i swear i have stuff to tell you

i have all kinds of stuff to tell you and pictures to show you....but blogger is giving me attitude.

no editing. no copying and pasting. all photos exactly where i don't want them.

i'm in no mood for it. i have other stuff to think (read worry) about. b is driving with an instructor--right this moment.

i'm thinking about buying a driver's ed car--so that i can have a passenger brake and steering option. i'm mostly kidding. mostly.

or can i just pimp my ride? my 10 year old mini-van? that would be sweet, no? :)

alright, that's all i have until i arm-wrestle blogger into submission. i'll try again later. i have a story about baseball and poorly behaved adults. i have a story about what i'm reading, i have a story about setting boundaries and i have a story about snakes. oh, and i am sharing recipes for summer salads.


love and light and attitude
deborah

strawberry legacy

in michigan, strawberry season is just about the time school gets out for summer.

when i was a little girl, my grandparents would go strawberry picking about the middle of june. they picked a lot. trays full--for jam and preserves. and for shortcakes.

on the last day of school, my grands would come over to my house and we'd have homemade strawberry shortcakes. nothing fancy. bisquick shortcakes, very rustic style, marinated strawberries and whipped cream.
to this day, this summer in a bowl dessert makes me think of my favorite things: my grands, summer vacation, and well....strawberries, shortcakes and whipped cream. seriously, what's not to love, right?

so every year, i in turn make strawberry shortcakes for the last day of school celebration around here. this year, the boys had friends over to eat it up with us. and they did. they ate until it was GONE. in about 4 minutes.

hello summa!!!!


love and light and summer in a bowl
deborah

145,000 children

This Father's Day weekend (June 18 and 19), 50 cents from each Wendy's Frosty purchase will be donated to to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption(DTFA,http://davethomasfoundation.org/). Money raised helps kids in foster care find permanent loving homes.
Dave Thomas and I were both adopted. Though, my time in foster care was very short, as i was put up for adoption at birth and placed into my forever family within weeks.

There are over 145,000 children in the foster care system in North America, today.

So if you are thinking about a little sweet this weekend, maybe a Frosty would be just the ticket. You might want to pick one up for dad, too.

love and light and care

deborah

disclosure:i worked with wendy's and themotherhood.com and have received compensation for my participation. all opinions within this post are mine.

intentional summer

our intentions for fun this summer.

we completed it.

well, three of us completed it. one of us, had better things to do. whatev.

but, we've left lots of room for the unexpected.

for fun.
for silliness.
and for the stuff that just has to get done. but, i'm not making a list for that.

that's not unexpected, or fun or silly. that bums me out.

i'm looking forward to doing most of this list. i am not looking forward to a couple of things on this list. aw, but there is something for everyone. i do love that.


love and light and making the most of it
deborah

class is in session

i sat in the van, that was parked safely in the garage and tried to teach b how to drive.

b likes to mess with me. a lot. like all the time. he's my button-pusher.


then, the next day, i put my camera away and took him to a neighborhood to drive. for reals. this is a neighborhood with few houses. even less cars and it seems like no people. of course, there were cars and people and mailboxes and not a straight road in the place.

i panicked a few times. yelled once or twice. i think i swore out loud. and i could feel my heart in my stomach, head and neck. pulsing. hard.

to make matters worse, some goof-ball was lighting fireworks off in his yard, just as we whizzed by at about 7 mph.

when we returned home i looked up *how to teach someone to drive* on google. this is what i read.

If possible, leave your teen's first on-the-road experiences to the care of a professional. Many a nasty accident has occurred because an inexperienced beginner was allowed to get into a situation that was too much to cope with. A miscalculation in speed, a sudden change in traffic conditions, or an awkward combination of circumstances could lead to disaster. The professionals are used to anticipating such problems-and they have the advantage of dual controls. Your task as co-driver is to back up the work of the professionals with well-planned and coordinated practice sessions.--fromdrivers.com.

i knew it.

i am a mom.
i am a pretty good cook.
i am a pretty good psychologist.
i am a pretty good nurse.
i am a pretty good barber.
i am a pretty good math teacher.
i am a pretty good referee.
i am a pretty good accountant.

i am a lousy driving instructor.

that's all. class dismissed.


love and light and I SAID BRAKE
deborah

p.s. this morning as we were dropping off my son's friend (after the official first day of driver's ed), someone did a bit of a lawn job while pulling out of the friend's driveway. it happens to the best of us right? yeah. i was driving. awesome.

intentional summer

our intentions for fun this summer.

we completed it.

