Happy birthday to my precious Libby Lu :)

This song has been on replay in my mind lately… ‘Blink’ by the contemporary Christian group, Revive.

A sampling of the lyrics:

I don't want to miss
Even just a second
more of this

It happens in a blink
It happens in a flash
It happens in the time it took to look back
I try to hold on tight, but there's no stopping time…

And here’s why:

My baby has a birthday tomorrow. I am now truly one of those moms that can say, “It seems like just yesterday that I brought her home from the hospital!” Because that is how I feel. I’m trying to hold on tight, but time is flying at a rate I feel unequipped to handle.

My sweet baby is turning seven. Seven years that have passed in the blink of an eye.

Five for Sunday

Five for Sunday

1. okay, first and foremost, no more lame apologies about why this here blog isn’t getting updated more than once a month. I know that you know that I know we’re all bizzy people. Whatevs.


2. If you have been catching up on my life via my status updates (which really is all anyone has the time for these days anyway!), you already know that not only have I hit my weight goal (so long to those 35 pounds!), but that I’ve also been through training to become a leader for Weight Watchers. I’m learning so much… like to nod, and look thoughtful, mostly. Which I am learning is not as easy as it sounds.

Especially if you are like me, and you like to talk like I like to talk. And I like to talk. (Huge surprise, I know.) So, it will be a good thing.


3. The season is upon us… the season of ‘Elf’ and ‘Home Alone’, ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’, and glory Hallelujah, ‘A Christmas Story’. It’s time to get your ‘Ralphie’ on, friends… bunny suit and all.


4. Oh, and another season is upon us… deer season. And my nine year old son killed his first deer, and happiness abounded on Planet Linson. I have deer sausage in my freezer, and it is oh-so yummy. It tastes of spice, and my childhood. :)

5. Speaking of deer season, when we were in the van a couple of weeks ago (pre-dead-deer), and were lamenting about the lack of deer sausage in our freezer...

Libby: “Maybe a deer will just run out and we’ll hit it with our car!”

Phil: “Well, let’s hope not. Besides, you're not supposed to use that for meat anyway. It's illegal. Remember the rules from hunter education, Davis?”

Davis: “Yeah, you can’t use a deer for meat if it has been hit by a car.”







Josie: “I *totally* get why… it’s because of the 5 second rule, right??”



Um, yeah… that’s why. ;)

Dino from the Flintstones never looked so... well... happy?

It’s true. For the last month, I’ve forgotten that I have a blog. Actually, it wasn’t so much that I forgot… it was more that I have been a little busy with ‘Occupy Hobby Lobby’, ‘Occupy Kids’ school’, and ‘Occupy Weight Watchers’.

Short story… I am NEVER at home anymore. Between subbing at the kids’ schools, working on craft projects for the holidays, subbing, training for Weight Watchers, hitting my Director goals for Thirty-One, and SUBBING (can you tell I’ve been subbing a lot?!), I have not been keeping up with certain things.

And the blog? Well, it’s been pretty low on the priority list.

But I just had to share something that made me laugh out loud today, as I subbed in 2nd grade. One bonus of subbing for the younger grades is all the ‘gifts’ that those little darlings want to bestow on you. A substitute is such a novelty for little kids… “Someone new to tell my story about the cat that my dad accidentally ran over on the way to school! Someone new that I can ‘help’ with all the rules, and who doesn’t know that we’re really not supposed to color with the Sharpie markers !”.

As opposed to being a substitute for older grades, or God forbid, middle school… “Someone new that doesn’t know I’m NOT actually a foreign exchange student who claims to speak no English!” (oh, the things they try to get away with! ;)

Anyway, by now, I’ve subbed at the kids’ school often enough that most of the kids know me pretty well, and I walk out the door at the end of the day with a sampling of drawings and little notes. Today’s example, though, deserves its own special badge of honor. It was definitely one of those that makes you say…


“Wow, sweetie! That is so, um… just… WOW! Tell me all about it…”

Which just happens to be the code for either:

1. What the heck is this?

OR

2. ‘Am I looking at what I THINK I’m looking at???’)

In this case, it was code for the 2nd one.












“Mrs. Linson, it’s a DINOSAUR!”


Why, yes… it certainly appears to be. *cough, cough

A very merry Christmas in September

I’ve already started my Christmas shopping.


