Meet The Family

Let me introduce you to my precious munchkins first...




Sissy is 7 1/2 years old, loves being a girl! Refuses to wear anything besides skirts or dresses, loves crafts, has a huge heart, and is a great big sister. She loves her little brothers very much. Sissy is my daughter from my first marriage and spends 3 weekends per month with her father.



Bubba is 3 1/2 years old. We call him the Hurricane. He is full of energy from dawn till way past dusk. He love dinosaurs and cars, choo choo trains and airplanes. He adores his Sissy and his partner in crime Peanut. Bubba is my first mini-clone of my Hubby, he looks remerkably like his Daddy except for the strawberry blonde hair.



Peanut is 22 months old. He is my Typhoon. He is a very fast learner and a great problems solver. He is highly engergetic and is up for anything that his Sissy and Bubba want to do, he can keep up with the older too shockingly well. Peanut is also my bruiser though he is the smallest of them all. He is clone #2 in looks, in build he takes after my side of the family.



Now that you have met the munchkins...



My wonderful Hubby... We have been friends since we were 12 & 13 years old. Fate finally brought us together again in 2005. He is the love of my life and though many people don't understand our relationship, we can't stand to be apart. After 4 years I still feel like a part of me is missing if he isn't near me, even when he just goes to work. We have been through more in the last 4 years than most couples experience in their entire marriage. Through it all we have stayed at eachother's side even when we didn't meet eye to eye. Hubby is a wonderful man that I can't imagine my life without. He has given me 2 beautiful son's, considers my daughter one of his own and loves us all to no end. He works a job he hates that has tremendous health risks and causes him constant injuries and burns, to support our family as best he can.



I am a 28 year old stay at home Mom. Though I do like to work when I have, I enjoy being home with my kids and knowing that I am the one raising them and not a babysitter or facility. I like to think that I can be a crafty person, I used to enjoy doing crafts and scrapbooking. I also used to enjoy reading, not it seems as if I only read to make it easier to tune out the garble in my mind. I am also a phenomenal procrastinator. I work well under pressure in most instances, but I am easily sidetracked and if it is something that my heart is not 100% into I tend to put it off untill the last moment



Oliver, my ash grey colored cat is a laid back big ole baby. He is such a baby that he hugs and kisses when I come home and whines if I don't let him curl up behind my legs or on my pillow at night. He is does tolerate the kids to a point, but let's face it my munchkins are Elmira they love animals to death. He is originally from a shelter he was a bottle baby so he is overly affectionate at times. He is a good hunter as well and leaves me dead mice and moles on my porch almost daily (EWW). Though he does not eat his catch, or anything else besides his dry cat food for that matter. (He is picky)

Yellow Shirt

This was sent to me in an email and I really love the message it conveys so I am posting it for all to read: The Yellow Shirt: The yellow shirt had long sleeves, four extra-large pockets trimmed in black thread and snaps up the front. It was faded from years of wear, but still in decent shape. I found it in 1963 when I was home from college on Christmas break, rummaging through bags of clothes Mom intended to give away. 'You're not taking that old thing, are you?' Mom said when she saw me packing the yellow shirt. 'I wore that when I was pregnant with your brother in 1954!''It's just the thing to wear over my clothes during art class,Mom. Thanks!' I slipped it into my suitcase before she could object. The yellow shirt be came a part of my college wardrobe. I loved it. After graduation, I wore the shirt the day I moved into my new apartment and on Saturday mornings when I cleaned. The next year, I married. When I became pregnant, I wore the yellow shirt during big-belly days. I missed Mom and the rest of my family, since we were in Colorado and they were in Illinois But that shirt helped. I smiled, remembering that Mother had worn it when she was pregnant, 15 years earlier. That Christmas, mindful of the warm feelings the shirt had given me, I patched one elbow, wrapped it in holiday paper and sent it to Mom. When Mom wrote to thank me for her 'real' gifts, she said the yellow shirt was lovely. She never mentioned it again. The next year, my husband, daughter and I stopped at Mom and Dad's to pick up somefurniture. Days later, when we uncrated the kitchen table, I noticed something yellow taped to its bottom. The shirt! And so the pattern was set. On our next visit home, I secretly placed the shirt under Mom and Dad's mattress. I don't know how long it took for her to find it, but almost two years passed before I discovered it under the base of our living-room floor lamp. The yellow shirt was just what I needed now while refinishing furniture. The walnut stains added character. In 1975 my husband and I divorced. With my three children, I prepared to move back to Illinois . As I packed, a deep depression overtook me. I wondered if I could make it on my own. I wondered if I would find a job. I paged through the Bible, looking for comfort. In Ephesians, I read, 'So use every piece of God's armor to resist the enemy whenever he attacks, and when it is all over, you will be standing up.'I tried to picture myself wearing God's armor, but all I saw was the stained yellow shirt. Slowly, it dawned on me. Wasn't my mother's love a piece of God's armor? My courage was renewed. Unpacking in our new home, I knew I had to get the shirt back to Mother. The next time I visited her, I tucked it in her bottom dresser drawer. Meanwhile, I found a good job at a radio station. A year later I discovered the yellow shirt hidden in a rag bag in my cleaning closet.Something new had been added. Embroidered in bright green across the breast pocket were the words 'I BELONG TO PAT.' Not to be outdone, I got out my own embroidery materials and added an apostrophe and seven more letters. Now the shirt proudly proclaimed, 'I BELONG TO PAT'S MOTHER.' But I didn't stop there. I zig-zagged all the frayed seams, then had a friend mail the shirt in a fancy box to Mom from Arlington , VA. We enclosed an official looking letter from 'The Institute for the Destitute,' announcing that she was the recipient of an award for good deeds. I would have given anything to see Mom's face when she opened the box. But, of course, she never mentioned it. Two years later, in 1978, I remarried. The day of our wedding, Harold and I put our car in a friend's garage to avoid practical jokers After the wedding, while my husband drove us to our honeymoon suite, I reached for a pillow in the car to rest my head. It felt lumpy. I unzipped the case and found, wrapped in wedding paper, the yellow shirt. Inside a pocket was a note: 'Read John 14:27-29. I love you both, Mother.' That night I paged through the Bible in a hotel room and found the verses: 'I am leaving you with a gift: peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn't fragile like the peace the world gives. So don't be troubled or afraid. Remember what I told you: I am going away, but I will come back to you again. If you really love me, you will be very happy for me, for now I can go to the Father, who is greater than I am. I have told you these things before they happen so that when they do, you will believe in me.' The shirt was Mother's final gift. She had known for three months thatshe had terminal Lou Gehrig's disease. Mother died the following year at age 57. I was tempted to send the yellow shirt with her to her grave. But I'm glad I didn't, because it is a vivid reminder of the love-filled game she and I played for 16 years. Besides, my older daughter is in college now, majoring in art. And every art student needs a baggy yellow shirt with big pockets.