Shopping Trips

Overall, I have to admit that I rather enjoy shopping.  Though I have been told that as a very young child, I was not a pleasant shopping companion.  Several of our long-time family friends have recounted lovely tales of me throwing horrific tantrums while they and my mother tried to shop.  Fact is, I think I may have lost my mother a few friends there for time.  That’s why I got my children started as early as possible.  Mattie made her first public outing to Wal-Mart when she was just 3 days old.  I wouldn’t really call that shopping though.  We stopped at the store on the way home from the hospital with Reese.  My children know their way around all of the 3 different Target layouts.  They also know that crying and fussing will not make the shopping trip end.  It might be briefly interrupted, but you may as well just sit back and be quiet and let mama do her thing.  Reese has also figured out that the more excited and eager to join me on these trips, the more likely he is to get some sort of treasure.  Thankfully for me, a treasure for Reese can be anything from the dollar section or even finding an old Chick-fil-A sticker on the floor.

Anyway, I seemed to have caught on with the joy of shopping fairly early and some of my favorite memories as a little girl, are my mom and I’s sunday shopping trips.  She packed us a snack and we would stop by QuikTrip ( I blogged about the wonder’s of Oklahoma’s QuikTrip convenience stores back last summer) and get a special drink in our refillable mugs.  It was a pretty big deal to me at 8 years old.  I would then sit in the front seat, because this was 1987 and it wasn’t yet illegal to have a young child in the front and there weren’t airbags to be afraid of, and sit back and enjoy my mom’s undivided attention for the 30 minutes that it took to get to our first stop.  Mom taught me what a sale was and that if you looked a little bit harder and maybe waited a little longer, or even if you went to some sketchy places, you could find what you were wanting for a little bit cheaper and then get even more.  I also feel like I had some big life experiences on those shopping trips.  I remember buying my first pair of stirrup pants from Sears like it was yesterday.  I remember going bra shopping for the first time and thinking I was going to die.  Then there was the time that we just went looking and ended up coming home with a kitten…..we weren’t at a pet shop, so that was a little out of the ordinary.

There was that first car shopping trip and I remember shopping for my wedding dress, it only took two stores.  Then there was that almost giddy shopping trip for fabric, the day we found out that the baby I was expecting was going to be a little girl.

Shopping makes me happy…usually, but there are some things that are just no fun to go shopping for.  I’ve noticed lately that I have been wearing the same pajama pants for forever.  Some of these pants go back to the days when I was still Kaylee Reese, and that just seems weird.  To think that my pants are older than my children and even my geriatric dog, just seems a little wrong.  So the other day, I decided to let that oldest pair go.  I should probably let more than that go, but then I might be left without any pajamas.  Brandon suggests that I need to go and actually buy some pajamas that aren’t old and worn and flannel, but that just seems like the most unfun thing to spend any money on to me.  Kind of like I probably should follow those jammies up with an underwear shopping trip, too.  Things change, size-wise, over time anyway but when you add a few pregnancies in there……yeah, I could use a little shopping trip.  But there is something about taking my little crew into the lingerie department of even Marshalls, that makes me want to hide in a rack of clothes.  Inevitably, one of them, usually my son, will at some point put a bra on his head and this will be accompanied by laughter, that often turns into this squealing.  Once the bra goes on the head, the whole show goes down the tubes.  They start noticing EVERYTHING! and suddenly even the supportive tank tops are absolutely hilarious.  The key is to get in and get out before they realize where they are.  So you can see why going to a store that carries exclusively lingerie just isn’t going to happen for me for probably the next 8 years.  And unfortunately for me, the jammie pant section at Target has bras right next door.

Another thing that isn’t very fun to go shopping for is a bathing suit.  Again, keep in mind that not only do I have these 3 amigos with me at all times, but I have to take them into dressing rooms.  There is nothing quite as wonderful as doing your best to shimmy into a suit with a captive audience.  They never seem to notice me any other time, but when I would love for them to forget that I was there….they are suddenly fascinated with me. Today while visiting Target, I decided to take a little gander through the swim suit section because I really only have one at the moment that I think I’ll be wearing and with our daily visits to the pool, I figure more than one might be nice.  I was drawn to the slightly retro one made by the makers of Spanx.  That made me walk a little taller right there, knowing that I would be taken care of by the #1 support garment company in America…if not the whole entire world.  I may have even been slightly excited to see what these amazing Spanx were going to do for me.

