Little old lady in the shoe

On any given day this is what my foyer looks like. Lots of shoes none of which belong to anyone with the last name of Johnson.
Is it the unlimited amount of pretzels that I offer the boys?
Is it the unlimited amount of Crystal Light flavored water I offer them?

Whatever it is, I love that my boys and their friends always feel welcomed.

Those flip flops right there belong to a 14 year old boy, and are a size 11 in men's.

We might need a bigger boat house.

Waking up to a beautiful sunrise

On more mornings than not when I awake at O dark thirty I find a sleeping beauty in my bed. Somewhere between my husband awaking and leaving at an even early O dark thirty and my alarm going off, this beauty slithers her way under my covers and falls back to sleep after she attach's herself to me as tightly as we were when she was growing inside of my belly.  She doesn't use the personal space rule, she doesn't care about mommas dragon breath in the mornings, she just wants to be close to me.

This morning she didn't fall back to sleep.
I was restless and so was she.
So what do two restless ladies do?
They chat of course.
About which planets are our favorites (Saturn and Uranus) and why (because they're colorful).
About why the glitter pink scarf just didn't go with the yellow shirt (because the color just didn't work together) and about why God is giving me and daddy the honor of raising such a beautiful little lady (because we must have done something right).

(pardon the crusty eyes and drool stains, my daughter has been enjoying taking lots of self portraits lately)

The Comedy Of Multiple Mothering

One of my professors asked us to fill out a little questionnaire on why we think multi tasking is so important now a days. Do we think we WOULD be good at it? Also, do we think that it is harder to balance everything in life because of all the modern technology?

I had to stop myself from laughing out loud.

Honey, I should of been awarded the Noble prize of....
Keeping my son from losing a limb
Reminding my other son to brush, wash, and breathe everyday
Saving a little blond child from yet another nasty tango with a roller brush

and that's all before 7 AM.

Then on the afternoon menu it's all,

one child walking in complaining about a teacher who is SO MEAN because I mean seriously mom, we have to pay attention to every little detail of the test material and she didn't even tell us it was going to be on the test (well if it's TEST material, it's safe to assume that's it's going to be on the UMMM test!)

another child needing to know how to google college scholarships and what event in the Olympics pays more with endorsements (go to google and type in, how I'm going to support my aging mother?)

and another child needing help with the color periwinkle because the crayola version just isn't what she saw in her dream last night (I'm thinking that Mrs. Crayola would be really upset if we mess with her colors, so how about a nice shade of lavender)

All this while cooking a delicious well balanced meal, standing up straight as to not play into the illusion that I am a flat chested boy (that is an illusion right?), vacuuming and figuring out why I should care about
8x squared + 12 xy cubed - 14=

Did she REALLY ask if we think we could be good at this?
Well lets see, I haven't had to be medicated yet because of these 3 little beautiful life sucker outers.
So I would say SCORE!!

And no form of technology has made anything harder in my life. If I don't like it or don't want my kids to take part in it, I say a word that is very foreign to a lot of parents now a days because God forbid their kids might not like them for it....it's called NO, have you heard of it??

Some days, I say it over and over again in hopes that one of my little beautiful life sucker outers will be mad at me, like really really mad and not talk to me for a whole 5 minutes or at least until they need to find their socks.

So in the end I put, yes it's important, I kick major butt at it on an every day basics and no I don't think technology has anything to do with it.

As the teacher handed our papers back, she handed mine to me and had a chuckle in her voice when she said my name.

teacher : I like your brain Mrs. Johnson.
me : well thanks I'm pretty fond out it myself.
teacher : your the comic relief I needed this weekend.
me : I got plenty more where that came from :)

The Mardi Gras Mambo

This year as Hannah helped me take out our Mardi Gras decorations, while we were putting up our Christmas stuff, she and I started talking about parades. To my horror my little Georgia peach didn't remember anything about the Carnival season. She was three years old when we moved to Georgia and we haven't taken the kids back in for Mardi Gras since we moved.
I immediately text message Mr. Johnson, we need to get to Louisiana ASAP.
Well not really ASAP but before Mardi Gras.
Is something wrong? he asks.
IS SOMETHING WRONG??? Only the fact that my sweet angel faced baby doesn't remember what it's like to hear the sound of the marching bands drumming to "OH WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN" (you know the same Saints that WON THE SUPER BOWL:) or what it's like to stand on top of an ice chest and scream for CUP CUP CUP, and actually catch one, and lord knows every child has to experience getting pelted in the face by a big old pair of white pearls! WHAT KIND OF MOTHER AM I.......
All righty Heidi, I will see if I can take off before Mardi Gras.

