Mother’s Day? Already?

With all this back to back traveling, Mother’s Day has kind of crept up on me. I was vaguely aware that it was going to happen while I was gone, but I wasn’t counting down the days or anything. Violet Jayne, however, was on TOP of it.

Man I love this kid.

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According to Joe, they were in the NEX looking at shoes when she spotted a box with the ROXY logo on it. She grabbed his hand, and started dragging him to the other side of the store telling him that there was something she needed to show him, he had to come RIGHT NOW and see, come on, come on, it’s IMPORTANT. When she got him to the bags section she explained that Mother’s Day was coming up, and she wanted to buy me a bag. It had to have “pretty colors, lots of pockets, and - the most important thing - it had to say ROXY on it.” My Twink. Turns out all that looking but not buying in the bag section paid off. She knows exactly what I like.

She takes her bag-modeling duties very seriously.

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I love it. It is exactly what I would have picked out. Look at that print! Is it not awesome? Look at that big pocket! Aren’t you jealous? It’s fabulous. And so is my girl.

So - Happy Mother’s Day to all of you Moms (including you, Mom. Love you. Violet changed into that green dress when I told her I wanted to do a photo shoot for the blog. “This way, when Grandma reads it, she’ll see her favorite color!”) May your day be filled with ROXY bags and LUSH soaps.

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(Yeah - I know this is a day early. We’re getting on the train in 2 hours to head to Rome, and flying out to the Canaries in the morning. Next update in 10 days, full of beach pictures. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to trim that kid’s bangs. Yikes.)

We interrupt this hiatus…

… to bring you pictures of cute kids in front of famous places!

First we went here -

Look at that!  All four of us in one picture!  It was almost worth being stuck in the back seat between the hooligans to have that extra adult around to take our picture.

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Where I took this requisite cheesy picture -

Don’t let go, honey!  The lives of all these tourists depend on you!

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- and this ENORMOUSLY cute picture -

Aack!  Where is his sister?  That tower is going to crush him!

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We then headed off to Lucca, which is really the most beautiful little city ever.  We saw this little (What is the word for this? This spot in a wall where a statue should go?  I was going to say ‘arch’, but it’s more than that.  This recessed shelf-like spot? This obvious ‘put a sculpture here’ spot? Whatever.) and the kids happily climbed up and “acted like statues” for the camera.

I must have missed it somehow, when they saw statues in a pose like this.  Cute bellies, though.

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I snuck up and took this one while they were having a little snuggle -

Say it with me now - “Aaaaaaaaaaw.”

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And this is what Joe gets when he says “Smile!”  Honestly - I don’t know how he puts up with us.

What?  It was late.  We’d spent a lot of hours in the car.  It’s possible I was a little loopy.

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The next day it was on to Firenze! (That’s “Florence”, for all you non-Italians.)  We saw David (no pictures allowed, dammit.  I totally needed a picture of the kiddos w/ his tush.  Ah, well.  I guess that’s what Photoshop is for. )

Not sure what this devil horns pose is all about.  Is it a warning of some sort?  “Mom?  Hi.  I just want to let you know that I’m going to nap for about 20 minutes today, and be a real pain for the rest of the afternoon. So enjoy this relatively peaceful moment while it lasts. “

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Violet and I dropped six euro on a real waste of a museum - so tiny that Google can’t find it.  It was a Leonardo Di Vinci museum that the guidebook said was all hands-on reproductions of his machines.  The idea is after a day of saying “No!” and “Don’t touch that!” you can take the kids in and let them turn cranks and pull ropes and push buttons to their heart’s content.  Then we pay our money and walk in and see 72 “Do Not Touch!” signs.  Awesome.

She did get to pull a few ropes and turn a couple of cranks, though, and then on the way out?  We totally got our money’s worth -

The Mona Viola!  Look at that mysterious smile!  I wonder what she’s thinking about?  (Answer: gelato.)

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We continued north to Venice, where Joe caused a bird-riot with a 10lb bag of birdseed.  Apparently, they’ve outlawed the birdseed vendors, and made it illegal to feed the pigeons.  (They did not, however, bother to post that new rule on any of the FORBIDDEN! signs.  Would have been nice to know.)  Making it illegal to feed the pigeons makes desperate, hungry, crazy birds.  You open up a 10lb bag of birdseed near them and they go berzerker.  I got many pictures and videos of this, but that is a whole post in itself.  I will show you this picture, taken after I had put my foot down and the big bag was gone.  These are just curious, hopeful birds.  Not birds driven insane by seed-lust.