I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to put on one of these state of the art, girdle-esque support swimming suits but it isn’t easy.  The “Spanxy“portion is like trying to wrestle an alligator or something without the fear of dying.  Though I will be honest, there were a few moments there when I thought I was stuck and I was going to just be so mortified with the fire department had to come rescue me from the python suit I was trapped in.  The kids looked on in partial fear, partial disgust and a large portion of fascinated humor.  There were many questions sounding similar to, “Mommy why are you moving like that? Mommy are you hurt?  Mommy should we call the lady for help? Mommy your bottom looks funny.” It’s all enough to make you feel so very shameful.  You almost feel like just hanging your head and walking out apologizing to the dressing room person for even attempting to try something on.  But after I adjusted some straps and peeked through my fingers that were covering my face, I had to admit, the people of Spanx seem to know what they are doing.  I kinda liked my little retro suit.  And the seal of approval came when Mattie said in a wowed voice, “Mama you look like Mrs. Brady!” Right now, the Brady Bunch and Little House on the Prairie are the favorite shows at our house so I know that to be compared with Carol Brady, well, that’s a pretty huge compliment.  I don’t know if it’s exactly what I was going for, but hey, I’ll take it.  And I took the suit too….well bought it, not so much just took it.

And while enjoying our evening trip to the pool I held my head high as I sported my vintage-inspired navy blue suit.  Also, just so you know, I am still wearing it….primarily because it is incredibly difficult to remove.  It’s extremely comfortable though, which is a great think because it looks like it might become a part of me for quite some time.

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As a side note, there are some other wonderful things at Target right now.

1. There are these adorable little perfect for a small serving of ice cream patriotic bowls in the dollar section.  They are ceramic and come in about 4 different styles.  I would show you the three that I got, but you know, the whole picture thing.

2. There are also little packs of 3, small American flags that would be cute for the 4th.  We bought two packages and are planning to line our little walkway.  They are also in the $ section

3. Tons of Batman and WonderWoman stuff, and cute  not super cheesy.  It’s back in the seasonal section that’s usually towards the back.  But there were placemats, cups, plates, snack pods, even pool- type toys.  Oh and hooded batman beach towels!  My kids thought it was wonderful…..Mattie is so going to be WonderWoman for Halloween this year!

4. The cutest little nautical paper plates, napkins, and cups.  They are in the stationary department on the end and I am seriously thinking about buying some and saving them for Lila’s birthday.

Oh that wasn’t all, there was something else…..oh!

5. Morning Star Farms Veggie foods were $3.00 each.

And that is all I have to report today.

Summer Has Started

Something weird is going down here on WordPress.  I’m not really sure what it is and there isn’t a freindly helpline to call for those of us who are less than computer savvy, so I am a little in the dark.  But for the most part, WordPress no longer wants to upload any of my pictures.  I have deducted that it’s possible that I have used up all my free storage space for uploading, but I’m not really sure what to do from there.  I know I can buy more, but I don’t want to use it up to fast, so for now I am just going to send unillustrated posts until I get things all figured out.  I know that won’t be nearly as much fun, but by now, I think you are all know what we look like well enough to use your imaginations while  I get things cleaned out.

So today marked this first official day of our family summer.  We measure the summer from first visit to the pool to the last, so I guess you could say these past few weeks have just been filler.  Really, now that I think about it, this isn’t a post where you would probably want to see many pictures.  Oh don’t get me wrong, the children were just darling.  I will describe them for you, Mattie was sporting a one shoulder ruffled teal number today with her hair all crimpy from being in pigtail french braids.  She looked straight off of an island and I will admit, for just a moment of was jealous of my child and her already late summer looking tan. I, on the other hand, probably appear frosty to the touch because my skin is so pale.  I would imagine that people just automatically assume that I am cold just by looking at my skin.  Lila couldn’t have been more adorable with her grandma-like one-piece and little chickeny legs.  She was completely captivated with everything the kid pool had to offer and after getting over her first inital amazment at splashing when she walked, she trotted right out like a big girl who had been doing this for at least 2 summers.

This is a good spot to point out that there are multiple pools that I will be refrencing in the weeks to come, so I will list them so that you can visualize what I’m talking about.

Kid pool – has a large slide and play structure and starts out sort of like a beach, perfect for babies like Lila and then gets about 3 feet deep.  My kids prmarily hang out here.

Baby pool – it’s about a foot deep all the way around and has a large green frog slide in it.  None of my children really like this one

Splash pad – its just what it sounds like, lots of brightly colored things spraying water.  I do not like this area one bit and have pretty much told the kids its off limits

Big water slide pool – again, this one is pretty self-explanatory though there is a little section that is about 4 ft deep where kids can swim

Lazy river – again, I think you get the jist of that

Lap and diving pool – we don’t venture there…yet

Also, this is a good time to share that the pool we are members of is at the Jewish Community Center and I think they let us in for two reasons only, 1) we keep the Sabbath, Shabbat Shalom new friends and 2) Reese’s hair.

