Parents, be wary.

I have been obsessing lately on the over-regulation of my life. All of my friends have been made aware, in animated language, that I'm fed up with the control the powers that be exert over me. I'm tired of paying too many taxes for stupid things. I'm tired of electronic tickets given in the blink of a camera lense, gas prices higher than anywhere else in the country due to taxes, thwarted elections due to the long tradition of Cook County "appointments", and the overwhelming feeling that I am never alone...Big Brother is always watching.

But now, they want into my house. Literally. The federal government (the twits in Congress) Are voting on a bill called Education Begins at Home which will have Uncle Sam waltzing into my living room to evaluate my parenting. All of this is "voluntary", of course, but it has severely frightening potential to become sinister in the extreme. They want to evaluate everyone's children for all sorts of medical, social, mental red flags and "help" you work it out. They also want to "help" you discipline your child better.

Let me give you a perfectly reasonable scenario that could occur when one of these sensibly shoed "social workers" comes into your home.

"Johnny appears to be very hyper Mrs. Smith, it's definitely ADD. Here is a prescription for some terriffic depressants that will chill him out. I also notice he hasn't had the chicken pox shot or the MMR vaccine. I have them here. Let's take care of that right now. "

"Uh...thanks for coming, but I think I'll pass."

"Mrs. Smith, I don't think you understand. This is what he needs and you must give it to him or we will rescue him from your negligence."

"Please leave. "

"And Johnny also mentioned that he gets spankings sometimes. Mrs. Smith, the government doesn't recognize corporal punishment as a valid parenting method. We request you stop that immediately and simply listen to Johnny's feelings about his behavior."

3 months later, you're in court hearing a judge order your son to be forcibly medicated and you get sentenced to regular visits from a social worker to be sure there are no more spankings. The even more terrorizing scenario is having your children taken from you and put into the foster system.

This is not liberty! We have all declared that we hold these truths to be self-evident. All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights and among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (And if you don't agree with this declaration, you don't belong here. There are plenty of places that would suit you well, like Cuba, North Korea, Iran...)

The arguments about drugs for ADD versus nutritional overhaul and natural remedy and the pro-vaccine and the anti-vaccine, and spanking or timeouts, are VAST. Which is what makes them valid and valuable topics that need to be debated over and over until we have answers. Or at least until you, the individual can make an informed, free decision on what is best for you and your child. I'm not here to tell anyone what to do. I have no desire to run your life, but I do have a very passionate desire to run my own.

I'm writing my reps to tell them to vote down this bill. The further away from your life the government is, the happier you will be. Care to join me in telling them?

CLICK HERE TO WRITE TO CONGRESS

Here's my letter to Bobby Rush...fat lot of good it will do here in the People's Republic of Cook County, IL. I hate my reps.

Dear Mr. Rush,I am writing you to encourage you to vote against the Education Starts at Home bill that is coming to the floor soon. This bill is more government intrusion on my rights as a parent. I do not want the government evaluating my child. I do not trust any government with the well-being of my child. I believe I have the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness which is self-evident in the state of being human. That no government has the right to impose upon those rights. This bill is an imposition on my liberty. My liberty to be a parent to my child. My child has parents who love her more than any institution in the world and we will act in her best interest. We do not need help from the state to determine if our child is well, happy, healthy or sane. All we need from the federal govt, is to ensure our lives by keeping our national defense tight and our borders sealed, to ensure our liberty by protecting the Constitution, and to allow us to pursue our happiness by staying out of the way! We'll take care of the rest of our lives!
Thank you for doing your duty by upholding our great Constitution and listening to the will of the people.

First "Real" Haircut

Food Musings

As most of you know, Veronica barely eats anything. It's a real struggle to get anywhere near 3 meals a day into her. In fact, if I get 3 meals a week into her it was a good week. I've been so frustrated about it. Mealtime is my least favorite part of the day (and unfortunately it seems like it's an all day affair). How does a child of mine not like food??? Why can't I have her malady? I'm struggling to not eat everything I see while she turns her nose up at deep fried oreos. DEEP FRIED OREOS!!! I can't get her to eat anything. Last night we were at a carnival and she barely touched her fried oreos. She won't eat cake, cupcakes, pizza, hot dogs, you name it, she won't eat it. Everyone says "well there must be something she likes." And unbelievably the answer is...nothing. Not one solid food does she crave. All she wants is Ovaltine. Maybe God has seen me struggle not to strangle her when she refuses everything I offer her...or maybe He just feels sorry for me and wanted to give me a break because today, she woke up and said "I want eggies." Then I made them and SHE ATE THEM. She ate a quarter of an egg! Then, right after that she said "I want cheese" and she ate cheese! Then she said, "I want strawberries" and she ate those too! Then a half hour later she said "I want pizza." So I made it, AND SHE ATE THE WHOLE THING. And that's not all!!!! She has eaten about 4 strawberries in between! She's still eating! The photo above was taken AFTER dinner of pork, bananas and carrots while she was fishing with Daddy. The bread was supposed to be for the fish! I'm confused, relieved, happy, and worried. Is she sick? What's wrong with her? Does she have a tape worm? Scurvy? Why the sudden hunger?

