Just have to share some pics of our little garden...we're loving it and we're totally hooked on gardening.  My hubby is already planning to expand the garden next year.  He says he wants to grow sweet corn.  Dare I mention we live in your typical 1960s built, totally suburban, split-level style, less than a 1/4 acre per lot type of neighborhood?  A corn field would really work with that type of landscape, don't you think?

Yeah, I can see our neighbors now giving directions to their future visitors.  "Um yes, make a right on Elm, hang a left at the at the cornfield in front of the yellow split-level."

But I digress. 

So here are the pics.  I think my Grandpa's pride is shining down from heaven.  I asked Shawn if he wanted me to take a picture of him in front of the garden... he said "why do you want a picture of ME in front of the garden?"  I said "well, my grandpa used to take one every year, so why not...might be good karma."  He thought no...

So here's the kiddos with our very first harvest...two yellow squash and a zucchini.  And Katie and her new haircut.  And Jon with a squash up his nose.

first veggies from our garden

grandpa'd be proud

squash

zucchini

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Yesterday was Katie's big dance recital.  She did great and we were so proud of her and our little neighbor, Miss Kayla. 

Here's the little collage I made up from the studio pics I did yesterday morning before we departed for the big show.  I apologize for the Tammy Faye/Little Miss Sunshine makeup...I'm not a fan of it, but that's how you have to do it for dance recitals.  When she's older, they have to wear fake eyelashes...I'm certain I'll have to hire someone to help me with that when the time comes because I can't even go within two feet of super glue without gluing my fingers together. 

11x14 Collage

Ugh.  Why must Vox automatically sharpen pictures?  They look so crispy on here...it drives me mad! 

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First, my sweet, adorable, beautiful nephew, B-Man.  He really can't look anymore like my brother, honestly.  But I do see quite a bit of his beautiful mama in him, too, so no doubt this kiddo is going to break many a heart...sigh...what I wouldn't give to see this sweet thing and smooch on him, but he's all the way out in Missurah :(

Bradyn

Then, some shots from today of my two knuckleheads...I was practicing shooting on a white background...the goal being to actually get it WHITE straight out of the camera.  This is no small feat with a budget lighting setup.  Basically, to get the white background white (without lighting it its a putrid shade of gray...), you have to aim at least one (two is better) strobes at it and blow it out (overexpose it).  So I aimed my two portable flash units at the white background and used my regular strobe as my main, and by george, I think I got it!!!  Could you accomplish this without the lights on the background?  Yes, but you'd be spending several hours in Photoshop afterwards...so better to get it right SOOC (straight-out-of-camera).  I'll be upgrading my lighting equipment very soon, so in the future this won't be so cantankerous.

So here we have The Boy, currently a.k.a. Hee-Haw or Ozark, because (a) the missing teeth, crazy cowlicks, and numerous freckles bemoan such a moniker, and (b) you have to strap him down and sit on him to put his shoes on most of the time.  The Child hates to wear shoes outside, and rips them off the minute he walks in the door.  But he is darn cute if I do say so myself...course I'm a bit biased....

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And then we have our little diva-in-training, doing her best Hannah Montana poses...

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Last I blogged, I was headed for Texas for Miss Ashley's wedding.  That was June 7th. 

Obviously, things have been somewhat hectic since then, but a good kind of hectic.  Katie is now on summer vacation, so we had all the end of the year wrap up last week, and lots of half days, and with it being so warm this past week, we spent much of it in our pool or our neighbor's pool. 

I haven't even begun to wade through all the pics I took in Houston.  I hadn't even posted a recap, but if you read Miss Kelly's recap, my response thereto is "yeah that."  Especially the part about Jimmy Choo...they can suck it.  Alls I did was take a damn picture of ONE shoe...and yeah, do I look like the type of person who can reverse engineer an ugly orange pump from ONE picture?  I can't even add numbers without an excel spreadsheet or a calculator.  Get over yourselves and your ugly shoes, y'all.  Despite that, we had a blast and it was an amazing time. 