Gearing up for pool season always gets me a little nervous.  I will be honest, I wear these three children like a full-body beach sarong.  I feel like if I keep them all splayed out around me, people will possibly not notice me as much and if they do notice my day glow, slightly curvier in places that I would rather it not be and awkwardly sparse in places that I would rather it not be body, they will also see the three kids and shake their heads knowingly that they are the primary reason for the less than stellar bod I’m sporting these days. I’m really not complaining about it, no, that was not all just said for you to write comments back to me saying flattering things.  I am fully aware that I could be working harder at it, but I enjoy the sleep that I do get and really don’t have any desire to get up any earlier before the kids rise to work on sculpting it.  Previously, I had this great idea to do squats the entire time that I worked on my hair in the morning….but then I just decided to quit fixing my hair so……..

Anyway, getting back to things…..I feel very comfortable bathing suitwise at the JCC.  Though I am hardly the best shaped person there, I am also hardly the worst.  And I think back hair definitely outweighs my jiggly thighs in the looks department.  I would much rather be a little “soft” then have the lifeguards worried about my back hair clogging the drain systems.  And by the looks of things this evening, I can see that as being a very real problem.

That’s another thing I love about the JCC, they keep late hours.  You can spend the whole day using “going to the pool” as a bribery thing.  None of this, we have to be there by noon to get our money’s worth.  No! The JCC stays open to around 8:30 most nights which means we don’t bother with going until after naps and right before dinner.  There’s just a handful of after work parents there and the cool kids have already left for the day so the kids pretty much have the place to themselves.  We bring a few little snacks and just have a grand time.  Speaking of snacks, I think that was Lila’s favorite part of the pool – the snacks.  Before she even got in the water she insisted on having a swig of milk, which she somehow poured all over her stroller, (spill-proof lid my foot) and a handful of pretzels with a few cheese cubes. Thanks to her milk-spilling, I think I am pretty much guaranteed a new stroller.  I had been trying to suggest that maybe we needed one to Brandon, and now that we will have a milk saturated one I think he might be ready to commit.  I thought about strolling the things on into the pool to attempt to rinse it off, but didn’t think I wanted to get us label as the weirdos quite this early in the season.

One last little bit of funny regarding our first day at the pool, and again, this is definitely not something we would have shared pictures of. But you know those little hygienic liners that are often in the crotch of swimsuits?  Well, unbeknownst to me, Mattie’s new little suit had one of those in it.  When she first came out wearing it, she said how much she loved it and seemed to feel especially grown up because I had told her that I bought it in the girls section of Old Navy, not the toddler side.  She let me know that it felt a little funny in the bottom, and when I asked her if we should take it back, she shook her head profusely that it would be okay.  So when we got home and I put the suits in the wash and discovered the little plastic, papery thing still in her swim suit I just had to laugh.  Poor thing must think that to get to be a big girl means having stickers in your pants.  I felt so bad that she endured that there the whole time without complaining once, and many of us know that Mattie has no problem complaining.  It all makes sense though why she was walking rather odd and kept pulling at her suit.  I think I just made her day 100% better by removing the culprit.

Okay, enjoy your evening and I will get back to work shrinking my pictures.

Wilderness Safari Part 1

Even after the cable man spent the entire afternoon with us the other day, and after enjoying one entire evening of both internet and cable television, I woke up to find that it had all just been a dream.  No more internet, AT&T had texted to let us know that we had used 100% of our data plan and were now being charged an extra $20, and I think that was also the morning that we went to pick up Brandon’s car from the mechanic and it wouldn’t start.  This is a completely off topic statement that I am about to make, a whole situation that we haven’t even talked about here up to this point and maybe we will cover it another time, but regarding Brandon’s car, let’s just say that it wasn’t even at the mechanic for starting issues so for that to happen was really odd, but also completely our luck.

So anyway, I hope that explains my lack of blogging these past few days.

Now, back to our fun in Arkansas.

When I left you, we had just finished up a nice little Sabbath.

So on to Sunday.

Somewhere on Friday I think it was, Mattie found my old copy (in VHS form no less) of The Princess Bride.  This was my favorite movie for many, many years and it probably still is on the Top Ten.  I had a special place in my heart, for a very long time, for Cary Elwes (though I really didn’t appreciate his work in either Twister or Days of Thunder, and his turn in two of the Saw movies pretty much severed everything for me. ) and I can’t hear the words, “As you Wish” without smiling.  While at the zoo the other day when someone made a reference to the aardvark as being ROUS’s, I knew right away the were referencing the Rodents of Unusual Size. Back to Mattie though, I think she watched it 4 times on Friday.