Toddlers. What a ride.

This just in...Special Cornrow Alert

As promised, Damon is busted. Here he is, Damon a la Cornrows!

There is nothing more precious than a white boy in cornrows. Damon, you're the man.

And now for an updated photo of Damon and his extremely good-looking wife and daughter. We couldn't be happier that his cornrow days are behind him.

P.S. Funny moment of the day....Veronica points to Jason's black eye and says, "Daddy, owie. What happened?" And Daddy says "I got an owie" and Veronica replies "Unca Mark did it."

I'm trying to teach her "Crazy" Uncle Mark...we're working on it.

More random photos from Katie....

Our Summer Vacation

This is going to be a long one!

Every girl knows that before going on vacation to any sunny location, one MUST have a pedicure.

Then we were off to exotic Eagle Lake, Michigan! Jen invited us up for two days at the beginning of the week. Veronica and I had a wonderful time, as usual, with the Paczosas. Here she is on their boat, driving and tubing!

Then we went home, packed again and left for our big road trip to OKLAHOMA! Veronica had the coolest setup in the car. She had her movies, her DVD and her puffy headphones. She was a happy traveller! We left at bedtime so she'd sleep most of the way. It worked!

We drove all night and through the next day and arrived around 12noon. Veronica fell in love with her cousin Averi immediately.







Averi took such good care of her! We went to dinner in Bricktown the night we arrived and the kids had so much fun feeding the ducks and playing on the river walk. It was the first time Veronica met Averi and Ashton (who she calls Avy and Baston).

After dinner I had the brilliant idea to get on a water taxi and take a tour of the river. Remind me to keep my ideas to myself next time. We waiting in the sweltering heat for about 20 minutes, during which time Jason ran around with Veronica like a maniac up and down this huge grassy hill. Then we all piled onto a boat driven by a drunken chick who kept bumping into the walls. About half way through the trip, the heat and the motion got to Veronica and she proceeded to hurl on me, Robbie, Averi and a few people we don't know. This happened 3 times before it was over and we had to jump out of the boat at an unscheduled stop. I feel sorry for the people who had to finish the ride! We hightailed it to Toby Keith's restaurant and headed straight to the bathroom where we stripped her down and bathed her in the sink. We basically flooded the bathroom in the process. Sorry Toby! Here she is, naked in the sink.

The next day was the 4th of July when we headed to Abi and Mark's house for a bbq and fireworks. Deirdre and Sebastian and Roma showed up that evening on their way to AZ. Roma and Veronica had fun fighting in the pool! There are more photos I hope to post later that I don't have on my camera with pics of all of us. It was like a reunion of sorts. Even Annie showed up! There was a big blowup slide pool thingy that the kids had fun in and a baby pool too. They swam all day! Then at night we took the golf cart on rides through the neighborhood. Abi's neighborhood is really neat the way they all blow off tons of fireworks. Of course, it's more than a little dangerous but I tried not to think about it. The boys had a lot of fun scaring the hell out of us with too close fireworks.

Then we got back in the car the next day and headed off to Grand Lake for some boating on Katie and Robbie's boat. Robbie hauled that thing on a 3 hour drive in his SUV and had to fill up about 10 times. I think he got about 1.3 miles to the gallon. I can't believe I didn't take any photos of us on the boat but I didn't. It might have something to do with the fact that Robbie kept hitting these huge waves soaking everything on the boat. It wasn't the safest place for a camera.





Now for the comedy portion of our vaca.

Jason didn't have the greatest of times on our first day at the lake. It all started with a playful dunking game. I tried to dunk Mark (which is next to impossible). Then Jason tried it and when Mark went after him to retaliate he "accidentally" punched him in the eye. We staged a dry land photo for your viewing pleasure.





NICE SHINER!