The kids loved it.  I was in germapobe hell.  I had to boil them in Purell afterwards.

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On the way back south we stopped in Siena, which was beautiful, but we were all sick at that point and ready to go home, so we only spent a couple of hours there.  The good news is - it’s only about 4 hours away and we can give it another shot at a later date. We’ll just be sure to make it the stop at the beginning of a trip next time, instead of the one that is the only thing between us and our own beds.  Jonas did take this excellent shot of him and his Dad in front of the big church there, as proof that we actually stopped -

The kid has talent!  Look how he captured that big smile AND most of the church facade in one shot! Nice!

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And then we drove home.  This is (obviously) the abbreviated version.  It’s the best you’re going to get.  Somewhere between Florence and Venice I picked up the snot bug and I’ve passed it around to everyone else.  We’re miserable.  And leaving for our fabulous beach vacation tomorrow.  So hopefully it’s a quick sick and not a lingering one.

This trip was good.  We spent our time in the cities just basically strolling around with no sense of urgency, no “gotta see this, gotta do that” tourist mind-set.  Just taking it in, window shopping, and eating lots and lots of gelato (seriously - like two or three times a day.  The kids were in frozen heaven.)  There are a couple of anecdotes that should be here accompanying these photos (Joe losing his wallet, Violet guiding a tour through the Peggy Guggenheim collection, me leaving the library’s DVD in the hotel room 8 hours from here (DAMMIT), our “driving tour” of Siena (a car-free city.  Whoops.), how reasonable it suddenly seems to spent hundreds of dollars on leather once in Florence…), but they will have to wait.  Joe and the kids are all sprawled out on the couch with tissues and cartoons, and that’s where I need to be, too.  I will leave you with this charming image - we found this vending machine at a gas station on the way back home…

Yeah.  That’s thong undies in there.  Only two euro!  I didn’t have the change, so I had to make due with taking this picture home as a souvenir, instead of an actual pair of panties.  It’s funny too, because I had *just* been thinking that I sure could use some gas, a coke, and a new thong.  This gas station had it all!

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We leave tomorrow for Fuerteventura.  If we can drag ourselves out of the tissue boxes, that is.  Wish us luck!

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five… four… three… two…..

We are at T minus two hours until we leave on vacation.  You know what that means.  I talk like I’m going to keep posting whenever I get internet access, and then there’s two weeks of radio silence instead.

Well be going here to see him, then well go here and take goofy pictures next to this.  We’ll also go here and here, and end up back here, where we will spend all of our time riding the boats and feeding the birds.  Oh, we will also definitely go looking for this photo op again.  How can we not?

We’ll be home next Thursday night, then we leave Saturday for a week in the Canary Islands.  I’m all Googled out - you can find your own incredible images of that one.  I’ll try to make a quick post between trips, but if you don’t hear from me, know that I’m drinking frozen drinks by the pool.

We get back 2 days before Joe leaves for Iraq.  I suspect what’s going to happen here is there may be one “OMG THE TRIP WAS FANTASTIC!” post and then it’ll deteriorate immediately into “My husband is gone, my kids are terrorists, I spent 25 minutes today locked in the bathroom.” kind of stuff.  So stay tuned for that!  Should be fun!

Random Sunday

Look!  I’m posting on the weekend!  Must be something pretty important to tear me away from the bowling/going to the park/bike riding/pizza making/cartoon watching/YAY DADDY’S HERE AND IT’S FUN TIME madness we have here from about 4pm Friday to 8pm Sunday.  Well, yes.  Yes it is. Important, that is.  I have three things to show you, and I just could not wait.

1) Suz designated Joe as her official wedding videographer.  It’s an important job, and extremely difficult to do when you are also responsible for a 30lb terrorist wearing a white dress shirt. (See pic in previous post.)

He managed to do a pretty good job, even if some parts you hear whining, and some parts it’s too windy to really hear the ceremony, and some parts he’s running around a bush with the camera still on (Suz - you get what you pay for.)

We’re nowhere near having a DVD to mail out to people (software problem - I won’t even attempt to explain it as I don’t understand any of it for a second. He talks to me about these things and it’s like my brains liquefy and dribble out my other ear. )  We do, however, have a few teasers that I’ve uploaded to YouTube (so people all over the planet can admire how lovely my sister looked.  “Hey Bernard!  Come look at this chick!  She looks just like Bride Barbie!”)

