I am Twittering!

Well, I actually started Twittering a little over a year ago. I Tweeted one or 2 posts and then did nothing with it again until a few weeks ago. I still love my Facebook though and have no desire to give that up like some people I know have talked about doing. So come follow me on Twitter @karenpartin.

Have you ever lost a tooth from a Blizzard??

It is currently April 7th, baseball is in full swing, flowers are blooming and pollen is coating everything!!! The only problem is that our high today was only 53 degrees, yes, 53 degrees!!That is INSANE!!! What is even more insane is that after meeting my mom and sister and niece for dinner we went to Dairy Queen for ice cream!

Chris and I along with my sister are starting a new diet this weekend. This week has been spent weaning ourselves from caffeine, if you know me you know I have a DIEHARD Diet Coke habit, so this has been interesting. I brewed up the last of the coffee this morning and used up the last of the chocolate caramel coffee creamer and on the way to dinner polished off the last of my diet coke stash from home. Tomorrow is COLD TURKEY on the caffeine for me and this weekend we start our 14 day detox where we are not allowed caffeine, sugar, sweetners, dairy, oils, etc... I figure I will be curled up in the fetal position by Sat. After our 14 day detox we can start adding some things back into our diet, we will see how long I can hold off the diet cokes.

I say all of that to get back to our DQ trip. Right before we left for dinner there was a commercial on TV for the new Midnight Truffle Blizzard at DQ. I told Chris I needed one last treat before this diet starts and Kathrine agreed she needed one too. While we were eating our ice cream the DIVA jumps up from the table screaming and runs to the bathroom yelling that she is bleeding. Thanks to the fact that it is so cold outside there was only 1 couple in the place besides us. I go check on the DIVA and her mouth is covered with blood, no paper towels anywhere in the bathroom, got some napkins out front and in no time she pulled her tooth out on one yank! After that there was no going back to the ice cream for her, she walked around DQ with napkins hanging out of her mouth looking like a rabid animal. The other couple got a chuckle and now the Tooth Fairy has to make a stop. So I ask, have you ever lost a tooth from eating ice cream?? The DIVA has!!

Did anyone watch today's Oprah?

I am not a devout Oprah follower but will watch on occasion. Today was a hour long show about how mom's today feel overwhelmed and alone as well as some funny confessions. I must say this was an hour that I definately needed!!

There is a new book out called "I Would Trade My Husband for a Housekeeper" that they were talking about and they were also discussing the new show "In The Motherhood" which is written from real life mom stories. I watched ITM when it was a online show and loved it and now am watching the TV series and find it quite funny as well.

It was trying to teach mom's not to be so hard on themselves and how we as mom's tend to judge other mom's to harshly. Also, how we see these "perfect mom's" on TV and try too hard to make ourselves like them only we disconnect from the fact that that is on TV and not real. I will say that I don't try by any means to be a perfect TV mom but I do get frustrated and overwhelmed often.

Some of the "Mom Confessions" included a mom who admitted to making her kids an entire lunch out of the snacks she found in the car, another admitted to driving with her sleeping kids and not wanting to wake them to stop so she could use the bathroom so she used a diaper for herself (that is not one I have personally done but there was a time when I probably would have). I will admit that I have made my son pee in an empty diet coke bottle in the car so I did not have to stop on my way to wherever I was going at the time. Some other confessions I will make is that I got tired of making my daughter a different dinner than what we were having and in trying to get her to eat what we were eating she pitched a fit and cried at the table until she fell asleep at the table with her blanket, long after we had finished ours. I am also guilty of not jumping up everytime they cry b/c as their mother I can tell a difference between a cry of being "really hurt" and a cry of "I bumped my head". Both my husband and I are guilty of sleeping in on the weekends and letting the kids watch TV in the living room or play video games in their rooms until we get up.

Let me know if you saw the show today as well and what your thoughts were on it. Us mom's need to stick together and not try to bring each other down.

Ok, so there are some of my confessions. Please leave your own and maybe I will post some more in another blog soon! One more confession before I sign off...there are times when I would do ANYTHING for a housekeeper, sometimes even trading my hubby for one, but only for a couple of hours each week!

I must have lost my mind!!

The Diva's birthday cake that Aunt Kiki made, the Diva designed it herself!

The Diva's birthday ALWAYS falls at the beginning of track out or right at Easter or both! This year it fell during track out, since we had just been to Florida we thought that we could get away with that being her "Birthday" but no such luck of course, being the Diva that she is. We looked into several options for parties and then she decided that she wanted a sleepover party with her friends. Yes, I said SLEEPOVER!! We agreed and started making plans to be invaded by 7 yr old girls.

Camden hightailed it out of the house for the night and went to stay with Kiki and Jared who also had Levi (Jared's nephew) come down. Chris tried to hightail it out of the house but that was not happening!!

