A Jen Too Many

Pictures of our recent snowstorm. We got about 2 1/2 feet, which is nothing to those of you in Idaho, Utah and other parts west, but is a huge amount here. They shut down school Friday in anticipation of the snow, canceled church today, and have canceled school for the first part of this next week and we may yet wind up having school canceled for the entire week. My sweetheart was told when he left work Thursday not to come in Friday, and has heard that his workplace is closed Monday, too.

It's been a very relaxing weekend for us. Except for the whole snow shoveling thing, that is. On the bright side, I'm sure my biceps are much more developed than they were Friday morning!

The girls are beside themselves with glee. They have never been in snow up to their knees before. and are wallowing in it (deliberately, that is, not because they've fallen and are stuck.) I told them that their Grandma's house gets this much snow all the time and now they want to fly cross-country several times a winter.

On a more serious note, I have been thinking a lot about the phrase, "If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear." Disasters, large and small, are part of life, and I try to keep my family prepared for most of the calamities that I can think of. Because of that, this has turned out to be a nice little mini-vacation for us. We didn't have to hurry and get to the store before all the bread and milk were gone. We haven't had to worry about what we would do if we lost our electricity. We had a plan for frozen pipes. Being ready for the unexpected brought me much peace of mind this weekend.

The only thing I would change is to have bought a snowblower last fall. Excuse me. I need to go take some more aspirin. Can anyone help me get the lid off the aspirin bottle?

The fat little guy on the left grew up to be the father of my children (who looked very much like this when they were babies.) No idea who the other baby is. A cousin? A friend? I'd also love to know whose hand that is he's holding. I'm guessing his mother.

Judging from what I saw the girls do when they were babies, that lopsided grin on his face means he's concentrating on something very interesting. He also looks like they did when they were still learning to sit up - I can just see him getting all side to side wobbly like babies do just before they fall backward.

I've been trying to see if I can see a trace of the adult in the baby, but nope. All I see is a baby, completely interchangeable with any one of his children.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

OK - time to jump back into Vintage Photo Fridays!

These old school photos are all of my mother-in-law. The Kilgore referred to is Kilgore, Texas. Later on she became a Kilgore Rangerette, which my husband informs me is a Big Deal and Very Impressive.

Genetics crops up again, here. In the first two photos I can really see the resemblance to Youngest Girl Child, but in the two later photos she reminds me of Oldest Girl Child. I see my husband and The Boy Child in the two youngest photos, too.

It's most striking in the first and last photos - '42/'43 and '47/'48. I've seen that exact same expression on YGC's face ('42/'43). In the last photo, it's the way she's looking at the camera. She smiles like her oldest granddaughter and has a look in her eyes that I've seen in OGC's eyes.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

I'm trying to figure out where I got this song from. I think I remember my mother singing it to us when I was a kid, but the memory is fuzzy. I started singing it to my children in the mornings when I was getting them out of bed, several years ago.

Good morning!
Good morning!
Good morning!
Good morning I say!

Good morning!
Good morning!
And have a good day!

Is anyone (siblings o' mine, chip in, please!) familiar with this song? Did my mother make it up, or did it come from some longer song?

I'll ask her, too, but honestly, I doubt she'll remember. She tends not to remember stuff like that.

Emanuel Lupkin, the cute little guy in this newspaper clipping, grew up and had a band. He's the guy standing up on the left. We don't know what the name of the band was, or what kind of music it played (my husband says, "1920s kind of music.") We do know that they did a certain amount of traveling, and that Emanuel played the violin. That seems to be an L and a B on the front of the music stands (? Podiums?)

I have hopes of someday finding an old newspaper article that will give us lots of information about them. We have another side of the family that was musically inclined, and we have information about them from just such a source. I'll post a photo of them next Friday.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

Alonzo Bryson, Jul 23, 1840 - Feb 29, 1920, and his wife, Valeria Wright Bryson, May 21, 1839 - ????. I found the pictures at the Upper Mississippi Valley Digital Image Archive when I was idly Googling for Alonzo Bryson one day.

I was hoping to find information on a different Alonzo, the father of Dow Gilbert, but didn't mind getting distracted with this photo of his identically named cousin.