So, for your viewing pleasure we have the walk -

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The vows (be sure to watch my bouquet self destruct right at this very serious moment.) -

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And the cake.  Mmmm. Cake.

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Next on the list of stuff too important to wait for tomorrow to post about…

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Madam’s outfit today.  What a winner.  I kept thinking it was silly.  I told her it was too much pink.  Too much sparkle.  It was looking ridiculous.  Then when she had it ALL on, right down to the sparkly shoes I decided that, actually? It kind of worked. The tank top says PRINCESS, and is a size 6x.  The purse is something she insisted on in the Thrift shop one day.  The pink stool is something she carried out herself when I said “Come out to the balcony so I can get a picture of you in your pinky-pink outfit.”  This kids slays me.

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I know what you’re thinking.  Video clips?  Another ridiculous outfit?  Sure, these are fun, but certainly not so important that you had to use up valuable nap time to blog them right. this. second.  And you’re right.  This stuff could have waited until tomorrow morning. This next one, however?  Could not.

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Yes.  That is exactly what it looks like.

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My boy.  My former baby.  He asked to use the potty on Thursday night and hasn’t stopped since. Two and a half days of nudity, one accident.  We went out shopping this morning and put him in a diaper, and as soon as we got home he asked to use the potty.  Took a dry dipe off the kid and watched him pee out a gallon. HE WAS HOLDING IT.

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Where did my baby go, and who on earth is this kid?

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He got pretty cranky with me for putting the diaper on him in the first place.  “NO!  Just want panties!  Like Jaynie!” (He hasn’t gotten the Violet memo.)  So we went right out and got him some.  Thomas the Train and Spiderman.   The Baby has left the building.

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Ok, folks.  Back to your regularly scheduled lazy Sunday.  I’m off to snuggle my linebacker-sized toddler, who is currently sporting underPANTIES with Spiderman, the Hulk, and Wolverine on the butt.  I’m living the dream, people.

Prepare yourselves

For the cuteness.  First, can you please stand for the singing of our National Anthem.

(Ignore the annoying woman at the end that feels the need to repeat that last line.  “Home of the brains” kind of took her by surprise.  He skips the first part entirely in this rendition, but usually it goes “The la-and of the FREEZE! And the home.. of the… BRAAAAAIIIIINS!”  Violet immediately asks if she is the brains.  “Am I the brains?  Is that song about our house?”  It’s a party every minute here, people.)

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And speaking of national pastimes, forget baseball.  Yeah, I said it.  It’s boring.  You know what’s fun?  A sport that you can play WHILE drinking beer and eating a pizza.  Or drinking milk and eating a pizza, depending on how old you are..

Did you see him haul that ball all by himself?  I’ve been calling it an eight-pounder, but I actually think it was a nine.  The kid weighs about 32 lbs.  That’s like me carrying a….  well, we don’t have to actually do that math. It’s impressive.  I was yelling at Joe that the kid was going to be the only two-year-old with a hernia, but Jonas seemed to be on top of it.  The game really improved for him when the rest of us gave up our turns to eat lunch and we just let him go every time.  He bowled the last 4 frames entirely on his own.  We had 3 players, so that’s 12 turns. 24 times that kid picked up that ball, carried over, and rolled it down the lane. It didn’t always make it to the end, but he never seemed to slow down.  When the game was over he was very upset. MORE BOWLING.  I thought for sure the next day he’d be sore, but nothing seems to slow this kid down.  Maybe he’s a robot.  An evil robot.

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An evil robot with narcolepsy?

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Is it really too much to ask for a picture of them in the matchy-matchy outfits?  See? Evil.

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Ok, there it is.  A post full of Jonas.  My Mommy guilt level is feeling a bit lower now.

Must learn to be more specific.

Earlier this week, I asked Miss Violet to please “Go put on park clothes” so we could… wait for it… go to the park.   She was wandering the house in princess jammies, and I asked her to get dressed.  I told her where we were going so she could pick out an appropriate outfit.  I told her it was a little chilly outside, but very sunny, so she wouldn’t need a sweater or anything.  I asked her if she needed help picking out an outfit and she said she could handle it. And handle it she did - here is what she came up with…

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Well loved striped shirt?  Check.  Hot pink puffy sleeve tee?  Check.  Flowered skirt over turquoise capris?  Yep.  Ridiculously large sunglasses?  Of course!  Tiara complete with bride veil?  Duh!  This is obviously a park outfit.  What you can’t see - red patent leather maryjanes.  THE park shoes of discriminating four-year-olds.