Now, don’t be a hater… I wasn’t *going* to do any shopping yet, but when you find the perfect gifts for the perfect people, it’s hard to not just jump right in with both jingle bells, waving your Mastercard around, yelling, “I’ve got to get me one of those!! Or maybe even THREE!”

And honestly, they don’t mind you doing that in TJMaxx. It’s encouraged, even.

So, I wasn’t *going* to do any shopping yet, but when this little gem arrived in my mailbox, I was a goner.



I do so love getting catalogs in the mail, but I usually am pinching pennies, which makes my catalog perusal exactly that… more of a perusal, and less of a purchasing expedition. But everything in this catalog is TOTALLY in my price range! Which just happens to be somewhere between free, and ‘how well do I like this person’? I usually lean a little closer to the ‘free’ end of the spectrum.

And this catalog? Well, this catalog is the perfect marriage of Lillian Vernon meets SkyMall meets Home Shopping Network. This would be THE catalog that Lillian Vernon would conceptualize when flipping through a SkyMall mag whilst on a plane to the Home Shopping Network studio.

So, with Mastercard in hand, I’ve hammered out a couple of gifts for the most *special* people in my life. And I mean that in the *special-ist* way possible.



First and foremost, I’m totally getting this candle for my mother.



She likes Paula Deen… she likes candles. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this candle probably smells like butter. Or bacon. Or white-haired old lady.

This candle makes me want to talk with a Southern accent, use an alarming amount of butter in recipes, and narrate to an imaginary audience exactly what I’m doing every time I toast a piece of bread. It’s a ‘must-have’ for every white-haired old lady in YOUR life. (I kid, Mother.)

And for my MIL (mother-in-law)? Well, she enjoys a glass of wine every now and again, and I just knew that she would love to visit with The King while imbibing.



The King of Rock & Roll, of course, not to be confused with the King of Pop. I’m not 100% sure she’d know who the King of Pop is (was), and would wonder why there was a picture of an ugly white girl with sunglasses and an unfortunate nose job on her Christmas present.

These glasses are divine, though, and feature the King in his glory days.

Of course, I can’t help but think that the fat, bloated Elvis in his later years might be more appropriate on wine glasses, but I guess nobody wants a cautionary tale when they’re having a cocktail. Which explains why there are no Lindsay Lohan wineglasses. Not that my MIL would know who that is either.

But the clincher? The item that made this catalog my automatic ‘One Stop Shop’ for All Things Crap… er… Unique?

For my darling husband:








I KNOW!! I couldn’t believe it either! The style…

the flair…

the complete abandonment of self-esteem and total indifference for one’s appearance.

I mean… um… the COMFORT!

(oh, and click on the picture to get a better look. Because, really, why *wouldn't* you??)

I simply couldn’t choose between the dark wash (with realistic patches and boxers showing at the waist! Even gangstas want to be comfy in their jammies from time to time)...

... and the acid wash (BTW, 1987 wants their Pajama Jean back.) But at the oh-so-reasonable price of $12.95, I can afford to get both pair!

It was a happy day on Planet Linson when I realized my hard-working husband wouldn’t have to sacrifice comfort to look...well, to look completely disheveled in what looks like jeans from back in his college days when he worked in an aviary, and was attacked by a giant African crane (a whole other blog).

Now, I know what you’re thinking… where can I find that catalog?? Well, I’m pretty sure I included the website on a couple of my pictures because I really have an eye for detail. And a compulsive laziness in regards to cropping and/ or Photoshopping pictures for my blog.

So there is a very good chance that you will go there, and find the perfect gifts for your loved ones. One can never have too many “Jingle Jitters Latte Candles”, “ShotGun Shell Shot Glasses”, or “Glow-in-the-Dark Balls” (not kidding.)

I was going to include pictures of each of those, as well, but did I mention my compulsive laziness? So, yeah.

What I wouldn’t do to have one of each and every thing from the Lakeside Collection. Well, one of every item, save one.



If you get the urge to do a little shopping for ME?


Well, skip the jellybeans, and just send the booze.




Thanks, and Merry Christmas in advance! :)

Oh, you have no idea.

Yesterday I took my van in to have the drop-down DVD player repaired.

It stopped working a few months ago, but I haven’t had a chance to take it in because I couldn’t be without my vehicle during the summer. The logistics of three kids, dropping off the van, switching the seats into Phil’s car, etc. was just too much to handle in this heat. So no DVD player in the car all summer. No biggie.

