Pretty flowers given to the girls, who were being extra polite and friendly (much to my amazement).

Did you ever wonder why it’s called eggplant.  I don’t even really love it, but I had to have these, they were just so fun. 

What dreadful hot weather we have!
It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
~Jane Austen

It’s just been one of those days.

SO long, and SO busy and SO exhausting, on top of a really long and busy and exhausting week.  All of this would probably be fine if it hadn’t immediately followed vacation.  I had a lot of catching up to do after a week off (such as LAUNDRY), and ZERO time to do it.

But that’s okay.  We’re all fine.  And I really have no excuse for complaining.

I learned a really important lesson from our vacation at home.  This was the first time in eight years of marriage that I just totally relaxed while my husband was home.  I forgot about exercise, forgot about the cleaning, the laundry, the bills (not so good), and just hung out.  It was great.

EXCEPT, now I’m having to catch up from all that down time.  I’ve been really tempted to get frustrated about it, but I realized that’s just silly.  We had a great time.  Even though there were no clean clothes and the house was such a disaster you couldn’t see the floor in a single room, we had a good time.  Even though we ate lots of dessert and mostly pizza and didn’t do naps, we had a good time.  Even though I didn’t vacuum  for 12 DAYS!!!!!!, or dust, or mop, or clean out the fridge (don’t worry, we did do dishes), we had a good time.

I think I learned that all of that stuff that is SO IMPORTANT, is really a lot more flexible than I thought. That it’s true what I said before, I do create a lot of my own problems.  I discovered that I can cook a meal, even when every inch of counter space is covered in dirty dishes.  And we can all get dressed in the morning, even if the clothes come from a laundry basket, or a pile on the couch, instead of the dresser drawer.  I can sleep at night, even if there are toys scattered across the living room floor.  I just have to RELAX.

So I’m really thankful for this vacation and all I learned.  For an obsessive compulsive control freak like me these were valuable lessons. 

And I’m also really thankful that my husband took the kids out today so I could clean my house!;)

 For more thankful thoughts visit here.

**READ THIS FIRST** I want to apoligize in advance for the absurd number of links in this post, but, there they are so…if you don’t intend to look at them don’t bother reading the post…it will be boring.  But if you want to have A LOT OF FUN, keep reading and take a look.

I was driving in the car this evening, flipping stations.  This is what I do. I flip stations about every 1.5 seconds pretty much the whole time I drive anywhere, unless I happen to land on that one special song that will make my day.  Even then I might not listen to the whole thing.  It depends on how amazing it is.  Hombre HATES this.  Most the time that we spend in the car together I’m not allowed to touch the radio for this reason.  Lucky for me we hardly ever get to drive together.

Anyway, I was flipping, and I heard good old “Jack and Diane“.

On the OLDIES STATION!!!!!

This is a song from my childhood, and now it’s playing on the oldies station.  The one that plays songs like “My Girl” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”.  They were playing “Jack and Diane”!!!! Maybe I’m dumb but this really bothered me.  I just don’t think I’m old enough to have songs I grew up with playing on the oldies station.  I guess I should probably get used to it.

This whole experience got me thinking about music in general though. 

I LOVE music. Not ALL music for sure, but a lot of it, and probably a lot that I shouldn’t.  It’s always kind of been an issue for me.  But I don’t want to get into that.  What I want to talk about is music that brings back memories.  I love, and sometimes hate, how a song can completely transport you to such a specific moment in time, like you’ve been there all along.

For example, last week I was waiting for a haircut when the familiar melody of ”My Heart Will Go On” started playing. In a split second I went from a 26 year old married mother of three sitting in the waiting area of a salon, to a 16 year old emotional basketcase sitting in a movie theater watching poor Jack drown and knowing that the 19 year old guy I was infatuated with who had just shipped out with the Navy would absolutely end up the same as Jack and I would have to make that song my anthem, just like Rose.

It was R.I.D.I.C.U.L.O.U.S.!

But music does that! At least to me.

Other songs that bring back memories:

This one takes me back to me and my sister’s birthday parties, like around ‘88, and dance contests! I always won:)

This one reminds me of my country phase, ages 11-14, and clogging! :0 Oh yeah, and a really unhealthy obsession with the karaoke machine!

This one (country phase continues) makes me feel like a 12 year old girl, completely starry eyed and convinced that nothing in life could compare to having someone say these romantic things about you.

THIS is jr. high youth group in a nutshell.  This was the awakening…when i started figuring out how to be one of the cool kids;)

This was at the peak of coolness, when we girls started making our own music videos. Maybe I’ll show you ours sometime….

This one reminds me of driving around in my volvo when I was 17, and so over navy guy, drinking Dr. Pepper, smoking cigars and fighting with my sister while my favorite friend, we’ll call him The Ninja, drummed on the dashboard.

I remember Hombre running around Applebee’s singing this the night he “asked me out”.  (I don’t remember if there is anything bad in this video…be careful!)

This one takes me back to when Hombre and I had been dating a couple of months, sitting up late at night with my friends, wishing I could be with him.  It makes me feel summery; I had really short hair then and liked to wear LOTS of make up.  If I heard this song now while I was looking in a mirror, I think I would be really startled by the change in my appearance.

There’s other great songs too. I’ve known the words to this one since I was about six, and I STILL LOVE IT!

I could go on ALL NIGHT with this.  There are so many songs that bring back so many memories and stir up so many different emotions.  Some I’m excited to hear, some (in the words of my sister-in-law) make me want to puke! But I just think it’s so crazy and kind of amazing how music sticks in our brains like that.

So what are your songs? This is your chance to speak up ALL YOU READERS (all two of you).

I really want to know.

Hombre got to take a little vacation last week.  We didn’t have plans to go anywhere, just stay home and do some house stuff.  But the daily afternoon rains put a damper on some of our projects, like painting the porch. Oh well.

But it was a nice time to relax as a family.  The last time he had a week off was in October and we spent the ENTIRE time nursing each of our children through their first experience with croup.  Not fun.

This time worked out much better.

The beginning of the week was of course our anniversary, so that was great.

My parents kept the girls for the WHOLE DAY so we got to just hang out.  It was a lot of fun.  I think we’ve both kind of forgotten how to just spend a day as two adults with no children to take care of.  But we managed.:)

Later in the week we did our part to support animal cruelty and took the older two to the circus.

They LOVED it, and Miss A was very insistent that the elephants looked “SO HAPPY!”, so I don’t think those PETA people know what they’re talking about.

Saturday night we decided to try something new.  This is an ice cream maker.

It was a wedding gift from a sweet lady at work who went out and bought us exactly what I told her we wanted.  Well guess what?  We’re dumb, and this is the first time we’ve ever used it.  For some silly reason it just seemed so intimidating to me.

But we gave it a try and the result was fabulous!  It will definitly be used regularly from now on.

(hombre insisted that I needed to be in the picture of the ice cream…)

We ended the week with a trip downtown to take glamorous summer pictures to replace all of the pictures of our girls in fall leaves that are decorating my living room.

Miss I was not feeling so cooperative, but we got some good ones.

This is my favorite…

I still find each day too short for
all the thoughts I want to think,
all the walks I want to take,
all the books I want to read,
and all the friends I want to see.
~John Burroughs

It was a wonderful rest!:)