Summertime

Summer is supposed to be a slower time. A time for lazy days by the pool. A time for ice cream and lemonade. A time for reading good books in the shade of a tall tree. A time for this mama to live in her pajamas in the mornings and not worry if a shower isn't on the agenda until afternoon naps are done.

Summer isn't working out like that.

So far, the oldest child has had band camp every morning at 9 a.m. Every. Stinkin'. Morning. Band camp is finally over (and you can thank me later for sparing you the agony of the band concert). Next up is track camp. We've had softball and tball games 2-3 nights a week, plus softball practices on top of that because our pitchers are getting their rear ends kicked. And evidently, when you're 10, you can no longer just hang out at home with your sisters and your mom. You must be on the phone constantly arranging play dates and discussing important fashion trends for upcoming sporting events. (The tshirts are tied in the back, not the side. And ponytails are sooooo yesterday... hair must be braided to fit neatly under the helmet.)

Then add in this silly little thing called work and the summertime livin' hasn't been all that easy so far. I looked at the calendar this morning and it's not going to be any better in July.

But life has been pretty good anyway. The little girls have spent hours outside playing on their new swingset. The 10 year old has been methodically working her way through the Harry Potter books, which serves the dual purpose of meeting her summer reading goals and getting her ready for our movie date on July 15th. We have a kiddie pool on the deck that has seen a lot of use, giving me a fun view of three wet monkeys splashing around while I sit at the counter pounding out articles for work. There's a lot to look forward to, including several weekends with family, the long-awaited Jonas Brothers concert, and an overnight at the Great Wolf Lodge waterpark (thanks to one of the husband's drug reps). July is going to be jam-packed, but I'm going to do my best to enjoy every minute.

Even if my bunny slippers aren't getting much attention.

The Rest of the Story

Last week, on Day 4 of the Great Family Staycation, the husband and I took Miss N to the history museum. We left the little ones at daycare, knowing that they wouldn't care to wander around the exhibits (or keep quiet while we looked around!). It was a gorgeous, sunny day and I'd been meaning to get a few pictures of Miss N. The grounds of the history museum are always pretty, so I decided to seize the opportunity. Here are a few more shots from that day.

We Have A Winner!

And the winner is...

JILL! Mama to the fabulous and spunky Layne Nhi. Here's her winning story:

We have a cute story about Layne Nhi. We were only home from Vietnam about 6 weeks with 7 year old Layne Nhi Anne when we decided to treat her to our local Pizza Hut buffet for lunch. Still only able to communicate through a few words and pointing to what she needed, she pointed to each of the foods from the buffet she wanted to try and I put it on her plate. We sat back down to eat and told her the names of each of the foods on her plate. Well, she repeated all of the foods, trying so hard to speak english like us... pizza, breadsticks, salad, and PEACHES. Well, we have 3 dogs, one of them with the name PEACHES. When we told her the name of the fruit she was about to eat was PEACHES, she dropped her fork and started to cry. It took us a minute to figure out what she was so upset about, and she said "con cho", Vietnamese for dog. She thought she was eating our dog PEACHES!! We had to leave Pizza Hut and go home to show her that our dog Peaches was ok, and try to explain that peaches was a name of fruit!!! Looking back we all three laugh about it, but poor kid thought we were feeding her the sweet dog!

Congratulations Jill! Please email me at mamainjammies@yahoo.com.

Sneak Peek

A Few More Hours!

Contest ends at Noon on Sunday (Father's Day)... enter now to win a $10 Starbucks gift card and your own copy of Meant to Be: Stories of International Adoption!

Want to Win a Book???

Whoooo hooooo! The books have finally made it through the agonizing development/design/print phase and are just waiting for all of you lovely people to order 8 gazillion copies. However, I understand that 8 gazillion is a bunch, and may seem like an unreasonable financial layout when you haven't actually read the product. So... I'm hosting my very first giveaway!

Meredith (my co-editor) has a lovely contest on her blog where she asks her readers to enter by telling a story of something in their life that was 'meant to be'. (Hmmm... wonder where she came up with that catchy phrase???)

I shall mix it up a bit. If you would like to win your very own copy of Meant To Be: Stories of International Adoption and a $10 Starbucks gift card (since you'll be up late reading the book and will need a caffeine jolt in the a.m.), leave a story in the Comments section about the antics of a kiddo in your life. It could be about the time your nephew climbed up the wire enclosure surrounding the monkey cage at the zoo... or the time your granddaughter wanted to bake cookies with only peanut butter and chocolate chips... or the time your son decided to 'help' with the cleaning by dumping Windex all over the floor.

For an extra entry, blog about the book or the contest (or both!) and leave me a comment with the link. I'll let the short people in my house choose a winner to be announced on Sunday.

You know you've got 'em... so commence with the storytelling! And remember - 100 percent of the profits from the sale of the book goes to orphanCare International for the support and education of kiddos in orphanages around the world. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that?

P.S. I was so lazy that I stole the photo of the book from Mer's website. Pitiful, aren't I???

