I have sparkles on my butt.

Yep, you read that right. I have sparkles on my butt. And it’s not just me… the rest of the family has sparkles on their butts, as well.

Before I tell you anymore, let’s flash back for just a moment to the spring of 1991. Oh, I know… waaaaaay back. I was a freshman at UT, living in the dorm, preparing to go to a spring formal. I can’t remember if it was a Lambda Chi formal (my future hubby’s fraternity) or a Texas Spooks formal, but the theme, if I’m remembering correctly, was ‘Black and White’. I had the perfect dress. I had actually worn it to my junior prom in high school (and if I could ever figure out how to work my scanner again, I’d upload a picture!). It was classic late 80’s with a black velvet top, puff sleeves, and a little flouncy skirt with black velvet dots on the white satin. Super cute. I even wore my hair in a rockin’ side pony tail, curled within an inch of its life. My bangs were high, too, of course. Oh, the 80’s! My mother had made it, as she made ALL of my prom dresses, and I planned on recycling it for the college formal.

About a week before the formal, as a favor to me, Phil took the dress to Jack Brown Cleaners to get it dry-cleaned. The day before the formal, he called me… with terror in his voice. (Keep in mind, we’d only been dating a few months… he had only BEGUN to experience the terror of life with me!) He said, simply… “The cleaners called. The spots fell off your dress.” Whaaaaaaaat?!!

As if turned out, the black velvet spots came off the white satin in the dry cleaning process. Who knew? My mother had made the dress, so it didn’t come with care instructions, and I assumed that having it dry-cleaned would be fine. Now, not only did the spots come off, but the cleaners was angry because the spots had stuck to all the other clothes that were being cleaned at the same time. I was full of righteous indignation, pissed that they had ruined my dress, and I vowed never to darken the doorstep of another Jack Brown Cleaners (which I have not, to this day.) I ended up just borrowing a black dress from a girl that lived on my dorm floor for the formal. It wasn’t nearly as cute, and I had to cinch the back of it with a safety pin, but it would have to do.

Now, I’ve been pissed about that little incident for the last 18 years. That is, until last week. Last week, I washed Josie’s Halloween costume. If you saw the pictures, you know she was Sharpay Evans from High School Musical 2 (she looked adorable!) We had thrown the dress in the ‘dress-up box’ and Libby has taken to wearing it, complete with the golfing glove. Of course, since she’s four years old, she spilled something on it (juice, milk, baloney…who knows?) Not really thinking, I threw the dress in the washing machine. It was covered with little silver sparkle dots…. half of them came off… and GUESS where they went?! That’s right. On everyone else’s clothes.

So, I’m feeling a little more understanding of Jack Brown Cleaners’ dilemma, all those years ago. And I’m hoping that you’re a good enough friend that you’ll tell me when I have sparkles on my backside.

Davis the dictator...

Okay, I’m back to the blog, after letting my mini-Mussolini do the blogging yesterday.

Davis was VERY specific about what he wanted ‘his blog’ to say. He would tell me exactly what to type, and then at the end of each sentence, he would say, “Period. Mom, put a period right there.” He didn’t want me to add anything to it, and you know how much I wanted to. My witty little commentary was just hankering to come out. It was a giant acorn, for heaven’s sake! That just cries out for snarky comments. When I tried, though, he just glared at me, pointed to the keyboard, and said, “That’s the backspace. I need to push it.” (darn school computer lab.)

And when he was finished, and I showed him that I’d put it on the blog, along with a picture of his beloved acorn… was he excited? Well, yeah, he was, but he was also pissed because the Daisy Duck cake picture was still on there. “I don’t want that on there! I just want the picture of my acooooorn!” (In case you can’t tell, that’s whining…) So, did I reason with him? Did I firmly tell him that all of the pictures on the blog were equally important? Did I stamp my foot, and say, “I worked hard on that stupid cake! The picture is staying!” ?

Nope…I finally just told him that no one else would be able to see it on THEIR computer. That they would only be able to see the picture of the acorn. So sue me, people! Jeesh…

One heck of an acorn...

In the interest of this being the ‘family blog’, I turned over the blogging duties to Davis today. He decided he’d like to tell you about his giant acorn.

Transcribed to Mommy: (with reminders of where to put each period, even!)

“My acorn is very big. I found it in my backyard. I lifted a rock up and it was pushed in the rocks. I pulled it out and it was a big acorn. It is from a burr oak tree. We googled it, and we saw a picture of it. It is very special to me because it is so big.”

