bedtime prayer

during our bedtime prayers tonight kendall had an especially long one.. so much that i wished i had brought my phone in the room to record it. here are the highlights....

dear God
thank you for all of the people everywhere. thank you that we can never swim without our floaties in the pool but sometimes we can swim without our floaties if our mommy lets us and when i turn 5 i can go to school and i will see mason's classroom and i will have my own classroom and i will say thank you God so much for keeping us safe when we step in a big ant pile hole.
amen.

Masons First Day

Its hard to believe that I'm old enough to have a child in school. Kev and I have really been dreading this day since Mason was born.... and its finally here. Everyone has told me that time flies once they start school -- i cant imagine it going any faster. Each time I put him on the bus and watch it drive away I get a knot in my stomach... Im sure i will get used to it-- just another chapter in the life of Mason. Couple of pictures...

we walked to school the first day-- you will notice that my eyes are swollen.. that would be from the breakdown i had the night before.

Sarah, Mason, Luke and Kendall... all ready for our walk to school

We made signs for Mason and Sarah for when they got off the bus.. Kendall and Luke were so excited to welcome them home!

My little man getting off the bus

Chicago Marathon

Well, after 2 years of running.. ive decided to run the Chicago Marathon in October. Its kind of one of my life goals and I figure that now is as good a time as any to mark it off the list. I decided to run as a part of Team World Vision. If you dont know of World Vision its a Christian humanitarian organization that supports children and families around the world who are living in extreme poverty. Kevin and I have sponsored a child for about 10 years now and think the world of the organization-- 86% of all of the money raised by them goes directly to the poor.

My goal is to raise $1000 for World Vision before i run all 26.2 miles of it in October. None of this money goes to me for my race registration, flight, etc.. it all goes directly to World Vision. I'm asking for any support you will offer. Its a good cause and a really easy way to give to those who werent born with the luxuries that most of us were. I have a web page that makes it really easy to donate.

Amber's World Vision Page

Thanks in advance for anything that you can give! Ill keep you posted as I train in what has seemed like running in the pits of hell lately. Im really hoping it cools down a bit!
Love you guys!

creep

ok..seriously- top 5 funniest moments of my life thus far. i literally cannot tell this story without sobbing from laughing, so i really hope it will translate through written words. i will forever share this memory with Julie who saw the whole thing unfold.

So Julie invited me to go see the hotel cafe tour at center stage so we could hear Cary Brothers sing. There were quite a few other folks singing too, one of who was Ingrid Michaelson. You might not know the name, but you know her song, Take me the Way I am. "if you are cold.. here take my sweater... cause i-i-i-i lo-o-o-ove the way you call me baby" i wish you could hear me singing it as i try to write that. Anyway, she was up for her last set of songs and what would become a moment that Julie and i will laugh about for the next 10 years. Let me set the stage for you here.. Julie and i decided to stand down near the front rather than be seated so we are literally about 50 feet from the artists and in the dead center of the room with stadium seats all around us. Ingrid comes out with her ukulele and starts to sing a cover of Creep by Radiohead. I happen to think this is pretty cool song and i know my sweet husband (who is stuck at home with my kids) likes it, so i take out my blackberry and record it for him. So the song comes to an end, i hit stop on the recorder and the room is dead silent as Ingrid begins to talk about her next song. All of a sudden i hear this loud noise coming from my pocket and i take out my phone to find that somehow ive turned on the song that i have just recorded. i try to calmly press the off button, but it continues to sing on and now the people on either sides of me are looking at me wondering what the heck is going on. i look to Julie who gives me the "what is wrong with you.. turn off your freaking phone and move yourself away from me" look. in a futile attempt to muffle the sound, i try sandwiching the phone between my palms and putting it between my thighs , but it only seems to get louder. i begin sweating profusely and people around me are shifting and trying to figure out where the racket is coming from. then i hear Ingrid from the stage say "is someone playing music? what the heck is that?....wait, is that me singing?" total panic sets in and i no longer know what to do so me and my phone concert just take off running out of the room while trying to mash every button i can on the phone and apparently hitting the volume button bc it keeps getting louder and louder. people were yelling.. "shut up", "turn it off" at me as i hung my head and darted for the door. after what seemed like an eternity, i finally made it out of the room and figured out a way to silence my phone. I sat down on a bench outside and just doubled over laughing. i literally think i sat outside that concert laughing with tears streaming down my face for 5 minutes. When I finally composed myself and got back in there to my place beside Julie, we then could not focus on the concert bc we couldn't stop laughing. so.. all this to say, if any of you wanna hear a great bootleg cover of Creep by Ingrid Michaelson, let me know and ill let you borrow my phone.

Hot Tranny Mess

this will mean nothing to you if you dont love project runway and christian the way i do... if you do, this is hilarious

Not so skinny jeans

I bought a card the other day that i loved. It says " Skinny Jeans are for Imaginary Girls and 12 Year Old Boys". This came to my mind today when i was having my every Wednesday lunch date with Kendall at Doc Greens. If you have not experienced the little piece of heaven on earth that is Doc Greens, you are missing out. I have perfected what i like to call the best salad on earth. Those of you that know me know that im no lightweight in the eating department.. so for me to be in love with a salad-- its freaking good. Anyway, as I'm munching away on my lunch, in walks what can only be described by a black girl as a "Hot Mess". She was by my estimation about 5'4" and 200 lbs. Guess what she was wearing? SKINNY JEANS. I'm not lying when i say her legs were 2 big denim funnels with tiny shoes that had been forced to pop out of the bottom. It was like a Saturday Night Live skit was being filmed right in front of my eyes. Have you ever seen the one with the commercial for 'Mom Jeans' where the women all have really wide hips and have their jeans pulled up to their armpits. The skit I saw today at lunch was similar except kinda worse. So many questions come to mind....
First-- "Where do you even buy those?" In my opinion there are a couple of things that just shouldn't be sold in the size XXL. These include thongs, mini skirts, bikinis and skinny jeans.
Second-- "How the hell do you even squeeze yourself into those?" I was around in the 80s and I do remember laying down a time or two to put on my acid-washed Guess jeans, but these looked as if they could only have been hoisted up by a crane. My heart really went out to the stitching of her pants...it was just never meant to be tortured that way.
Lastly-- "Who forgot to explain to people that Skinny Jean is a description of the pants, not a description of what you are going to look like if you wear them?"
Nuff said.. leave the skinnys for the anorexics and Christian on Project Runway. Thats where they really belong.

lasagna

I was gone to Florida this weekend and so last night when I got home we went to Sonnys and the kids were catching me up on their weekend at Grammie and Papa's house. I dont know if other moms have this problem but my children do not know how to talk in a normal speaking voice. They yell everything they say. It seems like the voices go up a couple of levels higher if we are sitting in a restaurant. This way the entire restaurant gets to be a part of our dinner conversations which usually consists of who just farted or figuring out some way to put the word doo doo in a sentence and then dying laughing at an even louder volume. And thats just Kevin and my conversations. :) So back to the weekend at Grammie and Papas.. Mason has up to this point taken the lead on explaining the details of the weekend. Suddenly Kendall jumps in extra loud with her one detail from the weekend.. "We ate Vagina last night". I figure I've just heard her wrong until the third time she repeats it. "WE ATE VAGINA LAST NIGHT" Kevin grabs her arm and pulls her right next to his face while trying hide the fact that hes about to burst out laughing.. "its lasagna Kendall, we ate lasagna."
And I thought I was a bad cook.