Last Friday we loaded up the beast and drove through crazy sleet and snow and headed on down to the Carnival celebration. Our area in Georgia ended getting over 5 inches of snow, but we were to busy eating po boys and dancing the Mardi Gras Mambo to notice.

It was a very quick trip, but we had a blast.

 somewhere in Alabama when the snow started.

this was our house while we were gone.

 the famous Blue Dog

 waiting for the parade to start

WHO DAT!!

 throw me something mista!!

 Jakob was channeling his inner Mr. T

 Hannah, me and Toni (the 3 Marie's)

my baby LOVES her boas (like mother like daughter)

 the crowds

 my favorite marching band

 they were about to tear it up!

Flambeaux carriers

 Captain Endymion

the owner of the Saints (you know the team that won the SUPER BOWL!!)

 Hannah, Alex, Jakob and Patrick

I was hoping this picture would come out better but sadly it didn't. This was a beautiful sunset in City Park, this area is truly one of the most beautiful in New Orleans. The way the Spanish Moss drapes the giant Oak trees, couldn't be any more perfect. This evening when we were walking back to our car, the sun was setting through the trees; my baby girl was skipping through the shadows, my boys and baby brother were talking about the footballs they caught at the parade and Brian and I were home, at least for the weekend :)

Isn't She Lovely

Brian and Hannah attended the Girl Scout's Father/Daughter dance this year. It was an Oscar themed dance, red carpet and all. The girls and dads were encouraged to dress in their "Oscar best" outfits. Hannah took choosing a dress very seriously. She tried on about twenty before deciding on this one. Out of the three that she really liked, this one won because of the color. I keep my tears in check until right when they were walking out the door. Brian came in the room and said,"where's my beautiful date?" Right here daddy!! Here I am!! She was so happy to be going with him and so happy that he liked her dress. They danced the night away and picked up Mickey D's on their way home. Hannah said it was just a PERFECT night!

BLESS DEM BOYS!

In case you live under a rock or just REALLY REALLY don't care about it, THE NEW ORLEANS SAINTS WON THE SUPER BOWL!! As I was typing this I did scream that sentence at the top of my lungs and do the second line at the same time. Because you know, that's how we roll!


I'm not a football fan. I enjoy having or attending parties to celebrate these games or any other games for that matter. Truth be told, I pretty much just like to eat and have some beers with friends. So the actual act of the 2 teams wearing really tight pants and knocking each other to the ground for a ball, I still don't get. This year football, wasn't just about football anymore. It was about a city that has hit some bumps in the road. A city that I proudly call home. The Saints are to New Orleans what the Statue of Liberty is to New York. SACRED. I remember being a little girl and my daddy torturing me, by making us all go to the Saints training camp practices.
WHY DO WE HAVE TO GO???
We need to support our players, he would say.


It was BLAH BLAH BLAH to me.


I married a man who would much rather be running 500 miles than watching sports on T.V. Then came along two little boys, Alex and Jakob.


My boys LOVE to watch ANY and ALL sports.


Football. Awesome.
Baseball. Sweet.
Basketball. Cha Ching.
Soccer, swimming, cricket, men's underwater flying trapeze zebra wrestling. Score.

ANY and ALL sports people.
So I have gotten used to the sports seasons and what munchies go best with each sport.

This year, I found myself wanting to be at a sports restaurant on Sundays to watch the game
(In Georgia we only got a hand full of the Saints games on regular T.V).

What was happening to me?

I started to S L O W L Y understand 1st and 4th and a safety (just a little bit) and what games meant what to who and why (again just a little bit).


We won a whole bunch, sprinkled in a few loses.


Then a Championship win and we were Superbowl bound.


Just like the end to all good fairy tales, the good guys won and they all lived happily ever after....

The city of New Orleans wasn't magically fixed by the Saints amazing season. They're still on the road to recovery. What did happen was people, if only for a minute, people can now understand the passion that New Orleanians have. The people in that city greeted the players at the airport after every away game, whether they lost or won. We celebrate our good fortune, our loved ones lives after they pass away, and the fact that we raised on good manners, good food and knowing that your family and friends will always have your back.

And that my friends is what's called being a PROUD member of the WHO DAT NATION!!!

here we go!!

I told our guests that we were doing the second line during every commercial. And at the end of the game we were celebrating NO MATTER what happened.
Well what happened was tear filled cheers and who dat toasts at the end of the night, and a happy happy city!

How much longer until football season???