Here's the thing that makes my head hurt, though:

Isaac Bryson (b 1771) married Jane Carr (b 1775). They had 16 children (that we know about.) One of their sons was named after his father. Isaac, Jr. (b 1816) grew up and married a girl named ... (wait for it) ... Jane Kerr (b 1817).*

You can imagine that with 16 children (that we know about) Isaac-n-Jane the First had an absolute ton of descendents. The family was very fond of certain names, which means that I have to wade through dozens of Alonzos, Isaacs, Isabelles, James, Charles's, Pearls, Margarets, Janes, Johns, Williams, Priscillas, and Valerias, trying to track down which is who. They're not as bad as the Kanatzers, however (another family line), who were absolutely obsessive about the name Elizabeth (oops - have I complained about that before on here?)

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.
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*It reminds me of a family I knew, three brothers and a sister. Two of the brothers married girls named Emily**. Their sister's name was also Emily. Now there's a family that's going to give some poor future genealogist a nervous breakdown!

**The name has been changed, although I would guess if any of them read this they'll recognize themselves.

This is my mother-in-law's class photo, probably taken around 1944. She's the little girl in the front row with the black pinafore. She grew up to be a strikingly beautiful woman, as you can see in this prom photo from 1952 or '53. She's the dark-haired girl in the middle of the picture.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

I got this photo from a family member. I believe she has the original. According to her these people are (from left to right):

George Washington Boylan, Lou McKinnis, Winson Elson Boylan, Lide Boylan, Della Boylan Green, Della's son (name unknown), and then some guy with no head. And the little girl in the front with her dad's hand on her shoulder? That would be my grandmother!

I have no idea who Lou McKinnis is. Relative? Friend? Annoying neighbor who wouldn't get out of the picture?

I have a question about my grandmother, though. Is she blonde in that photo, or is that just the way the black and white photo made it look? Because I always remember her as having brown hair. Even in her 80's. Which might be my answer, right there...

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

This photo isn't very clear, I know, but you should see the original. Meet Emanuel Lupkin, age 5. I scanned this photo from a crumbling 94 year old newspaper, where his picture was printed in the Children's Page section of The Commercial Appeal newspaper, on June 6, 1915.

This picture was, obviously, taken before his sister took scissors to his hair and cut off all those curls. According to the family folklore, his mother (Anna Polewoda Lupkin) cried and cried over the loss. She saved the curls in a little box which we still have, tucked in with all the old family memorabilia. (They are a gorgeous color - a rich brownish-blond with just enough red to intensify the color, but not enough that you're consciously aware it's there.)

We have the two sheet section of the newspaper his picture was in, but it was folded several times. Now, anytime anyone touches it, little bits flake off the edges. My sweetheart is talking about getting it laminated, but I'm scared to do that, for fear of it getting damaged even more. At the moment we have it carefully wrapped up in foil to keep it away from any friction.

We have an absolute ton of old newspaper clippings - obituaries, wedding announcements, photos - my husband's family was very big on that kind of memorabilia. This is the oldest one we have, and the one in the worst shape, but the others are heading down that road, too. You can see why I'm so anxious to get them scanned and saved in several different places. My goal is to eventually be in a position where, even if there was some sort of disaster and we lost everything, we would still be able to have all our family photos and papers saved somewhere online.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

This is a picture of Addie Lee Clark Bryson and her three daughters. I'm not sure, but I think Addie is the woman in the dark coat without a hat. I don't know who the other woman is.

The tallest child, in the plaid coat, would have been Minnie Elizabeth (probably named after Dow's mother, Lelia Mae Minnie Rolph Bryson, 1857-1924.) The little girl in white, with a big bow, would have been Edythe. The sweet little chunk in the bonnet would have been Irene. Don't you just want to pick her up and kiss those chubby cheeks?

Looking at the apparent ages of the girls, I think this would have been taken about 1908 or 1909. The family was living in Kentucky at this time (where Addie grew up.) The next census has them in Arkansas, where they remained.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

Squeeeee!!!!

Guess who called me last night?!

(No, nobody that dramatic. Sorry. Didn't mean to get your hopes up.)

My mother in law's cousin!! (Trust me, it's far more exciting than it sounds.)

My mil was an only child. On her mother's side, she was the only grandchild. On her father's side, she wasn't the only grandchild (obviously), but she didn't have a huge number of cousins. Many, many aunts and uncles, but very few cousins. Not a wildly prolific family in that generation.

For a number of reasons, not the least of which was his early death, contact with her father's family (this would be my husband's maternal grandfather - try not to get confused here) was limited. Not that anyone wanted it that way, it just worked out like that.

