Home Again

Like Dorothy said..."There's no place like home!"

Texas Bound

We are heading to Texas on Thursday to spend Christmas with Fonzy's family. No white Christmas there. It actually snowed for Thanksgiving in Odessa, but I'm almost positive it will not snow for Christmas. With my luck it will be about 80 degrees.

According to Mapquest, this is how long our drive will be....yes, we are driving.

Distance: 1544.1 miles Time: 22 hours 42 mins.

Have we lost our mind? Pretty much, but we are breaking the trip up. We are leaving Thursday evening after Elijah's basketball game and head to Atlanta, GA to stay with my cousin Tyra and family. It will take us about 6 hrs from Raleigh to Atlanta, so we should get there around midnight or so. They just love when we come to visit the Connor bed and breakfast. That's basically all we will be doing...sleeping and hopefully getting a big country breakfast before we hit the road again. So Tyra/Charles, if you are reading this, we want eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, grits, homefries, gravy&biscuits, and freshly squeezed orange juice. Oh...and don't forget the coffee. I NEED my coffee. Friday morning, after we have our big country breakfast, we will hit the road again to Dallas. According to Mapquest, that is about 11 hrs....11 hours in a car with a 17yr, 8yr and a 5yr old....oh joy! Once we get to Dallas we will stay at a friends house for the night. Then Saturday morning we will wake up bright and early and head to Odessa with a pit stop in Abilene to see Samuel(my oldest son, 18yr), my girlfriend Susan and then off to OD. From Dallas to OD is about 5 hrs. So we will leave Thursday evening and get to our destination sometime Saturday. Then repeat the whole process the following Friday.

Sounds like fun, huh?

Traditional Christmas Cookie Making

Every year growing up my mom made Christmas cookies. Of course she would let us (Karen, Jay and myself) help. It was so much fun. I want to share the Christmas cookie making tradition with my boys and have for the past few years, but it never seems to turn out like I remember as a child.

I remember being so excited when it was time to make the cookies. Mommy would make the dough in the kitchen and bring it to the table for us to cut out the cookies. Once the cookies were baked and cooled she would bring them back to us to decorate. We would have a variety of frosting colors and all sorts of sprinkles and candy. It seemed like we made hundreds of cookies, but thinking back I'm sure it wasn't that many. The dining room would be a mess...flour, frosting and sprinkles everywhere, but I don't remember my mom ever yelling or being upset about the mess.

Fast forward to today......

I admit, I am not a very patient mom. I get frustrated easily. I have all these great ideas or images of being this great mom, but I never seem able to fulfill them. We started making the cookies, and not even 5 minutes into it, they start arguing about who was going to do what, who was standing in the way, who was pushing who out of way and so forth. It didn't take long for me to lose the little patience I had. I don't remember us fighting or arguing during our Christmas cookie making sessions, or maybe I just blocked them out, who knows. I just remember a happy time. Hopefully my boys will have selective memory and only remember happy times too.

Here's our ingredients, including sprinkles, candies and cookie cutters, etc.

Ezekiel mixing the dough.

Elijah's turn

Watching the cookies bake.

OK, what is wrong with this picture, besides the jacked up candy cane cookies? Notice any cut out cookies? No? Um yeah....I lost patience before those were made. There's always next year, right?

Grinch Day

Today was Grinch Day in Ezekiel's class. All the class wore green, watched the original "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" cartoon, read the book and watched the movie with Jim Carey. Not a lot of learning going on today, huh.....unless you want to learn to be a grinch. According to Ezekiel, I don't need to learn how to be a grinch, because I'm already one.

Ezekiel in front of their Grinch door.

Mom...you are always taking pictures!

Watching the Grinch movie and eating green pudding, popcorn mixed with green M&M's and green marshmallow trees, and of course green Hawaiian punch! Oh, and pizza, which of course was not green, that would of been pretty disgusting!

Ezekiel's Grinch on the door.

Oh, and check out this special phone, this is a direct line to Santa. I tried getting Santa, but got his secretary. She said Santa was busy checking his nice and naughty lists. I told her to make sure I was on the nice list, because you know, I'm nice.

Gingerbread House Makin'

Last week I played the role of a good Mommy and went with Elijah to school to make Gingerbread houses, what fun!

Here's our bare, boring house...but we are about to make it FABULOUS!

