Archives for July 2012

It’s been a make-yourself-look-for-the-rainbow kind of day…and not because of the ants…well not solely because of the ants 🙂  Storms just come in life and all you can do is hang on tight and keep hoping for that rainbow at the end.  And I keep telling myself that God’s got this mess…nothing surprises Him one bit.  So today I chose to look for the rainbow.  Making the choice for hope is hard sometimes.

We’re blessed…crazy blessed…blessed way more than we ever deserve.  And I am just thankful.  So no matter the storms…even though they are terribly hard and difficult at times…and I want to scream and yell and cry and pitch a fit and maybe say some not very nice words…I’m making a choice to look for the rainbow today instead…to see goodness…and give God all the praise He so rightfully deserves…in good times and in bad.  That’s what I am consciously choosing for today…being hopeful for that rainbow.

Happy Thursday!

I never dreamed when I blogged about our ant covered  high chair seat that I would get lots and lots of emails about ant problem remedies.  You guys feel pretty strongly about how to get rid of ants and I am for one…grateful…and THANK YOU!!!  There was an overwhelming consensus that Terro ant killer was the way to go.  We have been battling ants for a few weeks now.  I try to keep a clean house…I really do…I have such good intentions…but I also have 3 wee Kelleys home who tend to drop crumbles from their breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner on the floor.  And I may or may not, not sweep up every single day.  So I may never win the Best House Cleaner Award.  But alas, I try…sometimes.

Last night we did some last minute ant smashing and cleaning before we headed to bed and I thought maybe, just maybe this is the end of these crappy little creatures that have seriously gotten on my very, very last nerve.  I won’t even begin to tell you where all the ants have invaded in fear of running you off for forever.  And we’ve tried to get rid of them…really, really tried and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned some more.  Ugh.  They still show up.  I scream and yell at them and say things like, “You stupid, stupid ants.” while I stomp the ever loven’ life out of them.  And then realize all the wee Kelleys are just staring at me and soaking up every time I used the word stupid…which is a “not very nice” word in our house and we tell them not to use it.  So I may not win the Mom Of The Year Award either.

I got up early this morning and went for a swim with my friend Jess.  When I flipped on the kitchen light to grab my bag and hit the door…there they were…again.  Back with a vengeance…like they have a personal vendetta against me.  We tell our kids that the word hate is saved only for the Devil…we totally Hate the Devil, but I personally, Hate ants too.  Ants and the Devil…I hate them both..strongly!  I was so bummed leaving the house with all those ants going crazy in my kitchen and all under our kitchen table…it killed me to close the door and leave, but I didn’t want to leave Jess hanging.  So after a good hard swim and one of Jess’ homemade cookies while I drove home…#breakfastofchampions…

I remembered the Terro suggestion.  On my way home I went to Kroger…no Terro.  I went to Walmart…no Terro.  I went to Target…no Terro.  And finally Ace Hardware…no Terro.  Everywhere I went they were out.  We’re talking shelf completely empty and none to be found anywhere in the store.  This made me feel like the stuff was legit though and it also made me feel like I wasn’t alone in our ant battle because apparently a lot of other people have ant problems as well.  There’s nothing like knowing others are hating on ants like me.  Misery loves company.

At Ace Hardware the worker dude was like, “Oh yeah, Terro is the best.  I can’t keep that stuff on the shelves.”  But I didn’t want to go home without something…just anything that would give me some hope that I could finally kill off those three bodied little beasts.  So the worker dude said this was the next best thing.  Apparently very similar to the ever coveted and sought after Terro…

When I got home I started laying out the traps everywhere.  I even boobie trapped the outside of our back door.  Now I’m ready.  I’m ready to kill those little guys for real.  But here’s the hard part…I want to come in and just innihilate them all…I want to just smash them to smithereens, but that’s not how this stuff works.  I have to just let them live…it is so hard seeing them crawl all over, but this ant killer is like blue kool-aid for ants.  The little ants are drawn to the, I assume, good tasting goo or whatever is in the traps, so they go in and take a little piece.  Then they decide to share, because apparently ants do have good manners, and they take some of the tasty goo back to their colony and then pass it around.  A little later…bam…death…sweet, sweet death and a house free of ants.  YAH for Humans and our tricky ant killer.

