Happy Birthday, Ezra!

My beloved little boy, Ezra, has turned 6 today. He's a good one.

Planking

My kids and I have been busy planking this week.

What is planking, you may ask? Watch this video to learn more.

I heard about it from this week's episode of The Office. Apparently, it is a craze that has been going on for quite some time, but I am only now just hearing about it (typical, right?).

For example, this is how behind on the times I am... We were doing some planking at Target:

And this 60 year old lady sees Peace planking and she says, "Oh, is she planking? How cute." Because this 60 year old lady is all familiar with planking and I AM ONLY NOW JUST HEARING ABOUT IT!

(And, don't worry, I am now caught up on owling and batmanning and coning and all the rest of it... but not one of them can compete with planking, in my opinion.)

Our Billboard

I couple of month's ago, a local pizza place was looking for local people to be on their billboards and television commercials. Guess who signed up?

Here's a hint:

And here's the TV spot:


You may notice that they don't cut to me speaking when I say my line, like they do for everybody else. There is a reason for this... it is because I don't know how to deliver a line. So, they did the best with what they got. Ocean kept asking me later, "Why did talk like that? It didn't sound like your real voice." And then she would go on to imitate my voice and laugh.

I'll have you all know I did community theater, everybody! COMMUNITY THEATER! (And I wasn't any good then either.)

Here's a little secret: My Davanni's Favorite isn't really birthday parties. They told me to say that.

This is another commercial where I don't have a line, but you can still see us in it:




We got a $25 gift certificate, for those of you wondering.

Cell Phone Bars

Look at my family. We look like cell phone bars.

And now, freestyling. (Note Vern's attempt at freestyling. He's usually much more creative.) 

Look At Me

When I was pregnant with Peace, I would listen to this song (Look at Me by Sum 41) over and over and over and over and over and over and over...


And then I had it playing during her birth over and over and over and over and over (until I got sick of listening to it and shut it off completely. Read entire birth story here.)

The lyrics:

Look at me
Whom I supposed to be and what do I believe?
Can you tell me, since you’ve made up your mind and know what you believe
And I just don’t know
I just don’t know
Who I’m supposed to be

Look at me
Am I the image of your hopes and tragedies?
Just look at me
Will I ever be more than just a memory?

And it's literally just occurred to me today that those lyrics weren't meant for her.

That song was meant for me.

I finally understand why I was listening to it so much, because that is totally what I was going through at that time.

Pretty trippy, right?

I'm trippy like that.

The Grass-Fed Cow

This was the picture Ezra won the coloring contest with at Stockyard Days:

This is how he described his picture to me: "I colored brown all around it because it's a grass-fed cow and he ate up all the grass."

Grandma's Dead

Eight years ago today my grandma died. (I remember the years because the year she died was the year my oldest daughter was born.)

If you all would have known me back in the day, you would have known how close I was to my beloved grandmother. I'm fairly confident in saying that another pair couldn't have been closer than we were. We had t-shirts made up that said "Two of a Kind". We starred in our very own video-recorded talk show called "Day In, Day Out" where we had cooking segments, conducted interviews, talked about the weather. We went out to eat together, almost every Saturday night. We flew to California together for vacation, just the two of us.

When normal teenagers were off smoking weed or kissing each other on their faces, I was hanging out with my grandma. When normal 21-year-olds were off with their boyfriends on New Year's Eve, getting drunk and playing some strange game that I only know of as "Quarters", I was taking my boyfriend to my grandma's house so that we could spend the night with her.

And also doing stuff like this:



And then there was that one glorious summer (2001) when Vern and I were living with my mom (why is it that Vern and I are always living with other people?), and we'd go over to my grandma's house to watch SpyTV, You Don't Know Jack, and the second season of Big Brother. Grandma didn't understand SpyTV, and she REALLY didn't understand Big Brother (so much so that she wouldn't be quiet while we were watching it so we would oftentimes just watch it at my mother's), but she enjoyed Paul Ruebens in You Don't Know Jack. Good times, those were. Good times. (SIDENOTE: Vernon was so excited after one episode of Big Brother, when Hardy won the Head of Household competition over someone from the Chill Town alliance, that he jumped off his seat and started cheering. My mom thought he was so weird.)

Anyway, after she died, I didn't really feel sad about it. I missed her, and I felt sad about missing the times we had together, but I never really felt sad about the fact that she died. It didn't feel like that big of a deal. (She was one day shy of her 85th birthday and she had lived a wonderful life.)

Sometimes I think people are unreasonably afraid of dying, clinging onto their lives like it's all that matters. It doesn't. It's okay to die.

Or, as I tell my children, "It's just your body that dies, the real you lives forever."

Which is what grandma is doing, and that's probably the reason I'm not really sad about it.

Getting Another Car

So, we're going to start looking for a new car (and by "new", I mean "used, but it's new to us!").

Here's the reasoning...

I was looking into Religion Classes for the kids, and they are from 5:30-6:30 pm on Wednesdays. And I saw something about Youth Choir (which Ocean is interested in) and it is from 4:30-5:30 on Tuesdays. I told this to Vernon, and he said, "We should make this work. It's not fair to Ocean." And I said, "But I don't want to drop you off at work, bring the kids to wherever they need to go, and then pick you up from work again." And Vern said, "We should figure out something. It's not fair to Ocean." And I said, "Well, then we should get another car."

Technically, we have enough money to buy a $2,000 car. (But I don't necessarily want to spend that money because we aren't making any money with the chiro business yet. So, that money is part of our safety net which is slowly making its way to dwindling.) But, I will have some photography money coming in, and our living expenses are only $600 a month right now, so I think it'll be okay. And we can always sell the car if we need the money. Cars are incredibly easy to sell. I know this because there was once a six-month period in my life where I went through about 4 different vehicles because I couldn't figure out what I wanted. (Note: What I want is a Toyota Corolla or Toyota Camry. I know this now).

So, I guess that's that. Wish us luck!