Oldielocks at bat

Oldielocks plays softball. She has been blessed with a natural athletic ability, just like her dad. This is her second year,and she really enjoys it. The husband helps coach the team, and I get to sit on the sidelines and chase Baloney and Middle, all while trying to watch the game. Every now and then I shove licorice in their dirt encrusted hands and watch them spend forever chewing. It keeps them busy and buys me time to watch Oldielocks play. Candy is the currency of kids I tell you. And 25 cents for 5... I'm a rich momma.

I'm not the overly laid back parent that would rather be lounging on my bed, yet I am not the red-in-the-face-major-league-player-breeder either. I will tell you this, I expect effort. I will not let my child half ass things, in my house, at school or in sport.

Recently, Oldie wants to pitch. I will always let and encourage my kids to go for it, because if they never try, then they will never know. I was recently posed the question if it was too much pressure, for a 9 year old. Being pitcher. Well can't have a game without a pitcher. She likes it, and asks to do it. The problem is, she does great for the husband, and if she starts off great, she keeps going. If she makes one mistake, she stops. Literally a wall comes down, and she gives up. She will pitch the ball, but it will hit the ground. before the plate. Over and over. She stops moving her legs and that's it. Then she suffers throughout the inning until she walks 4 players.
It's painful, when you know she can do it. I look at it as a learning lesson. That life is gonna suck, but when and where you pick it back up is where it matters.

It's hard work, every day. Practicing, honing skills. Hard work is what sets apart the people who want it.

I honestly think some parents today make the world to easy for kids. That they shouldn't have to be disappointed, that they all are winners, that if they are unhappy it needs to be fixed. I think softball is a great teacher for this. She does have her teammates rely on her, she is responsible to others,, She can learn that you can swing and miss or you can swing and hit, but if you don't swing at all, then you have no chance of ever hitting at all. It's not always going to be easy. You can want something badly for someone else. It's okay to feel pressure, people count on you. And it's okay, to rely on others around you. If she walks away with just having tried, then she will be far better in life then never learning to try at all.

We celebrate her successes. She has her mommy encouraging her from the stands, and her daddy, sitting on a bucket, guiding her through every pitch. If she hears no voices but ours, and knows that we believe in her, I know that she will learn to believe in herself. I remember after her first inning pitching, a parent commented that they really liked how the husband sat on a bucket and talked her through every pitch. He turned to them and said " If I could pitch for her, I would." I hope when she grows up, she'll see why we let her feel sad, why we let her feel frustrated, why we watched, hearts aching from the sidelines as she would throw balls, or miss a play. And all that we ever asked, was that she try.

Thank you Veterans

"He's A Veteran!"

He's a man who looks the world in the eye. He's a man who feels an extra heart-tug when the flag goes by. He's a man who steps a little faster when he hears the beat of a military band. He's a Veteran.

He comes in all assorted sizes and shapes. He's a big man, he's a small man...he's a short man, he's a tall man. He is the "Doughboy" of World War I...the "GI" of World War II... He's a man who's seen Korean skies, fought the cold and silent battle of uneasy Berlin....and braved the booby traps and ambushes of Ia Drang Valley in Viet Nam. He's a Veteran.

He's a sailor....soldier...Marine. He's a flyer...seabee...coast guard. He's artillery...infantry..medic...aviation machinist mate....armored and ordnance.. He's a Veteran.

He has the quiet dignity of a man who knows the pride of freedom ...He has the clear eyes of a man who respects himself. He is courage living on Main Street. He is patriotism mowing the lawn on Saturday afternoon. He is good citizenship with a smile on his face. He's a Veteran.

He is Republican, Democrat, Independent/..He is mechanic, farmer, banker... He is Catholic, Protestant, Jew... He is rich and poor and in-between. He's a Veteran

He's a man who loves peace because he knows the price tag of war. He's a member of history's most exclusive fraternity. He knows that war is ninety percent boredom and ten percent sheer terror. He's been there. He's a Veteran.

He likes the majesty of America's mountains...the tranquility of America's valleys. He likes the bustle of America's cities and the friendliness of America's Main Streets. He likes the sound of America's children playing on the American playgrounds. He likes to watch the flag go by... He feels a bit sad when he hears the sound of an American bugler playing "Taps". He is a citizen soldier...Peacetime leader... He's the first to volunteer in time of trouble...and the last to come home. He's a Veteran.

He is proud of his American past...alert to his American present...confident of his American future. He likes the legends of America's greats...the Washingtons...the Jeffersons...the Abraham Lincolns...the Roosevelts...the Robert E. Lees....The Stonewall Jacksons...the Pattons...the Eisenhowers...the MacArthurs...the Nimitzs....the Pullers....the Dalys and all the proud patriots who have marched through America's history books. He's a Veteran.

He has bivouacked at Valley Forge...charged the hill at Gettysburg...stormed the sands at Guadalcanal...swarmed ashore at Omaha Beach..advanced on Pork Chop Hill and fought in the bunker complex in War Zone "C" in Southeast Asia. He parachuted into Grenada. He stood watch in Beirut. He fought in the streets of Panama and served in the Middle East in support of "Operation Desert Shield". He's a Veteran.

