a peek into the playroom...and this is actually pretty clean! my son is a total tinkerer. millions of tiny pieces. legos. blocks. cars. trains. puzzles. he can play alone all day. it is great when i am working on my own projects, we work parallel, my studio next to his. together we break for lunch. the mess he can make on these home days is amazing! but then again, mine is too :)

** sorry the picture is fuzzy. it is another taken by my daughter with my phone. after my son so passionately built this track, she was concerned i would clean it up to vacuum. they wanted a picture to remember how to rebuild it. you see how this kind of thing is taken very seriously here? :)

i picked up the bride the morning of her wedding. i had put blue ribbons on my car and decorated the inside with a few small touches. in her seat i put a ruffled pillow and in front of her i wrote out the word "bride" so she would not forget it was her day. we went and got her nails and toes done. we shopped a bit. she needed something blue (am i the right person to help with that, or what?) and some lip gloss. we picked up her freshly pressed dress and we got a cup of coffee and a bagel.

i taught her when she was in the fifth grade. when she got older, she babysat my children. i often helped her with her school work. in fact, this computer of mine is full of her word documents. suddenly, she is all grown up and now she is a wife.

i took her to pick out her wedding gift. she chose a lovely saying in the ivory color and she says she is going to hang it near her kitchen. i hope when she looks at it, not only will it represent her new life, but remind her of her old one. and a teacher who will always love her.

i am doing my best to get through this alphabet thing i started, just for the sake of commitment. and i got tagged to do the middle name meme by a lovely lady that i will not disappoint. but i feel like you must know enough (too much) about me. so i am going to post about my husband using the letters of my middle name. i told you this was going to be random.


e - emotional. i am this. i like it about myself. my husband is steady freddy. i LOVE that about him :)
l - laughter. hahahahahaha. my husband is hilarious. that is why i couldn't let him go when i met him.
i - i love you. we say that a lot. we decided this year, since we are coming up on a big anniversary, we would add, "so much." so now it is, "i love you so much." we are so deep.
z - he snores.
a - adorable. his smile is huge. and he has great teeth.
b - baby daddy. i think i am using that term right. i'm trying to be hip. he is the father of our children and he couldn't be better at it.
e - enthusiastic. seriously, this one might make me cry. he doesn't complain. he is the happiest, silliest person. he will do all the mundane garbage around here and do it while whistling.
t - tech. go hokies. he is their biggest fan.
h - heart. i can trust him with mine. i am so thankful.

happy weekend!

i'm still playing the alphabet game. anyone else? i'm so slow!

my children are starting to get fussy on me. i know they are tired. these early mornings with school and homework, it is just too much sometimes - but i'm tired too! so sometimes i just join in. tonight i just said we are going to be quiet. no talking. none. just do your homework, eat your dinner, and clean up....QUIETLY. it was wonderful. what took me so long to think that up?

i did not get a new room in my house. this is the room that you see in my "about me" photo. i'm just trying something new. i want some curtains, but don't know what yet. lisa sent me a seamstress referral that i hope to use. lisa, do you have a blog yet? :)

about three years ago, i was finishing up my MAT and trying to decide what would be my next step after graduation. i felt a new freedom was just around the bend, my children were about to begin preschool and i was no longer going to be a slave to my trips into area elementary schools, my student teaching, or my night classes. i just had to write my thesis and i would be off and running...doing something new...something i love...a break from the classroom...something totally me...i decided to open an antique shop. my husband was completely supportive. he believed it was something i could do well. he was almost as excited about it as i was and he was a huge help. we picked out the location, we started going to market and we began making some great purchases for the store. for months i thought about the perfect name and with much care i named my little shop, "found a peanut." i started to collect old peanut paraphernalia and old mr. peanut began to cover the shelves of my home. my store was going to be in an historic part of town. i was going to have rocking chairs and bowls of peanuts on my welcoming front porch. men who wanted to sit while their wives shopped could find a comfortable spot there while they snacked on the free legumes. we were going to have "find a peanut sales." i was going to paint and hide peanuts for the children - the finder of the pink peanut would get a whopping 25 percent off of their family's purchase. i wanted my place to embrace the community, to have soul. it was all i could think about. i was planning and shopping and sketching and dreaming away when i went into my final MAT class one saturday morning - research writing . i was told i had to pick my research topic within 15 days. bleh! with all of the exciting things going on in my mind, nothing could have sounded more dull. i decided i was going to breeze through this thesis writing year as easily as i could. after all, would i ever teach? i was going to be a shop owner! but something happened before my next class that changed all of my plans. my son ate a cookie and stopped breathing. we found out he had a life threatening allergy to my beloved peanut. when i discovered this news, i did what all parents do, i immediately began researching as much as i could about this allergy. the timing couldn't have been more perfect, my thesis: "are elementary schools safe for children with severe peanut allergies?" there began a huge shift in my priorities. my store not only needed a new name and theme, but i strongly felt i had a better job to do. the store could wait. for the past three years, my attention has been greatly focused on food allergy research and keeping my son safe. two weeks ago we traveled to johns hopkins to meet dr. robert wood. he is a world renowned pediatric allergy specialist who also happens to be allergic to peanuts. he has written a new book, food allergies for dummies, that is very thorough and addresses every aspect of the allergic person's lifestyle. he explains why peanut allergies are especially deadly. as you can imagine, the peanut and i are not the same as we used to be. i no longer think of it as the sweet little bundle of protein i once did. when i think back about the store that almost was, and the name i once chose, i can't help but think it wasn't a coincidence. i just believe for some reason the peanut and i were meant to have this close relationship.

her show called me once. can you believe that? it was back in 2004. i remember it so clearly. it was around six o'clock on a monday night. i was bathing my then two and three year old children. i let the machine get it as i always do at that hour, and my husband called out asking if i was hearing the voice on the recording. of course, it wasn't opes herself, but it was one of her producers. i came into our bedroom and caught the end of the message, not completely understanding what was going on. i replayed the message as soon as i could, sending my husband in to finish up with the kids. i remember shrieking as i heard that the oprah show was interested in having ME come to talk about my distressed furniture techniques. i had emailed the show - you know that page on her site that is looking for people to be on the program? they had asked if you had a passion for making things from trash to treasure - and, uh, YES, i did! i had written a fine little note about how i had been doing that very thing and, voila, they called me. for a week following the producer and i corresponded with each other. i sent him pictures, he asked for a demonstration video, i complied. he kept me in the loop for a bit...and then....nothing. a few days passed and i got an email thanking me for everything but, "the show had been redirected." they decided to go with the big shots instead of the everyday folks and they had rachel ashwell on the the show. well, duh, i could have told them she would have been better than me. so why did they go and get my hopes up like that? i am still recovering. seriously.

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this picture was taken before she lost TWO more this past week. yes, two more on the top row.
her teacher asked her yesterday if she was on an ice-cream only diet. bless her heart, she replied, "well, i do eat a lot of yogurt!" it is true.


her poor little smile reminds me of this:



and i'm not referring to alice or the chicken, i'm talking about the big orange guy seated in the old blue chair. if my daughter didn't want so badly to be dorothy from the wizard of oz this year for halloween, i was thinking she'd make a great jack-o-lantern!


someone once warned me, take lots of pictures while those front teeth are wiggly because it will be awhile once they are gone. thank you for that advice. i took it. and i'm glad i did!