The Great Staycation of 2009

Wow, staycations are exhausting! We're two days into our week-long staycation and I'm worn out. But we're having a blast, so I guess it's worth it. Uninterrupted family time? Priceless.

Yes, I know I'm stealing lines from a credit card advertisement. It's still accurate. ;-)

So far, we've gone to a movie memorabilia museum, headed to a fun outdoor shopping center not too far from home, and eaten a lot of ice cream. We've also managed to splash around each day in the little pool on the deck, watch some of the College World Series, and I'm squeezing in an Agatha Christie novel that I don't remember reading previously (Murder on the Links). On the agenda for tomorrow? The local pool/aquatic center.

And more ice cream.

Remember the Hair Bands!

We've had a lazy Saturday. We loaded up the kids and went to the library, where we stocked up on books (including a new book for me by Laurie R. King - SCORE!), movies, and cds. The College World Series started today and although we aren't big baseball fans, we are big Omaha fans... so we've had the tv tuned to catch the action at Rosenblatt Stadium. And then we lost our minds and decided to upload a bunch of old cds to our iPods. We are in 80s hair band heaven!

Quiet Riot, Van Halen (7 cds worth), Scorpion, Night Ranger... if their jeans were torn and their hair teased, we probably have the cd. Nelson... Rick Springfield... Michael Bolton... some of this music hasn't been heard on a radio station in two decades, but we're having a blast strolling down memory lane and making sure it's available at the slightest whim thanks to our handy dandy iTouch (the husband's) and Nano (mine). I'm taking a quick moment to blog while Aerosmith is making its way into the music library. Steven Tyler is a bit creepy, but the man does know how to crank out the hits!

Not The Weekend I Was Hoping For

This weekend is Dillon International's Vietnam Heritage Weekend, where all of my friends from our adoption agency get together to chat, watch our children run in circles, and learn more about the amazing country of our kiddos' birth. I've been looking forward to this since last year. It's been on the calendar and even my husband, who isn't the most social of creatures, was prepared for the trip and looking forward to it. Okay fine. He wasn't looking forward to all of it, but there were aspects of the weekend that he wasn't opposed to.

But you see, we won't be going this year after all. Because we're idiots. We also wanted to take a week off this summer - a staycation, to use the media's term. We want to take the girls to the history museum and to the pool and generally putter around our local attractions. So we decided that we'd plan our staycation for the week after Dillon Weekend, thus ensuring ourselves a nice long time away from jobs and responsibilities.

And income. Oops! That's where the poor planning comes into play. We really can't afford to both go to Tulsa and have our week-long staycation. So we're going to be responsible adults and skip the Tulsa trip this year. It sucks, because I've been looking forward to this time with my friends for so long! But darn it, we WILL be there next year and there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

I hate being a grown-up!

Serious Sugar for Breakfast

When I was little and we went to Granny and Gramp's house, pancakes were always high on my list of hoped-for food items. Not so much because of the pancakes, but because of the syrup. Aunt Jemima ain't got nuttin' on my Granny.

When I went home a couple of weeks ago, my mom gave me a copy of our church cookbook. When she was choosing recipes, my sister contributed her Taco Soup, I added Meredith's Keilbasa Soup, and we tossed in a couple of other family favorites, like Mom's Depression Cake. At my insistence, Mom added the recipe for Granny's syrup.

Then my Mom went above and beyond and made the syrup for breakfast the next morning. You want to know how good the syrup is??? My sister showed up and - even though she had already eaten breakfast - she had Mom make a couple of pancakes so she could eat the syrup. THAT is good.

So, here you go. Enjoy! And don't try to substitute anything for the cream... suck it up and go for a walk after breakfast.

Granny's Syrup

1 c brown sugar
1 c white sugar
1 c cream

Stir over medium heat until bubbly. Remove and serve. Leftovers can be refrigerated - then warm in microwave to serve.

Pics of the Girls

Inbox

Things are a little slow this week at the office, which is a welcome break from the frantic burst of activity that encompassed most of April and May and which lurks around the corner as the summer magazine deadlines approach. When these little lulls occur, we all try to take advantage of them. We come in a little later, we leave a little earlier, and those tasks that never seem to get done are slowly scratched off the To Do list.

Today, the focus is the dreaded Email Inbox. My coworkers and I held a mini-competition, with one of our graphic designers winning gold for having almost 8,000 items in his Inbox, with nearly 500 unread. I might suggest that this indicates a larger problem than Avoidance of Inbox Cleaning, but it wouldn't be polite.

I, however, took silver with almost 3,000 items in my Sent folder. You see, I have a horrible fear that the minute I delete something from my Sent folder, I will need to prove that I did, indeed, send the response. There's stuff in there from three years ago. Let's face it - if I haven't gotten in trouble for whatever I might have gotten in trouble for in three years, then the statute of limitations on prosecution has probably passed.

So today is the day! I'm going to tackle my personal mountain! And then I'm going to mock my coworker with the Inbox problem.