Now that I'm officially in my late thirties... ;)

Thanks everyone for all the fab birthday wishes, calls, cards and emails!

I had a wonderful birthday weekend, starting with dinner with my hubby on Friday night at Trudy's (Thanks Bonnie & Drew for keeping the three gangstas). Hadn't been there in forever, and we even went to the one that was just down the street from the school where I used to teach. I spent many a 'Happy Hour' at that location! The food was delicious, as usual, and the Mexican Martinis were strong (just like I remembered... or rather, 'didn't remember'?!) Anyway...

Saturday, I got to hang out with a couple of girlfriends, scrapbooking and having lunch, and then when I got home... the tree in the family room was lit up and decorated! Courtesy of my little family. We had already decorated the tree for the front room together, so I didn't feel like I missed out on any 'tradition', and appreciated that it was done as a surprise for me. Next time you're at my house, though, make sure you look back in the family room. The tree is so overloaded with ornaments in the front and on the bottom part, it's a wonder it doesn't just tip over from the weight. The kids gave me a gift card for a massage, and when I went to give Phil a hug, Josie said, "Don't thank him! It was us!" Heehee.

Phil also gave me a special silver ring that I'd been wanting which is stamped with each of our kids' names. Well, technically, he gave me the ring sizer, which they sent him after he ordered it because they need an exact size. The ring cannot be resized once its been etched, so there's not really room for any guesswork...anyway, the finished ring should be here in a couple of weeks. Yay!

And tonight we went to the new Salt Lick with some of our college pals. In case you didn't know, there is a new Salt Lick next to the Dell Diamond, and we hadn't tried it out yet. The friends we went with are, of course, the same ones we used to make the yearly (well, more often in college) pilgimage to Driftwood with, and it's always been a bit of a tradition for all of us. So, we were fully prepared to deem it as 'not up to par' with the original location. Well, let me tell you, it was every bit as delicious, without that LOOOOOONG drive! So, I think we may have just started a new tradition. ;)

Awesome birthday... um...looking back at this post, it appears that I ate my way through it. Oh well! Guess the kids get cake on their birthdays... I get alcohol and barbecue. I'll take the alcohol and barbecue any day...

My last NaNoWriMo post... promise! ;)

Okay, I promised ‘more later’, so here’s my last post about NaNoWriMo, at least until next November when I do it all over again (?!) I even have a few people that have agreed to try it with me. (I’m going to hold you to it!)

I hit the 50,000 word mark on Saturday night at around 9:00 p.m., and then I promptly stopped what I was writing and took a picture of my wordcount stats on the computer (yes, I know, I’m a doofus!) I entered my manuscript on the website to have my numbers verified, and when I did, the screen immediately changed to the ‘winner’s circle’, and it said that I had officially won NaNoWriMo 2008 (took a picture of that, too.) And then I cheered, took a few more pictures, and danced just a little, much to my husband’s amusement.

I had an extra day, so I could have easily gotten more words in, and waited until Sunday night to verify, but the way I looked at it was that I just needed to get to 50,000 words to ‘win’. I guess it’s kind of like having a baby. Nobody gets a medal for NOT getting the epidural and having a ‘natural birth’, and I didn’t get some kind of extra prize for writing 52,000 words vs. 50,000 before midnight, November 30th. So, I’ll just go ahead and get verified, and take pictures, and be done. And in case you couldn’t guess, I got the epidural all three times, too.

And no, I’m not done. I did not get my story finished. Not yet. The story still has a few thousand words left to go, and few more trials for my characters to conquer. And then of course, lots of editing and re-writes. I did NOT do what the website suggested and get a complete ‘story arc’ written. As much as things have changed as I have written, I wanted to see where this might go without pinning myself into an ending. I will finish it, I’m just not ‘under the gun’ so much, so to speak. Jen would kill me if I left her hanging. ;) My goal is to finish in the next week or so.

A few numbers to ponder: 119,301 authors signed up on the website to go on this crazy month-long journey, and 21,683 people got their numbers verified at 50,000 words (or more) and ‘won’. That’s an 18.2% ‘win rate’. And I have to say, I’m really not surprised that more people don’t complete it. It’s much more difficult than I thought it would be, initially. But once I got the momentum going, and got past about 15,000 words, it was easier to follow through. And I think it helps that I just REALLY hate to lose. Really, I do.

