The Next Big Thing

It's been a big week.

Last night, my sister got married.  Many of you were there.  We threw popcorn and toast (yes, toasted bread), and we booed and sighed and cheered.  (Okay, if you weren't there, the wedding was at a theater that was performing a popcorn-tossing melodrama, Sinbad the Sailor, so not all of the booing and cheering was about the bride and groom). The girls played the wedding march until Rhonda said "Wrap it up!" Rhonda and Larry were silly and giddy, and so absolutely sure of themselves.  It was wonderful to see.

Someone, I can't remember who, said to me that I was losing my sister.  I don't buy that.  You couldn't pry me away from my sister however hard you tried. Not even Larry, who my grandmother calls a "good-sized man," could do that. All I lost last night was my voice. 

But Larry may be losing something--peace, quiet, sanity... 

I have to say, he's adjusted to our chaos pretty well over the last three and a half years.  It's not easy, and you all know I'm not always easy to be around, but he keeps trying.  He adores Andrew and has bonded with the chickens.  I admit it; Larry's a good guy.

Congratulations, guys.  I'll even try to knock before I walk into the house from now on! 

Hurricane Harbor

How does a mother express her love for her children?  Two words: Hurricane Harbor.  At least those were the words for today.  You know when kids are so giddy that their smiles pull back toward their ears and their whole body seems as tight as a bowstring? 

All afternoon, I saw these smiles. 

And it's impossible not to be affected by it.  I mean, it's not like I wanted to spend the afternoon at Hurricane Harbor for myself.  Clearly not.  But seeing the girls like that, laughing and screaming, all of us playing shark in the lazy river, it was wonderful in a way I couldn't have imagined 10 years ago. Sweating and getting deeply sunburned didn't seem recreational in those many (too many) years between my own childhood and revisiting it with my children.

God, I love being a mom.  And where did I leave the aloe vera?

Happy Fourth of July!

We just got home from watching fireworks.  Sitting on an open field above White Rock Lake, we could see firework shows from all over the city.  Leona thought they were beautiful, but Gloria found them a little dull.  Then rockets starting going off right over our heads -- boom! The sparks seemed to be raining down on us.  Gloria lit up just as bright at the lights overhead, grinning and clapping her hands... and Leona burst into tears.  She was sure we were going to be set on fire. 

There are my two girls, the one who would through herself off any wall without a glance at what lay below and the one who didn't want to walk down the smallest steps without holding on to my hand.  Both of them absolutely themselves, both of them so precious.

Today, on their own, they bought a pair of bracelets that say Big Sister and Lil Sister on them.  They put them on and held hands and there were a blessed few minutes when they stopped bickering and seemed to appreciate each other.  Only a few minutes, of course.

Happy Fourth of July!
Misty

Starting on the Adventure.

It wouldn't really be fair to call this the start of an adventure because life with Gloria and Leona has always been an adventure.  We started our first blog (or I started it for us) in May 2007, when the girls and I set out in our minivan and a little travel trailer named Rosie.  You can learn all about that trip at http://www.trailer-mama.blogspot.com/.  But since we settled back home, I lost my drive to blog.  We're not so far from friends and family anymore, so we just stopped documenting our adventures.

After watching Julie and Julia, 10-year-old Gloria and 7-year-old Leona decided we really had to have our own blog.  So here we are, our family: one mom, two daughters, two dogs, three cats, a lizard, a snake, a fish, three chickens and several Madagascar hissing cockroaches (who are very senior and are expected to die soon...please?).

Welcome, take a peek into the chaos of our lives.  Don't mind the dust bunnies in the corners, or the ones in my head, either!