shenanyagans

One of the first times I attempted to start a blog, I wrote a post titled, “All About Me in 150 Words or Less.” It was exactly as it sounds, my life story all wrapped up in one short paragraph. That may sound a little crazy. I mean, no one’s life story can really be told in 150 words, but it ended up being a great exercise in paying attention to what details really stuck out and led me to where I am today. It goes a little something like this:

“Born and raised in Oklahoma. Daughter of a Baptist preacher and awesome mom. Town of less than 300. Class of 20 something. Valedictorian (life peaked here apparently) in 1996. College at Oklahoma State University. Met The Canadian online. Long drawn out INS visa process. Married August 1, 1998. Right papers not signed. Annulled marriage. Remarried on August 23, 1998. Apartment burns September 1998. Move in with parents. Tornado destroys house May 3rd, 1999. Move to new apartment. New apartment floods. Move to new apartment. New apartment has gas leak, we nearly die. Move to new apartment (losing count at this point). Degree in English/Technical Writing, December 2000. Job search for a year in lousy economy. Start a family instead. Rogit is born October 2002. Build a house, move again, October 2003, hopefully for the last time. Dexter comes along November 2004. Thank God everything has settled down. Life is good.”

And there you have it, the summary of me. Kind of fun, right? So here’s your challenge. Try to write the summary of your life story in 150 words or less, and leave it in the comments below. This post will be up all weekend, so you’ve got time to think about it! It will be a great way for me to get to know those of you who are reading here. So go ahead, give it a shot and have some fun with it. I can’t wait to read all about you, so don’t leave me hanging here!

Have a great weekend!

One of the greatest things about being a child is the excitement. Excitement over everything. Something as simple as a trip to the zoo or having your very own banana split can be exciting enough to make you grin for a week. But somewhere along the way, as the years pass, our excitement gives way to practical reasoning, and instead of just enjoying things as they come, we worry about what they cost, or how much time they’ll take out of our day. There just aren’t that many things that we can just cut loose and get excited about.

But every once in a while, one of those rare things come along that just instantly sends that spark of childlike giddiness straight through us. It happened to me as I was driving into another town a few weeks ago. I looked up at the Interstate paralleling the road I was on, and what did I see? None other than the infamous Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. I reverted back to childhood almost faster than I could process what I was seeing. I literally squealed as I realized it was taking the exit and I’d be waiting at the stop sign when it got there. As it passed by, I did what any reasonable adult would do.

I stalked that weiner all the way around the gas pumps and through the Love’s parking lot until it finally came to a stop at the Arby’s next door. I pulled up beside it and took a quick picture with my phone, trying to be discreet about it so no one would see me before I could drive away.

Then as I pulled out of the parking lot, I went back into mommy mode and realized I hadn’t even gotten a picture of my kids with the Wienermobile. I couldn’t stand it, so I reluctantly pulled back in, feeling like an idiot. But when I circled the store, it was clear I wasn’t alone.

There wasn’t a kid in sight, but there were adults coming out of their cars all over the parking lot, all armed with cameras and cell phones. I grabbed my phone and told the boys to get out of the car. They complained, they didn’t know what the heck it was, (Roenick asked if it was Anthony Weiner’s hideout)…I didn’t care, they were having their picture made whether they liked it or not. I was sure they’d thank me later, at least that’s what I told myself. I gave them instructions on where to stand and they went into awkward posing mode while I snapped pictures as fast as my phone would let me.

I did finally get one with just them and the giant wiener, awkward poses and all, but this one is my favorite because it really says it all.

It’s not often you see a grown man excited enough to be pressing his face against a window just to get a glimpse of something, (I totally refrained from saying “someone else’s wiener”…oh wait), completely disregarding what anyone around him may think.

As I walked back to my car, the smile still plastered on my face, I watched the other folks in the parking lot texting and calling everyone they could reach, grinning and laughing as they relayed what they were seeing. I sat down in the car to look at my pictures and post them on twitter and facebook, of course, only to see one update after another pop up from people who were all so excited to see that massive hotdog on wheels. The whole scene was so full of this childlike excitement, I wanted to press pause and live in it for a while.