well, three of us completed it. one of us, had better things to do. whatev.

but, we've left lots of room for the unexpected.
for fun.
for silliness.
and for the stuff that just has to get done. but, i'm not making a list for that.

that's not unexpected, or fun or silly. that bums me out.

i'm looking forward to doing most of this list. i am not looking forward to a couple of things on this list. aw, but there is something for everyone. i do love that.


love and light and making the most of it
deborah

and the livin' is easy

it is almost summer. almost. tomorrow is the last day of school around here--that's my measurement.

i still love summer vacation. love it. love my boys being on our family schedule--as goofy as that is, sometimes.

every last day of school we make a list--and i'm not much of a list maker. but, we(all four of us) make a list of all the things we'd like to do,see,visit,learn, make,try and experience over the short michigan summer.

we started the summer list because as b was ending the school year in 2000, i had just given birth to his new baby brother and i was hoping a list of things from b would help me stay balanced and attuned to both kids--little and itty-bitty. the early baby days of nursing and bathing, napping and burping slip away too quickly and i wanted to make the most of summer for b too. admittedly, i was afraid balancing the needs of two kids would be near impossible. the summer list eased this worry. we did fine, if i remember correctly.

so tomorrow, we'll make our list and do a few other things to celebrate the end of another successful school year. i'll post our list next week. in the meantime, what do you most want to do, see, visit, make, try and experience this summer?



love and light and summmertime
deborah

send

i did it. i really did it. i did it this time.

i've need to call the place down the road that teaches driver's education.

i know i needed to. i've needed to for quite some time.

not for me. for this little guy.

alright, that's an old picture. but, in my mind he will always be a little like that.
even though he is much more like this.

i linked everything i could to the driving.
not a perfect grade = no driving school.
forget to put your bike away properly = no driving school.
leaving backpack in the middle of the hallway = no driving school.
not wearing his retainer = no driving school.

truly, no rhyme or reason.

but our son has been patient. i mean REALLY--break out the capital letters, PATIENT.

let me just say--i know it is not his issue.

it's mine. all mine.

and the issue isn't really driving.

it's control.

and i realize that my fear, anxiety and worry is that i cannot control what happens to my children, my growing young man in this world.

i am happiest and most at ease when i know that all my people are safe at home. unfortunately, my people aren't so accommodating to being tucked in at home all the time.

there was a time that i thought that i feared my child driving. i have no reason to think b isn't ready. i have no reason to think he will be a bad or careless driver. and then i realized, my dad was driving the day he was hit head-on and he is an excellent driver. he did what he could to avoid being hit and probably saved my mom in the process, but he was hit. he could not control the person in the other car.

we cannot control the actions of someone else.

let me say that again (mostly for myself)--we cannot control the actions of someone else.

but we can control some things. things like preparing ourselves and our children through education and example. we can give them an advantage, by offering skills and knowledge. by giving them boundaries, so at least they know when they've crossed them.

so last week, i called b over and asked him to look over the registration. i had signed him up.

after a few minutes, b says, "hit the *send* button, mom"

it's a big step for me. and for my son.

now, i might need to throw-up. but, i'm prepared.


love and light and big steps
deborah

what's the ball count?

we've been celebrating a birthday around here, this week. celebrating our youngest son.

which also means, i've been baking like a fool.

yes, i mean that literally--like a fool.

i baked two 9 inch rounds for a traditional two layer birthday cake. (i don't really like cake and i really don't like sheet cakes....sheet cakes are not festive, in my mind)

that being said, i should have baked a sheet cake.

i let the cakes cool and then began frosting them. the rounded top required a lot more frosting than i had originally figured. all frosted, i carefully covered the cake with the glass dome. i could decorate with swirly lettering after i had cut up two cantalopes and four pounds of strawberries.

this is what i found.

www.cakewrecks.com has nothing on me.

so, then i baked two dozen cupcakes, because i really couldn't put candles in that cake. it would be overkill, right?

then yesterday i made another 48 cupcakes for our little guy's class. and now today i am baking another 48 cupcakes for his baseball team and their families.

oh, and all those little cupcakes are decorated to look like baseballs....if you do the math (i'll save you the trouble) that makes 120 baseball cupcakes.

um, i thought i didn't bake.

oh. yeah. i don't bake WELL.

that's all i've got....i hear the timer going off. sheesh, i hope it's the timer and not the fire alarm.


love and light and cake
deborah

quote for wednesday

"be kind and merciful. let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier." -- mother teresa


love and light and refreshing rains
deborah