My Sunshine

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are grey, you'll never know dear how much I love you, so please don't take your sunshine away!

Meet my sunshine. This is A. She is playful, tomboyish, sassy, serious, artsy, adventurous, beautiful~inside and out, my heartbeat, my reason for breathing, smart, amazing, silly, a dress-hater, a t-shirt and jean short wearer, softball player, part little girl~part big kid. 100% amazing.

A is a good mix of her dad and I. I like to think she is the best of both of us. She's serious but silly. She's a thinker, always has been. She was the best baby. She is the best big kid.

I used to sing the "sunshine song" to her every night as I gave her her bedtime bottle. It was OUR time. I still get to sing it occasionally as somehow bedtime as turned into her and her Daddy's time now. Which is ok. I'm here with her all day (I'm blessed), he's not, so if bedtime now belongs to him, then I can accept that. Though I do love the nights he is away (for whatever reason) and I get bedtime. And on those nights, she always requests the "sunshine song".

She is the sunshine of my life. She is the best thing ever, and I thank God for her every.single.day.

Just A Pinch....

Do you have a recipe that you could never actually write down for someone? You know, one that they would have to watch you make? And one that would require them to know what a "pinch" and a "smidgen" and a "dollop" are?

My mashed potatoes are like that. I could never actually write down exaclty how to make them, because I never make them the same way. Sometimes they require more butter or more mayonaise or more sour cream. Tonight I had to add more salt.

Isn't it funny how recipes like that work? You can't write them down, even though the ingredients are always the same. I always use mayonaise, butter, sour cream, salt, pepper, and a "smidge" of ranch dressing. But sometimes it is more mayo, sometimes more sour cream, and sometimes more butter. But NEVER more ranch. I've never actually added more than just a "smidge" of ranch.

Funny thing about these mashed potatoes though, I learned to make them from my Grammy. But I LEARNED to make them. She didn't write down her recipe, she taught it to me over time. And now, I am teaching A to make them, as she is the official mashed tater taster around here.

So what recipes can you not write down?

source, source, source, source

Family Time

This weekend, my little family and I had some much needed family time. Much needed. It was nice to get away from it all and just be us.

It was so nice to not have a schedule. To not have to be anywhere at anytime. We did whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. We had pizza for breakfast. We had steaks for lunch. We just were. Together.

I saw my husband relax. I saw my daughter smile. I heard all of us laugh hysterically.

I can't even begin to tell you how happy it made me for us to just be together. We left everything behind and just hung out. Just us. We thought about letting A take a friend, but in the end decided that this time it would just be us. We're going back to the lake this weekend and she can take a friend, but this time, this time? It was just us. And it was just perfect.

What about ya'll? How do you unplug and reconnect?

Father's Day

This man is an amazing father. He is an amazing friend. He is an amazing husband. I am so blessed to have him to share my life with. I am a lucky girl. Scratch that. I am a BLESSED girl.

Happy Father's Day W. I love you to the moon and back.

What A Girl Wants

Let me preface this post by saying that I truly LOVE my husband. I love that he gets up every morning to go to work to provide for our family, that he supported me 100% when I lost my job and that he was 100% behind me when I decided to make things work to work from home, that he is an amazing father, that he is a man of God and a man of his word, and that he loves me to the moon and back.....

That being said.....sometimes he drives me UP.THE.WALL. Ya feel me? UP.THE.WALL. And for all of those wonderful qualities I listed about him, he is still the man whose underwear I have to wash on a daily basis. I guess that is the reason some of his "shine" has worn off, at least on me.

So, there are few things, that in a perfect world, I WANT. I want:

-A husband that knows that underwear (and all his other clothes) belong in the dirty clothes hamper, strategically placed right beside his dresser, not right beside said hamper. Really? Is that a hard concept to understand? Doesn't dropping them IN the hamper require just as much effort as dropping them ON the floor?

