of old cardboard boxes for the kids to use. It was great. They were having fun so it made it easier to relax and enjoy knowing that we could save so many lives in just an hour of our time. We'll be donating whole blood this week sometime and plan to donate platelets whenever we head to Springfield since it's the closest place.

Here's the pictures!



We got our own parking spots!!









Here we are with our platelets!



That's me, I'm quite proud of my pastey looking bag of platelets!



Here's Amber.



And of course Brandy!



This is the greatest lady ever and our 6 kids! Woohoo for her making our morning enjoyable!

And that was only the first few hours before noon! The afternoon and evening blog is next!

Amber Kidnapped Me

Yep that's the truth no matter what she says. She's a horrible ex-felon and tried to abuse me too. Or not but it makes for a more exciting story.

Fine I'll tell the truth! Amber's kids were gone for a million weeks OR three but who's counting? So we drove four hours each way to meet her in laws and get the girls. The boys started asking are we there yet? I assured them we were. We were there and there and now we're here. They should have been more specific. But if we were there we wouldn't have still be driving right? Common sense boys!!

Before we left Amber asked what was all over the back of my shirt. I had no idea, it wasn't like I could see it! Well it turns out the boys were so sweet the other day to leave a crayon in their pocket and it ruined a load of laundry. Lucky me! So I ran up and threw on another top. On the drive to our halfway mark I realized I was flashing truckers as we drove by cause the seat belt was in just the wrong place! Men designed that no doubt! We got to the truck stop and I realized that I was like the boob queen! Amber assured me my shirt was alright. That was until she sat across from me at the table. She couldn't look at me cause my boob shirt was too distracting! Lucky for me we were at a truck stop. I found a tshirt and went to pay. The lady tried to put it in a bag and I told her no need since I was going to put it on right away. I played the shy, sweet modest girl who was so embarrassed that I had so much boobage showing. It was fun to pretend!

So anyhow on the drive home I jokingly said we should stop and get some of the road flowers that were so pretty! Next thing I know she headed over the rumble strips onto the shoulder, opened my door, unbuckled my seat belt and told me to tuck and roll as she shoved me out! Seriously! I can't make these things up!

I picked a bunch of the pretty orange flowers, pretended I was puking when cars went by though so no one would think we would do something so stupid as to stop to pick flowers! Then we needed more color so a little ways down she stopped so I could get some pinkish/purple ones. More fake puking as I picked some flowers! Then she started telling me the names of flowers and I remarked about her similarities to my grandma who is the only person I know who knows flowers names. (Ok not really but still!) She didn't like it! We stopped at a rest stop and they had some Black Eyed Susans, which I'm sure was named after a victim of spousal abuse. I was gonna pick one but this darn lady was watching me. So I did what any logical person would do. I told Amber to do it! She did!

So here's the final arrangement. Amber has the good pictures on her blog here. (guess she better hurry up and blog that story huh?)



Oh and I almost forgot I took this picture for Burgh Baby's Mama because she has a fascination with creepy looking baby dolls. And while this baby doll wasn't so creepy at first, she was after Amber's daughter ripped her arms and legs off. I just gave her a new body and this is exactly what we delivered to Brandy when we took her the flowers after our drive!




Today I found out that Bowling For Soup is playing with ZZ TOP here in August! I LOVE LOVE LOVE them! They make me laugh. I like to laugh!

BeeWare of the Dyson!

