and the winner is.....

i didn't want to send you into the weekend with suspense over the giveaway. so with out further ahhhchoo....

the winner picked by random number generator was...



elizabeth! it is appropriate that she won because she had several comments, but each time she made new word suggestions. so if she made multiple comments just to up her chances, she did it in a clever enough way so as to not attract attention. plus, it was her first comment that won it for her. so maybe matt isn't the lucky one after all. (although he has you and the girls, and that's pretty darn lucky!)

my favorite word suggestions were snorckel from erika and schnixzel from jja. they were all really good, but i felt like they didn't quite embody the apparently completely unique to me phenomena that is my "caught off guard, laughed out my nose because i forgot to open my mouth" action, which i think i will from here on out call snorkeling. several of them had to be thrown out because there was no way my little brain could figure out how to say them or remember how to spell them.

amanda wins a special prize for saying "sneeze pee" and census guy was disqualified for using one of my very least favorite words-fart. (even just typing it now makes me send a scowl out into the universe directed at him.)

because i never win anything and because i'm a pretty totally fantastic nice person, anyone who emails me their address at mary_strawberry(at)yahoo(dot)com before next wednesday will receive a prize in the mail in 6-8 weeks. (or maybe even days if we all get lucky.) be assured, i will sell your personal information to as many scammers as possible, so please also include you SSN# to make it worth my time.

have a great weekend.

buying friendship

because tim is on his way home with a free! pizza from knolla's,

because i finished the work that i had been putting off even though i would have rather stuck needles into my own leg,

but mostly because you guys crack. me. up! with your comments,

i am doing a giveaway.



seriously-you guys encourage me, commiserate with me, and literally make me laugh out loud. and sometimes through my nose. (can someone please give me an accurate descriptor of the action of exhaling/laughing through one's nose. neither guffaw nor snort is quite appropriate.)

i love stationary and love getting mail-who doesn't?! pretty/cute cards are such a satisfying cheap thrill for me. so as an excuse to buy more cards and in an attempt to thin out my own stash, for christmas i made these compilation sets of a bunch of cute, blank note cards. i gave them as part of my gifts to tim's mom, my sister, and several other people. this set was intended for a friend, but then i didn't want her to feel obliged to get me a gift and set the precedent for gift giving between us, so i didn't give it to her. (yes, i know i over think things.) they have been sitting in my craft/storage room ever since, longing to be loved.



so leave a comment giving me the word i desperately need to describe what i do when elizabeth describes matt rolling her down the stairs and using the word "girth" in her comment. (see the comments on my last post if you are confused.) if you need me to imitate what i do, ask me in person. i considered doing a video of my snort laugh but that would be weird even for me. (but in person i have no problem ;)

i'll select a name at random, but the best word might garner an extra prize. (brother-if you win, i'll man things up for you, drenching the cards in beer before i mail the package to you.)

thanks for brightening my days with your comments. seriously, thank you.

hot time. summer in the city.

put on your imagination eyes. the camera needs to be charged so no pictures have been taken this week.

we stayed at our annual vacation resort this week for two days. red hot bel aire!!! tim's parents were out of town and graciously told us we could hang out at their house, eat their food, swim in the pool, watch cable, and bask in a fully ACed house. we had talked about it for several days, but other things kept coming up. then, tuesday night after dinner, tim decided to pack up and go. he packed for himself and the boys and left me to come after i went to knitting.

inspired by his light packing (stuffing their clothes and max's necessary multiple special blankets into their respective pillowcases) i to (too? whatever) packed light. i felt the nudging to pack food for us but was being lazy, and, slightly annoyed that tim makes things look so easy and i always seem to over complicate things, i didn't.

once we got there and i realized there wasn't much food (i know, really, how rude of them not to fully stock their fridge before going on a week long vacay!)i refused to go grocery shopping because i didn't want to have to pack home whatever didn't get completely consumed, and well, i just didn't want to go shopping.

(this could be a post itself: mary's weirdness about grocery shopping. i'll spare you this time, but just know, i have issues. lots of them.)

my avoidance of shopping and therefore lack of food definitely effected the quality of our vacation. if nothing sounds good to me, i just don't eat. or if there's only enough cereal for the boys to eat, i just don't eat. but the catch is, when i don't eat, i get "grouchy". it takes me a really long time to get uncomfortably hungry, but in the mean time, i will have been "grouchy" for a looonnnngggg time. if tim ever makes this connection, i think he'll just start pinning me down and stuffing food in my mouth when the stink-eyes start shooting his way. (on a funny cereal note-proof that my boys are seriously deprived in the cold cereal department: ben got really, really excited about fiber one cereal, the blandest cereal ever!)

the fact that tim had to work both days we were there and that i had work stuff that needed to be done could have also been a factor. or that i was deliriously tired, but instead of going to bed early one night, i got sucked in to "i didn't know i was pregnant" on tlc. lack of sleep also makes me "grouchy".

or the fact that there was a pool-cool, refreshing, and tempting, calling out to us, but i wouldn't let the boys swim. max is way too daring around the pool and i didn't think that i could handle both boys by myself. i finally gave in one evening, and with the help of all of our guardian angels, managed to stay alive and have a good time.

or the fact that my boys aren't good sleepers, which is amplified by being away from home. ben fell out of the (quite high) queen bed twice both nights. it didn't seem to bother him much at the time but he seemed pretty grouchy during the day from the interrupted sleep. max actually spent one of his naps sitting up in the pack-n-play. he fell asleep while nursing but woke as soon as i layed him down and threw a fit. after he quieted down, i went in to check on him and yep, he was sleeping sitting up in one of the corners. i think it was the biggest "doh! i don't have the camera" moment of my parenting thus far. i watched my adorable sleeping budda for a while before ben started yelling for something and i dove out of the room to silence him.

after really only staying for one whole day and one morning, i threw in the towel on the vacation that was anything but. we headed home at max's naptime and of course, he only slept in the car and didn't transfer in to the house. damn you, illusive transfer-of all days!!

by thursday evening i was very, very "grouchy".

i learned a few things from this "vacaton".