It’s not like we really went anywhere that was far enough away to allow even one movie to play all the way through, anyway.

Not my point.



Point is, kids are finally back in school (yay!), we are headed to Dallas for the weekend, and I was looking forward to a nice, quiet drive with the kids wearing their headphones, immersed in a movie they’ve seen 50 times, but shush each other throughout like it’s a first-run premiere.

So, I took the van in to have it repaired/ replaced/ basically whatever the warranty covers.

And the tech was a very nice guy. Nice enough to write down the stations that my radio was set to so he could re-set them after they worked on the system. Nice enough to offer to run my receipt up to customer service to check out the warranty, since I seemed like I was in a hurry.

Nice enough to checkmark the box for the ‘Interior of the Vehicle’ as:




HEAVY WEAR & TEAR.

Whaaaat?? That’s not very nice. :(

I mean, I know my van’s not the cleanest mini-van on the planet (Planet Linson or otherwise.) But HEAVY wear and tear? On a vehicle that I’m still 5 months away from owning outright??


NORMAL wear and tear, yes, I get that. I mean, I have been known to let them eat in the car from time to time.

And there was that time I let them eat their McDonald’s ice cream cones in the van because I saw that guy sitting in the booth next to us, rocking back and forth, eyes squeezed shut, murmuring, ‘Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus!’, and clutching his backpack to his chest. That seemed like a good opportunity to just grab our cones, and enjoy them on our drive home.

And we MAY have had a Sonic slushy or two spill out on the seats. And there *is* a red gummy bear ground into the back of the seat that we’ve never been able to fully get out. But it’s covered by a carseat… there was no way he could have seen that!


Anyway, I peeked over his shoulder as he filled out the form, checking off HEAVY WEAR & TEAR.

The only place to go from here is the box marked: COMPLETELY PIGGISH CONDITION.

He saw me watching him. He must have noticed my stricken look because he shrugged and said, “I just have to finish up the paperwork. Don’t worry, I’ve seen a lot worse. Kids can really do a number on a car.”



I just sighed and nodded.


But what I really wanted to say was, “You should see what they can do to a uterus.”

That's NOT what I meant, honey!

We’ve got stuff to do around here, y’all. Lots of stuff.

Not only is it the week before school starts, and we’re busy with all that entails, like new haircuts, finishing up shopping for clothes, meeting the teachers, school supply drop-off night, and grocery shopping for Fritos & Capri-Suns for lunches,…

but I also have been running around, delivering Thirty-One products and catalogs to hostesses and customers , getting my paperwork finished to kick off my leader training with WeightWatchers, and in general, getting ready to be ‘out of pocket’ for the next three weeks, subbing at the kids’ school.


Oh, and we mustn’t forget:

Re-finishing our kitchen table.

Don’t ask me why my darling husband and I picked now to undertake this massive project. We’ve been meaning to tackle it long before now, but we’ve never gotten around to it. Something about 3 kids, a ‘new-ish’ job, our busy schedules, and, oh… life in general, kept getting in the way of progress.

So, it makes perfect sense, I guess, to wait until the week before school starts to whip out the card table for our family of five to use at dinner.

Great planning on our part...am I right?

And of course, we have to do all of this inside the house right now because it’s so incredibly hot outside. We’ve completely disassembled our front room to use as a temporary workshop. (Well, I can hope it’s temporary.)

We’re working on it in the evenings after the kids head to bed, sanding and staining at a snail’s pace. Meanwhile, it appears that we are eschewing other mundane things like… oh, laundry. And cleaning. And personal hygiene (kidding! I just skipped shaving my legs. Like you've never done that. Whatever.)


Superb timing on our part...am I right?

The kids have become accustomed to walking around the furniture that’s been moved to a new place, and the plastic tarp covering the carpet. We’re officially living in a work zone for the next couple of weeks, and we’re just going to have to get used to it.

What I can’t get used to, though, is telling the kids to hurry up and finish eating their dinner,






“…because Mommy and Daddy have got to GET BUSY!!!”




Regrettable word choice on my part... am I right?

Eat your heart out, Hallmark.

Isn't that the sweetest? A card my 6 year old made for me. She eschews color, as you can see, and goes for a more 'minimalist' look.


And on the inside?









I can't help but feel like there's some subtext at play...