Well I know that it's mighty soon after posting how wonderful my rainbow POS is but here's the real story. It's a pain in the tail. I spent so much time and gag reflex emptying the rainbows water collection tank. The problem is that I vacuum, well I like to, a couple times a day. It usually needs it. Ever since we got the rainbow I have totally slacked on vacuuming as well as overall house cleaning cause whats the point if the floors are dirty right? HA! Anyhow like I was saying, I spent more time cleaning it then I did cleaning with it and it was gross. It was like emptying swamp water into a strainer and then throwing the strained junk swamp monster into the trash. Then I had to take the trash out cause the swamp monster smells like a swamp on a hot summer day. Blech! It was absolutely disgusting. Usually I could get away with just using the rainbow and leaving it for Kirke to empty when he got home. It would really stink by the time he got home now! YUCK! So anyhow we got a new vacuum yesterday. Yes I have an obsession. Yes I'm seeking psychological attention for this problem. I have now owned a Kirby, Rainbow, and now a Dyson. I promise I'm done now. But don't tell Kirke that okay, just in case an emergency arises. The boys love vacuums as well. Today after grocery shopping Tate helped me carry in the bags. Well then Tayton wanted to vacuum. How do you say no to a kid who wants to vacuum? He did the living room. As he was finishing up I saw a gigantic bumble bee in the window. I grabbed the extension hose for the attachments (which by the way is like 17feet long!!) and I walked over and sucked that big giant stinging airplane out of my window. The cool thing about these bagless vacuums is being able to see the junk your sweeping up. That included bees! The boys and I started to watch the be whirl around over and over fighting off the cyclonic power of the Dyson. Then decided that we shouldn't keep this entertainment all to ourselves so we made a video, actually two. The three of us boys watched this excitement of the dizzy bee twirling in circles for quite a while! Here you go.
And here's more video of the same thing but a few minutes later.

Fly Invasion of 2008 ~OR~ Flies are drawn to Rainbows!

Last summer my house was invaded by these horrible, gigantic, child chasing, dog teasin, dizzy making beasts. Most people call them flies. Here we call them the Invaders!

At one point last year I counted over 40 flies on my ceiling in the kitchen! YUCK! We tried the fly swatter thing. That was just enough to make them laugh, yes flies laugh I've heard it myself!

Kirke and I finally sat down to devise a plan to rid ourselves of these beasts once and for all! We tried sprays, traps, strips, even stripping didn't work although we never saw our neighbors again after that attempt.

Finally I got an idea. My ideas are never conventional mind you. I have this Rainbow Vacuum. It doubles as many things. The part the salesperson doesn't tell you is that it will suck flies right out of the air!

I discovered this when I was at my wits end! I didn't even tell Kirke what I was doing. I simply grabbed the rainbow, lifted it onto the counter in the kitchen, took off the power nozzle so I just had the long handle part with the canister at my feet. Kirke came into the kitchen to see what I was up to and almost died laughing! Men!

Soon enough the little beasts were drowning in the rainbow's water collection tank. One by one they lost the battle. It was so funny to see them trying to hold on to the ceiling as the suction got closer and closer until they finally gave up and I won! Then Kirke joined me by using the broom at the outer edges of the kitchen and dining room and chasing the beasts in my direction. We were a real fly destroying team! The beasts lost that battle and the other flies must have heard the news of our fly destroying machine because we never again had that many flies invade at one time.

And we got a screen door for the backdoor. Too bad over the winter that screen door died and now I don't have one at all.

Flies BEWARE because I'm ready this year!



Oh hey want to know what makes me laugh? Everytime I click to spell check it tells me I'm spelling Kirke wrong! I've been saying that ALL along! Let's add an "e"! Who does that??

The Interview

I'm not sure how this started. I was talking to Tayton and decided he would make a good interview victim subject. So I typed up a few questions and asked them to both of the boys. I quoted them exactly despite gramatical errors. Enjoy!




First I talked to Tayton:

~What is your name? Tayton David Best

~Are you named after anyone? No. Am I right? (yes he was named after people...David is a very prominent name in our families)

~How old are you? 6

~What is your favorite thing to do? play with Pokemon and watch Pokemon

~How many years have you been alive? I dont know how many? umm 12?

~How old is Mommy? 21 is that right?

~How old is Daddy? is he 25?

~How many pets do you have? two but we used to have three

~Who named your pets? you

~What would you name them? I would of called scrappy uh you know, pikachu and allie the same name (allie)

~If you had all the money in the world what would you do with it? spend it on a bunch of pokemons and food

~What do you love most about your house? hmm...the part that we have a garage.

~Why do you like your garage so much? because we have a pool in it and we have bikes in it.

~Do you want another brother or sister? no.

~why not? because

~What do you like best about your brother? That sometimes he plays with me.

~What do you like best about Mom? (thinking for a really long time) .....that you come upstairs sometimes and sometimes you let us watch tv down here.