So Sunday started with her ripping into viewing number 5.  I think by this time, there were only a few scenes that she hadn’t memorized.  That’s one of Mattie’s talents, memorizing movies.  Math facts, negative.  Vowels sounds, took forever.  Memory verses from the Bible, each time its like the first time she’s heard it.  But give her a movie to watch, just even once, especially if its stupid, and she has it down pat. I guess I should admit that even though its been probably 10 years since I last watched The Princess Bride, I have a great many of the scenes still memorized, as well. I think I even got some bonus cool points from Mattie when I dazzled her with quoting a few lines myself.

We had a surprise interruption when our long-lost friend Natalie and her roommate (who is also our friend) Taylor dropped by unexpectedly to say hello to Mattie.  As I have mentioned before, Natalie is our special “Grown-Up” version of Mattie.  I have known her since she was just a little girl and Mattie latched on to her when she was around 3.  She lived in Tulsa near us and would baby sit now and again and about the same time that we moved away, she started school in Arkansas where Poppy works so we were still able to see her plenty.  Natalie and Taylor graduated last spring and have been in Michigan for their first year of college and just happened to come over to Arkansas for graduation.  I love surprising Mattie because she reacts fantastically.  She has lots of flair and drama and I like to see that in a surprise.  So when I told her to pause her movie, that I wanted to show her something really quick and she walked cautiously out in the hall, upon seeing her Natalie standing there, she did not disappoint as far as reactions went.

There was running.

There was leaping.

And I don’t know that she even said anything, just immediately buried her face in Natalie and just held as tight as she could.

Hurray for Happy Sunday Surprises!

In about March, Mattie had finally stopped asking if maybe Nat would be at church when we would go and visit Mums and Poppy. I think she had just finally come to terms that it might be a really long time before we saw her again and she would have to be happy with FaceTime and emails. I suppose we have relight the fire that there is always that possibility, when visiting Arkansas, that there might be a Natalie-sighting. But it was completely worth it.

Around Princess Bride episode 6, Grandma and Grandpa arrived.  This was also around the time that my dear friend Jessica, who just happened to be passing through on her way home from a little day trip, also stopped for a little Baughman love.  We take what we can get when we live so far away from some of our dearest friends. Uncle Tom, Aunt Heidi, John, Kumiko and little MoMo arrived for a visit and a trip to the Wilderness Safari.

I consider myself very lucky to live near the Wilderness Safari, as it has been the back-drop of many special events in my life.  I imagine my first few visits were when I was in high school.  It wasn’t much then, just a few cages with some monkeys, a few peacocks and lots of emus in the drive-thru portion.  Towards the end of high school, I visited with a boyfriend and my dad and was impressed at the huge snake, the giraffes you could feed and that you could actually get into the lemur cage and hold them.  That’s not something you can do at just any zoo.

In college, I took my cousin Carrie Ann and things had really grown.  There were ostriches, emus, tons of african-y deer and even a hippo, which we happened to see running across some muddy hay and it tried and fell.  I had never seen a hippo trip before and have yet to see one since – but it was life changing.  Oh and the cats, this was about the time that they started bringing in the lions and tigers and bears.

Brandon also made a trip when we were in college and there is just something about seeing the guy you are falling for cradling a baby  bear cub, that really makes a young girl’s heart race.

It should come as no surprise that our Sabbath afternoon activity the weekend of our wedding, was taking all of our bridesmaids and groomsmen to the safari.  I feel like that really cemented our marriage and would encourage everyone to start their nuptials with a group outing to the Wild Wilderness Safari in Gentry, Arkansas.

And when Mattie was a little over a year old, she got to go on her maiden voyage through the wonder of the wilderness safari.  Here are a few little photos from that first visit:

Some cute little bear cubs

Auntie April, Mattie and I petting the kangaroos

Mrs. Roo, I also carry my baby in a pouch

Meeting a giant pig

Some Lemur Love

About two years ago we finally made it back again to take Reese for his first visit

Reese, too took up with the goats

Loving on the goats

Reunited with that roo

It was very important that we made this trip to the safari because there were several newer members of our family who had either never been, or it had been entirely too long. Momo, Lila, Kumiko and Heidi to name a few had never experienced the wonder.

For some reason, WordPress isn’t letting me add anymore pictures to this particular post so we will have a little “To Be Continued and you will find the rest of my story in the following post. See ya there!