Follow up on planet...

Kylie really liked her planet when we finished it.  Although I still think it looks a bit more like a spaceship! :)

Out of this world school project...

Why is it that all school projects are forgotten until the very last minute?  You have to get really creative at 8:30pm in Ada, OK to come up with the supplies you need if you don't have them in your craft stash already! ( I know..you guys thought I had EVERYTHING in my craft stash didn't you!)  So...what do you get when you mix a nerf ball, 6 toothpicks, a paper plate and some spray paint?  Pause for dramatic effect.......

What do you mean you don't know?!?!?!?  Saturn of course!!!  Kylie's class is making the solar system and her planet is Saturn.  As you all know, I am a expert on Saturn and what it looks like.  NOT!!!  So I went by what Kylie said and we got it as close as we could with what we had.

Hot glue to hold Saturn's "rings" in place takes way to long to dry!

 We couldn't find a smooth nerf ball so Saturn has a really strange topography!

Saturn is more than a tad over exposed from the flash in this one!

This picture is for my friend Deann...I don't think she got to get her hands dirty with a craft project today!

Oh! I almost forgot the best part...we added glow in the dark spray paint!  That got me the way cool mom of the day award with my daughter and that is worth a few paint specks on my fingers any time! :)

Dust bunnies and cobwebs....

Wow...would you look at the cobwebs in here!  Who is supposed to be keeping this place up? Me?  Are you sure?  I am pretty sure I told someone else to do it!  Oh well, if you want something done right...

I can't believe it has been as long as it has since I posted regularly.  Life seems to have been such a whirl wind this last year and a half or so.  I don't know if I will go back and "relive" the whirl wind in detail here, but I do want to try and MAKE more time for "me" stuff.

Blogging, scrapping and who knows...my kids might even let me take a new picture of them every now and then since they are getting a little older.  I am not going to start my family update tonight...but I promise to be back soon to do that.

In the mean time, for your blog reading entertainment...I think it would be fun to revisit some of my old posts on occasion.  So I will start with one of those tonight!

I thought I would find a old post from a previous November...but I settled on one that talks about a serious subject for all of us who are no longer 18 years old!

Enjoy...Kicking and Screaming...

Where oh where could they be???

Could someone PULEEEEZZZZE tell me where 2 - yes I said 2 - TWO!!!! of our cordless phones have totally disappeared to?!?!?!?!?!?!? I have looked everywhere I can think to look. I know they were here, so they weren't lost in the move - can't blame that. I have checked all the kids rooms, in the furniture, checked our room, under the beds, in drawers, in the garage...EVERYWHERE!!!!!! WHERE THE HECK COULD THEY BE???? If they show up at your house could you please send them home!!!!!!!! Thank You!

Life in Limbo

Warning - not really a bleeding heart post, but could be considered a whining heart post!

When I was younger I used to say that I wanted to be like Peter-Pan (Peter-Pan Ann - since I am not a guy)and never grow up! Now that I am older, I realize that I didn't really mean it! My birthday is rapidly approaching and I will be(mumble mumble) years old. In my life I have been happily married for twenty-three years, have 4 great kids, have had good success in my work life (considering I don't have my degree - which was a huge mistake on my part! Kids!!!! Go to college - get your degree - whether you are encouraged too or not - just do it!!!! You won't go back and do it later, so don't fool yourself!!!!)...so why do I feel like there is something missing? I don't mean that the decisions I made were wrong. Or that I regret any of them...that isn't it at all. I love my family! I wouldn't change that part of my life. It is hard to explain... I have so many things that I enjoy and keeping my modesty intact - I am at least pretty good at...but nothing that I feel defines me outside of my family. I guess I don't feel like I have found my "calling" in life. What is it I am supposed to be? Yes, a wife, yes, a mother...but does it make me a bad wife and mother if I feel like there is supposed to be something else?

Why is it that there isn't anything else yet? Am I too flaky to make a decision about what to commit too? Am I too lazy to put the work/time into what it takes to make this type of commitment? Will I ever find the answers to these questions?

I guess for now the only thing I can say is.. "Please be patient - God isn't finished with me yet.

Kicking and screaming...

You know what they saying about how your body goes down hill after 40? About how your eye sight starts to fade, your saddle bags are saggier, your love handles are handier and most of your "assets" are starting to get closer to your knees!