~Is that all you like about me? yeah

~What do you like best about Dad? that he carries us sometimes

~If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? In alaska still

~Why? because we dont get paid very much here

~If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life what would it be? can I pick two of my favorite chips? doritos and sun chips and fruit (so much for one thing)

~How old will you be when you get married? 21

~What grade are you in when you graduate from high school? college

~How many planets are there? 8 since Pluto aint one anymore

Name them? earth, sun, mercury, venus, earth, and thats all I can remember but Pluto isn't one anymore because it was this big(hold up hand in a circle). They took it down and brought it to Earth and put it in a museum.

~Why do you want to be when you grow up? a firefighter or maybe a builder

~How can you tell if someone is old? If they have white hair they're old isn't that right?
~What are you? a kid

~What is your favorite song? its a pokemon song


Korbin:

~What's your name? Cool Dude but not I want to talk about Scrappy

~Were you named after anyone? Yeah I was named after Tayton because he was born first

~How old are you? 5

~What is your favorite thing to do? play and eat

~How many years have you been alive? a long time like a thousand years

~How old is your mommy? 21

~Daddy? 29

~How many pets do you have? 2

~Who named your pets? you and dad

~What would you name them? I would name them scrappy and allie-allie

~If you had all the money in the world what would you do with it? pay everything (what does that mean?) that means a lots I would buy everything even all the houses

~What do you love most about your house? the kitchen the bathroom the laundry room, garage, the stairs the hallways,the bedrooms, the playroom, the sleep room, the tv room, but that's it.

~Do you want another brother or sister? another brother because so Nicholas and Tayton can play with each other and I would have the new brother to play with.

~What would you name him? Nicky

~What do you like best about Tayton? I like my brother if he plays with me, that's it the end.

~What do you like best about Mommy? I like my Mommmy more than my brother because he doesnt like me sometimes and you like me all the time and so does dad.

~What do you like best about Dad? I like most about my daddy, oh, wrestling with my Daddy

~If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be and why? This house because it's so big

~If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life what would it be? so sad, lasagna. (bazonya)

~How old will you be when you get married? 26

~What grade are you in when you graduate from high school? first grade

~How many planets are there? a lots but not Pluto because they took down Pluto

~Name them? pluto the sun and moon

~What about the planet we live on? I dont know the name

~What do you want to be when you grow up? monster truck cool dude

~How can you tell if someone is old? the green lines on their hands

~What are you? a person and I'm a little bit of old

~What is your favorite song? Sing it.


So now I want to challenge all of you to interview one or two or all 8 of your children and see how many laughs you get! Post your interviews on your blogs for everyone to enjoy!

I can't believe they did that!

Korbin came down the stairs today with his hand steady next to his side. I knew that something was up. I saw a hint of green under his hand. I told him to give me whatever it was that he was hiding. I thought it was the scissors from yesterday. But no, I wasnt that lucky. Instead it was this:



Yep that's right! My brand new, very sharp Pampered Chef paring knife. Seriously? Give me a freakin break! What on Earth was he thinking? What on earth were the other three kids older than him that knew he had the knife thinking? What was a brown haired 8 year old doing when she cut herself with said knife and didn't tell anyone? He had it in his pants pocket ALL day today! I'm lucky my son is not my daughter now!

Don't worry though. I sat my two down and told them how they could die from using tools they aren't old enough to use properly. I'm going to lose my mind. He's 5. Not even 5 1/2 yet. Just plain 5. And about as bone headed as can be!

Whats next? Good thing WE don't have any guns in the house! Ugh... life.

On the upside I just went to this blog Booking Mama entered to win Drivng Sideways by new author Jess Riley.



Go enter but if you win please let me have it!

He did what?

As my day progressed today, I realized we had a Relay For Life committee meeting. Oops! So I spend a good part of the afternoon preparing for the meeting since I was asked to do the talking tonight. Anyone who knows me knows that I love to talk and have no fear of public speaking need time to prepare for these things. I have to have at least two or three minutes to look over notes before I begin my ramblings!

The boys were in the company of 5 other children at tonights meeting. During the committee meeting we were getting ready to start and realized that our agendas had to be separated. I started passing them out and asking people to tear them in half to separate the committee part from the team captain parts. Someone asked me why we had to rip them. I replied that we didn't have any scissors and forgot to cut them before we left.

To my surprise here comes Tayton. He's been wearing his fishing vest for days now. He comes up to me and says "excuse me mom excuse me". "Yes Tayton?" I reply in my sweet loving motherly way. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a pair of scissors. This kid is great! He's always got strange things in his pockets. He also had a roll of scotch tape. Crazy kid! He saved us from lots of tearing though!


