Daily Dose of Sugar Mama

The weather here, like most places, has been super mild. I’m not complaining, but I do miss snow. I miss bundling up in my favorite sweaters and thick wool socks. If it’s going to be overcast, it might as well be chilly. That’s just my opinion.

And I realize we are already into the second week of January, but seriously! I can’t get used to it being a new year yet! 2012 just sounds so foreign to me… futuristic will you. It’s going to be a fantastic year though, I can feel it in my bones. It’s just gotta be! Last year too much time was spent complaining.  WAY too much.

I spent the last several days trying out a wide angle lens and loved it. BUT, I realized very quickly that I will not be happy with the off brand. You know what that means? It means I have to save a lot of money. It means budget grocery shopping and saying “no” to some daily things that can add up. It means dying my hair myself and having my husband trim it. And I’m okay with all of those things. Low Maintenance is my middle name. But just look at how cool that picture is! I can capture the entire room!

In the picture are 6 of my 8 daycare kids… the two missing are a brother and sister.

1) They are identical twin boys

2) She is a sweetheart! And her mom is pregnant (another daycare kid soon!)

3) She is a twin to the girl near number 4 with the purple glasses, but they are not identical

4) He is brother to the twins at number 1

5) That is an afghan my Grandmother made YEARS ago and it’s one of my very favorite things. And do you see the sad looking plant on my desk? I have since replaced it with a Bird’s Nest fern which I named “Birdie” . I name my plants if I like them.

I walked around outside taking hundreds of photos with the wide angle lens. Like this shot. Normally, I could care less about seeing a picture of my house, but I just love what the wide angle lens does to a photo. Have I mentioned how much I really liked the wide angle lens? Oh, and yes, those are blue Christmas lights on our house. And they are awesome. Daniel picked out dark blue lights and neatly trimmed our entire house; every angle. I was SO against blue lights at first… now I love them. And I love him.

Girl got a neat book for Christmas that has activities for Mom & Daughter to do together. One of the ideas was to pretend to be at a restaurant at dinner time. She decided to do this for for all of us. She made menus, seated us, took our order, and served us. If you look closely, the menu lists drinks and next to wine and beer it says “Must show ID”… LOL! I love her attention to detail. And, yes, under “beer” there are several choices from foreign dark lager to cheap light domestic. We like a variety. Oh, her waitress name was “Bean”. I love her.

This week we received the results for Teen’s Freshman ACT results. Um, he is smart. And I have to admit that I envy his ability to test well. I was an AWFUL test taker, and that is part of the reason I’m scared to finish my degree. Cade has the same problem I do with test taking. Poor kid! The way the school system is set up a kid really needs to be able to test well. Otherwise, it’s a challenge. Teen scored in the 100th percentile. Yes, 100. It’s crazy! And what makes it even more awesome is that he scores that high in math AND English AND science. I would love to have some of his smarts.

But you know what I love most about Teen? Moments like the picture above. I love him.