Well for the sake of not totally embarrassing myself, we are going to limit this post (and all future posts for that matter!)to the first part of my list - my eye sight. Now since we have excluded all of my other ahem - "assets" (or liabilities as they are now!!!!!) my eye sight is something that I have held great pride in as I aged. When I have had my eyes checked previously I have always been able to read the very smallest lines and came away with at the very worst "almost" 20/20 vision. Woo hoo - go me!

Recently I have been noticing a few problems. When reviewing some of my photo sessions I have noticed occassions where a few of the pictures are focused on something other than the main subject. That is something I should have caught... Also, when using the double monitor at work I noticed I was having a hard time focusing on the smaller monitor and being able to read the words.

This was quite distressing to me, so I blamed a lot of it on my allergies which have been HORRIBLE since we moved back. The only thing reacting to them is my eyes. They burn, water and are extremely red most of the time lately. I have tried several different OTC medications/drops and even went to the doctor about it. He said I am not alone in my misery and gave me a prescription for eye drops.

That being said - I did decide it would be best if I went ahead and had my eyes checked to sure. I made an appointment with my cousin who is an eye doctor here in Ada and waited.

Once in the office, his assistant had me try to read the chart. "Read the smallest line you can." I tried as hard as I could but I could not read the bottom line...it was fuzzy. I was a complete failure! I could read the second to the bottom line but that was not good enough for me! I want to read the bottom one dang it! It seemed no matter how hard I tried it wasn't going to happen. I felt like I couldn't get my eyes to cooperate and focus - TRAITORS! I kept blinking and blinking, but to no avail!

So I sat there in the chair with my failure sitting there with me and weighing heavy on me. Jeff came in and stuck that big ol' contraption in front of my eyes and began "Is this better or this? One or two? Three or four? Here or here?" I pouted and answered his questions begrudingly knowing in my heart I was getting ready to hear those dreaded words - "Well, you do need glasses." I DO NOT want GLASSES!!!!!!!

You have to understand that I have a history with glasses. When I was (lots) younger I had to have glasses...I don't know who helped me pick out my glasses but I think it was the same person who helped that hispanic guy on the last season of American Idol pick out his. I don't think I ever had a pair that was flattering...at least not in the pictures my mom has. And to add to that I had a really bad habit of scrunching my nose up and "walking" my glasses up with my cheeks to push them up instead of using my finger. It was a habit my mother hated. So all I heard was "stop that...push your glasses up right!" I am pretty sure there was beatings and physical abuse involved! If you saw the pictures you would KNOW it was abusive to make a young girl walk around in public looking like that! And don't get me started on the Carol Brady hair cut on a 10 year old!

So needless to say I eventually stopped wearing them all together. Mom took me to get contacts when I was in 6th grade. I have astigmatism (impressed that I knew how to spell that aren't ya! Go look it up, it's right!) - and they did not make soft contacts to correct that and I went home with hard contacts. I was extremely dilagent about doing exactly as I was told. It was great having them...not only did it mean I didn't have to wear those gawd awful glasses anymore but they were also a great excuse to "have" to leave class and go "fix" my contact in the bathroom. BONUS!!! But alas, my new adventure was short lived. I woke up one morning with my eyes totally swollen shut! I tried as hard as I could and could not open them. Mom was sure I had fallen asleep with my contacts in..but they were in their case. I had never wanted to go to school so bad in all my life...I thought it would be so cool to have to be lead from one class to the next since I couldn't see. Mom said no and made me stay home. See! I told you I was mistreated! What a killjoy!

So I spent the next ????? years of my life not needing anything according to the Dr.s I saw and had no problems with my vision. Until now...

Jeff said that my problem was not with my actual ability to see - but with my ability to focus instead. Of course he had to add - that it was an ability that we lose as we get (you guessed it!) OLDER! So before he could say anything at all about glasses, I asked him if it could be corrected with contacts - because giving me glasses would be pointless since I probably won't wear them right. (I spared him the LONG story you have been subjected to here!) So he ordered me some trial contacts..I picked them up late this afternoon. I didn't have any problems putting them in and I plan to work my way into wearing them all day. My vision right now isn't great with them in...they take some getting use to and they are getting better as the evening goes on. Hopefully they will work and my focusing issue will be resolved!

So since that is all taken care of - I am going to refocus on improving my other "assets". If that doesn't work, I will have to take the contacts back out!!!

Neglected and ignored but not forgotten....