Then Roenick, an 8-year-old, says, “Wow, Mom, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get that excited before!” Really? In his 8 years of life he has never seen me as excited as I was about a silly car? That really struck me, and I decided right then and there that I spend too much time being a grown-up, and not enough time allowing myself to be a kid again. I don’t think any of us do.

So take this as a challenge, to let your guard down more often, to let yourself cut loose and enjoy…I mean really, really enjoy…the life playing out around you, no matter how silly you may look while you’re doing it. I double dog dare you. I promise you won’t regret it.

This summer was the first time we’ve ever bought the boys anything larger than a kiddie pool. I’m a big fan of being able to let them play in the back yard without constant supervision, and until this year I didn’t think they were old enough for me to trust them not to get in a pool while no one was looking. They are 6 and 8 now, so needless to say it was a big deal when the Canadian finally brought home a decent sized pool. It sat in the garage for a good week before we got it out, and they drove us bonkers begging us to get it ready.

The day finally came, and when it was set up and filled, they couldn’t wait to jump in. Then they actually got in, realized it wasn’t warm, realized neither one of them knew how to swim and hated water on their face, and promptly got out. And there it sat, for weeks, doing nothing but cost us money and extra work.

We tried everything we could to get them to like it. I got in with them, the Canadian bought them tubes to float on, but nothing worked. Dex was terrified to leave the edge of the pool, and Roenick was totally freaked out when water touched anything above his collar bone. They had begged for that pool for several summers, and now that they had it, their fears kept them from being able to enjoy it.

Unfortunately, I can relate to them. There are so many of my own fears that have kept me from enjoying various things in my life. They range from tangible fears, like my fear of tornados that keeps me from being able to enjoy Spring, to more abstract fears, like my paralyzing fear of failure that keeps me from attempting the things I have always dreamed about doing. The problem is, after 33 years, I still have not been able to conquer those fears and I worry that I won’t be able to help them overcome theirs.

But last week, when the temperature finally hit 111 degrees, I guess the boys finally realized if they wanted to be outside, the pool was the only place that was tolerable. So they got in and spent a couple of hours playing around. Dex ventured away from the side of the pool, they both climbed onto their tubes and floated around, bumped each other, and just had a great time. Then out of the blue, Roenick found his courage and went under water. After that, there was no looking back. Once he realized it wasn’t the end of the world to have water on his face, he was ready to rock.

First order of business? A cannonball.

Once he perfected that, he was unstoppable. He spent the next hour doing underwater summersaults, blowing bubbles with his nose and even picking things up from the bottom of the pool.

Nothing could have wiped the grin off of his face. By the next afternoon he was swimming across the pool, underwater. He was so proud of himself. He had completely conquered his fear and you could tell by the look on his face that it was totally liberating.

I sort of envied him, being able to face his fears with so much courage, overcoming them and not letting them hold him back. I realized then that I was worried for nothing. They didn’t need me to teach them to conquer their fears at all. But, as is so often the case with kids, they are the ones teaching me how to conquer mine.

Since I’ve been craving a cupcake for several weeks now, it seems like a good day for a cupcake post. I’m a glutton for punishment, what can I say?

You just never know what kind of requests people will come up with when they order cupcakes, and some are a little “out there” if you know what I mean, but this was one of my favorite requests to date. They were so much fun to make, and adorable, if I do say so myself.

I love things you can do ahead of time so baking day can go quickly and your cupcakes are super fresh when they go out the door. If that’s how you like to work, these are the perfect cupcakes for you. I spent several days making sheep parts. My kitchen table, looked like a sheep factory for a while.

(Pretty sure one of my kiddos took this picture, because I hadn’t seen it before today.)

A word of warning, when you take a cupcake order, and it involves something with 4 legs, stop and calculate just how many appendages you’ll have to make before you agree to several dozen. I made 36 sheep…you do the math. Lesson learned? Never take an order for octopus cupcakes.