So now I wait.  I have been quite obsessed all day watching the traps and seeing if there are little trails of dead ant bodies left lying around on our floor, but none yet.  I really hope this stuff works.  It does say on the box that it’s guaranteed to work.  I hope they are not liars.  If they are, I just wasted money, time and an entire blog post on my ant problem for nothing.  I suppose, if ant death does not occur, I will have to stalk the trucks that deliver Terro to the stores.  That would be a little on the sad side.

And if you love ants and think they are wonderful and cute and lovely and you would never ever kill one…then I suggest that you don’t read this post 🙂

Happy Ant Killing Wednesday!

I made several purchases at Ikea when we were there over the weekend.  My top two favorite:

This crazy cool bird platter.

And a red highchair for Amon.  We’ve actually never had a highchair for any of the wee Kelleys.  We always had one of those little seats that just strapped to a chair.  Shockingly we still had the one that all three of our kiddos used, but sadly, we have a major ant problem in our house…it’s war…human Vs ant kind of war…and we found the seat completely covered in ants.  We decided it was time to move on.

The boys went to the dentist for the first time yesterday.  They both marched back all by themselves and proceeded to rock that dentist chair.  And no cavities.  I did find dental floss all over our house the rest of the day and the boys brushed their teeth approximately 1,136 times yesterday.

We got the sweetest package of goodies in the mail when we arrived home on Sunday.  It was full of fun surprises including these super cool sunglasses for all 4 of the wee Kelleys.  Thank you so much Alisa.  And check our Alisa’s blog and join me in big, bold prayers for her husband Eric.

I also got these sweet shoes in the mail from my best friend Ashley.  Be still my heart.  She knows me so well and has great taste.  Love you completely Ashley and miss you like crazy.

I made Caramel Brownie Cheesecake last night to share with a sweet family!  I taste tested it this morning before 8am…it was a little rich, but then Courtney pointed out that it WAS before 8am…maybe that had something to do with the richness.  She was right.  I taste tested again after lunch.  Pretty tasty.  And I’ve never made homemade caramel sauce before, but the one in this recipe is seriously good.  Only took me 2 tries…the first batch looked like yummy caramel sauce, but tasted like burnt crap.  For real.  It was terrible.  Second time was a charm.  Delicious.

Photo Source

Thank you so much for all the ace of hearts that have been arriving in the mail and showing up on our door step.  So, so thankful for your generosity and big love.  If you sent some of those sweet ace of hearts our way, I made you a key fob today.  They will be in the mail this afternoon and on their way to your mailbox for a happy Thank You!

And speaking of Ace of Hearts…it has been far, far too long since I held and kissed and hugged and squeezed our little Ace of Hearts.  Oh man!  Still praying big, bold prayers.  God is so big and so so good.  I believe it.

Happy Tuesday!

Every year for Sol’s Gotcha Day we do something fun together as a family.  We celebrate birthdays more focused on the individual, but for Gotcha Days we focus more on our family as a whole.  This year Sol said he wanted to see a “real” baseball game…he wanted to see some of those major leaguers play that he reads about in his books.  So on Saturday we headed down to Atlanta, Georgia to watch the Braves/Mets game on Sunday.

Everyone kept themselves pretty entertained with books and drawing and action figures.  I love how Sol uses our Tag pen.  He totally cracks me up.

I did discover maybe the best trail mix ever!  We love spicy things and I snagged this Tex Mex trail mix at Target right before we left.  I may have text way too many people about this trail mix.  It is so so so good.

We arrived in Atlanta, just in time to grab some dinner and make a few baby Amon purchases at Ikea.  Ikea is like real joy to me…really, really big, giant true joy!

On Sunday morning, we got up and headed to Turner Field.  The kids were super excited.

