Typical

Sometimes he can't even make it inside the house before beginning the tantrum.

How cool is this?

I woke up this morning to find a message in my inbox that someone put the picture of the train we made for Will's birthday on a webpage called "Best of Web Thomas Parties."

Awesome.

And I didn't submit it at all. I guess they found it by searching the web. Pretty cool. Granted, we didn't have a Thomas party- it was just a generic train party, but the color scheme of the train fit I suppose.

Here's the website. Our train, The Webster Express, is in the 2nd group of pictures in the middle. Pretty cool!

The Great American Campout and other stuff

This is one of those posts where I go through my camera and decide to post a whole bunch of random pictures and try to weave them into some sort of cohesive narrative.

Try is the operative word here.

I'll begin with our backyard camping adventure. Rob and I want to take the kids camping this Fall and so we thought we would do a trial run in our backyard. It went really well, but I think camping in nature would be a lot more peaceful than camping on a Friday night in our subdivision where our neighbors are throwing a house party. I would rather sleep to the sounds of crickets rather than car horns and Lil Wayne. We began with dinner and smores. Of course.

Daddy has to help reload the marshmellows.

Somebody really loves them!

Settling into our tent for the night. Goodnight.....

Okay, so I didn't make it all night. Between the thumping bass of our neighbors party and my husbands snoring, I gave it up just before midnight. I took Will inside with me. Mainly because if he woke up in the middle of the night and I wasn't there, he would have a nervous breakdown. I am not even remotely kidding. He would. But super trooper Bennett and Daddy made it all night.

We are loving our local children's farmstead this time of year. We have a season pass so we like to go as often as possible. I wish every community had one of these. Deanna Rose's rocks. Plain and simple. We have to go straight to the horses. Every time.

Do you notice a theme to my blog posts? And can someone generous donor please send us money so I can start saving for horseback riding lessons? Couldn't she have a cheaper passion?

After riding the horses we decided to go fishing.

Mommy caught one!

And then so did Bennett! She felt it pull and yanked it up all by herself! She was so proud. She has told everyone this week that she caught a fish. Her teacher, her swim coach, her dance instructor, her pediatrician, the mailman....

Will wasn't really into the fish. But he was all about feeding bottles of milk to the baby goats.

And we always end up at the playground.

And here's the BEST part about having a 2 and 3 year old. For the first time since I became a parent, I can sit down and relax. I don't have to help them up the slides, across the walkways, or down the big ladders. I can sit and observe. Heavenly.

Alright, random pics from my camera. I found this cute one of my kids with their best buddies, Levi and Crosby. You can totally tell which set of kids go together.

We made puppets on a rainy day. The kids played with these all day long. Clearly Will needed a little help on how to hold one.

We found a gorgeous patch of sunflowers during one of our family drives. We like to get some coffee, roll down the windows, and see what we can find. I think we had a great discovery this day.

I think that's it for now. Off to ponder my typical Saturday dilemma. Play with my kids or watch college football? The latter usually wins. There are 6 other days of the week to play with them.

Where were you?

September 11th, 2001

I was living in Montgomery, Alabama for only a few months. I was in between leaving my year on the road with the Missoula Children's Theatre and my move to New York City. I had been in Charlotte, NC the day before and had just flown in to Alabama with my Dad on September 10th. I had been auditioning for some theatre jobs. I was on a plane the day before. Just typing that gives me chills.

I was working for a few months at WCOV Fox 20 doing sales and promotions. I watched the Today Show as I got ready for work. Nothing special. I remember they were talking about Michael Jordan retiring again. As I was driving to work I heard the radio stations taking about a plane crash. When I walked in the lobby the TV was on and it had just happened. The first plane had just hit the north tower.

We all know what happened next. I spent the day huddled in the lobby with co workers. We watched the whole thing. We watched every minute live including the instant both towers fell. When I went home at 5:00, I just hugged my parents for what seemed like hours.

My Dad worked at the Pentagon from 1990-2000. I actually interned there in the summer of '97. I remember his shock as he tried to figure out where the plane had hit. Were his co-workers safe? Nobody knew at that point. It was so confusing. I just kept redialing my friends that lived in NYC. All I got was busy signals. I think I watched CNN until dawn the next morning. Nobody could sleep.

I had an apartment hunting trip in NYC scheduled for the first week in October. I had already bought my plane ticket and there was no way I was going to miss that trip. I wanted so badly to be in the city I loved so much. The security was understandably tight. There were soldiers everywhere. Nerves were on edge. But I was happy to be there.

I took these shots while I was in NYC. These were taken just three weeks after 9/11.

For reference, this was obviously the before shot.


This was the same angle in early October, 2001. You can still see the smoke and the twisted metal coming out of buildings. This was as close as they would let us get so this was taken about 4 blocks away.


Another shot. By the way, these were taken during the daytime. It appears to b dark because there was still so much dust everywhere. It clouded the sky.


Taken downtown in Washington Square. You can see that people still had missing posters up. Heartbreaking.


My friends and I stayed downtown for hours and just cried.


Scene outside of a fire station in mid town. I believe that this company had lost several members, but I can't remember how many.


I do remember the very last time I was in the World Trade Center towers. They had a TKTS booth there. That is where you can buy discount tickets to Broadway shows. Most tourists use the one in Times Square and so locals who wanted to catch an evening show would go to the one at the WTC. It was the summer of 1999 and I was working at a theatre outside of Philadelphia. We would drive into the city when we had nights off to catch a show. I went in with some cast members and we went to the towers to the TKTS booth to buy tickets to see, "Annie get Your Gun." It was so busy and bustling and alive! That was the last time I would ever walk inside the towers.

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Revelation 21:4

Catching Up

I sat here for 5 minutes and tried to think of a header for this blog post. And folks, after said 5 minutes, I got nothin'. So then I tried to keep it as simple and basic as possible. "Catching Up" is what I came up with. I am nothing short of a genius.

Rob is away this weekend celebrating his birthday in New Orleans with his siblings. His present from me is 3 days away from the little ones. In his absence I have been watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and re reading Anne of Green Gables for the 51st time. I am a walking cliche.

Oh, and I've been watching college football. Because that's what we do on weekends in the Fall. And yes, I will root for any SEC team when they're not playing Alabama. Except for Auburn. Because I can't.

On to the photos. We went to a great festival in Parkville, Missouri. I love exploring new areas and this one was fantastic. Such an adorable little town. I love them. I wish more than anything that I could live in an old neighborhood within walking distance of a quaint main street where I would know all of the shop owners. Maybe one day. I love this main street area....

...and this local ice cream parlor....

...And this mill.... Heavenly.

Of course, what do the Websters do right off the bat? Think folks. If you were a Webster, what would be the very first thing that you would find? One guess.
Will is starting to bcome as obsessed as his sister

Love local restaurants. If I could help it, I would never eat at a chain restaurant again. Except for Chick-fil-A. Of course.

Future date night, perhaps?

It has been ridiculously hot here so I am racking my brain thinking of craft projects. One morning we had fun making crowns for my little royals.

And then it cooled down enough for them to go outside and play "library." Bennett checks out books and then Will hits her with them. That's how we roll.




We took the kids to a real horse show. Bennett has a lot of books about horse competitions and so we thought it would fun to take her to a real one so she could see if it was something she might want to do in the future. She loved it as much as we hoped she would.











I will post more later. Pride and Prejudice is almost over and I have 3 chapters left in the 6th Anne book of the series so I need to go and have a good cry. Feel free to openly mock me. I deserve it.