-A husband who realizes that I do not go to Walmart for fun. I go there to shop for the things we NEED. (And maybe, occasionally, a pair of flip flops that I "need.") For some reason (and he's the numbers guy around these parts, I just spend the money..), he thinks that I'm splurging on "big ticket" items at Walmart. Um, no. Have you not seen the increase in the price of groceries? Clearly, he needs to make at least one of these trips sometime soon. With kid in tow. Hello Honey, welcome to my world.

-A husband who realizes that just because I work at home, does not mean that I don't work. And please don't get me wrong here, I know he knows I work, but I also think he thinks I have all the free time in the world. To do things for him. Or to apparently, clean house all day, every day. Not gonna happen.

-A kid who realizes the same thing. Except she just wants me to play with her all the time. This is the first summer I've done this (I just started my job in February), so this summer is a whole new world for us. We're learning by error. Somethings work, somethings don't. I like to call it "flying by the seat of my pants". Yeah. Welcome to my world.

-And finally, while one of the qualities I adore about my husband is his devotion to our daughter's school (he's President of the Board of Directors), it is also one of the things that annoys me the most. Why? Because we have precious free time as it is, and sometimes I don't wanna share. It's that simple. I don't play well with others.

A Lost Art

*photo courtesy of http://www.littlekanawha.com/.

To me, quilting is a lost art. I have 3 beautiful quilts in my home. One was handmade by my granmother as a wedding present to my husband and I. One belonged to my great grandmother and is in need of some TLC and repair. The third I'm not even sure counts as a true "quilt" in that I bought it from a store. Sure it has a "quilted" pattern, but unlike the other two, which were made by the hands of two of the women I admire most, I'm certain it was made by a machine. So for that fact alone, it doesn't have the love behind it that the other two have.

The very old one, made by my great grandmother, I'm sure was made out of necessity. Necessity to keep warm many moons ago, before the invention of central heat. It is worn and tattered, has a few holes in it, but is filled with love. She gave it to me shortly before she passed, wanting me to have a piece of her in my home.

Then there is the one made by my grandmother for my wedding present. I watched her as she made it. Watched as her hands sewed each piece together. She hand-stithced every thread. It is a "wedding ring" quilt, and it comes out of the cedar chest each fall to become the centerpiece of my bedroom throughout the winter. It is beautiful and colorful and most definately made with love. I loved watching her make it. I would stop by to visit her and she would work, telling me stories of her deep love for my grandfather. She made a quilt for each of her grandchildren prior to their weddings. Since she too has also passed, I cherish it.

I've got quilts on the brain because the other day I was going through some of A's old clothes and wishing that I had made my grandmother teach me how to quilt. Oh how I wish I could take pieces of fabric from those clothes she wore at different points in her life and create a masterpiece for her to have. What a lovely way to display all of the "special" outfits from her life. The gown she came home from the hospital in, the t-shirt she wore everyday one summer because she loved it so much, maybe a patch from her graduation gown, a patch from her first prom dress, patches of cloth made from memories.

Isn't that what quilting was about? Other than the necessity to stay warm? Isnt' that how stories were passed from generation to generation? How mother's and daughters communicated? But it is a lost art. We don't quilt anymore. That's not how we share stories, in this generation of email and Facebook and blogging. It isn't how we spend time together, us mothers and daughters.

So, A's clothes continue to sit in a box, each of these emories cherished by me, but not shared with anyone. Which has me thinking. Maybe I should learn. In this day of the internet, surely I could teach myself to quilt online. Or at least to weave together a tapestry of all those things that have so many memories behind them, yet are left in a box on a shelf in my office. Hidden behind the cardboard walls, not shared with anyone. Hidden in my mind, not shared with my daughter. So maybe I should learn to quilt. And teach my daughter to do the same. Then we can share a moment weaving all those memories into a patchwork quilt for her to have for her home one day. And we can create a new memory. Of how we sat, TV and computer off, talking and sharing, loving and caring, creating a memory.