There’s just something so glorious about a ballpark.  I got all teary eyed walking in with the kids…this was their first ever major league game.  And then everyone is just so nice and one of the ushers gave them personalized certificates for their first game and I lost it.  Believe it or not, but I am not an emotional person…I do pretty good on keeping my tears reigned in, but sometimes life just gets a bit big and all of sudden you cry at the drop of a hat…or at personalized 1st major league game certificates 🙂

We had great seats down the third base line, right in the shade.  The Braves ballpark is really family friendly, which I love.  You can take in all your own drinks and food, so we were able to save tons of money taking all our own snacks and drinks.

I personally ooogled over the icees and cotton candy.  I love ballpark food.

We did buy ice cream in the mini helmets though.  This is a must in my opinion.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a baseball game and not gotten a mini helmet full of ice cream.  It’s my absolute favorite and thought the happiness needed to be shared with the wee Kelleys.

And the boys, especially Huddy, were quite enamored with the Braves foam tomahawks.  It was a special celebration so the boys both got one and participated all through out the game in the tomahawk chops.

They are totally and completely little boys and I LOVE it!

It was such a fun day to spend with our little Kelley family.  Loved celebrating how God has grown our family.  What an honor it is to be a parent.  I seriously just don’t get why we get to be all these little kiddos parents…still blows my mind…but oh how thankful we are.

And at first it bummed me out that Sol wasn’t looking in the picture, but this is totally him.  He is my little studier.  He will just sit and study books and magazines for forever and this was the Braves program they gave us when we got to the ballpark.  He spent the better first half of the game looking at this thing, so even though he’s not looking, I’m good with that, because that is totally Sol and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Happy Monday!

Sol’s Gotcha Day was full of fun celebrations.  It was also my cousin Rachel’s birthday too, so we had a little Mexican fiesta last night to celebrate and then I pulled a late night drive back home with the kids.

As part of Kelley celebration tradition, we had cupcakes for breakfast.  My new favorite way to ice cupcakes:  I mix three different colors and then load them in my piping thing one scoop of color at a time…what you get is swirly icing awesomeness.

Rebecca celebrated with a cupcake and a happy cup of coffee.  I soooooo wish I liked coffee.

I personally think cupcakes for breakfast should be okay for everyday.  I would be the coolest mom ever…or the most unhealthy 🙂  Isn’t everyday worth this kind of celebrating?  I think so.

We also did a little swimming.  Rebecca’s neighborhood pool is literally like one minute away.  Full on run-as-fast-as-you-can kid distance.

I remember when Grant was smashing his 1st birthday cake with his little chubby baby hands…now he’s huge and a total young man.  Dang you time.

Rebecca and my younger, 16-year-old cousin Hannah took me to a little piece of heaven on earth called Charming Charlies.  Why have I never been and why is there not one near our house?  It’s a colored coded…wait for it… accessory store.  Crazy cool right?  I could have spent hours, upon hours there.  I may be easily impressed, but it completely blew my mind.  My favorite section was the green.

I found several really rad items.  Like rainbow rain boots.  $4…thank you very much.

Harper and Natalie rocked these very well.

And ginormous lightning bolt earrings.  I mean, seriously, who doesn’t need purple rhinestone lighting bolt earrings the size of your face.  Don’t be jealous of my beautiful hair 🙂

And a large muli-colored ring the size of my pointer finger.  Sadly, the earrings and ring did not go home with me.

We did get Rachel a cool birthday gift though.

For dinner we celebrated Rachel and Sol with Mexican…their favorite.

Then we hit the road for home.  Bell was sad to see us go and tried to make her escape.

Today, well today my nerves are a bit shot and my anxiety level pretty high while we wait for some important news on Amon and embassy and I’m nursing a killer ear infection, so we spent it playing some ever important skee-ball and other mindless games, while eating pizza.  #Nohatershere #ChuckECheeseiscool

And that is that.  Hope you have a great, great weekend.  Enjoy it.

Happy Friday!

Today we celebrated Solomon’s 3rd Gotcha Day!

3 years home…I can totally believe it in some ways, but in others I cannot.  It just seems like he’s been here forever…like our family was never without him.

This day is just priceless and special and amazing and life-changing and lovely and just blessed…all wrapped into one.