All the wonderful candy for our fabulous gingerbread house.The kids were told they could eat 5 pieces....that was all, or they were going to get sick. Yeah...the getting sick part was to scare them from eating too much candy. Didn't work....I saw kids popping candy like crack addicts and it was 10 AM! I have to admit I had a few Hersey kisses myself, but who can resist the chocolaty goodness of a kiss!

Elijah spreading on the frosting...that stuff was like cement!

Concentrating on his masterpiece.

Our FABULOUS Gingerbread House!

Dreaming of a White Christmas

80 degrees is not Christmas weather! At least not where I come from. I miss my white Christmases.

Wanted: Toothfairy

Wanted: a toothfairy who is reliable! That's it...you don't have to be proactive, think outside the box, or work very hard. You can even come to work in your PJ's....just be RELIABLE! Show up when you are suppose to. If you are a toothfairy that fits this description, please contact me at the Mami-Dearest hotline.

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Ezekiel lost another tooth and the toothfairy has forgotten for 3 nights! We told him the toothfairy will probably leave him $5 this time since she is such a slacker....read here.

I've noticed the price of a tooth keeps going up....I blame Bush.

Why Mami Dearest

I’ve had a few people ask why Mami (pronounced Mommy) Dearest for the title of my blog. I got it from the movie Mommy Dearest, about Joan Crawford and her adopted daughter Christina, with the notorious “no more wire hangers” scene.

“Joan stalks into Christina's bedroom in the middle of the night, her face covered with beauty cream ,and discovers one of the child's dresses hanging on a wire hanger. Joan launches into a frightening tirade, screaming at the girl that she had forbidden wire hangers, viciously tearing apart her closet, and then beating the girl with the hanger. The fight continues when Crawford stumbles into Christina's bathroom and feels that she has not obeyed her orders to scrub the floor that day. Furious that the child doesn't understand her notion of cleanliness, Joan destroys the bathroom as well, beating Christina with two cans of scouring powder and hurling the cleanser over everything. Finally she leaves the girl with an angry order to "clean up this mess" all by herself.”

Couldn’t forget this…..

Joan Crawford: Did you scrub the bathroom floor today? DID YOU?
Christina Crawford: Yes, Mommie.
Joan Crawford: Yes, Mommie what?
Christina Crawford: Yes, Mommie Dearest.
Joan Crawford: When I told you to call me that, I wanted you to mean it.

Now…I’m not saying I beat my kids with wire hangers or comet cans, but I have been known to yell a lot, give out whoppings when needed and wear a green mask to bed. I may have even been TEMPTED to throw comet all over the bathroom, and have them clean it up. So maybe that’s why my kids have called me Mami Dearest on occasion….hence the title of my blog.

We've Been Elfed

Click to see us dance...we have some dancing skills!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9609156667

Fonzy, the stunt man

Thanksgiving recap - we ate and we rode

We didn't have the traditional Thanksgiving this year. Yes, we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Yes, we had turkey, stuffing, ham, greens, yams, mac-n-cheese, ribs(not so traditional) broccoli cheese casserole, mashed potatoes, arroz con gandules, deviled eggs, ambrosia(fruit salad), millionaire pies, and pumpkin pies. We ate until we were stuffed! Normally, we lay around, watch football, then head back for seconds. Not us....we ate, then we rode....four wheelers, mini motorcycles and a horse!

Fonzy, my sexy rough rider - ok, it's not a Harley, but he is still sexy

I think we need a motorcycle

Rough Rider gang


Fonzy and Ezekiel


Fonzy and Elijah


Karen and TJ


Karen and Jay


Fonzy and some fat chick
(I really need to lose weight. YUCK)


Jay and Ezekiel


Marge - Karen's 87yr old friend, and yes, we had her on a four wheeler. She is a ride or die chick.


Jay and Uncle Charlie


Elijah


Ezekiel


Penny, Uncle Charlie, Karen, Marge, and the same fat chick(me)


Thanksgiving full moon

Football Fun

Today was a beautiful fall day, sunny, about 75 degrees, with the smell of fallen leaves. I wanted to stay outside and enjoy the weather, but of course there was cleaning to do.....like always. However, the boys, Ezekiel, Elijah and McAdam (Vicki's son) decided to enjoy the day.....playing football. And I enjoyed it to for a little bit too, taking pictures.