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So she’s not real practical, and she’s not real stylish, but she is REAL entertaining.

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I know I’m entertained.

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Two days later it was quite a bit warmer out.  Again I ask for “park clothes”, again I get ridiculous cuteness.  Gil and Evie - nice pick on those pants.  They seem to be a new favorite.  And I get the credit for these unbelievably hysterical sunglasses.  Why buy just one pair when you can have choices?

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The backpack had a change of shoes in it, in case she wanted to “run and climb ladders.”  Why she didn’t just put sneakers on in the first place, I do not know.

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And in case you are concerned that we’ve sold Jonas to the gypsies, don’t worry. They weren’t interested.

He’s still around, still causing trouble.  The big excitement of the past two days is a newfound interest in the potty.  He was naked for many hours today and there was only one accident.  And immediately after peeing on my floor, he ran to find me and say “Mommy?  I need a towel!”  That’s my boy.

I’ve been trying to upload some new videos of him to YouTube for the past 30 minutes, but it is not cooperating.  So, for right now you’ll have to imagine him covered in spaghetti and singing the national anthem (no,  I am not kidding).  When you’re done with that picture him bowling.  By himself.  Watching him lug that 8lb ball to the lane is a freaking riot.

For now, I’ll leave you with this - just because he’s cute and he doesn’t seem to have made it into the last 37 posts….

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He has to be cute.  It’s his number-one defense mechanism.

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If YouTube ever decides to cooperate with me, I’ll post those videos this weekend.  Until then, just sing to yourself  “… and the home… of the… BRAINS!”

Great minds think alike

(Or maybe we substitute “Smartasses” for “Great minds”.  Whatever.)

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I was killing time in the NEX when I spotted it.  The funniest shirt ever.  This shirt -

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Yeah, so I never took a picture of it before gifting, and now you get the cropped, wrinkled, half turned away shot.  Whatever.  The bride is smiling, the groom is frowning, it says THE END.  Funny, no?

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And I knew I had to buy it for Matt, the future-brother-in-law.  What better person to buy it for, than the man about to marry my sister?  Come on!  It made it’s way into my shopping cart, and I ran home to show it to Joe and laugh.

I got such a kick out of it, in fact, that I showed it or talked about it to several friends.  They were not as enthusiastic about the gift as I was.  The question that I kept hearing was, “Will your sister be ok with that?”  My argument was if I found it funny, she would find it funny.  The general consensus was that I was crazy (and insensitive),  and somehow forgetting that brides get CRAZY (and sensitive) as the wedding nears, and she certainly would NOT find it funny.

I brought it anyway.  And when Suz saw it, she laughed and ran into her room to get this -

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Bwah ha ha ha.

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- that she had bought him the week before.  Take that, all you naysayers.

Here they are, the day after the wedding, headed off to their fabulous Caribbean honeymoon.  It’s hard to see, but her shirt says “Just Married.”  Married for one day and already she’s picking out his outfits for him….

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I especially like the frowny face he’s making, next to her big smile, next to that shirt.  Great, another smartass in the family.  Exactly what we needed.

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And they lived happily ever after.

Part 3

OCD Flower girl, or “She definitely is Joe’s daughter.”

So rehearsal day finally arrives, after a week of driving back and forth from Orlando to Tampa, going to Disneyworld, the grossest cab ride in history (yeah, I’m looking at you), “eating” dinner with the family (the three of us who had dresses to fit into didn’t actually *eat* much. We drank the hell out of the water, though.), making bouquets and centerpieces, last minute shopping trips, and CAREFULLY orchestrated nap schedules to make sure everyone would be fit to participate.

The guys line up in their places, the bridesmaids go, I go, the ring bearer goes… and now it’s Little Miss OCD’s turn. She’s wearing this dress -

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Only this time, I managed to wrestle that completely not-matching bow out of her hair.

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- because we told her she couldn’t wear her actual flower girl dress yet, but she still wanted “to look FANCY.” And here she comes walking oh-so-carefully down the aisle. She’s got a plastic Halloween pumpkin full of petals, and when she gets to the point where we told her to start dropping them she reaches in and pulls out… one. One petal. Which she bends down and oh-so-carefully places on the path. Then she takes two steps and reaches in for another. One comes out, one gets put on the path. Just when we think this process can’t get any slower the wind blows the petals into the grass… so she runs over to get them and put them back… We were all rolling. It was really hard to get her to just pitch handfuls on the floor. Which is interesting, considering Aunty Suz sent her some silk petals like 2 days after she got engaged to practice with, and she never had any problems pitching those by the handful all over the freaking house.

