Becoming like my mother...

So, they say that as you get older, you become more and more like your mother. If you know my mama and me, you'll know that I'm already A LOT like her. Here a few things that have happened in the last week that have made me think that I'm turning into my mama...love her!!! Last week, I was getting some M&M's out of a snack machine at school like this






Well, I was wearing a bracelet and as I stuck my hand in to pull out my M&M's a funny thing happened. I couldn't get my hand out. Did you catch that? I. COULD. NOT. GET. MY. HAND. OUT! Like, it wouldn't come out of the slot. Seriously, it was stuck. There was a fellow teacher in the room with me and I tried my hardest to get it out myself before I said something to her! I tried to push the slot open more and it wouldn't budge. So I told her. And then she tried to push the slot open more. Nothing was happening...nothing. So, after many many giggles and laughs and her pushing the slot and me trying to wedge the bracelet off, my hand was free. She decided that she'd get the M&M's for me! :) We then had a big laugh at how funny it would have been to buzz the front office and say that Mrs. Dudish was stuck in the snack machine.

How this incident reminded me of becoming my Mama: my Mama has this ugly pair of Mommy jeans that have for years been tagged as her paint pants. Here's why...she went to Home Depot 30 miles from where we lived. She picked up a gallon of white paint, dropped it and it spilled ALL OVER HER! Did you catch that? WHITE. PAINT. ALL. OVER! The men who work at Home Depot tried to help her as best they could. She made white footprints all through the store! They gave her trash bags, I think, to put down in the car at least. She came home, rang the doorbell and stood there for my Daddy to come see her standing there with white paint all over her jeans...thus...the paint pants! (At least my stuck hand wasn't permanent...thank goodness!)


Now to this week. I put a pork tenderloin in my crockpot this morning to cook all day while I was at work. This is what it looked like this morning when I put it in...


AND...this is what it looked like 9 hours later when I came home from work...


Notice anything similar about these two pictures. Yeah...they're the same! When I came home, I noticed that my house did not have the wonderful smell of that meat cooking. And then, I had a flash to this morning when I was in a hurry, put the tenderloin in, covered it with mustard, plugged the crock pot in and LEFT. I never pushed how long it should cook.

How this reminded me of becoming my Mama: her brothers and my daddy tell a story of her cooking for one of them sometime after she and my Daddy got married but before they had children. She was cooking stew, I think, and she cooked it all day and kept checking on it and wondering why it wasn't cooking....only later to learn that she had never plugged the thing in! (at least I remembered to plug my crockpot in!) :)

Now, as long as I don't start telling people that I'm 7 ' 5" and ordering graduation gowns where I convert those feet and inches to all inches...I won't officially be JUST like my mama (yes...she did that for her college graduation...ordered a gown for someone who was 7 feet 5 inches, converted it all to inches...the gown came and was too big for the tallest guy in her college graduating class...my Daddy called the company where the gowns were ordered from to see if they could rush another gown for her and the lady he spoke with said that people who worked there had talked about booking flights to Georgia to see the 7 '5 lady walk down the aisle to graduate!) So, if you see me doing silly things like falling out of nowhere in a parking lot or spilling paint everywhere...please know...I get it honest!

(I got the vending machine picture from http://www.vendingondemand.com/)

Finley's Pictures

Justin took pictures of Finley for the first time since her newborn shots. They are seriously, seriously PRECIOUS! Like I can't stand it...so sweet! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Wotcjzak! You should check out his BEAUTIFUL pictures at http://www.375photography.com/.

I am so in love with this girl!

The Creativity of a Child

I think that you can figure out what Hudson's doing by seeing him on the video, but I want to explain how it all came to happen. Finley and I were sitting on my bed. Hudson and Walker wedged a bat and a broom in between the mattress and bed frame. They then stood behind them and sang. Next, Hudson walked up with the vacuum hose as his guitar. Then came the guitar "pedal". Finally, he grabbed the thermometer which became his pick. And, I did see Walker climbing on the box while filming this video and got him down as soon as I was finished filming. I asked Hudson where he had seen someone with a guitar pedal, he said "at church." But let me say this child has never been up at the front watching this, he has observed it from the very few times he's been in the service with music...but in the back! That child is quite observant!!!