Grace brought me a list of at least 20 girls she wanted to come which I promptly whittled down to 5 plus her. We sent out invites and had the girls meet us at Milton's for pizza before heading home to party. This was Grace's first sleepover and all the girls had never stayed anywhere except at grandparents or aunts/uncles so we were in for an adventure. One little girl came to dinner with us but just was not ready to stay away from home so we ended up with 4 coming home with us and I know Milton's was glad to see me leave with all these loud, squealing little girls, LOL!!

We came home and had cake, opened presents, got on jammies and then I held on tight to see what the night would bring. There was bed jumping and bumped heads, snacks, snacks and snacks (who would of thought that little girls would eat like teenage boys!!), crafts,movies, Barbie's, Wii and Zubber...all that was in the first hour and half, seriously!!

They all were very good, no fights and one was asleep by 10:30 and another by 11:30. Leave it to mine to be up with the other 2 until 2am...yes, 3 7yr olds STILL up at 2AM!!!!!! Then everyone was up and awake at 7am...are they insane???

All in all it was a good night, the girls had fun and Chris and I survived...but it may be awhile before we do this again!

Wordless Wednesday

Wintering in Florida

That is what we will be doing from now on! We were able to go to Florida Feb 25th thru March 2nd. The weather was beautiful and we had a good time seeing family and friends in Lake Wales and staying out at Crooked Lake.

While we were in Lake Wales I was able to catch up with some old friends that I have not seen in 20 yrs!! I have known Angel Goodman Bowen since we attended First Methodist Preschool and then we both went to Babson Park Elem which is where I first met Jennifer Jacobs Mueller. We all attended middle school together in LW but went to different high schools before I moved to NC. We have all recently gotten back in touch through Facebook so when I found out I was coming to LW I told Angel to get Jennifer and that we needed to get together. We had a great time reminising about old times and people and stuff we did as kids, it was just like 20 yrs had never passed. They brought their kids out to the lake and they all had a blast playing on the beach and playing ping pong and getting to know each other. Grace loved hanging out with Angel's daughter, Blair and was begging for a sleepover. It was great to see them hang out and have fun just like their mom's did with each other all those years ago! I so wish that I lived close enough to see them more!

We also went to see my grandfather while we were in town. He looks good and seems to be well, except for the cold he was getting while we were there. We went to church with him on Sunday and it was good to see some old friends at First Baptist. It was so good to see him and I hope that we can get down again to see him this summer or early fall. We were also able to see my aunt and uncle, who graciously let us use their lake house and one of my cousins while we were in town.

We spent one day in Orlando because Chris had a convention to go to. Before we dropped him off we went to Downtown Disney and took the kids to lunch at Planet Hollywood and then took Camden to the Lego Store. It was VERY HARD to get Chris and Camden to leave the Lego Store!! We are getting in Raleigh this summer so I now know where Chris and Camden will be every free moment we have :) On our way back from Orlando we met up with my friend Jaime and her husband Bill and kids for dinner. It was good to see them and catch up.

Since we had such beautiful weather during our trip we took Saturday and headed to the beach!! We toook the kids to Sanibel Island where they were able to swim and collect shells. The kids and I got a little sun, Chris got A LOT of sun and he survived the drive to the island! If you know Chris you know he really does not like bridges and if you know Sanibel in order to get there you have to go across 3 miles of bridges! I did not tell Chris that until we had already gotten in the car and well into our trip that day, he handled it very well!! There was a lot of traffic that day but thankfully the beach was not too busy. On our way back to LW we ate dinner at Sonny's BBQ (a must whenever I am in the area) and we got Plant City strawberries to bring back to NC, yum!! We also had to make a stop at Spook Hill for Grace, she loved going the last time we were there and BEGGED all week until we finally went. I don't know if I ever got that excited about it when I lived but it is fun to see her so giddy!

Since NC had snow and schools had a snow day when we left FL on Monday we decided to stop in Savannah and continue home on Tuesday. We made our way to dowtown and went by The Lady and Sons and Paula Deen's store adn we got some pics of a couple of the town squares. It was chilly when we arrived, not too bad though. We got a room down on Bay St. and could see the river from our room. At dinner we walked over to Lady and Sons and took a chance that we could get in that night and as luck would have it we GOT IN!! We did have to spend some time walking around sight seeing prior to dinner but it was SO worth it, thankfully we had missed lunch while on the road b/c everyone was sleeping. The kids got the buffet and I got Paula's famous chicken pot pie and Chris got shrimp and grits. We could not finish our meals, SO GOOD but TOO MUCH of it!! (the cheddar biscuits are to die for!!) It was freezing on Tues when we got up to leave but we did manage to take a quick stroll along the river before heading home. I am already scheduling a Girls Weekend to Savannah for later this year!

The majority of the snow was gone when we hit Raleigh late last Tues afternoon and then Wed was back into the swing of school and dance and now baseball is starting back. We had a great time on our trip and hope to get back very soon, I pray that we can move back down there sometime in the near future.

Wordless Wednesday