1. don't think that staying up way too late will make me any less grouchy just because we are in a different environment.

2. my already very poor time management skillz don't stand a chance against cable television. i really can't resist the beast.

3. a vacation, when both parents are working, is not really a vacation. thinking any differently is just a set up for failure.

4. although a pain in the tushy to plan, food is very, very important. me need to eat.

5. i love, love, LOVE my king sized bed. although not very aesthetic, (monica, i think you mentioned this.) the amount of space is soooooo essential for us.

don't get me wrong-we had some fun times in the exotic land of bel aire. but it was good to come home.

something clever

i was reprimanded last night by a reader (although one who has never left a comment-ahem missy!!)that i haven't been blogging enough lately. reasons for not blogging include:

-i'm lazy.

-i've been tired.

-i've been busy.

okay, i'm lame, i know. my lack of blogging is certainly not for lack of material. plenty of weird and noteworthy things happen around here. but with summer comes later bedtimes for the boys, which means less computer time for me. actually, when i really think about it, in the winter i go to bed later than the summer. so that meant: the boys would go to bed around 7, then i would curl up with the computer for warmth and stay up really late. i think i stayed up so late because although my brain was exhausted from the boys, my body was still restless from lack of activity. i'm pretty worthless in the winter and really should just hibernate. (maybe the boys will get the memo this year.) but i feel unfulfilled from the lack of activity and the dark gloom of winter so i seek stimulation and cheeriness online. amongst all that random computer time i would eek out a few blog posts.

but now it is summer-ahhhhh glorious summer! i'm doing so much more because i'm not half frozen and my body, as well as my mind, are both pleasantly tired at the end of the day. my computer time is just enough to keep up on blogs i read and facebook, but not the endless internet wandering of winter. (wow, no wonder i feel so pathetic during the winter.)

and i've been working on house projects. and we've had a lot of family stuff. (i feel like i've said all this before, but i'm too lazy to go back through old blog posts. see bullet point one.) and when i've been away for a while, the mental que of posts builds up and then i'm overwhelmed into inactivity.

so this is what you've been missing. it is guaranteed random.



our "daycare" kid is with us this week and as i was walking out the front door i couldn't resist trying on his sandals. my feet are only slightly bigger than an almost six year old's. i used to worry about ben being tiny. now i thank my lucky stars that i don't have monster children. although maybe i wouldn't give in to max demands of being carried all the time if he weighed 40lbs. or maybe he could carry me. hmmmm. (is it weird that i tried on his sandal? i didn't think so until i wrote this and then i kinda felt like a creeper.)

(excuse me. lord maximillian has awoken. i must go fluff his royal pillow and lull him back to sleep.)

(i'm back. he's lucky he has gloriously soft, golden curls i can kiss and stroke and kiss some more as i nurse him. seriously, if it weren't for his hair, i would have weaned the boy in february.)



me thinks these tiny toes are much cuter. ben got these sandals for his birthday and max thinks they are his. he threw a huge fit when ben dared to wear them. when ben first opened them max begged to wear them. so i put them on him, with the elastic cord still on them that holds the two sandals together-it made max waddle like an inmate. he thought it was pretty funny.

thanks for all your kind comments about "blurg" and the whole car situation. i read all the comments to tim because really it was his decision and kindness. because the whole reclaiming the car mess happened in the middle of the night, i actually woke up in the morning hoping it was all a really annoying dream. of course it wasn't, but we both just let it go pretty quickly, which was totally a grace thing.

after a week of back and forth with different interested peoples, we sold the car. again. because it's kind of a niche car, even though it wasn't running, there were still quite a few people who were, in fact, interested. the kid who bought it actually paid more for it than we sold it for the first time, but we bought the parts he would need to fix it. so it pretty much evened out and we didn't have to spend the time (that we didn't have) to fix it. the story could still not be over because he's making payments to us on the car. not ideal, but he was willing to pay the most and his down payment was what most people were willing to pay total. so we'll just wait and see. but my goodness, does God sure have a sense of humor about how he provides!



these gorgeous lilies are blooming in front of our house. because the flower bed is so terribly neglected and overgrown, combined with the fact that the grasshoppers DEVOUR them, they are almost depressing for me to look at. so i brought them inside and played with them. ben ooooed and ahhhhhed at them and max literally climbed up on the table after his nap as soon as he noticed them and kept exclaiming "pitty! pitty! pitty! (pretty)" as he jabbed at them.





i settled on this little jar and these happy little bottles. i love random jars and bottles so much more than vases. the bottles are from a trip tim and i took when i was pregnant with max. while strolling mass street in lawrence we stopped into a fun little import shop and tim picked up a bottle of orangina (the round bottle)and i got a bottle of "sanbitter". i picked it solely because i liked the bottle and knew i would save it. fortunately i had no expectations for the drink inside because it was awful! a fun memory of a great trip that is now repurposed on my table.

the cloth underneath the flowers is a burp cloth that i remember using for my baby brother. i love the fabric, and again, it makes me happy to see it getting a new life.


several other events deserve there own posts but i just needed to break the blogging fast.

random, as guaranteed.