The pieces are simple. For the legs I rolled a snake with a thicker ball on the end, flattened the ball a bit with my thumb and cut a slit in the middle with a sharp knife. Bend them at the knee and dry them over the edge of a piece of styrofoam, or anything else you can get your hands on. For the head, you’ll need an egg-ish (that’s a word now, you know) shape, wider and thicker at the bottom, with small indentations for the nose and mouth. I dried them on short lollipop sticks and then added eyes and ears. No two sheep looked alike, but all were equally hilarious.

The icing is absolutely fool proof, as there isn’t much way to mess up a wooly sheep. You could do it a hundred different ways, but I used a Wilton tip #18 and piped little individual swirls until I had a sufficiently fluffy body. While the icing is still wet, just insert the legs in their appropriate places, then plop the head-on-a-stick right into the front edge and, poof!, a sheep is born!

These were for a birthday girl who was celebrating while she was at a sheep show, but they would be great for Spring, Easter or any farm themed party. They truly are very easy to make. So whether you need a sheepish little couple,

or even a whole flock,

I don’t want to hear any of this “there’s no way I could do that” business! Just get out your fondant and play. They don’t have to be perfect, so what better way to learn?

Have fun!

This afternoon, I’m going to meet with a friend about doing some projects for her church. When she told me about it, I was excited. Then the longer I thought about it, the more nervous I got, and now I’ve convinced myself I’m not good enough to do it. I’ve gone from fully confident to totally discouraged in the span of a week…and I don’t even know what the projects entail yet.

Welcome to the world of a people-pleasing perfectionist. This thought process is pretty much the status quo for me. I am presented with an opportunity I’m excited about, I have too long to think about it, and I convince myself that I won’t be able to do it perfectly so, more often than not, I just don’t do it at all.

I can’t begin to count how many opportunities I’ve let slip through my fingers because I was afraid to try, afraid there’d be some imperfection or flaw that would expose me as a failure. I wanted to be a scientist, but I was afraid I’d fail my labs. I wanted to be a broadcast journalist, but I was afraid no one would find me funny enough to put me on the radio. I wanted to write a children’s book, actually did write it, but I was afraid I couldn’t illustrate it to my standards, so it still sits in my drawer gathering dust. I want to homeschool my kids, but I’m afraid I’ll fail and then they’ll suffer for it, too. And let’s not even talk about how many cake orders I have turned down because I was afraid I couldn’t do it perfectly.

I hate it. I hate feeling this way. I hate being so keenly aware of it and not being able to change my way of thinking. I don’t have a magical fix that will just make me okay with imperfect work. I don’t have the switch to turn on my confidence. It’s like a prison that keeps me from creating and enjoying what abilities I do have. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to get over it, is to fail at something and prove to myself that I can survive it. At the very least, do something imperfectly and not be afraid to show it to the world.

This blog was a major first step for me. Writing something personal and putting it out there for everyone to judge is terrifying for me. Every single time I hit “publish” I am overwhelmed with anxiety and self doubt. But I’m doing it, and, so far, it hasn’t killed me. Maybe today I’ll take another step toward freedom and jump in head first to this new opportunity. I may be terrified, but I’m not going to let it stop me…at least not this time.

Walking into my kitchen and dining room is a little like stepping into a time warp. The walls are lined with 45s, a jukebox lights up a corner of the room and an original 1950s Coca-Cola vending machine sits next to the 50s style diner set. It’s a 50s diner scene from the ceiling right down to the black and white checkered floor. Most of it is new, reproductions of the originals, smooth and polished like the originals were 60 years ago. This is partially because, like most people, I can’t afford the originals, but it’s also because the clean shiny things are what the perfectionist in me likes to see when I walk in the room.

But my favorite piece in the room is far from perfect.

You might think it’s my favorite because it’s an original, straight from the 50s with decades of history, but it isn’t. My mom and I bought it in the 90s, and it hung on my bedroom wall waiting for the day I finally had my dream diner-style kitchen. It was perfectly smooth, not a chip in the vibrant red paint, not even the tiniest dent or scratch. Until May 3rd of 1999.