Unfortunately (1), it left us knowing very little about that side of the family, which is a shame, because they were immigrants and what history I have been able to learn is absolutely fascinating. (I've been researching them on Ancestry.com, which has been helpful in finding them in the census records and such.) Unfortunately (2), it has proved remarkably difficult to find out more than a little about them. I get tantalizing snapshots every 10 years, but there are so many things that happened in between censuses. What happened to J.'s wife? Why does he suddenly have only one child and is living with his parents? Did his wife and first child die? I don't know. I can't find any death records. I can't even find a marriage record, to tell me his wife's name. I only know she existed because, on his WWI draft registration papers, he stated that he had a wife and two children.

Then, last week, I found a reference that gave us a name. A cousin! Someone who might be able to answer some of the questions we have about the family! Someone I was actually able to track down online and find an address I could use to write to her!

So, last week I carefully wrote a very tactful letter, enclosed a copy of a picture we had of her mother, and gave this cousin our contact information. And yesterday? She called!!!! She called us and I had a lovely conversation with her!

She is 86 years old, an absolutely delightful, sweet lady. Unfortunately (3), she seems to know as little about the family as we do. She didn't even realize her grandfather had been a widower before he married her grandmother.

Never mind. She is family and she is excited to hear from us. Her children are excited to hear from us. We are excited to hear from her! I can't wait to get to know them all better.

And that is why I was jumping up and down and squealing with delight yesterday afternoon, instead of making dinner.

One of the things that I really enjoy in doing genealogy is finding out things we didn't know. Like this lady, Fannye Lupkin. We had no idea that great-aunt Fannye had been a beauty queen until I ran across this old newspaper photo online*.

It turns out that 18 year old Fannye was the 1924 Queen of the Arkansas State Fair, and Miss Arkansas at the American Legion National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

You can't really tell just what she looked like, from this clipping ('Humph!' said the Camel) so here is a better photo from a few years later.

I can see her as a beauty queen.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.
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*From the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Caption reads: BEAUTY QUEEN OF ARKANSAS - Miss Fannie Lupkin of Helena, Arkansas has been selected by Florenz Ziegfield, Jr. as Queen of Arkansas State Fair. She acted as "Miss Arkansas" at American Legion National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. (Int'l Newsreel)

"I’ve had cheap pedometers and expensive pedometers, and I just must walk weird, because I’ve never yet had one that was remotely accurate." (Quoting myself, from a comment over on Segullah. )

My first pedometer was a very nice one, a gift from my mother when I was complaining to her about my post baby weight. It was nice, but I had the darndest time keeping it on. It had a very small clip and had a tendency to flip off my waistband every time I bent over, and since (as a mother) I bend over many, many times during the day... I kept using it longer than I would have, just because it came from my mother (Hi, Mom!) and her thoughtfulness really touched me.

Then we moved, and it disappeared, so a while later I picked up another one, cheap. Very, very cheap. It was also the best one I've ever had, as long as I wore it on my pocket instead of my waist band. That way it managed to count about 7 or 8 out of every 10 steps. Unfortunately, a pocket is not the most secure location. One day I went to look at my numbers and the pedometer wasn't there. I went back to the store to buy another one, but they weren't selling that kind anymore.

Since I was already there, I bought the replacement cheapo, but it was horrible. I could take 10 steps and wind up with the pedometer counting only 1 step. Or 3 steps. Or 4. (Never as high as 7 or 8, though.) It didn't matter where on my waistband or pocket I put it - the only way I could get an accurate count out of it was to hold it in the palm of my hand. Not exactly convenient for someone who rarely goes 10 minutes without plunging her hands into hot water.*

My fourth was more expensive, but just as inaccurate as the cheapo, with a tendency to reset itself at unpredictable intervals. And so it has gone with every pedometer since then, leading me to conclude that either I am doing something wrong with the pedometers, or I walk weird.

I'm inclined to the "walks weird" hypothesis.
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*Just life - not OCD. The results of doing things like wiping off counters, cleaning toilets, wiping off messy faces, preparing an inestimable number of meals, snacks, and drinks, mopping floors, washing dishes, doing laundry - seriously, have you ever considered just how many parts of motherhood involve water?

I don't know if it's a consequence of teaching the CTR 5 Primary class, having two small children in school, or The Boy Child working at the local grocery store (although it's probably the fiendish combination of all three) but I have been sick more often this last winter than I've been in years. It's all very annoying.

