I LOVE FAMILY!

The girls on Thanksgiving night

Nothing is better than family to help you feel happy when you know you would be feeling down. We decided to make the trek out to Indiana to visit my brother Marcus and his family. It ended up being a 12 hour drive out and 13 hours home. I must commend my girls, they did wonderfully. Rachel started crying around hour 12, but I don't blame her, I wanted to cry too.

We got there and just had so much fun with the Indiana Darringtons. The best thing was that Lauren & Rachel got to know their cousins. Reagan is just one year younger than Lauren, but they had a blast playing together, as you can see in the video.

I got to help bake stuff for Thanksgiving which was awesome. It just doesn't feel like Thanksgiving without baking a little bit. Thanksgiving was good this year. I told my sister, it must have been good because I didn't cry at all. Now before you go, awwww, and start feeling sorry for me - I'm just stating a fact. The last two times Trav was gone over Thanksgiving, I remember leaving the room crying. So this was a very good year. Marcus and Brittanie's friends did a great job of making me feel included.

I'm glad to be home and to get back into the routine. We've got about 10 days before we head out on another trip - to another brother's house. I love family. They really know what I need to keep my spirits up.

One Stop Holiday Shop

My MOMS club did a one stop holiday shop a couple of weeks ago. I ended up putting up a booth there. At first I was just going to advertise decorating cakes, but then I decided (with some help from a friend) that I should do homemade goods.

I made up goody plates to give away to friends (that's the blue thing with the bow) and breads and different goodies. There was stuff there to sample. I got a lot of positive reviews, and I had a ton of fun preparing it all.

I got a handful of orders and some offers to do booths elsewhere. I turned them down, because I'm planning on traveling a lot this Christmas and won't have the time to fulfill the orders. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Baking is definitely a passion of mine.

Tag, I'm it

Okay when I saw Jaime's blog, I didn't exactly know what the whole tagging thing was. After reading Katie's blog - I think I have an idea. Just some things you may not know about me:

1. I can look at leftovers and know which Tupperware they will fit into.

2. I love reconciling my checkbook.

3. I've got a knack at guessing (with accuracy) how many weight watcher points a food item is.

4. I hate hearing (and starting) sentences with "I saw on Oprah..." or "Dr. Phil says..."

5. I read slow. I'm one of those people that will pretend like I'm done reading something, just so I don't look dumb.

On a track...

So when you ask Lauren where her daddy is, she'll proudly tell you that he is "on a track." Really that means "in Iraq." It sounds similar, right? Sometimes I have Lauren tell Rachel about her daddy. One time Lauren's first response was, "Rachel, my daddy is a soldier." I loved the pride that I heard in her voice.

Well tonight we were getting ready to run over to a friend's house so I told Lauren to put on her shoes. She asked, "Are we going on a track?"

My response, "Why do you want to go on a track?"

She followed my question with another one, "are we going to Pennsylvania?" Trav did some training there before he left, and Lauren would always say that Daddy was choo-choo training in Pennsylvania.

I asked, "Why do you want to go to Pennsylvania?"

"Because it's far, far, away."

"Who do you want to see that's far, far, away?"

"My Daddy."

I then ask her, "Do you miss your daddy?"

She hugs me and says, "Yeah."

All I could say was, "I miss him too," and then I hugged the closest thing I have to Trav, his daughter. Life is hard today.

River Dance Rachel

Most of the time I put Lauren and Rachel in the tub together. One night Lauren was already in bed and Rachel's neck was really smelly. Anyway, I put her in my tub to bath her and she was having so much fun kicking her legs. I swear she looked like a river dancer. Her torso was completely still and her legs were flailing all about. The bummer is that I didn't have the camera on me and I wasn't about to leave my 4 month old in a bathtub, to run down and get it. So this video is captured a few days later. Of course this time Lauren was in the tub so she didn't get quite as into it.

Here I go...

The main reason for starting this blog is that I wanted to be like everyone else... yeah right. I actually really dislike trends, and I didn't want to be following in it. I've contemplated starting a blog for a few weeks now. Its a dumb thing to think about. I mean does it really matter if I get on and write about stuff. Who is really going to look at it? There's no way it will be as cool as my brother-in-law Rob's. I don't have any deep thoughts on music, movies, or politics. I can't be as funny as my brother, Scotty, or cousin, Brady. So if you laugh at anything, it probably wasn't intended to be funny. Yep, no matter how I try it will just be a plain, jane blog.

One of the real reasons that I'm starting this blog is I thought it would be a great way for Trav to get to see video of his girls. We've been having a really hard time of emailing videos to them. So anyone else who gets on is now subject to my thoughts. We'll see how often I get on to type something.

So here is the first video test. I hope it works, babe!

My first posting. Whew, I'm glad that's over with. Short and sweet, get used to it.