That night, our home, and the majority of the town, was completely destroyed by a massive tornado. When we emerged from the old sandstone cellar we took shelter in, this is the view that greeted us:

There were a few walls left standing, but everything on them was gone, ripped into the sky along with the roof. Photos, paintings, everything you hold dear enough to display, gone without a trace. Everything, that is, except that Coca-Cola sign on my bedroom wall. It had been hit hard with debris, dented and mangled and punched straight into the sheetrock. When we took it down, it left a perfect circle cut into the wall where it had hung for several years.

When I finally got my dream kitchen, the first thing I hung up was that sign. It’s far from perfect, it’s smashed, it’s faded, and it hangs a little crooked on the wall, but oh does it have character. If it could speak, I can only imagine the story it would tell about the night it rode out that tornado. So while it’s a little worn and weathered, I still have it hanging up. It means a lot to me and it reminds me to appreciate the things I have while I still have them.

I’m sure we all have things like that. But the sign is just that, a thing, a piece of metal that can’t say a word.  I value it, nonetheless. But last week, as I sat at my kitchen table with that sign hanging right behind me, I was listening to my mom tell a story. I suddenly found myself hanging on every word, trying to make a mental recording of it so I’d never forget, even years from now when she isn’t here to tell me again. There are so many things my grandparents talked about when I was younger that I’d give anything to hear again, stories of my grandpa’s time in WWII, memories of raising my parents, and recipes for chicken and noodles and fried pies. All things I value greatly as an adult, but never knew how important it was to remember when I heard them as a child.

Whatever your “sign” is, that worn and weathered thing that you value, I hope that when you look at it you are reminded to value the people around you even more, to take the time to listen to their stories and soak them in as though your life depended on it. One day, your “sign” may end up gone with the wind, but those memories will last you a lifetime.

Each year, around this time when we hit a miserable stretch of 100+ degree days, I tend to stay inside. A lot. I am not a fan of heat, and I earn the right to complain about it by not complaining once about the cold during the winter. My theory is, you can always add layers, but you can only get so naked. Therefore, cold is obviously more tolerable than heat.

The problem is I start to go a little crazy when I’m stuck in the house all day, so I like to spend the early mornings on my back porch in my lawn chair. The kids are always in bed, the town is quiet, and it’s so peaceful back there I wish I could hit pause and spend a few hours that way.

I am almost always joined by my best buddy, Buster. I keep the house pretty cold, so he loves to go outside and soak up some sunshine. Most days he sits on our storm shelter to soak up the heat from the concrete, but other days he just hits the grass and rolls over like a beached whale. It’s quite a sight, really.

I’ve always envied him being able to beach himself like that, with no one expecting anything of him. Nobody asking him to work, nobody hollering for him to wipe their butt, nobody asking why dinner isn’t done or why their favorite shirt wasn’t ready for school that morning.  He could lie there all day and no one would judge him for it.

But the last time Buster and I sat outside like this, something was different. It was already getting hot, the sun was beating down and there was no breeze. I noticed a shadow pass over him once, but didn’t see what it was. Then it passed over him a second time, and then a third, each time getting progressively larger. I realized then what it was. I looked into the sky just in time to see a massive buzzard swooping down toward poor Buster, mistaking him for fresh meat. I yelled, the buzzard headed back into the sky, and Buster just raised his head and looked at me in disgust for interrupting his nap, completely oblivious to the fact that he was almost lunch for an unbelievably ugly bird.

Now I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere about not being lazy because the world will eat you alive. Read into it whatever you’d like. But me? I’ll just be cooking dinner and wiping butts with a little less complaining from here on out.

Today’s post may be a repeat for some of you, as it was a post I wrote for the Testify blog before the content was lost. Since I no longer write for Testify, I’m posting it here for those of you who may have missed it.  I’ve spent the whole weekend editing photos, so it seemed appropriate for today.

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The digital age is pretty fascinating, isn’t it?  We can be in constant communication with each other, have our finger on the pulse of the global community, stay in touch with family, and promote ourselves in any forum we wish.  There are definitely positives to be found in all of that.