Then, that evening another boat ride was planned to watch fireworks which we said we were going on but somehow the info wasn't communicated so they left us. But we didn't know this so we went trucking down to the dock, through the fireworks and the smoke in about 95 degree heat carrying Veronica and 2 six-packs. We never found the boat but Jason got hit in the head with a firework and one of the beer boxes broke. I should have taken a picture of his face at that moment. Then, as if the rest of it wasn't enough, when we got back to the house all Jason wanted to do was sit and have a beer. The bottle opener was missing. So Jason used his pocket knife to open one for me and it worked. Then he tried to open one for him and the glass broke slicing his finger. He was bleeding all over the deck! Luckily, Damon the medic was there and I had a first aid kit. Everyone agreed he should sit where he was and stop moving for the rest of the evening.

Here are a list of things I've learned on my trip to Oklahoma

1. Under no circumstances do I ever want to do any of the following; noodling (a form of fishing where one sticks ones arm into a hole to pull out a fish which may or may not tear off your hand), witness "cat brains" (which I shall not describe in the interest of keeping this blog rated G), meet Pedro (a growth so large it has its own name), or pee off a balcony in mixed company while holding a conversation.

2. Even rednecks get pedicures. That's right...I mean YOU Mark. All the men in my family have been "manscaped" and while Mark is the most surprising candidate, I hear he enjoyed every minute of it. (All of the men except Jason! He's the only one left to be initiated. We'll get you one of these days)


3. The men we married would choose beautiful women over sane, kind or healthy women. In Katie's words "You either get beautiful or sane. You don't get both!" Guess which ones we are? My very favorite moment had to be when Damon (no photo! someone send me one and preferably one with cornrows!) tried to illustrate this. "Come see my wife. Honey, do you need to throw up again? But look at her, isn't she HOT??? Honey can you smile for me when you're done throwing up? Look at her! Isn't she something?" You see, the women in this family are quite lovely but all of us have some sort of physical or mental issue. Terrible pregnancies, auto-immune diseases, chronic fatigue, fibro-myalgia, lupus, addictions, neurosis, ticks, skin picking, hair pulling weirdness....all kinds of things. But it speaks to the character of our men that they put up with it all.... because we're pretty. LOL

this is no makeup, 95 degrees, no sleep, and probably no showers. We had crammed 16 people in a 2 bedroom condo. We are pretty smokin if I do say so myself. :) (These are my cousins Katie on the left and her sister Abi on the right.)

Someone needs to send me photos of the rest of the girls! Aunt Thalia? Please send!

And look at the fellas who nabbed us. We think they are so.....oh what's the word?

LUCKY

Now, continuing on with things I've learned on my trip.

4. YES. That is a worm Robbie is about to eat. Oklahomians, man! They're crazy
5. Don't piss off Mark and most definitly do not share a room with him. The man snores like a grizzly bear and scares the children.
6. If you should ever move to OK, steer clear of the Sout-Siiiiiiiiiiiide! (Mark lives there and the snoring would keep you up all night)
7. Even when you're in your 30's, you still get shushed!


A big thank you to Katie and Robbie for treating us to such a nice weekend and to Averi for lending us her room and taking such good care of Veronica, and to Ashton for seranading us with his guitar. To Abi and Mark for hosting such a nice party and to Cole for enjoying Uncle Jason's ribs with so much gusto! To Tiffany and Dennis and Cooper and Connor for coming out to see us while we were there and to Audrey and Damon and little Emma for making us LAUGH so loudly we got shushed. And to Annie and Jen for surprising us all! And to Auntie Thalia for helping out so much with the little ones. Thank you! We love you all and can't wait to see you again!

Summer is here again!

There's so much to catch you up on! Summer is here and we're taking advantage of it to the fullest! We spend most of our days at Auntie Beth's pool, where, (drumroll please) Veronica swam by herself for the first time two days ago! She wears a turtle suit, of course, but she is now fully mobile in the pool. She even swims in the deep end and jumps off the diving board! We'll get video of that soon. We have a very busy week coming up. Vacation Bible School starts tomorrow and I am volunteering 3 days out of the week. I think I'm going to regret that humanitarian urge...but I'm hoping it will be more fun than harassment! Here's some recent photos!

Here we are at Auntie Beth's pool! The coolest place in town...well, sort of cool. (Average water temperature 120 degrees-haha)

Veronica is very confident in Beth's pool and it's so fun to watch her swim around in that suit. She's getting very adventurous!

On Father's Day we had Jason's parents over for dinner. Here's Dad and Jason enjoying cigars on the balcony. Veronica had a great time playing with Gramma! We've been enjoying excellent weather and good company and delicious BBQ. Can't get much better than that.
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Neighbor update...

There's nothing really to tell except that I called the building and the village and the health inspector and animal control. If that doesn't do it nothing will. So far so good. No more mystery puddles on my balcony rug.