I've been busy with business stuff, so there's been very little time to play.  Plus work has been crazy at night.  Doesn't that how life usually goes?  It's not like you can slow it down in some spots--it's all or nothing.

But I'm here, I'm alive...just treading through life one day at a time like the rest of the pack.  I'm hopeful things will slow soon so I can take some time to gather my thoughts and put together a funny blog or two.  Right now, I'm barren for material.  Well, other than Jon said something today that I want to freeze in time...I was giving him a hug and he says "Mom, give me a BIG HUG," so I squeeze him harder.  Then he goes "Oh, Mom, you guish me."  I'm certain guish = squish if he had his two front teeth to help enunciate that sound. 

I know, not hardly my usual funny, but I thought it was cute.  I'm sure the mamas reading out there can relate.

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I just have to share the movie trailer of the movie wherein my very beautiful and talented sister-in-law, Michelle Bratcher (maiden Davidson), takes on the role as a news reporter in a movie about the reclamation of religious freedoms.

http://www.lastounceofcourage.com/default.aspx

Michelle

So you have to check it out.  Why?  Because I said so!   

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So Sunday we had our neighbors over to hang out, and we decided to throw a few slabs of ribs on the grill for dinner.  As we're all crowded around the picnic table chowing down on the pork flesh, getting all kinds of messy, I asked Katie if she would run inside and grab the YELLOW box of baby wipes on the railing by the stairs.  I find it helps to be as descriptive as possible with her; although in this case the descriptiveness only added to the confusion.

We have two sets of stairs in our split level -- one goes up, the other goes down.  She happened to look at the one going up and picked up the box of tampons I had just purchased, which, were in a YELLOW bag awaiting the next trip upstairs to the bathroom.  In her confusion, she retrieved the box and then brings them outside and hands them to me, at which point I choked on the pork fat and subsequently died (kidding, of course, although posthumous blogging could be quite lucrative if it were possible...)

I'm only thankful our neighbors are awesome and down to earth and immediately recognized the humor in the whole snafu. 

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While most of Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey heads to the shore for the weekend, we opted to hang out at home, chill with the chillruns and our neighbors and have some nice, quiet family downtime.  The weather cooperated nicely all weekend--have to say it was, quite possibly, one of the nicest Memorial Day weekends in recent memory.

The highlight of our weekend occurred on Saturday, when we planted our very first vegetable garden.  We soon shall see if the Bratcher family gardening gene has passed on down the old family tree.  My grandfather on my dad's side was a legendary gardener.  He grew, essentially, an entire grocery store produce department every summer.  You name it, he grew it.  Tomatoes, corn, lettuce, melons--he grew it all.  Of course, the soil in the Missouri delta is some of the most fertile on the earth--my father often quips that you could plant a toothpick and end up with an oak tree. 

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So we'll see how we make out with this garden.  I generally tend to kill things that require sustained mental effort (well, minus my children, obviously--they're pretty good about making lots of noise so that doesn't happen ;0)), so I'll be leaving most of the gardening duties up to the Old Man for the most part.  The kids are really excited and keep asking when we're going to "pick the garden"; I suppose in this day and age where everything is instantaneous, where you can freeze and rewind live television, it's going to take them some time to get used to the concept of stuff actually having to take more than 3.7 seconds for something to become reality.  But, I'm fully on board with this whole gardening thing.  We are in the Garden State after all, so maybe we'll have a decent yield.  I read somewhere that they call New Jersey the Garden State because Petrochemical Refinery State wouldn't fit on the license plate.  I'm still trying to figure out how they got that moniker. 

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My hubby...taken yesterday...dzam, he's hot!

Happy Birthday to my sweet, handsome, wonderful, amazing husband.  He's 35 today.  He'll probably be mortified that I posted this here for all to see, but I think the world needs to know that my hubby IS THE BOMB DIGGITY, and it's his birthday! 