We are forever and completely grateful to God for allowing us to be Sol’s parents.  He is just this crazy, wonderful blessing.  We love you tons Solomon.

Happy 3rd Gotcha Day sweet, sweet boy!

I headed out early yesterday morning to pick the wee Kelleys up at my cousin Amy’s house in Collierville.  Driving alone for 3 hours gave me maybe a little too much time to think.  So I was very ready to get out of the car and see my cousins.

My cousin Amy, my cousin Rebecca and my Aunt Janie all live in Collierville and Rebecca has 3 little kiddos too.  Everyone was swimming at Amy’s house when I arrived.  It was super nice to see my kiddos.

All the wee cousins have been having a blast.  OH.MY.WORD.  Rebecca’s table is quite full.

And our van is quite full too.

Natalie is fulfilling Harper’s dream of a sister.  She tells us all the time “I wouldn’t be so lonely in my room if I had a sister.”  I am always so amazed the difference between boys and girls.  And Natalie is laid back and easy going just like Harper.  They are quite the dream play match.

The boys have been playing swords and fighting and all those crazy boy games…plus Don’t Break The Ice.

Minimum bed space means Harper has been my little sleeping partner…which is nice to get a little extra snuggle time.  Plus sleeping kids are way cute.

I’ve had a few odd encounters while here in Collierville too.

A)  Rebecca keeps old bananas in her freezer.  I find that a little on the odd side, but she said it keeps her old bananas old, but not rotted and she can make banana bread later on.  Hmmmm.

B)  This cat, who clearly thought it was a dog, at Chick-fil-A.

C)  And Rebecca’s dog Bell who just doesn’t understand how to stay off tables.  And who also helped herself to Bec’s egg, cheese and toast sandwich.

Hi Rebecca sprinting through the background…caught ya’!

Overall we are having the best time getting in some good cousin time with all our Collierville residents.  Cousin’s this cute should just be wrong.

Happy Wednesday!

Kid-free days are rare…like albino polar bear rare.  I really wasn’t sure what all to do with myself.  But I managed 🙂 just fine.

Hit up our Joannes for some cupcake holders for Sol’s Gotcha Day this week.  Cannot believe he has already been home 3 years.  Craziness.  While there I found some new fabric.  Swoon.

I took our van in to get the fluids checked.  I just recently discovered that you can take your car to a dealership’s service center, even if you didn’t get your car from them.  I went to get our oil changed about a month ago and all they did was change my oil.  That’s it!  They didn’t try to sell me anything extra.  No tire rotation or extra fluids or new brakes or new transmission.  Okay, so I would have been super skeptical of the new transmission.  And the Honda service center waiting room has the best kids area ever.

And today I was floored.  This was my bill.  And they said everything was fine.  What?  This does not happen.  I am now a loyal Honda service center customer.

I ate lunch alone.  In Chick-fil-A.  Did I mention alone?  It was quite odd, but great at the same time.  Chick-fil-A sauce.  Be still my heart.

While I ate I even read.  Maybe it wasn’t a great novel, but it was an incredible article about the amazing Josh Hamilton.  If you don’t know anything about baseball or don’t even care about baseball, Josh Hamilton’s story is still soooo worth reading about.  It’s all about redemption and honesty and being a flawed individual and good baseball.  A great read for sure.

I even perused some of my favorite local antique/junk stores.  This chandelier really, really needed to come home with me, but I sadly left it hanging there.

This guy really needed to come home with me as well.  No, not really.  I just thought he was quite hilarious and provocative 🙂  Headless, armless and legless plastic dummy men are so hot

Ace of hearts have been arriving in the mail.  So crazy fun.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!  If you have any I will gladly purchase them or send you a little key fob ‘thank you’ gift.  Cannot wait to collect enough for some special artwork.

And I ended my kid-free day watching Josh play some really great baseball with the Full Count Ministry guys.  It was a long, high scoring game.  They lost…boo…16-15.  That’s a good game though.

Now back to kid-full days 🙂  I miss them though.  Ready to see those wee Kelleys.  And still praying like mad for this one.  So beyond ready to hold him again.

Happy Tuesday!