Amber was over tonight after our meetings. I decided to unhook my crummy Vonage Router and hook up the Belkin router Kirke bought when he was in Maryland. Yeah as much of a computer geek as I try not to admit to be I could not get it work right. I decided not to waste time fighting with it and called Belkin.

First of all when you call a company like this don't expect the worker to speak very English very well. I was on the phone with the first lady for oh I don't know an hour? Something like that. Long enough that when she put me on hold to transfer me to someone who knew what they were doing might be better able to assist me, I threw my phone at to Amber and ran to the bathroom. Unfortunately I didn't have time to grab my bluetooth and more pepsi. I think that Amber saw smoke coming from my hair being on fire from having my phone up to my head and overheating for so long because she brought me my bluetooth and a fire extinguisher. She also filled my drink, I just love her! I think she was scared that I was gonna go off on the poor Belkin guy and knew Pepsi makes me happy!

Finally after a gazillion hours and the onset of a horrible headache we got it running good woohoo for the guy I don't know that I told I wanted to kiss! I was just so stinking happy that he actually (after another hour) helped me fix my problem. He was in India, it was only ten in the morning! How would you like to start your day dealing with computer dumb, angry Americans like me? Poor guy!

Korbin/Cool Dude came downstairs with a strip of money taped to the front of his shirt. He has a major infatuation with money. He finds change everywhere, steals it from my car even and hides it in strange places. Today he wasn't hiding it very well. His brother must have whipped out the handy dandy scotch tape from one of the billion pockets on his vest so Korbin could keep his beloved money close to his heart.


I was trying to get him to get pajamas on at the time. We were wrestling around and his pants started to fall and his little white underwear were hanging out. I pretended to spank him. His response to this was to drop his drawers and moon me! I went to swat him and that little snot "tooted" as we say! I thought I was going to die from laughing so hard. I of course told him that it is never okay to moon people once I stopped laughing. Gross little boy! I should have had girls!



I'm not sure what happened with this picture. Tayton took it and the color was all off and crazy. This is the best I could do with it. Sorry! Notice the money...

The Worst Part of a Deployment

Last night I went to bed and I discovered the worst part of my husband being gone. You're probably thinking its going to bed alone every night, worrying about his safety, dealing with kids crying about missing their Daddy, having to move heavy furniture on my own, fighting off grill fires myself, chasing around two boys with no help, carrying in groceries, all of the housework being put on me, going to doctors appointments on my own, being lonely, living by the computer waiting for the next IM to come, trying to financially budget his needs there with ours here, worrying about car troubles, carrying heavy kids, or of course having no one to cuddle with and watch tv. Well you're wrong. There is something far worse than any of these things!

Ticks! Yep that's right, when my husband left I lost my tick hunter/killer. Yesterday I had to weed eat the knee high weeds in my dog's yard. Anyone here knows that my house is a tick magnet. I'm pretty sure that every week in the wee hours of the night a plane flys over and drops a couple hundred pounds of ticks directly over my house. The boys can walk from the house to the car and find a tick on them. It's so creepy. So after I did the back yard yesterday I felt all creepy crawly and tickish.

When I went to bed last night I was not convinced that I was tick-free. I twisted and turned and looked for ticks in the mirror but dang it all there's no way I can see the back of my head or various other tick zones. I laid in bed and tossed and turned and even turned on the light a million times because I swear there was something crawling on me.

At one point I got up and went into my bathroom. As soon as I turned on the light a little huge spider went running across the floor. I couldn't scream and have Kirke come running in laughing at me to kill the spider. Nope I had to suck it up and grab the nearest object and chase that sucker down and kill him myself. Gross!

I don't love it. I miss my tick hunting, spider smasher. This is definately the worst part of a deployment. Tick tick tick. They're everywhere!

Well we had a better day..

Today was better for us. We even got up and got some things done. I'm declaring my time of pouting and being moody over when he gets to his destination and I can send off my first package.

Tayton has been having issues with wearing shoes. He usually sheds them pretty quick whenever we get somewhere but lately he's been forgetting to wear shoes when we go somewhere. I had to carry his heavy (39 lbs now!!!) butt into the commissary and push him in the cart the whole time. Darn kid!