He's not actually singing anything....just kinda doing something in jibberish...but it sounds very rock n' roll!

Finley's Love of her Baby Doll

Last "official" night of our summer

Tonight is the last night of summer break since tomorrow is the night before I go back to work. And, even though I just work part time. It's never quite like being home for an extended period of time like the good ole summer! I wanted to do something fun that we haven't done before, so we had poporn and Bruster's for dinner. Then, we played at the newly updated Grayson Park. We've never even been to Bruster's b/c it's icecream, but I looked online earlier in the summer and saw they had some dairy free products, so I thought we'd try it out sometime this summer, which of course went way too fast. We tried the strawberry fruit sorbet...and boy, was it good! Walker ate almost his entire bowl. Hudson just ate some, then we played at the park, which was super fun with the new slides they have there! I'm making a video debut on the blog...here's hoping it works!

How the morning was spent..

7:30 a.m. Feed Finley...put her back in her crib, go back to sleep (Hudson got up at this point and decided it was time to start his day...get his clothes on, play in his room)

8:30 a.m. Hudson comes in saying Walker is crying and asking if he can go in and talk to him...sure...in he goes.

9:00 a.m. Hudson comes in and says Walker wants to get out of his crib...so I stumble, half asleep to his room and get him out of his crib (now I'm going to let them play and I"m going to sleep until Finley wakes up...the gate is up...nothing they can get into upstairs)

9:10 a.m. I hear Hudson and Walker talking about going to Hudson's "basement"...but they're always pretending.

9:20 a.m. Hudson runs into my room saying that Walker is stuck in "his basement"...so I run to Hudson's room, not knowing what I'll find...

9:26 a.m. Walker is LOCKED INSIDE the little crawl space that's in Hudson's room. DO NOT PANIC

9:27 a.m. To my room to get bobby pins and straight pins...how do you unlock a door with a little hole from the outside?? I tell Hudson we'll call the police if mommy can't get Walker out. Walker is inside just saying "I can't get out, Mommy." I try to talk him through how to turn the little part in the middle of the door knob, to which, he twists the locked knob and then says "I can't do it."

9:30 a.m. I try to call Tony...can't get him. I call my mama at work and tell the person it's an emergency

9:31 a.m. Mama says to get a little screwdriver or a credit card...I get these things, still can't get the door open, still trying to talk Walker into unlocking the door himself.

9:35 a.m. or so Mama puts me on hold to go look at a door knob at the store...I speak the blood of Jesus over the door and ask that we can get it open

9:37 a.m. Mama comes back and asks if I have an ice pick (what???) or a coat hanger (this I have) She also asks if it is a pop lock or a turn lock...which makes a difference b/c instead of just popping something in there, I have to stick something in there and turn.

9:38 a.m. I get a coat hanger, straighten it, stick it in the knob and ask "what do I do know?" She tells me to try and turn it, but we don't know which way...I turn one way and then the other all the while twisting the knob

9:40 a.m. Door opens and my sweet Walker comes out and says with a BIG smile..."Mommy, you got me ooowwwt." I giggle b/c he's wearing his jammies and this john deere hat turned crooked on his sweet head, and he's not phased by the fact that he's been locked in a little crawl space for the last 20 minutes.

Thank you God for the sweet spirit of this baby...he's so content wherever he is, whatever he's doing...what a wonderful gift!

It's the little things

Tonight, we came home from the grocery store in the rain, and my sweet and (just sometimes) sour Hudson wanted to go out and play in the rain with his umbrella and rain boots. The only umbrella we could find is Walker's that he broke the day he got it, so I got out the big umbrella and let them go on the deck. I didn't get any pictures b/c I was cooking dinner, but they had a big time going in and out trekking in water and giggling. The big umbrella ended up just being propped up on the deck and they got under it like a tent...how cute! I wish I'd had my camera close. Here's a picture of them on a sunny day in the frog boots! It's the little things that make big memories, right? I think I should make this a regular occurrence...playing with umbrellas and rain boots in the rain!