Mr. Uncle Matt was mad that we made her do the rehearsal. He thought she was so cute doing that one-petal thing, it was a shame we had the opportunity to “fix” it. I thought she was pretty cute, too, but I knew it was going to be 700 degrees the next day and I didn’t want the bride passing out from heat stroke while she waited 3 hours for the flower girl to make it down the aisle.

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Somehow the family photographer only managed to get this picture during the rehearsal - none of her after she passed her mark and started the careful petal placement. Stuff you can see in this pic - her ridiculous hot pink bow flip flops (the obvious choice to go with this dress), her pink princess Halloween pumpkin, how excited she is to be preforming this important duty. Stuff you can’t see - how hysterically terrible she ended up being at said important duty, how unbelievably see-through Suz’s dress was. It was like having a rehearsal for a naked wedding. I guess it’s all for the best that we don’t have any pics from the other angle, once we were up there with the sun behind us. They wouldn’t be fit for this family-friendly blog.

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(Can that all really qualify as a caption? It’s an entire paragraph! Must. Learn. Brevity. )

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After all our instructions and practicing, she did a bang-up job at the wedding. Handful, step, step. Handful, step, step. We had a moment there at the end where she ran out of petals three steps away from the front, and it looked like she was going to go backwards to scoop some off the ground, but we got her attention in time. Oh, there was also that moment where she actually STOPPED halfway down the aisle to post for the photographers -

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You can always tell when a child has been chased around with a camera since birth.

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We all thought she did a great job, though. There was a teeny, tiny, insignificant meltdown on the front lawn while we were trying to do group pictures (eeeesh), but later we realized the probable cause was the fact that it was over an hour past her usual dinner time and nobody had so much as offered her a cracker. Whoops.

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The kids have been doing cute things this week while I blog in the past tense. I only have a few more of these stories to go, and then it’s back to every day acts of hooliganism. Also, it looks like I need a post heavy in Jonas pictures. Reading these last few you’d think I only took Madam with me to Florida.

Maybe I’ll post tomorrow. Maybe not. I love it when I skip a day after faithfully posting for several in a row and my stats shoot WAY up. Sure, I know it’s just my Mom checking 72 times to see if I’ve posted yet, yet? Now? Is there something new now?, but it does my ego good to see the higher number.

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Part 2

Part 2 or Why I Could Never Be Anorexic.

First - a quick update on yesterday’s post.  About 2 hours after I posted it I got an email from Becky!  I should have posted about them last week!  They made it in one piece, and are currently staying with friends while their house gets unpacked.  I will have to get Madam her own email address so she and Bridget can correspond about their very busy lives.

Now - back to Tales From Our Trip!

Why I can never be anorexic, according to Joe.  Here is a quote from him on day five of me living on diet pills, coffee, and fruit -

“Wow.  You are even more annoying than usual!”

He also, apparently, pulled my cousin aside the first night we saw them and told her to “Watch out for Jenn, she’s CRAZY.”  Turns out I don’t handle caloric deprivation (or lots and lots of caffeine) real well.  He claims I was telling him one thing, then 2 hours later yelling at him for doing what I had allegedly instructed him to do.  Like he showed up for the wedding rehearsal in long sleeves and pants in dark colors when it was 7000 degrees outside and we had to look nice for dinner. I was in a sundress with my nice dinner dress on a hanger inside.

Me: Why are you wearing that?  I TOLD  you it was going to be hot out here!

Joe: You TOLD ME to wear this, woman!  You are making me crazy!  Tomorrow?  YOU START EATING.

(I have faith that all these anecdotes are seriously exaggerated.  Problem is, I don’t remember these conversations all that well, so I’m forced to rely on his versions of them.  Can’t imagine why I’m drawing such a blank.)

All this started when the day I arrived at Suz’s house (8 days before the wedding) she could barely zip me into the bridesmaid dress.  Whoops.  Turns out that ordering the size that, while zipping closed, was juuuuust a little snug and counting on “losing a few pounds” before the wedding wasn’t so smart when I was going home just in time for the eatfest that is the holidays. And then there was all the comfort food this winter (I have totally perfected my beef and potato pie.  OMG. Droolworthy.) And there was chocolate on Valentine’s.  And cake for birthdays.  And junk food while traveling.  And in the end, the only way to get the back closed was to open the front to such a degree that not only could you see an EXTREME amount of cleavage, you could actually see my bra.  Which was red.  Because I forgot to pack my nude one.  Nothing says “Maid of Honor” like a visible inch of bright red bra.