I'm gonna glue shoes to his feet! Or I could just leave a pair in the van for him. Except that would mean I put them on him and took him in the store. So if on the odd chance he kept them on until we got home then we'd have to remember to put them back in the van. Never mind it's too much work. I'll do better to just threaten to make him walk to the store instead of being carried in and hope he starts to remember.

Guess what? ZZ Top is coming here!! YAY!! I'm so excited. And guess what else? I'm sooo taking my camera in this time! August 31st we will hire our sitter and run out the door singing! I can't wait! And I'm really interested to see what specimen of people ZZ Top in Missouri brings. I hope they remember their clothes or I'm gonna need to stab my eyes out!

Today Sucked

Nothing good happened today. I'm pretty sure of that. So since I'm in a pissy mood I won't bother you with it. Instead I'll show you this slide show of one of our river trips before Kirke left.

Tupperwho?

We have these Tupperware team meetings monthly with our director and the rest of her team. It is usually fun and I get to laugh. The ride to the meeting was fun as usual but the meeting was blah today. Here are the notes I managed to take:

*Every Midget Seal counts! (Our director said so, apparently we are an equal opportunity midget loving company!)

*(referring to our Director) "Use her and Use I we're here to help!" (she said that too! And she just got a free car, not a company car, it's hers to keep forever even if she quits TW tomorrow! Here's a picture)


They like to put us in it and take our pictures. Weird...like hmmm...too bad it's not yours sucker! No really its for motivation to earn our own, I think. This picture is Brandy, Amber, Roxy, a little girl we don't know and I.

*let the hugging begin

*We've met our quota of Kathy/Cathy's for the team. There are three at the table and it's starting to freak me out. Like the gremlins they keep multiplying.


Those were the best of my notes. I took some real ones too but those were my wandering thoughts or noteworthy moments.

We watched the movie Juno the other night. I loved it! It was very funny and I loved the music it cracked me up! Amber hated it though. Which made me love it even more! So of course I volunteered to drive to our meeting tonight which meant I got to play my ipod! Woohoo, I limewired the song Loose Lips right away when they left to get ready for the drive.



Please don't hold the comments made in this song against me just because I like the song doesn't mean I agree completely with the politics of the song....And it's really freakin fun to try to sing the song. I told the girls I'd learn all the words so I can sing it much better then I did tonight. (sorry girls)

Here's the words cause they make me laugh! I need to laugh!

Loose Lips by Kimya Dawson
I got the lyrics here!

loose lips might sink ships but loose gooses take trips
to san francisco, double dutch disco,
tech tv hottie, do it for scotty
do it for the living and do it for the dead
do it for the monsters under your bed
do it for the teenagers and do it for your mom
broken hearts hurt but they make us strong and

we won't stop until somebody calls the cops
and even then we'll start again and just pretend that
nothing ever happened

we won't stop until somebody calls the cops
and even then we'll start again and just pretend that
nothing ever happened

we're just dancing, we're just hugging,
singing, screaming, kissing, tugging
on the sleeve of how it used to be
how's it gonna be?
i'll drop kick russell stover, move into the starting over house
and know matt rouse and jest are watching me achieve my dreams

and we'll pray, all damn day, every day,
that all this shit our president has got us in will go away
while we strive to figure out a way we can survive
these trying times without losing our minds

so if you wanna burn yourself remember that I LOVE YOU
and if you wanna cut yourself remember that I LOVE YOU
and if you wanna kill yourself remember that I LOVE YOU
call me up before your dead, we can make some plans instead
send me an IM, i'll be your friend

shysters live from scheme to scheme but my 4th quarter pipe dreams
are seeming more and more worth fighting for
so i'll curate some situations, make my job a big vacation
and i'll say F*CK BUSH AND F*CK THIS WAR
my war paint is sharpie ink and i'll show you how much my shit stinks
and ask you what you think because your thoughts and words are powerful
they think we're disposable, well both my thumbs opposable
spelled out on a double word and triple letter score

we won't stop until somebody calls the cops
and even then we'll start again and just pretend that
nothing ever happened

we won't stop until somebody calls the cops
and even then we'll start again and just pretend that
nothing ever happened

we're just dancing, we're just hugging,
singing, screaming, kissing, tugging
on the sleeve of how it used to be

Oh and another funny Best Boy moment. We were leaving the battalion the other day after we dropped off Kirke. Korbin and I were crying and Tayton said "Mom why are you guys even crying, he's only been gone a few minutes?"
It was funny. He's so logical in his little mixed up mind!