So, if you check the www.nanowrimo.org website, do an author search, and enter my author name (withbothfeet), you will see an awesome purple ‘winner’ bar on my author’s page.

Thanks again to all my lovely friends and family that listened to me go on about it this last month, probably to the point of splitting headaches. Sorry if I’ve been… what was the word you used, S.H.? ‘Obsessed’?! Yep, I have been, kind of. But I’m so glad I did it. I feel like I found a little piece of myself I’d forgotten about. The piece that isn’t just a wife and a mom and a volunteer (not that those aren’t wonderful things to be)…taking this personal challenge made me feel like a creative, complicated, artistic person. I guess I just needed a little kick in the pants to remember that. And what a month-long, caffeine-fueled, amazing kick in the pants it turned out to be.

Birthday Girl

“Am I still four today?” Libby asked me first thing this morning. I assured her that she WAS still four and that she would be for the next 364 days. That seemed to satisfy her. I’m not quite sure what she thought, though. Maybe when I have my birthday later this week, I’ll only have to be thirty-seven for a day, and then I can revert back to being thirty six for another year? I might like the logic of the newly four year old.

She had a great birthday yesterday with a par-tay in the park, her Daisy Duck cake, of course (yes, I’m leaving that dang picture up), snacks, presents, bubbles and a ‘Pin the Tail on Daisy' game, where I suspected the blindfold mask was a bit faulty when the first four children all stacked their ‘tails’ directly on top of one another. Hmmm…. We added a ‘spin’ for good measure, and the game was on!

Last night for dinner, we took her to her favorite restaurant, Mama Fu’s, where she got her usual teriyaki chicken and white rice which she loves to douse in soy sauce. When we got home, she opened her ‘big gift’ from us, which was a… are you ready for this?… a ‘Baby Alive Learns to Potty’. I’m not kidding. Or as Philip was calling it when we were shopping… ‘Little Baby Sh*ts Herself’.

Libby was soooo excited. She promptly named it ‘Emily’ and wanted to give her a bottle. Cute, right?

Now if the title is not enough to explain what it is, it’s a doll that ‘eats’ and ‘drinks’ and then…yep, pees and poops. Hopefully in the little potty chair that came with it in the box. More likely in the diaper that the doll is wearing. And she has a plethora of little phrases that she says when you push the button on her bracelet, a couple of the most memorable being, ‘Oooh… tinkle, tinkle!’ and ‘Uh-oh, I made a stinky!’ Think I’m joking?! I wish I were.

Had I known what was involved with this doll, it would have stayed on the shelf at Wal-Mart. Did you know that each time you feed the doll, you have to completely rinse her when you’re finished? But here’s the kicker… she’s not a tub toy. It specifically says that in the instructions. You just have to ‘flush her system’ with water to remove all the traces of ‘food’. Little did I know that I was going to be spending my late thirties giving doll enemas.

Let’s just hope Santa doesn’t bring the other doll she’s asking for... ‘Baby Alive has Smallpox’.

Ace of Cakes has nothing on me!!!

Okay, let me just give you a minute to absorb the awesomeness...

Good? Heck yeah, it's good! So good, in fact, that even though it's 10:30 on Sunday night, the day before Libby's party, and I JUST finished the Daisy Duck cake (and I'm still wearing my freakin' apron!), I had to post the picture. And oddly, in the picture, it looks a bit like a mylar balloon... but it's not! It's a cake. A delicious cake, coated in pure awesomeness. Or at least I hope it's delicious.

I can't wait for her to see it! I'm tempted to wake her up right now just so she can look at it. Even though 2 days ago she DID say, 'You know, Mommy, I think I'd like a Tinkerbell cake for my birthday!' After my head was finished imploding, I talked her out of it. I showed her the cups and plates and napkins and tablecloths I had bought, and the 'Pin the Tail on Daisy' game I had made, and we were TOTALLY back on the Daisy bandwagon. (thank God!) And even though Phil said she looked a little like Daisy's slutty, drugged out cousin (Ditzy Duck, I presume?), I still love her. (Dammit, Phil!) That's right, I said it. I am in love with this cake.

So, that's it... I just wanted to share with you all my first foray into the world of fondant. It's a tricky little medium, but I think my first attempt turned out just ducky! Haha...sorry...it's late and I'm tired... ;)

Sarah, whaddya think? Definitely not a CakeWreck!