bsmiles and sunny days

Tomorrow is Tre's 11th birthday.  Sweet boy is so excited... he lives for this day.  Dale and I were talking the other night, and I got busy inviting as many people as possible.  He was counting up how many he thought would be here.  18.  Imagine his surprise when twice that many show up tomorrow!  Woohoo! Needless to say, I got on the ball today and started cleaning.  My house is usually picked up- I should say the main floor and basement are usually picked up.  The second level is usually not picked up.  It is usually a wreck.  **Please let me know if you are stopping by and planning to make a trek up the stairs.  I need at least a two-hour warning. This time I didn't even touch the second level, I spent three hours on the main floor. I don't clean house regularly.  I wish I did.  I want to.  I am good at cleaning and organizing... just not at my house.  :(  My kids do what needs to be done the way...

I keep thinking about this past week.  I loved it. I saw so many people from my old life... And I loved it.  I love them. Sunday morning I was sitting in the foyer at my mom's church with Moses when a man walked in that I knew years ago.  I couldn't remember his name, but I knew him.  He didn't see me sitting just a few feet away from him.  He said, "I heard some of my girls were here for the Conley wedding.  I had to come over and see them."  I thought it was sweet and tried to think of who it might have been that he came to see. He approached me after the service let out and gave me a big hug.  He said, "I heard you was here and had to come see ya." He said the same thing to my sister.  We were his girls!  He made a special trip over to see us! His name was gifted back to my memory, thank you, Lord, and I took the time to ask questions about his life and introduce my children.  I didn't know I mattered to Al, but I...

When I started blogging in California, I found a way to post from my phone, remember the joy it brought me?  Well I no long had the same email address, so I lost access to my original blog site, which I loved.  It still bothers me that I can't go back there... boo. So I chose a name that made me laugh for my address and now it's too hard to tell people where to find me, so I'm moving.  Hopefully this will be the last move for us!  You can find me HERE !   Let me know you're with me!!!

 My dress had pockets that made me feel like a JC Penny's catalog model.  T.R.'s trouser pockets had the same effect.  Here's what's funny.  Moses is in my arms.  It's so natural for me to have a baby in my arms that I didn't even realize he was in this photo until someone mentioned it on Facebook.  He's on my left arm, see his little forehead?? Also, please notice that T.R. is carrying my purse.  Hahaha.  It makes me laugh every time I look at it!  My mother is kind of amazing.  She is working harder this year at school than she has in many years as a teacher.  Her life has changed completely, and yet she made sure to put a baby or a child in her immediate vicinity as soon as she walked in the door every day.  I love her.  She is my role model.  And still so lovely after all these years...  Clearly these two come from her gene pool, looking so beautiful and holding a sweet baby! Sista and I had fun, ...

Ravi Zacharias was on the radio as we were driving home from a bang-up week at my mom's.  He is amazing.  Amazing.  The way he communicates is nothing short of brilliant.  Unfortunately, my capability to retain anything from his messages, no matter how in awe I am, is limited. It's one of the hazards of having a large brood of children.  Short attention span. Minimal thought retention. He said, "Humility is the hallmark, the hallmark, of great leadership." He said something equally profound immediately following that statement, but I can't remember what it was. It was something about the iron in a star being too much for the star to sustain.  It actually burns itself out.  It implodes.  It's the same with men and power.  They cave after the power overtakes them. It really got me thinking. I pride myself on being focused on my marriage.  I try to keep peace at all costs. It usually works out well, until the cost is my convenienc...

This morning Dale asked me what I planned to do today. I said, "On the days that I do make plans, things go wrong. When I don't plan anything, I accomplish absolutely nothing. I'm not sure yet." At noon, I realized that I had not made a plan yet, nor had I accomplished anything. Bare with me as I recount my non-eventful day. 9am Take big kids to volunteer at the thrift store, take little ones to the YMCA, and workout 11:00 Make lunch for Dale and little ones, iron, and feed baby 12:00 Pick up kids from thrift store 2:00 Walk the pet sitters through the necessary care while we are gone 3:00 Pay bills, look at Pinterest for Co-op class ideas 5:00 Take Kennedy to drop off the bearded dragon to his sitter 6:30 Bathe tortoise, clean up house 7:30 Put baby to bed, pack myself  and the little ones, put little ones to bed 8:30 Put topper on truck for the trip 9:30 Make Dale a lunch because Jas made pancakes for dinner for the kiddos. Delicious pancakes that I didn't get m...

It was nice to ride the happy hormone wave Friday.  I have to tell you, it was a short ride.  I've been taking a b-complex supplement along with an evening primrose oil pill.  I don't expect it to start working for another week or so, but I'll do whatever it takes to clean this mess up inside me.  I am very close to going to the doctor.  I know they will try to drug me.  They always do.    Yesterday was not as busy, but my anxiety ran high.  Weird.  I knew I needed to pick the girls up at 11:00 so I planned to leave at 10:15 in order to stay ahead of the clock.  At 10:10 I decided to clean out the filter on our dishwasher. Mmhmm.  You can imagine my surprise when I got in the car at 10:35 and didn't have gas.    My kitchen was a wreck.  I didn't do dishes before bed; I'm lazy like that.  Then after I had the dishwasher taken apart, there were too many to handwash.  My kids do dishes.  I r...