Last night, my visiting teacher called, wanting to set up an appointment for next week. I had been feeling worse and worse and all day, and by the time she called I had a raging headache and a fever. When she found out I was sick she was full of sympathy, and asked me, "Do you have anyone to take care of you?"

Take care of me? Huh?

No. No, I do not have anyone to take care of me. I'm the mom. I take care of other people, not the other way round. Now, her children are older than mine. Maybe some miracle happens over the next few years. Maybe one day I'll wake up sick and find my children gathered solicitously about me, yearning to take care of my poor sniffly self. But I doubt it. I certainly don't recall ever doing that for my poor mother.

Actually, I am finding lately that I tend to regard my parents somewhat in the same light that I regard my children. I obsess about their safety. I try to take care of them as best I can living this far away. If I don't hear from them for awhile I start to worry something terrible has happened and I have to grab hold of myself to keep from panicking.

The only difference in fact, is that my children are who I teach and prepare them for a wonderful (I hope) future; my parents are the treasure troves of my past who I'm afraid to lose. I care for my children to ensure their future happiness. I care for my parents to ensure my future happiness.

So as much as I'd like to think I've grown out of the selfish child who demands her parents' time and attention constantly, I must admit that I still want my mother when I get sick.

There is a pink hobby horse leaning against the wall in a corner of my bedroom. It is right next to the the jewelry armoire that my husband gave me for Christmas early in our marriage. I had mentioned that I would like a jewelry box, and I showed him some pretty ones at Walmart. He decided that bigger was better, so got me a full fledged armoire.

In front of the armoire, impeding my access, is a box of old photographs that I am slowly (very slowly) scanning. It's taking a while because I am saving them in two formats - extremely large and detailed TIFF files that I burn onto DVDs and much more convenient JPEG files that I keep on the computer for easy access. It takes forever, especially since I have to type in all our known information about each photo. I got stalled when our DVD burner died; we have a new one now, but I've been putting off getting back to it. The days just go by so fast and I'm always left at the end of the day with a list of things I meant to do.

One of the photos is of my mother-in-law when she was a little girl. My husband pointed out the other day that it could almost be a picture of Youngest Girl Child. YGC has the dimples, hair and eyes of the oldest of my two brothers, but the shapes of her face and eyes are just like her grandmother's.

Oldest Girl Child just got her hair cut in a bob. She's been growing it out for quite a while, but when YGC went in a few weeks ago to get all her long hair cut off*, she got so much attention that OGC got jealous and decided she wanted to do the same. It took my breath away when I saw her, and even two weeks later I am amazed at the resemblance to Cannwin. There'll be times when she'll move a certain way, or I'll see her at a certain angle, and it takes me right back to Cannwin's childhood. (Of course, her father looks at OGC and sees his family in her features!)

The Boy Child has always been a little double of his father. He's grown up taller than his dad (the height comes from his mother's side) but the resemblance is still strong. Even in personality they are very much alike.

I've been thinking about the similarities and differences between the siblings in my family lately. All of us are artistic. Of the five of us, four are writers, one is a photographer. We have two blondes, two brunettes, and one of us (me) who inherited our father's red hair.** Three of us take after the skinny side of the family and two us take after the, umm, sturdy side. We are all very tall, with one brother well over six feet. He's the only person I know who makes me feel short. We all have green eyes, although my blonde brother's eyes tend to change from green to blue depending on the light. He is also the only one with dimples, which I thought was very unfair when I was young.

We tend to be hyperactive and impulsive. We are all romantics. We tend to be very private. We all have a very strong work ethic, but all of us have taken / are taking a while to figure out where we want to be and what we want out of life. One of my brothers told me that he thinks, for our family, our thirties are everyone else's twenties. It takes us that long to find ourselves. I think he's right.

Unfortunately, while I might be emotionally and experientially in my thirties, my body knows darn well it's 10 years older. When I had my 40th birthday, everything started falling apart. I had to get reading glasses, my hair started going gray in large chunks, and losing weight got much harder. And that was just the obvious changes. I swear I'm creakier than I used to be.

Which is probably why I haven't gotten the pink hobby horse out of my room yet. Yeah ... that's why.
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*She'd been begging for awhile to get it cut. I've been putting it off because she was just so cute with the long hair. She has a very sensitive scalp, however, and was just miserable with the work involved in taking care of her hair, so I gave in and took her to get it bobbed. She loves it, although she is annoyed that she still does get the occasional snarl.

