Our first cake...

Normally this type of announcement would be celebrated at the One Year Mark of a child's life, but with Ben...it's a little later. You see, my boy has a "texture" issue and loves to play in sand and loves to play in water, but not mud. His foods are limited to items that leave a minimal amount of "goo" on his tiny fingers.


So imagine my surprise this morning when Ben after beginning to decorate a cake for Daddy's Cake Party (no occasion - Ben declared it so!) I turned around and saw this...

A little creative...

Every once in a while, I have a moderately successful creative surge that produce a fairly cute piece of "art". Here are some designs I did recently. I matted them in white and put them in a thin black frame and they will hang in a group of 4 somewhere in my house.

Your thoughts?

Oh I can't keep it in...

Oh I can't keep it in...
I can't keep it in...
I've gotta let it out.
I've got to show the world...
world's got to see...
see all the love...
Love that's in me.
- Cat Stevens

Oh Joy! Oh Jubilation! Oh Sweet Glory!

My father-in-law called last night and after 20 something weeks of chemo and major surgery removing over a foot of his intestine, he received the news that he will NO LONGER undergo treatment for his cancer...you heard me right folks: Ron's cancer has been removed successfully! Can you think of any better news for the Bredemeyer Family to hear?!?!

Thank you all for your emails of well wishes and prayers and warm, wonderful thoughts the past seven or so months. It has meant so much to all of us.

MDA and Dr. Melnyk here in Abilene, will continue to monitor him every three months, obviously.

But for now, Ron is looking forward to the port being removed from his chest so that he may enjoy a real shower for the first time in a while!

Inferiority Complex

Everyone I know is getting these new snappy blog designs and after reading some of my favorites today, I have decided that I too need a snazzy new blog. The "only child" in me feels less funny and less important with my stock design and color scheme.

Summer Challenge: Have Melissa teach me about the coding and widgit thingys so that I can change my blog design.

It would be easier to say Summer Challenge: Hire someone...but I am cheap that way.

Summer Challenge: POTTY TRAINING

I gave everyone a "heads up" about Summer Challenge: VEGAN, but in the case of Summer Challenge: POTTY TRAINING, I felt like that was too much pressure on little Ben and myself. I had prepared myself to make notes as the training progressed so that I could post all of the drama, grossness, frivolity and delight of the ordeal.

But it never happened. He woke up and I took him to the potty and that was it. The rest was history. He spent a couple of days with my mom - no accidents. He came home - only one accident and that was because I forgot that he didn't have a diaper on. We have even ventured into a few public restrooms with little fanfare.

The potty is our friend and he is thrilled by his progress from baby to big boy! So am I!

So that's it for Summer Challenge: POTTY TRAINING. Nothing super funny. No stories of me gagging while I scrub something out of the carpet - none of it. Hurray for Ben! And hurray for waiting until he was ready and not making him do it sooner!

Summer Challenge: BOOT CAMP is in full swing as well. It is still an A$$ whipping but it is much easier in June than January. So up next: Summer Challenge: Allison hired a personal trainer for 4 weeks - bless her heart. (The Trainers - not mine!)

Who's that girl?

Kevin and I are habitually "messy". Not dirty so to speak, just cluttered and messy. In an effort to streamline my life and clear the clutter from my soul, I began today to clean out my garage. For the average homeowner, this would mean moving your neatly placed items to the driveway and sweeping or blowing out the garage and putting them back. Well folks, we have a 3 car garage that barely holds two cars...that's how bad our garage is. So with Kevin off on his Boy's Day Adventure with CJ, I donned my grubbiest of grubbies and took to the heat.


I moved boxes; I emptied boxes; I opened gagged and closed boxes for Kevin to look at later. It was a major undertaking and we are now at the point of the "clean out" where now my garage AND my house are a total disaster. But Kevin will help in the morning and hopefully our goal will be met!


In one of the boxes I found all of my old photos and yearbooks. I tried so hard not to look at them. I kept telling myself, "Eyes on the prize, Allison. Do not waste time looking at these. Finish what you started." I told myself to suck it and began to look through my life in pictures. Maybe it was the mood I was in. Maybe it was "Seasons of Love" blaring on my iPod. Maybe it was the heat. But I began to catch myself getting, well, a little sad.

Thumbing through the pictures I spanned the highlights of my life from 5th grade until college graduation and it shocked that I had so many pictures of people who came and left my life with little fanfare; but, I had very little of those who really packed a punch on my adolescent psyche. Now don't get me wrong...I have millions of photos of me and my girls and I cherish every single one of them. But you know who I am talking about. Those few people who were so important that you thought you would just die without them and then you didn't die without them and really in fact, you are not dead because you don't have their photo tucked away in the garage. There were three in my young life and I only found one photo or less of each of them. As it should be.

But again, I digress.

What I did find very comical were the photos of me and how looking back it was clear to everyone but me that I march to the beat of a different drummer. Not in a bad way. Just a little "quirky". And I caught myself asking, "Who is that girl?"



This girl doesn't care about what other people think about her before trying a new adventure.


Mrs. Mia Wallace & Jules Winnifield circa October 96




This girl is a little mean, a lot mischevious and has a sense of humor.



Black Bandits innagural prank. Circa 1996


And this girl...well, she just likes to groove to the beat, no matter what everyone else is doing.



My first garage party. Circa 1985


We are almost all cleaned out now and the photos have all gone back in the box. Memory Lane is a fun place to visit, but it becomes boring if you try to move back to that neighborhood.

Was it that funny?

There are times when your child gets so worked up in the moment and begins to throw the biggest fit and just won't stop...and it is during those times, as a mother, that you think it is kind of funny.

Looking back...was it really that funny?

If I were to tell you that this reaction was over that hat, does it make it funny now?

I thought so!