I have been a bbbbaaaaadddddd blogger of late. Several months actually... But as some of you know, I have had a really good excuse. Really...I have! And if you don't agree, well I don't want to hear it! That's my story and I am stickin' too it!

I guess I will do a really quick (or not so quick) update of some of what has been happening in our part of the Laxton world. I guess it would start with our spur of the moment (really it was!) decision to move back to Ada. This was briefly touched on in a previous albeit a tad bit sappy post.

The boys all decided they wanted to go ahead and move with Roger. Kylie, Lila, Adri and myself - were going to stay behind to get the house ready to sell, let Kylie finish school in Allen and Lila have the baby in Dallas. In the meantime, I thought I would apply for a few jobs in anticipation of possibly going back to work. I figured it would take me a while to find something here. Roger and the boys came on up here and Mom almost immediately found us a great little house with 4 bedrooms. We decided to rent it and the guys would all live there until us girls were ready to join them and then Roger and I would find another house for us and Chris and Lila would stay in this house. I am not even sure if this plan was in place more than a week! I got a call from the Chickasaw Nation about a position I had applied for about coming in for an interview. They called on Monday - I interviewed on Tuesday - took/passed my drug test (studied all night long for that one!) on Wednesday - withdrew Kylie from Allen schools on Thursday - packed me and Kylie on Friday (Lila and Adri were already in Ada with Chris) and we hit the road to Ada for me to start working on Monday! Wait...that was NOT in my plan.

Even as nice as the 4 bedroom house was to find and as great as it was working for the guys, it was not large enough for eight people to live in. Not even for the short time while we looked for another larger rent house for us. Soooo, Roger dropped me and Kylie off at Mom's and went home! Mom and Dad were not sure what to think about him bringing me back home to them after 23+ years! Dad was mostly distressed by the fact that they were sure I didn't have "that" many clothes when I left! It was kind of like dating again...I would leave work, go to mom's to change out of my suit, go to Roger's to have dinner - then Kylie and I would head back to Mom's for the night. Quite strange...but we didn't plan on it lasting long. Little did we know that the rental properties in Ada are mostly small and uhm...how to say this delicately...are a little lacking? And that is an understatement! Anything larger than 3 bedroom 1 bath is harder than heck to find! But God finally took pity on us and did at least provide a nice house for us...with a pool even! The down side is that it is only a 3 bedroom.

We discussed our options on how to make that work. The boys were not exactly open to the idea of sharing a room after 13 plus years of having their own. Luckily the house had a small room on the back that I guess you could call a sun room....maybe? It has a wetbar and is serving as Kylie's room. She loves having the wetbar in her room...she made Roger go get her sparkling grape and apple juice to put in "her" wine rack. And we had to immediately put "her" fancy glasses in the glasses holder. We got her new pre-teen bedding in bright pink, turquoise, purple and lime green - complete with 3 bright colored rugs. (Thank you to Joei and Trisha for helping talk her out of the trend trap of Hanna Montana bedding!!!) I still need to get some curtains for her, but it looks really cute!

The house is considerably smaller than the one we had in Texas, but the whole family is having a blast with the pool. Roger and I got some really pretty flowers and some floats and the pool area is ready for a party now! I actually got out in the pool and enjoyed it and a float for the first time today....maybe just a bit too long without sunscreen as I am now sporting my first sunburn in years! Don't worry...it is a mild one and should be fine tomorrow - so rest easy and don't worry about me. I am fine! But thank you all for your concern! <3

Let's see, what else has happened....Not much - but here is a brief list:

The boys ran track

Had Adri's 1st Bday party

Went to Cole's Bday party

Had Easter at Mamaw's

Cameron and Kindelle went to the Ada prom

Josh and Erin went to the Allen prom

Hired someone to fix up the Allen house to sell it

Attended Trenton's birthday party

Lila had the baby early (many other posts to come on this one I am sure!) - Alexis Grace

We listed the house for sale

Nana came to town to help with the baby and to attend graduation

Had Nana and Adri with us for several days because Adri got sick and couldn't be with the baby

Josh graduated from highschool

Roger broke his year 2 goal for projects won in month 2

I think that pretty much catches you up....add to that working fulltime and spending almost all of my free time unpacking and sorting through boxes and you know exactly what I have been up to! Any questions?

I won't even begin to try and list what I still have left to do...there are sharp objects in the house so it might not be wise for me to think too much about it!!!!