Eight days of sugar-free lattes, SlimQuik, a couple of apples, and lots and lots of diet tea?

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Joe said between the cleavage and the big bow I looked like a present. A “really really GOOD present.”

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At the wedding I had cheese and bread, a full dinner, and two pieces of cake.  It’s possible there was also something from the chocolate fountain, but it’s really kind of a blur.  Note to self - stick to the gym, this starving myself thing just isn’t for me.

Tales from our Trip - Part 1

Part 1 AKA The Big Goodbye -

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Violet has had little friends before.  In Little Rock she had a “best friend” - it was the other girl her age from our playgroup.  They had fun together (as much fun as toddlers can have together), but considering they didn’t really talk yet I don’t know if we can consider that to be her first best friend.

Bridget was something else.  They found each other.  She wasn’t just the daughter of my friend, or the girl that lived next door and was convenient to play with.  We were at a birthday party, and I saw that Madam was running around and playing with a girl I didn’t know.  They were great together.  Both so bossy.  Both right up in each other’s personal space.  Stuff that turns other kids off was no problem for these girls.  One of them yelled “I’ll be right back!  You stay right there!” while pointing with her bossy little finger.  The other yelled “I’ll be right here! You come right back!” with the same little pointer.  I said to myself - where is this girl’s mother?  We have to exchange info and get these kids together again!

It was a fantastic surprise that her mother and I got along just as well as the girls did, but it still wasn’t the reason they played together.  They just really clicked.  Becky and I would sit out on the couch and talk for hours while they disappeared into the bedroom to play dress-up, read princess books, or just have loooong serious conversations.  I once asked what on earth they were talking about in there for so long and the answer was “We were talking about how it’s sad when our Daddy’s have to go away for a long time.”  If that doesn’t freaking break your heart, you are dead inside.

As for breaking hearts - it has not been easy around here since they dared to move away.  We miss them every day.  I try to keep it in check, because to admit that I’m sad and miss Becky would unleash the torrent of “I wish BRIDGET was HERE!  She’s my VERY BEST FRIEND and I’m sad because I’ll NEVER SEE HER AGAIN!”  Sometimes I find her with her pictures of  them together, and she’s so sad.  This military life can really suck.

But this post is about our trip, and the first big excitement of our trip was the Girl Vacation.  The Girl Vacation involved dropping the boys off at Joe’s parents and heading out on our own.  It was pretty fantastic.  She had the backseat to herself, so I  put her right in the middle - easy to pass back snacks and books, easy to see the screen of our little car dvd player, easy to see her little face in the rear view while she was saying something entertaining.  No Jonas meant no crying, no emergency diaper stops.. just singing with the radio, playing I-Spy, girl-bonding.  We stayed at a very nice hotel, woke up when we wanted to, stopped at outlet malls along our drive, and ate out wherever we wanted (Denny’s - hellooooo pancakes for dinner!)

Where did we go on this Girl Vacation? Seriously?  Were you not reading the first half of this post? We went to Jacksonville to visit Becky and Bridget, of course!

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The ladies picnic out on the golf course.  The golfers were thrilled.

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Bridget had no idea we were coming, so the first step was to surprise her.  She was in the tub at the time. We’re all lucky she didn’t drown.

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Walking to the beach.  Always important to hold hands with your buddy while crossing the street.  And while walking on the sidewalk.  And in the grass.  And on the beach.  And across the living room…

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We had 2 glorious days together.  We went to the beach and hunted for shells.  We had picnics and jump-rope lessons (hilarious).  We shopped for matching sundresses.

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If ever two girls needed matching dresses, it was these two.

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They played pretend games for HOURS up in Bridget’s room.  Really a shame that they had to move now, when the girls are getting more and more independent.  I got plenty of quality time with Becky and the new baby sister, who I seem to have not one single picture of.  You’ll have to trust me that she’s really, really cute.

And now they’re in Hawaii.  If there is a place on the planet further from Italy… well, I’m sure there is, but it doesn’t matter. Nobody we love is there.  The time difference is like 12 hours, and I don’t even want to know how long it would take to fly there.   We haven’t heard from them since the left.  I have no idea if they have internet yet or not, or how long until they do. Again - sometimes this military life really sucks.

So bye-bye, Bridget.  Bye-bye, Becky.  We miss you.