Every single time we go to a family event in Emporia or Richmond, it is a sweet reminder that the Lord in His mercy has returned us safely home.   Dale's cousin's son turned 8 yesterday, sweet boy. Today was the big blow-out celebration. We are distant enough cousins that when I told him the hand-made card was from Leila, he turned to Deisha and politely said, "Thank you, Leila."  Hahahaha!  I love it.  They live in Springfield, it came as no surprise.  But, I believe I will have to make driving the distance to attend all the birthday parties a bigger priority.     The party was shark themed; it was adorable!  Each of the guests were offered a felt shark fin that was attached to the back of their shirts. Scarlette insisted on bringing this tiny Barbie baby to the party, and then she politely asked for a "shark fang" for her baby.  She was so proud of both fins. Moses was passed from arms and laps all af...

7:30am    Painters arrive and have a party on the roof. 7:31am   All children 7 and under are up and at em, rarin' to go. 7:45am    I resign myself to the fact that I don't have time to make coffee, so I change diapers, dress little ones,  make breakfast, feed the baby, shower, iron, dump some cottage cheese in a container for lunch and round up my stuff. 8:45am    Kennedy and I race out the door to work. 9-11am    I find myself randomly giggling as I work. 11:30am   Dale texts me a message to say that the painters found a problem with our roof. 12:00pm   I fight the urge to laugh uncontrollably about a memory from our trip to West Plains back in March. 1:00pm    Anxiety begins to creep in, but slowly creeps out. This continues to happen all afternoon. 4:00pm    We head home, chatting happily all the way. 5:30pm    After a quick ...

I want to organize my workroom. I want to take the junk off the top of my bookshelves. I need to clean the bathroom. I need to change sheets. I need to de-clutter my bedroom. I need to organize toys. I need to get rid of stuff in my garage so I have some storage areas. I need to make lesson plans for next school year. I should go through clothes to see what we need for the fall. I should make menus for the next week. I want to take our broken TV apart and see if I can fix it. I need to do plank for today. I want to read a book. I need to put kits together for the preschool art class. Dale is off tomorrow, so I need to do laundry and catch up my cleaning for tomorrow. And guess what I did today... ...went to the Y. ...took the kids out for ice cream. ...looked at facebook. ...snuggled Moses. ...planned a dream getaway with Sista that will never happen. ...planned a getaway with Sista to see Sista-in-Law that is happening. I'm thinking about buying hamburgers for ...

This is what it looks like around here sometimes.  I love the view from the other end of the table. Dale is studying, Kennedy is pinning, Jasmine is emailing, and Tre is drawing. Micah is avoiding having his cute mug on my blog. Usually I sit right there where Tre is, but I've relocated to the other end so the high chair won't block the isle.  Have you seen Dale recently?  He gets better looking every time I look at him.  I love that guy. We have not seen this movie yet, but the cutout was at the theater last week when we saw Despicable Me 2, and I couldn't resist.  That's Deisha in the first picture.   Leila wanted all three little girls to be matching, but only Deisha obliged.  At any rate, they looked really cute, and really similar! Scarlette was not sure what was going on here.  She had several meltdowns before she stuck her face through the box.  Love it!  We had movie passes to a theate...

So here's what's on my mind. This day was crazy. My crazy days used to be few and far between.  They are coming more and more often.  It's no bueno. I had a wise friend that told me she made plans for the day in three segments: morning, afternoon, evening.  She preferred to not fill more than one segment in a day, and never made plans in two sections together if she had to fill two.  For example, if she had story time in the morning, and Awanas in the evening, nothing was scheduled in the afternoon segment of the day. I have thought of this over and over.  Some days I have no choice in the schedule, but other times, my poor planning makes for a very high stress day.  I would like to incorporate this simple scheduling technique. On frugality, I have been using reusable wipes.  My sister gave me a set of 10 that she bought from a friend, the rest are made from baby washcloths and cut up microfiber rags that don't clean windows anymore....

I have battled my roly-poly tummy all my life.  In the seventh grade when I started to care about my appearance, I started doing various exercises on the floor next to my bed before going to sleep at night.  I did crunches, leg lifts, jumping, anything that I could think of that might help me to look thinner.  I guess that's when the obsession started.  I have been on again, off again, for 25 years.  It wasn't that I was so overweight, I was average size through adolescence and college, After I started having babies I gained, and gained, and gained.  It was terrible.  My body image was so mixed up.  When I was heavy, I thought I was thinner than I was.  When I was thin, I only saw my flawed body as heavy.  As I made my way out of misses sizes and into plus sizes after Trebo, #4, I knew something had to change.  Dale battled the same demon for years until he found out that he couldn't be a chaplain and maintain that level of ove...

GOOD GRIEF!  I did NOT know how big that photo was going to be on the last post!!! Yeow!  I guess I better double check before mobile publishing!  HA! Sometimes I feel like I have burdened my children with the yoke of the law, the Sutton law. Inside these walls, there must be an order that is carefully maintained, otherwise, seriously, it goes bananas in no time fast.  This applies to dishes, laundry, grocery consumption, volume control, behavior, demands for attention, the messes in the kitchen, the messes on the main floor, the messes in the basement, the yard, the car... the list goes on and on. I feel like I bark orders day in and day out.  Here's what I mean.  I walk into the kitchen in the morning, and there is a stack of papers on the table.  There is a glob of jelly that has trailed from the countertop, down the cabinet door, into a heap on the floor. The bread bag is wide open on top of the fridge with a few stray slices...