Mother's Day

So it has indeed been awhile since I have last blogged on any level of consistency. My kids have encouraged me to keep it up but I have been giving the excuse that I needed my own camera to properly blog. SO for Mother's Day ... I got my OWN digital camera. I have many blogs to catch up on.... so today I will try to begin my backlogged blogging. Below are pictures from MY new camera on MY special day.

Breakfast... Xbox Junkie, Wormie, 2Shate .. Love them!


Flowers from Big Daddy.... one for each of the little people that call me Mom. Ahhhh...He planted them from a seed ....but I'll cover that in more detail when I blog our anniversary segment :)

2Shaye and Xbox junkie... Thick as thieves even at nap time at Memas.

Wormie getting in on the napping action.

My gift from Sam. He had sent me an email the week prior about the dangerous material that some water bottles are made from. He must love me because he gave me BPA Free Camelback water bottle in my favorite color and a single rose for Mother's Day. The feeling is mutual! :)



My niece, the Farmers Daughter, showing off her culinary skills of making roses.



Sam and Wormie hanging out at my parents house....can you tell they didn't REALLY want their pictures taken? I wonder if Sam is still packing his Mammy's pistol in the back of his pants. ..his expression says it is a possibility.

Big Daddy manning the shisk-a-bobs and eating half of them as he cooks.

Peel-n-eat Shrimp time... .my brothers upper right...my mom lower right..neice on left....Sam upper left.
My sisters-in-law, neice and my mom.

My Dad

and ALWAYS.... a trip to the bottoms... This is a view of "The Bottoms' from my parents backyard ... let me TRY to explain....

It is small in size...just a few acres that has a small creek that borders one side and the Ararat River that borders another side.... This is one of my Dad's most favorite places...it belong to him now but this land has grown gardens for 3 or 4 generations. This place also holds my (and my brothers) childhood secrets....This is where our summer breaks were spent.... Forts, swings on high banks, swings over the Ararat River, the praying rock, fishing for anything that would bite-mostly catfish and hornyhead, catching crawfish by the dozens, building high-tech dams in the creek, camping, fist fights, learning to drive in an old Rambler station wagon, my first (not so real) kiss, working our tail off tending the gardens that my parents planted (it's amazing how hot July was when working in the garden but not when building forts), watching my mom mow and tend to this land with the utmost care, motorcyle jumps, creek banks where you could find snakes hanging out and turtles everywhere, groundhog hunting, mosquito the size of small birds, our ponies (Ranger and Sugarfoot) lived here, the goat stables, my oldest brother getting stuck in the middle of the night trying to sneak in, watching the flood water reach up and completely submerge our bottoms then playing in the mudd when the waters would reside (only to have Dad tell us our feet would get nasty sores from running with barefeet in that nasty mudd but that never happened or stopped us), crossing the Ararat to sneak to the stockyard sales only to get our tails tore up for not letting anyone know where we had gone, remembering our grandpa tending the land and resting with him in the cool grass watching the clouds after he had been hoeing for hours in the garden, taking him a 'quart jar of water' for a nickle, picking up black walnuts with my mom, gun and bow target practice, a great place to slip and smoke, hide and seek, looking for UFOs, minibike and pony trails everywhere, zip line from my backyard, the rose garden where Grandpa picked flowers for Grandma EVERY day....we all knew that this little piece of land was where Grandpa solved worldly problems, prayed, fed his children, hid a few bottles of homebrew or blackberry wine in the creek....and the same went for my dad. It was in fact.... their sanctuary....their safe haven. There is an old building named "Pap's Project" that my grandpa built and I am sure it still contains some of his artifacts. The memories that happened on this little piece of land are too numerous to count (and I only scratched the surface and I can not even begin to imagine the mischief that my dad his eleven brothers and sisters got into as children on this same piece of dirt). So as you can see 'the bottoms' is priceless to my family. This is probably where my life was formed. My brothers and I always try to take a walk to the bottoms and reminisce when we're all together....it is a place that doesnt get old to us. My kids nor Big Daddy can fully understand why this walk is so important for us and words can't fully explain it. Thank God there wasn't computers and Xbox games when we were growing up. It is this place.... 'the bottoms'.... that I call home and holds my fondest childhood memories. :)

Thanks for making my day special!