**Not that you would know that to look at me now. My gorgeous Titian hair gradually darkened over the years until I am now mostly a brunette with strong red highlights. The darkening is part of the package with the red hair. I color it red on a regular basis, which doesn't restore my former glory, but does appease my vanity!

When my sister Cannwin was about 13, she went through a stage where every word that came out of her mouth was laden with a kind of crooning, suggestive, accusation. Every action anyone around her took was immediately interpreted in the light of her newly found obsession with boys, and we were charged with romance every time we turned around.

I remember one event in particular. She was at my apartment, and the phone rang. "Ooooh!" she immediately said. "Jennifer got a ca-hall."

I wanted to throttle her.*

Youngest Girl Child seems to be following in her aunt's shoes, only in a wildly precocious manner since she's still in preschool. I got flowers a while back for our wedding anniversary - beautiful red roses that caught me completely off guard, which surprise made the gift all the more delightful.

The girls were fascinated as I unwrapped the flowers, trimmed the stems, and carefully arranged them in the red vase that had accompanied them.

"Mo-ommy," YGC said, in a tone that threw me right back to that long ago phone call. "I think Daddy lo-hoves you."

And you know what? Such is the power of a suggestive tone, that I actually had a quick impulse toward embarrassment. Then I caught myself, grinned, and said, "Yes, dear, I think he does."

"Are you in looove with him?" she asked, in the same tone.

"Yes, dear, I am."

"Are you going to ki-yiss him?"

I started laughing at that point, and assured her that I was most definitely going to kiss him.

And when he got home, I did.
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*I probably would have been less annoyed with her if it actually had been a romantic interest, but it was only my mother. I would have killed for a boyfriend at that point in my life.

There's been a discussion on one of my email lists about ways to spend less money on Christmas this year. It's the sort of topic that comes up every year, but this year the tone of the posts has been a little less casual, a little more intense.

One mother shared that, among other cost-cutting measures such as making wooden toys for the children, they are re-gifting some of the children's own toys to them. They are going to buy new batteries for old presents that haven't been played with in a while, wrap them, and let the kids open them on Christmas morning as new presents.

(If you are reading this, S., you know where I'm going.)

My parents did something like that once. Once.

It's one of those ignominious family stories, the kind they hate to have us retell. The kind that elicit mingled groans and laughter from everyone, and the question, "What were you thinking?"

One year for, I believe, Christmas, my little brother S. got a Lite Brite. He and I both* were ecstatic about this, and wanted to play with it constantly. And then the lightbulb burned out, and nobody bought another lightbulb and we couldn't play with it anymore, which was very disappointing. It was put away, and we forgot about it.

At some point the two of us ran across it again, still lacking a lightbulb. I was older, though, and I had a brilliant idea.** I knew where Mom kept the lightbulbs, so I got one out and put it in myself. We had so much fun playing with the Lite Brite again! Until we tried to pull the pegs back out.

Yep. Plastic designed to handle a low watt bulb doesn't handle a 60 watt bulb so well. The pegs and the black pegboard they fit into melded into a near solid mass on the side nearest the lightbulb.

And that was that. The end of the Lite Brite. No-one was very happy with me, including myself.

I don't know when the second Christmas was. In the time distortion of childhood memories it seems like it was several years later, but it might have been just a few months later. (It can't have been all that long, though, because both events happened in the same house, which we were only in for four years.) My dad was trying to get a business of his own off the ground, and things weren't going so well. There had been a great demand for his product when he started, but now demand had tapered off dramatically and our finances had gotten very tight.

As a parent, one who has known a tight Christmas or two myself, I can sympathize with them. As a child, I was appalled, though not nearly as upset as my brother was when he opened a fascinatingly large box to see his old Lite Brite, refurbished, with a new pegboard, new pegs, and new lightbulb.

Our parents, poor things, didn't get quite the reaction they were hoping for.
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*Our younger siblings are much younger than us, so it was still just the two of us at that point.

**I had a lot of brilliant ideas back then. Most of them weren't all that brilliant. Unfortunately, I didn't ever realize that until I was halfway into implementing the idea. That was generally when the unrealized, but very fatal, flaws would come to light.***

***This is why I went around with a large shock of hair sticking straight up from the top of my head for several weeks in 6th grade. It turned out that it wasn't such a great idea to try to deal with tangles and knots by cutting them out. Scissors just don't make a good replacement for hairbrushes.

