This is how a pre-teen babysits.

This is how many septic tanks are required for a five bedroom house with 6 females and one male.

Misty's first wasp sting.. I have a feeling she won't be trying to grab them off the back door anymore. She was pretty pissed at the whole situation.


On our way out of the neighborhood in Quinlan, Mark saw Angel looking all sad about being left behind. He stopped his single cab truck and let her in with him and Bethany. Before we even made it out of the neighborhood, he stopped, called Angel out and brought her to climb into the already stuffed Suburban with me and the other 4 girls. Angel discovered the rat poison that was placed strategically under the house. After 1/2 a bottle of vegetable oil, 1/2 a package of crackers, and about 1 cup of water, Angel puked up a blob containing green rat poison pellets. I gave her some Vit. K when we got home. We conveniently have Vit. K here because of Heather's liver disease. Angel seems fine today. Thank goodness..

This is the first tank in the ground.. Woohoo!! All three are in the ground. Today Mark is out in Cumby waiting for the inspector to come approve their placement. I got to stay home today. After all the shoveling of sand into the hole yesterday, I guess he took pity on me and let me stay here.

Fires in Texas

I was well aware we were having a very dry winter from the looks of the cracked lake bed behind my house. I had no idea we were about 16" below average until I read about the deadly fires that are breaking out in Texas.

How sweet is this picture? Mom and Dad were going for a peaceful walk around the lake (probably to get away from the chaos of all my kiddos, and my oozing tension over readying things for christmas eve) I took the picture using digital zoom so it's super blurry. I get really emotional any time I see old people holding hands. While I don't see my mom and dad as "old" yet, I do look forward to watching them grow old together.
He came in the 22nd of December and stayed with us till today, the 26th. He and mom are heading to his hometown of Cumberland Tennessee on Wednesday. They will spend about two weeks together, then he'll drive her back home. I'm going to miss them both like crazy, I know I can just call their cell phones since we are on the family and friends plan with Verizon, it's just weird knowing they are so far away.

Raise your hand if you have a messy house!! (Raising hand)

I absolutely LOVE this song! A friend that I've known since 1st grade came for a visit with her new boyfriend lastnight. She left about 4am, but not before letting me borrow an awesome 80's CD to copy to my computer. You'd think I'd transport to the 80's when hearing this song.. nope. I think of Family Guy, the episode where Loretta cheats on cleveland and Peter tries to cheer him up by singing Rock Lobster.

So.. this song will play for a while.

RIP "Berta"

Last year, on this day, a friend of ours lost her life after a week long "battle" with leukemia. She was the mother of 4 children that loved her very much. We were never really close friends. I didn't confide in her, she didn't confide in me. Our husbands were close. Our kids played together, went to each others parties, and we sat in the stands at the racetrack together. I feel guilty for not "letting her in" I'm hesitant to make new friends.. I'm not very trusting.
Now it's too late.

I knew this day was coming, I knew I wanted to blog about her as a sort of memorial. It's just really odd how I got a "slap in the face" reminder today.
My husband called me looking for a number for a company that manufactures septic tanks. Since he writes down numbers on random pieces of paper, I was calling various numbers that I found written down.
Here's how the first random phone call went...
Random recipient of call: "Hello?"
Me: "Hello, who is this?" (with a slight hint of humor and embarassment in voice, since I'm the one making the call, I should know)
Random recipient of call: "Hello??"
Me: Hello???" (crappy ass phone.. I'm so sick of these crappy phone lines!!!!)
Random recipient of call: HAHAH!! Just kidding.. it's me, James, leave a message and I'll call you back"
So I hung up.. it wasn't the septci tank manufacturer. I called dh and told him I had no way of finding this number he was looking for and told him about James' funny message on his voicemail. He said "My mom and I are dealing with something right now, I'll call you back"
So then it hits me after we hang up, today is his MOMS Birthday!! I call him back to remind him to tell his mom "Happy Birthday" and he gets snarky and says "I will.. I'm in the middle of something."
The phone rings and it's James. I tell him that my call was an accident and how he ended up being called by me. Immediately after hanging up, I realize today was the day his wife died. She went to the hospital for heavy "feminine bleeding". She was bleeding so heavily that she was passing out. They didn't think too much of it because she was always pretty anemic and had actually had problems after giving birth to her children, especially her youngest. Within days of hospitilization, they found that her white counts were wacky, they diagnosed her with leukemia. She kept complaining that she couldn't breathe. She went into distress and died very suddenly.
So, I need to call him back. I just don't know what to say.
For all you mommies (and daddies), don't sweat the small stuff, don't put off anything, don't hold back your feelings. You never know when you may lose the chance.

Is there really a humane mouse trap? We put the little boxes pictured above all around the house and caught nothing. Next, we decided to try "humane" glue traps. Right, humane. Heather came running out of the bathroom lastnight screaming "we caught a mouse!!" she said "it's SCREAMING!!!!" I could hear it from the livingroom. It was horrible. Before I went to bed, the mouse had writhed around enough to tear it's face on the adhesive. I turned on Masters of Horror, took some Tylenol, and left Mark to deal with the mouse.
Here's the story he told me this morning..
"I never want to use those traps again. I took the lil thing out in my shop and sat it on the workbench. I was planning to remove it from the trap then let it loose down near the lake. That didn't work.. every time I tugged on him he'd SCREAM and writhe in pain. I felt awful! I put it back down on the workbench and he followed me with his eyes as i came back in the house. I grabbed the box of franzia, and headed back out in the shop. The mouse just stared at me while I got relaxed enough to be ok with whatever I figured out to do."
I will not tell you some of the sadistic quick fixes that he contemplated, nor how he killed it. I will just say that he killed the adheared mouse in the quickest, least painful or gorey way I could have imagined.

We have issues with the critters in Cumby as well. We had poison there since the kids aren't there to get a hold of it. We still see occasional evidence (droppings) of the mice/rats there.
Hannah and I made up an idea for an indy film. Since the critters seem to be immune to just about any type of poison we put out, we thought we'd throw in a bunch of crack and guns and let them take each other out.
We pictured them all stealing strips of material from the bedding out of the girl's rooms to represent their colors. It was goofy, but funny.