Today at OT he spun and spun and spun in super fast circles for most of his hour of therapy. All Katy said was "wow it sure is taking a long time for him to process that information". I said "you're gonna be dizzy when you get off of there" and she pointed out the truth "that's not gonna happen". He doesn't get dizzy because his head is in a sort of constant dizzy state so it doesn't phase him. He loves circles, spinning anything like that that is repetitive and never ending it's soothing for him. It works, we're okay with that.

****Hey Kirke, I want to know if you're really reading my blogs over there or just watching the videos and checking out the pictures. Lets play one of those fun little games I like to play. You know, the one where I leave the longest voicemail ever just rambling about nothing? Then at the end I say something stupid like "if you listened to this whole message you'll say the word apple when we talk again". Yep here we go, if you've read to the bottom of this My Love, you'll mention our first kiss when we talk/email/IM again!

Dear God,

Here are the boys saying prayers tonight. It's been a long time since they had to pray for Daddy in Iraq....and it shows.



By the way it's now midnight and they are still awake talking away. Tomorrow Tayton has OT so it'll be a good time to fix our whole "sleeping till 10 am thing and get onto something that resembles a schedule.

Friday night we went to Brandy's to let the kids play after a delicious dinner at the big MD's. Here are some pictures of them playing and trying to crash into each other.
Here's little Korbin.

Little Megan

This is Elizabeth.

Naughty little Tayton.

And last Nicholas!

ZZ Topless

I was supposed to attend my college graduation on May 31st in Springfield even though I'm still finishing my last class. I'm a responsible college student and have worked very hard for the past two years doing online courses. The thing about online courses is that you're basically paying out a ton of money to a University for them to simply give you a book and a syllabus and say teach yourself.

Well as responsible and dedicated as I am to my education I decided my time would be best spent doing responsible grown up things. So we went to a ZZ Top Concert at Ft Knox. The previous "we" included me, one of my best friends ever, her 11 year old daughter and some of her other friends. Kirke was sweet enough to stay home and watch all three boys.

I expected that a concert on a military base would have mostly military and military families attending. I could not have been more wrong. The crowd looked as if every trailer park in Kentucky vomitted it's residents right in the middle of the Ft Knox airfield. And if that wasnt bad enough, appearantly many of these people didn't even have time to get dressed before being spewed all around us!

I decided that my time during the opening bands would be best spent taking pictures of people around me to share with all of you. I could not believe what I saw. It didn't take long before the well dressed normal people around me joined by pointing out people that I just had to get a picture of and even letting me use their camera phones when mine died long before ZZ Top even came out!

I saw more topless men that one day than I have in my entire life! Men who found it appropriate to take off their shirts just because they could. It wasn't the great looking guys or the young guys either. It was ugliest, creepiest, most tattooed, pierced nipple, beer belly having group of men I've ever seen!

Women who were probably 30 years old at the very first ZZ Top concert 30 years ago tried to wear the exact same outfit this time as they did 30 years ago. Old ladies with bra-tops on or their tank tops rolled up under thier bras, with their bellies hanging over way too tight jeans or shorts were freaking me the heck out!

And for your viewing pleasure here are the best pictures I could manage from my cell phone. I appologize for the picture quality, it was the best I could do since the tickets said "no cameras" and I was the only one in the audience who actually obeyed and left mine in the car, stupid me!!

First we have the Topless:










And now on to the original ZZ Top Groupies from first few years!






And here are some of my favorites:

This lady walked between our chairs and the row in front of us, very very close in front of us and then she stopped. With her tail right in Wendy's face. I did what any good friend would do and took pictures. I even pretended to "reach out and touch someone"!



Next we have some of my least favorite hairstyles if you can call it that, of all time:






This girl looked like she rubbed a dandilion on her head to get that shade of yellow blonde!



I didn't read the dress code before we left but I'm pretty sure it didn't include wearing pants that your butt will try to eat the whole night!


For a minute I thought that Britany and Avril were at the concert.



And these pictures, well take a look:




And now so that you can forget everything you just saw here's a picture of Cool Dude!