Because we don't. All we know is that she is some sort of relative and/or ancestor from my husband's mother's side of the family.

I don't even know enough about history to date this photo. If I knew more about hair and clothing styles I could guesstimate a year or decade, and then we could look through our genealogy and figure out who she might be.

So. Any clever types out there who can look at that and say, "Oh, yes, that's 1910!" or "Definitely 1860." Because I'd dearly, dearly love to get some kind of idea about who she might be.

Beautiful, isn't she?

UPDATE: A friend wrote me to say that in her fashion-history-expert experience, this woman's dress and hairstyle are from the early 1900's probably 1900 - 1910. Evidently that particular hairstyle is called a Gibson Girl. Here's a how-to, if you want to try the style for yourself.

Thank you, Cari!

My father thoroughly enjoyed tormenting, umm, teasing his children when I was little. He would tell us the most outrageous things, and we, being little and assuming our parents were omniscient, fell for it every time.

The joke I remember the most clearly was the time he told me that I was going to grow up to be a boy. I was aghast. I hated boys. Boys were swamp fungus. Boys were icky. Boys were everything that was gross and disgusting and utterly repellent.* Turning into a boy was the worst thing that could possibly ever happen to me!

I didn't believe him at first. I'd been fooled by him before and I was suspicious. Besides I'd never heard anything about this, and you were what you were. Right? You couldn't change from a girl to a boy. Could you?

Absolutely, my father told me. In fact, he, himself, had been a little girl when he was a child, and turned into a boy when he grew up. And Mommy had been a little boy, just like my little brother was going to grow up to be a girl.

I was so horrified I didn't know how to react. No sound or movement I could make could possible convey the depth of my alarm and dismay. My mother attempted to pop Dad's balloon by reassuring me that it wasn't true, but I wasn't entirely sure. After all, Daddy said he'd gone through it himself! Surely he would know what had happened to him in his life!

It wasn't until Dad reassured me, laughing the whole time, that he'd only been teasing that I started to breathe again.

Of course I wasn't going to turn into a boy. I knew it all the time.
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*All boys except my father. I loved Daddy. I hated boys. Therefore, despite the technicality of Daddy's gender, he wasn't really a boy. He was Daddy, and daddies didn't count on the disgusting scale.**

**Little brothers did, though.

Must. Blog. Regularly.

Gaaaahhh.

It's easy to think of things to write when the kids are being cute, but what do I write about when I want to run away screaming from my family - or start screaming AT my family?

Not that I have anything to complain about. I have a whole house to feel crazy in. I can go shut myself in my bedroom when I feel the walls of my self-control starting to splinter.* My poor sister has been cooped up with three small children in a hotel room for days now. I'd be flat out raving at this point. She's a much better woman than me.

My dad is doing a layover at an airport near us, so we'll be going to see him for an hour and a half. The kids are very excited to see their grandpa. The poor things haven't ever had a chance to get to know their grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins very well. We live so far away from the rest of the family that they've only see my parents twice, and most of the rest of the family once. We flew back home for a family reunion last year, which was great, and were planning to do the same thing this year. Then gas went through the roof and so did food costs and plane ticket prices and everything else.

*sigh* I miss my family.

I get to see my dad, though, so that should be nice! Now if I could just find a way to see my mother, my sisters, and my brothers. Also all my nieces and nephews.

I spent three hours shopping for school things yesterday, children in tow. Amazingly they didn't whine much at all. I think it's because it was far too riveting to get to buy so many things all for them. Shoes, socks, underclothes, backpacks, pencils, paper... We also went to McDonald's, which I loathe, but they have one right there in Walmart, and the kids were complaining about being hungry and I was tired.

Not that they turned out to be as hungry as they claimed. They played with the Happy Meal toys until I ordered them to pay attention to their food. Yes, mine are the children that have to be ordered to eat french fries and hamburgers. You may have noticed them - they're the ones jumping up and down and squealing with delight when I put a frozen package of brussels sprouts in the shopping cart.

They're weird, but I love that about them.
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*On really bad days I go in the master bedroom, shut the door, then go in the master bathroom and shut and lock the door. It doesn't stop my children from lying on the floor and sticking their fingers under the bathroom door, but it does stop me from hurting them.