On the other hand, we are also able to recreate ourselves in ways that just haven’t been possible before.  I, for one, have always been one to shy away from cameras.  Okay, that’s putting it lightly.  I have gone to extreme lengths to avoid having my picture taken.  Why?  Because I have always been ashamed of my appearance and pictures have a way of emphasizing my worst qualities.  But not anymore!  No, with the birth of Photoshop and digital cameras, anyone, and I do mean ANYONE, can be a supermodel within minutes.  No more fat rolls, no more pimples, no more dark circles under the eyes.  That’s great, right?

When I was asked to be a contributor at Testify, I jumped right in.  I was nervous, but nothing I couldn’t handle.  Until, that is, they asked me for a picture.  The very thought of it made me nauseous.  But I had to do it, so I swallowed my pride and had my husband take a few shots.  The only thing keeping me sane about the whole thing was knowing I have some decent Photoshop skills so I could edit out the bad stuff. Problem solved.

Or, not so much.

Photoshop may fix the flaws and create the image we want people to see, but the problem arises when we have to step out from behind the computer monitor and actually, you know, MEET people.  At that point, there’s no hiding behind an airbrush or a little “nudge” here and there.  At that point you have no choice but to be genuinely you, at least physically.  How can you have genuine relationships with people who get to know a fictional version of you before you ever meet?  Hiding your flaws, or pretending to be someone you’re not, might just be the very thing that keeps your best qualities from shining through, and allowing you to relate to the very people who’d love the chance to care about the real you.

Truth be told, this applies to our everyday lives and our walk with Christ.  We can put on a show for those around us, we can pretend to be spiritual, we can memorize scripture and spout it at people until we’re blue in the face.  We can filter out the stuff we don’t want them to see, and present them with the perfectly edited version of ourselves.  But God?  He’s not fooled by “photoshopped” personalities, He’s more of a Polaroid kind of guy.  He sees you as you are at any given moment, with no opportunities for post-processing.  Trying to fake it with Him takes a lot of time and effort, and for what result?  The fact is, while we’re wasting so much energy trying to paint the perfect image, we are not allowing ourselves to be…well…ourselves!  We are missing out on the relationship with Christ that comes from being real and raw and allowing Him to work on our flaws.  Not only that, but He created each of us, just as we are, with a purpose, and we may never fulfill that purpose unless we let ourselves be exactly who He intended us to be.

So what is it that you are working so hard to hide?  And how might it be keeping you from fulfilling your purpose?

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a cake fanatic. But truth be told, I’m not that big a fan of the baking part, or even the icing part. I’m really just a fan of sculpting little things out of fondant. I’m especially fond of making tiny critters for cupcakes, so when it comes time for class parties, baby showers, etc., I get a little excited. These baby chicks were my latest project. I made them for a spring party at school, but I think they’d be adorable for Easter or even a baby shower, so I thought I’d share the process with you. (You’ll have to excuse the cell phone photography along the way, because I never thought anyone would see them.)

I purchased a big bag of the smallest size plastic eggs from a craft store to use as a form to dry my eggshells. I separated the halves and coated them with a thin layer of vegetable shortening before I started rolling out my gumpaste. Normally, I really dislike working with pure gumpaste, but I wanted the eggshells to be as thin and realistic as possible, so for this purpose it was the best way to go.

I rolled it until I could see the lines in my mat through it, and draped it over one half of the plastic egg.

Covering tiny round things isn’t the easiest thing to do, but fortunately it doesn’t have to be perfect in this case. I trimmed the edges off with a knife so I could handle the egg a little more easily. I really wanted a realistic “broken” edge, so I used a small maple leaf cutter and simply rolled it around the edge of the gumpaste while it was still on the plastic egg and sat the whole thing aside to dry.

Once the shells were completely dry (I let them dry overnight), a gentle twist popped them right off of the plastic eggs.