Sure, we have those moments, like every other married couple, when I'd secretly like to choke him, but those are very few and far between.  What can I not say about my hubby?  Mostly I'm just so grateful of him.  He truly is my knight in shining armor, and he's the most wonderful Dad our two little hooligans.  I could not ask for a more wonderful husband and father.  I feel like with all my blessings in this world, he is truly one of the greatest.  Some women can spend their lives searching for that one true love.  Me?  I hit the jackpot when I was 18 and never needed to give anyone else another glance.  I suppose that's my little piece of divine grace for not having any dates in high school (I was the tallest girl in the whole school...I honestly think guys were afraid of me...)

But I digress...

So, even though the Flyers got their shit handed to them today by the Pens (did you honestly expect anything less?  COME ON!  This is PHILLY!  We have inherited the curse that plagued the BoSox..except it infected our entire city, unfortunately!!!), and even though money is tight (as it often is) and we aren't able to go out and celebrate in style, I feel like I already won the Stanley Cup of husbands and am the richest gal in the land because of all the blessings you bring to my life.  I am grateful for and humbled by your devotion to me and our family.  You have supported me unconditionally through everything, and I only hope to continue to return the favor to you.  Happy Birthday, Sweetheart.  Yup, you're still rockin my world at 35, and I hope in 10, 20, 30 years (even if we hasta break out the Viagra...although I doubt you'll ever need that), we'll still be as much in love then as we are now. 

I love you with all my heart.

Your horribly disorganized yet hopelessly devoted wife,

AmazonMama

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I think this is my son...

Its pictures just like this that make me somewhat thankful I work at night and am lucky to not have the onus of bathing this filthy mess of child.  When my hubby said "oh yeah, the bathwater was black tonight" during my nightly call home to bid the children good-night, I assumed he was just mincing words.  But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words...and so indeed it is.  Special thanks to my neighbor Ti Ti for capturing this priceless moment of boyhood history.

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Yesterday, Jon received his first set of stitches.  Technically, these aren't his first set, but given that the only stitches he has received prior hereto were administered under general anesthesia when his two front teeth were pulled, this set qualifies as the official "first set."  I've got a feeling that these certainly will not be the last.

And how, you ask?  I'm not even exactly certain.  We were sitting out in the backyard.  I was at the picnic table looking over some paperwork.  Jon was flittering about, getting dirty, having fun, and being his usual rambunctious self.  He went to climb up onto the arm of my chair, which is one of those metal types from your standard 1980s patio set.  The corners are rounded, but somehow he slipped and hit his mouth on one of the arms and busted his lip open.  It was the cleanest laceration I'd ever seen, almost as if it was sliced by an X-Acto knife or something like it.  So he's crying, bleeding profusely (why oh why does the mouth bleed so?).  So I rush him inside to assess the damage and stop the bleeding. 

Once I had the blood under control, I called our pediatrician to see if they could take a look to tell if it required stitches or not.  Their next available appointment was in 15 minutes, so I took it.  Meanwhile, I'm on my cell phone in my other ear telling Shawn the details and that I needed him home ASAP.  I'm trying desperately not to freak out at the sight of his gaping hole in his lip, and I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.  Jon calmed down pretty quickly -- even tried to eat pretzels with his busted lip while I was on the phone with the nurse.

I arranged to have our neighbor get Katie off the bus and we headed around to the pediatrician's office (thank you, Ti Ti-- and Aunt Joyce!).  Unfortunately, he did need stitches, and, of course, they do not do stitches in the office.  Off we went to the emergency room. 

Five very long hours later, he got two stitches in his lip.  He did okay for the most part -- even did not mind their restraining him like a burrito in a large sheet, but when they poked him with the needle the first two times, he screamed bloody murder and cried.  Poor guy.  Thankfully, the doctor worked fast and he was stitched up and ready to go home.

So, here we have it down in the record books...3.25 years old, first set of stitches.  Welcome to boyhood, little man.

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