The Smell of a Mom

The sense of scent is powerful, isn't it? It can make your mouth salivate or turn your stomach upside down. It can change your mood. It can bring back memories.

We've been going through boxes in our garage for an upcoming garage sale we're having. Since my mom and grandma passed away, I've had boxes of their things in our garage for a couple of years now. It's finally time to sort through it and decide what to keep and what to get rid of. I didn't realize that I needed to prepare myself emotionally just to get ready for a garage sale. But I almost lost it when I opened up a Sterlite container of my mom's sweaters. There it was. Her smell. I didn't know that I still had anything that smelled like her. I have her jewelry box and every once in a while when I open it, I think I can smell her perfume. When she first passed away, I wore her white sweatshiret jacket every morning and would just sit and smell it until it no longer smelled like her.

My mom always smelled good. When I would walk into her house, it smelled like her. When I would give her a big hug because we hadn't seen each other for a while, I would catch a whiff. When I was little, I wanted to smell like her and she would put a dab of her perfume on me. When Emily sees me getting out my body spray, she runs over and asks me if she can smell pretty too. Sometimes I thought my mom wore too much perfume - in fact, I can remember, as a teenager, during the summer when I would get to sleep in, I wouldn't wake up until my mom left for work. She would spray her perfume as the last thing she did before leaving and the strong smell of it would drift into my room and wake me up. And sometimes, she'd pull out a little bottle of perfume or scented lotion when we were driving in the car and dab it on herself and I'd get so irritated because the smell was over powering in the confines of a car! I miss her so much. And the smell of her things stings a little bit, but I'm thankful for them! I want to vacuum seal it so that every now and then, when I really miss her, I can open it up and breathe her in. It's not the same to just have the perfume that she used, because the scent of my mom was more than that. I can't describe it. She just had an essence.

Tiny Dancer

Emily loves music and she loves to dance! I had my iPod on the other day and caught her doing this:

And this:

If that's not cute, I don't know what is!!

Emily's Favorite Person

As much as she's her Mama's Girl, Emily's favorite person, hands down, is her Nan. This is Tripp's mom, Elaine, and Emily just adores her. She asks about Nan constantly and when can we see Nan. Up until recently, Emily would call her "Nee". Just to show you how much she loves her Nan, tonight as we met up with them for dinner at Red Robin, I pointed out Elaine to Emily. Once she spied her, she yelled, "Oh yay!" And goes tearing up the sidewalk with her arms outstretched straight for her Nan. I just love their bond. It's so sweet and heartwarming.

There's also a part of me that thinks she probably would've had a similar bond to her Mimi...

BFFs

I love these ladies! We all met last school year as each of us had a child in the same afternoon kindergarten class. We just got to know each other by chatting during drop off and pick up (one of the only benefits to not having a "drive-thru drop off" at our kindergarten class is getting to know the other moms!). They are, from left to right: Jenna who has a daughter named Reagan; Jessica who has a daughter named Samantha; Tonya who has a daughter name Savannah and then me, who has a son. I'm the odd ball :-) But our kids still play amazingly well together. What's also really cool is that all 4 of us have younger sons who play well together! All our little boys are between the ages of 3 and 4, but again, I'm the odd ball because I'm the only one with a 3rd child :-). All summer we fostered our friendship and got together to swim and hang out. This school year, we have committed to getting together 3 times a week and doing the P90X workout DVDs. I'm telling you, I could not do this on my own. I'd rather stick sharp objects in my eyes than workout to a DVD. But doing it with Jenna, Jessica and Tonya makes it fun and we forget our pain :-) Today, we celebrated Jessica's (undisclosed age) birthday! We got all gussied up and headed to Pei Wei for lunch, but first had to stop over and see the sale rack at White House/Black Market! I found a super cute top for $9.99! After lunch we headed next door to Coldstone for some ice cream. It sounds like I'm describing the perfect way to celebrate my own birthday - bargain shopping, chinese food and ice cream! We just had a great time and laughed a lot. And I have to give my amazing husband props here. Are you ready for this? He willingly agreed to watch all of our little boys - Four 3 & 4 year olds, in the pool, no less! Thanks, Honey. You are the best! Anyway, I'm just very thankful for my friendship with these great gals.

Casey's first day of pre-school!

Casey has been anticipating this day for months! It was really hard for him when Ryan started school and he had to wait another month! He met his teacher, Mrs. Cornelius last Tuesday and the next day he threw a fit when I told him he didn't start for another week!

Here he is on the way to school:

And just for fun, here are Ryan and Emily too :-)

Ryan starts school at 8am and Casey doesn't start until 9am. So to kill some time we went to the nearby Safeway and decided to get Mrs. Cornelius some flowers. Casey asked if he could get some whipped cream from the Starbuck's inside Safeway so we obliged:

He was gracious enough to share with his sister

Here he is waiting outside the classroom

And with Mrs. Cornelius' flowers

The proverbial shot with the little sister

And the moment he's been waiting for!

It was so cute - as we were about to turn into school after returning from Safeway, we hear this excited squeal from the backseat! Casey just couldn't contain himself, he was just giddy! After he came home, he told us all about his day and the songs he sang. For the rest of the day, all we heard was him singing this song, "5 little monkeys swinging from a tree, teasing Mr. Alligator 'can't catch me!'. Along came Mr. Alligator, quiet as can be and SNAPPED that monkey right out of that tree!" All I can say is, I hope those monkeys learned their lesson!

Lightning

Today was the kind of day that we 'Phoenicians' get excited about. The kind of day where our excitement is 'newsbreaking'. The kind of day when swimming playdates have to be canceled. Yes, people. It rained in Phoenix. And all of the above statements are true.

Usually our monsoons strike in the evening. But today, the storm rolled through in the morning and kind of lingered all day. I liked the clouds and drizzle (but not the humid 95 degree temp.). I am thankful for a day out of the triple digits, though. This morning, thankfully I got home from the grocery before the sky opened up. Around 9:30 this morning, minutes after the kids came inside from running around in the rain in our cul-de-sac, lightning struck. I swear it felt like it hit our house. But nothing was burning (Tripp says the house would be on fire if it'd been struck). But it had to have hit close because the windows rattled. The ground shook. It scared me enough to cause me to let out an uncontrolled shriek! Tripp poked his head outside our front and said, "you wanna know where the lightning struck?" It was our neighbor's, across the cul-de-sac from us, front lawn!! From our window, we could see a huge mud mound and grass divets all over her driveway! I couldn't wait for the storm to pass so I could go check it out! It was unbelievable:

From my uneducated perspective, it looks to me like the lightning struck right between these two palm trees and caused this 1 foot deep trench across the lawn to the brick border.

This is normally a nicely manicured lantana bush, but now, blown to smithereens! If you look at the brick border just behind the palm tree trunk, you can see how the border looked all the way around. Look at all the tiny pieces of brick that border became.

See that big gray rock? It used to be over by the palm trees. The force of the lightning strike, flung it about 10'!

Two of her yard lights were blown out of the ground, this one landed in the driveway. Look at all the debris from the blast!

Excuse my excitement, but I've never seen, up close, what a lightning strike can do. I'm amazed! And completely thankful that God spared our kids who had JUST been playing several feet away.