Now I just needed some chickens to hatch out of those eggs! I made the chickens out of fondant, in the event some 2nd grader should attempt to eat them. (And, of course, they did.) I needed to be sure they’d fit in the egg shells I had already made, so as I rolled each little ball into a general chicken shape, I rested them in the bottom half of the plastic eggs to dry.

Guess what? Plastic eggs don’t stand up very well with fondant chickens in them. So I had to come up with a creative way to dry them. I didn’t have any rice or beans to nestle them into, so they ended up drying in a cake pan full of Grape Nuts.

To finish off the chicks, I simply rolled small beaks from orange fondant, and used a black food writer to give them some eyes. None of them turned out alike, they were different shapes, different sizes, with different faces, but it gave them some character. I put them each in their eggs and rested the top half of the shell on their heads.

Now all that was left was to bake some cupcakes for the little guys to sit on. I didn’t want the icing to take away from the chicks, so I topped them with a simple pale green swirl. It’s quick and it’s pretty, which is exactly what you want when you need to make a whole army of chicks.

They were a big hit with the kiddos and grown-ups alike. I hope you’ll give them a try sometime. Happy baking!

I don’t know how it happened, but it seems we have become the local animal rescue as of late. Last time I checked, my name was not Diego and I didn’t have a magical orange rescue pack. But here we are again.

No more than a few hours after I posted about the great turtle rescue, the boys came bursting through the door from the back yard, yelling something about a baby bird in the grass. My stomach sort of did a flippity flop because I knew the likelihood of our day ending in tears over a sun-baked dead baby bird was pretty high. I told them not to touch it (hello, there’s not enough hand sanitizer in the world for that) and to leave the little guy alone. Secretly hoping, of course, that some neighborhood cat would come and take care of the poor chap so I wouldn’t have to.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my boys more than anything, but they listen about as well as a rock. So it was a mere 20 minutes later that they were back in the yard, hovering over that bird. But this time? He was in the pool. Great. Now I was going to have to fish a dead bird out of the pool. I figured I shouldn’t let him drown, so I (reluctantly) went outside to investigate.

Sure enough, there he was, perched on a floating stick, squawking away for his mother, who, as it turns out, was the most beautiful vibrant orange Oriole I had ever seen. I reached in and grabbed the stick, and the plump little dude was happy to go along for a ride. I sat the stick down at the base of a tree, and there he sat.

He was obviously not ready to be flying anywhere. Still covered in downy fluff, he flew about as well as a lead balloon. He chirped and chirped for his mama, but he couldn’t go anywhere.  I knew this wasn’t going to end well, so I went back to the porch and sat in my lawn chair.

But as I watched, his mama came to the ground and perched right beside him on the stick. First she fed him, but she stayed longer than I expected. From a distance, it looked as though she was whispering in his ear, and I wasn’t really sure what she was up to. Eventually she flew up into the tree, so I went to check him out. I was completely amazed at what I saw.

He looked like a brand new bird! Sleek and shiny, completely void of that downy fluff that had covered him just minutes before. His mama had groomed him to prepare him for flight, and stepped back to watch him take off. It took a few tries, but eventually he began to find his wings.

I don’t know what circumstances led him to end up on the ground. Maybe he was pushed out of the nest, maybe it was an unfortunate accident, or perhaps he got a little cocky and made a bad decision before he was ready. Whatever it was, his mama could have easily written him off and left him to suffer the consequences. But she didn’t. She came to his rescue, cared for him, and prepared him as best as she could for the next phase of his life. The rest, she just had to trust he could make it though.

Sometimes, as a parent, when your kids get themselves into less than ideal situations, it would be so easy to throw your hands in the air, give up and leave them to find their own way out of the mess they’ve gotten themselves into. And many times, even when we try, we may not be able to truly repair the situation in the way we had hoped. But that mama bird and her little one are a great reminder of what we are able to do, and that is to love them, prepare them as best we can for whatever comes next, and trust the Lord to carry them through.

And if you have ever found yourself in that little bird’s place, maybe today would be a good time to let your “mama bird”, whomever that may be, know how much you appreciate all the times you’ve been rescued.