In the very rear of his secret heart there is always a tinge of sorrow, a souvenir of sadness for lost and departed comrades. No matter how gray his temples grow or how many inches he adds to his middle-aged waist, he always walks with a distinctive pride that isn't given to lesser men. He is America with an honorable discharge... He is Democracy with a Good Conduct Medal lost in the darkness of his keepsake box... He is freedom with a Purple Heart. He is a first class fighting man with a quiet walk and sentimental grin. He's America's most honorable citizen He's a Veteran."

Author Unknown


Some don't blink an eye at today. They think of it as a holiday, a day off. Some don't have a grandfather who served in the navy. Or a grandfather that served in the army. Or a father who has two purple hearts, troubled memories, and spent countless nights in the jungles of Vietnam.
Who now spends his days making the lives better for all those who are serving now, his brothers, once a marine, always a marine. Whether someone knows someone or not, today, they all deserve our thanks. The wives and the kids who stay behind deserve our thanks.

For all that defend our freedom, years ago, today and tomorrow, thank you.

My fav juice ever

seriously. It's super good. All different flavors. I tend to be a little more of the tropical fruit lover,
so I get those flavors. I get it at Costco. Or some of the local stores.
Or the nudist colony.

*snort*
get it? Naked juice, nudist colony...

(I agree, that was lame.)

thought provoking

Found it here

"Living History
By Anna Quindlen

The American Museum of Natural History threw a spectacular party on New Year's Eve 1999, but perhaps the millennium really arrived there just a few weeks ago. A group of New York City schoolchildren were at an event marking the 150th birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, naturalist and president, and at the end of the visit one of the kids raised his hand. "I have a question," he said. "Was he black?"

History will record that on Nov. 4, 2008, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the first black president of the United States. It is impossible to overstate what that means to this nation.

America is as much a concept as it is a country, but it is a concept too often honored in the breach. The Statue of Liberty welcomes with the words "Give me your tired, your poor." Yet generation after generation of immigrants arrived here to face contempt and hatred until the passage of time, the flattening of accents, turned them into tolerated natives. The Declaration of Independence states unequivocally that all men are created equal. Yet for years the politicians and the powerful seemed to take the gender of that noun literally and denied all manner of rights to women.

But no injustice or prejudice brought to bear by this country against its own people can compare with how it has treated black men and women. Humiliation, degradation, lynchings, beatings, murders. The rights the United States pretended to confer upon all were unthinkingly and consistently denied them: the right to the franchise, to representation, to protection by the justice system.

Literal ownership gave way to something not so different: "When we are moved to better our lot," Richard Wright wrote in 1941, "we do not ask ourselves 'can we do it?' but 'will they let us do it?' " Henry Louis Gates Jr., in the memoir "Colored People," says simply, "For most of my childhood, we couldn't eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn't use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores." Alice Walker left home for college on a bus and was ordered to move after a white woman complained that she was too near the front.

None of this was so very long ago.

Time passed. Things changed. John Lewis, a boy who loved books but was not permitted to enter the public library, a man whose skull was fractured by Alabama state troopers when he led a peaceful march across a bridge, now sits in Congress. Gates is a professor at Harvard, Walker a revered writer. Segregation as a matter of law has given way to segregation as a matter of class and custom. As President-elect Obama said when he gave a speech about race earlier this year, speaking of systemic poverty, bad schools and broken families, "Many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."

But Obama said something else in that speech, something both simpler and more profound that has special resonance now that his improbable candidacy has prevailed. He made the political spiritual. "In the end, then," he said, "what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us." He asked the American people to be fair and just, to be kind and generous, to put prejudice behind them and be one people because that is, not a legal or social imperative, but a moral one.

There will be learned discussion in the years to come about the specific meaning of this moment, about whether it will be more symbolic than substantive, about whether having a black president will lull Americans into believing that racism is a thing of the past. But for just a moment consider this small fact: for a long time a black man in many parts of the United States was denied even the honorific "Mister" by the white community, and was instead called by his first name, like a child, no matter how elderly and esteemed he might be.

Now a black man will be called Mr. President.

They never thought they would see the day, people said, especially the older ones, who could remember the murders of Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. They wept, some of them, and so did I. Perhaps it was because this man seems so young and vigorous in a nation that seems old and tired. Perhaps it is because he promises change and hope, and both are so badly needed. He is the president for our children's generation, a more tolerant and diverse society, so insensible of bright dividing lines that one of them would idly wonder whether Theodore Roosevelt was a black man. They belie a time when there was a crayon labeled "flesh" in my Crayola box, a crayon that was a pale pink.

But I suspect that, like many others, I wept for myself, too, because I felt I was part of a country that was living its principles. Despite all our prejudices, seen and hidden, millions of citizens managed, in the words of Dr. King, to judge Barack Obama by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. There were many reasons to elect him president, but this was one collateral gift: to be able to watch America look an old evil in the eye and to say, no more. We must be better than that. We can be better than that. We are better than that. "

halloween's getting closer

I loveeee halloween shenanagins. I always have a cute little menu planned for halloween, decorations, crafts, etc. Even my fingers get in the action. (P.S. my nails are real, the coloring is not. It was night, and everything has a orange hue)




They have cute little peel and stick rock star/punk/halloween type graphics on them. The kids picked them out for me, and chose where to put them.



How cute is this green guy......




And for stupid human tricks, here's mine. I am double jointed. In my fingers, which sucks, because my knuckles will lock the other way. I can individually bend each joint, in different angles. Skills.... I got skills. "Ewwww how do you do that?" is a familiar comment. Grosses the husband out, and the kiddos think it's cool. For now.