The Crazee Chick's View of Life

My business partner has a little boy who loves cars. I have a little boy who doesn't care so much for them, consequently we have a box full of unused, unloved, untouched toy cars, so I decided to give them away. As I emptied the cars into a shoe box, and then tried to shove the motorbike with launching pad toy in as well, it became obvious that there wasn't enough room. I remembered a story I had read about a jar, some rocks and some pebbles where the theory was that you put the big things into the jar first and then the smaller stuff in order to make everything fit. It was a theory I'd known for a while but had never tried it out, so I set out to disprove it. There was no way I was going to get it all in... ...but I did. First thing to go in was the launching pad and the little motorcycles and then, miraculously, there was oodles of room left for the little cars. In fact there was more than enough room---I could have added more toys to the box had I had more to gi...

The other day a text I posted to Mo was meant to read, "Be safe", but a slight typo turned it into... "Be sage." Sage is defined as having or exhibiting wisdom and calm judgment, while safe is defined as being free from risk. This typo really gave me pause as I considered the depth of the meaning-- in order to be free from risk, we need to exercise calm judgement and use wisdom--so in order to be safe, we need to be sage, or smart. And then it occurred to me that we are always telling our kids to be safe but are we teaching them how to be wise? Are we providing them with the right tools they need to practise safety and sage-dom? What are those tools? I don't have the answers but here are a couple of things that I think are important to teach our kids: 1. Stranger danger/street smarts--when the kids were little and playing in the park they always knew to draw an imaginary safety circle around themselves (spanning out about 20 feet) and if someone...

The other night I introduced my kids to a whole bunch of my memories. No, I didn't use a pensieve like Harry Potter did (although how cool would it be to have one of those?!). No, my memories are hidden in many forms and one of them is in my stuffed animals. After introducing some of my most special ones to the kids, the last one to come out of the bag and get photographed was Animal from The Muppets.  With his big teeth, moveable eyebrows and floppy body, he was the source of much entertainment and laughter.  Our neighbors must have wondered if we had our senses about us as we were literally rolling on the ground laughing at some points. I kept the camera flashing and this is some of the craziness that ensued... This is how it began.  Zee posed Animal.... Then I showed the kids how my mom used to pose him on my bed... And then, in an unexpected move, Animal jumped on Zee's shoulder... ...and the gauntlet was thrown down.  They're both...

The first step in building a media room is to make room for the room. This means that our storage room needs to be less storage and more room so the time has finally come to purge! I have given away clothes, bikes, strollers, books, toy cars, years worth of Little Pet Shop collections, Bratz dolls, teddy bears and purses. But there's one thing I can not give up and that is my stuffed animals. Most of these were either purchased or given to me at an important time in my life and have a very special meaning so I decided for a Family Home Evening activity that I would introduce my best stuffies to my kids and tell them the stories that go along with them. And now, I will introduce my stuffies to you (there are two very important ones missing--Blue and Teddy--because I think they are tucked away in another bin so I will introduce them to  you in another post) This is 34 year old Duffy.  He was my good luck charm for skating competitions and swim meets.  Duffy is uniqu...

Each time I see the movie, Enchanted, I fall more and more in love with it. It's such a great story of love, acceptance, being true to yourself, and 'letting go and letting love' and after watching it again last night I inducted 'So Close' (the dance scene) into my All Time Favorite Movie Scenes list. One day I'll share the entire list with you --the scene from Top Gun when Goose dies and Maverick throws his dog tags into the ocean makes the list--but for now, just let yourself get lost in this scene... When Patrick Dempsey pulls away from their embrace and grabs an awestruck, appreciative, longing glance at ALL of Amy Adams, I think I die a little inside. Which leads me to a little story (you knew that was coming didn't you?) of when a boy I was in love with looked at me like that. One day, many, many years ago, my boyfriend (who is now my Hubby) and I were going on a date. My mom had made me a gorgeous dress--which was not at all consistent with chu...

Look at that face!  Isn't this manta ray adorable?  So sad to see the little chunk taken out of him...probably got too close to the nasty shark that he shares a tank with. How could anything hurt a creature with a face like this? There he is again!  So cute...wish I could bring him home in my back pocket! All I could think of was Crush from Finding Nemo everytime this guy swam by.  Magnificent! Wanna know what it feels like to be a frog?  Well just stick your head up inside this bubble and experience live in a pond (except that you can breathe). This beautiful dolphin came right to the window and gave kisses!  Unfortunately I forgot to charge my camera so this was the only shot I got.  ARGH!! We spent the day with my niece, her hubby and my great nephew.  I would have taken pictures of them but unfortunately we were never all in the same place at the same time!  Although, I did manage to snap a shot of my gre...

...and in my case, that early bird also gets the beds made, the bathrooms cleaned, the pantry organized, the storage closet cleaned out and organized, the laundry room face lifted, meals cooked and a whole bunch of other things. Typically my Realtor, Mother, Chauffeur, Cook, Laundress and Housekeeper duties end at 9 pm. After that time I retire to a nice relaxing bathtub and I read. For hours... Brain candy. Esoteric. Religious. Edu-ma-cational. You name it, I read it. This usually leads to late nights and consequently early mornings and I are not the best of friends. I LOVE to sleep in. In fact, if I could go to bed at 2:00am and sleep until 2:00pm, have a little bit of day time activity and then retire to my bed at 9pm to read, I would be the happiest creature in the world. Or so I thought. Over the summer, I`ve kind of been doing that...not sleeping in until 2pm mind you, but sleeping until about 9:30-10:00 on weekdays and occasionally until 11am on weekends...an...

As a family, we like to have 'date' days where one kid gets to spend a special day alone with either mom or dad. About a year ago, I took Kiki to a ceramics store for our date and ever since then Zee has been asking to go there for his date day with me. Well, one day, my 'sista' and I had planned a surprise day out for the kids at one of our many islands. We were going to take the ferry over, go for lunch and explore all the artisan kiosks. As it so happens, life stepped in and changed our plans so we frantically tried to find something else that would be a fun day for the kids...after all we had spent the entire week before telling them about our fun surprise Wednesday activity so they were stoked to do something FUN! We thought about the beach but the weather was crappy. The mall? Nah, too normal. How about a shopping trip to the US? Nah, too late in the day...the border line ups would be horrendous. We were running out of options, what could we do? Ent...