Blog Salad

Well, hot and muggy arrived today. The kind of hot and muggy where you break out in a sweat about 2.5 seconds after walking out the front door. It's only early May, and already it's oppressive. Eventhough, the kids and I took a nice walk this morning. Our city has a wonderful urban park; hundreds of acres, trails upon trails, and probably a dozen lakes. We go there a few times a week with the jogger and do a fast, almost two mile walk. This walk is important to me, because our summer vacation is coming up, and it involves wearing a swimsuit in public. The kids seems to like it, too. Little Man is in heaven there. There are mama and daddy ducks with their baby ducks waddling or swimming in between them, geese, and lots of birds. There are also usually a few tractors scattered along the trail. Little Man is obsessed with tractors, construction vehicles, trucks, anything that's big and has wheels. Which leads me to...

Mighty Machines. We watch it about 5 times a day. It's a great educational children's show about all kinds of machines, trucks, factories, etc. The theme song is permanently stuck in my head. I'm singing it right now. "Mighty machines, working all day doing mighty things..." I don't think it's on tv anymore, but thanks to Grandma, we have several dvds of the show.

And speaking of Grandma, our family's picture was in the paper a few days ago. We were in the paper because of a story about Grandpa. Grandpa passed away a little over a year ago, and his town (a small town about 40 minutes from where we live, but close enough to seem like a suburb) paid a sweet tribute to him. A wonderful tribute, my husband and Grandma loved it. Anyway, there was a write up in the big local paper, along with a photo. A horrible, horrible photo. I can honestly say it was a bad photo of all of us. However, the photo of me was especially cringe worthy. The first time in my life my picture is in the paper and how I wish is weren't! Grandma said something like, "oh, you look so nice." I've learned over the years that when Grandma goes out of her way to say something like that, it's because the opposite is true. Like when I was pregnant and she kept talking about how thin I was (I wasn't), or immediately after I gave birth she mentioned how rested and refreshed I looked. (I didn't, in fact I had just gone through natural childbirth and looked so white/sick/bad the doctor thought something was truly wrong). She just says these little white lies to try to make a person feel better. Anyway, this picture is probably the worst picture ever taken of me, or at least in the top three worst. The only positive spin I can put on this picture is this: that it's the good Lord's way of keeping my pride in check, and if it is, it sure worked.