Hangin' Out on 3rd

Hi Friends!!!!

My time off was has been filled with quite a ride. For today, to e-a-s-e back into the bloggy world I'll keep it nice and surface-y.  A few pics to catch up on for those of you not on FB with me.

Hanging out on third just means that we really are close to coming home with this adoption.

The first week of March, PandaPop and I headed out to Cali-forn-I-A for a children's ministry conference in San Diego. I've only flown through the San Francisco airport on our way back from China with PandaGirl several years ago so this was my first trip to the west coast. We didn't have much time at all so we made the most of the conference sessions and took in a quick trip to Coronado Beach.

Well worth it.

I go to put my little toes in the chilly gold glitter sand beaches of Coronado and was in heaven!! If I weren't a Texan to the bone I'd so love to live in the Pacific Northwest where I could have cloud cover days, some sunny ones and the mountain AND beach at my back door. Love having both of them! The humidity was NOTHING. After living in Baytown, TX (Houston) where my glasses fogged up the second I walked out the door I thought all ocean front areas were the same. Nuh-uh. San Diego has it going on. Loved it.

We attended the conference with two other ministers from our church so we strolled along those sandy beaches clicking pics of each other. Picked up a few shells for our girls. Kissed on the beach.

I will show you later, but below is one pic of 8 that I have taken for the new children's hallway at our church. Nothing huge, just new paint, carpet and wall decor. I have to say.....the pics are AWESOME!!! They each depict something that is iconic from childhood and are professionally printed on gorgeous two inch hard standouts. Gorgeous. Very fun to walk down the hall and see my work. Of course, since they were so expensive to make then the time & talent it took to make the images all comes along in the package of I-am-married-to-the-minister-so-I'm-volunteering-my-time&talent-in-love. I'm sure it'll all come out in the wash.

I truly do get a huge kick-back every time I see the pics in the hall or someone says, "Did you take these?!!"  Yes, thank you.

Jesus Calling. So many people have talked about this devotional over the year. PP picked up the kids' version and I was looking for something new to get my spiritual life back on track......a nice new post waiting on THAT subject for ya!!.....so I purchased the original adult version.

Good stuff.

It is God's Word written from a conversation like manner from Him to me. Powerful.

Hell---o. This child above has kept me on.my.toes. Can you say precious?

Yes.

Can you say......BUTTON PUSHER???

I can!!!

I love PG dearly, but lately she has reaaaaaallllllly been trying to find her own voice.  She just has to learn that she can't use that darling little voice to have the last word....every single time.

She's coming along and so am I. Team effort.

As far as PandaJOY below?

Well, this little one has turned into some kind of awesome delight for me!!!!!!!! Very fun to be with, funny, busy, busy, busy, creative, imaginative, still tries to be bossy and as cuddly as ever!

We still have our moments, but this child thinks of me as her Momma. Me. ME!!!!! PandaGirl and I have such a different relationship that I'm taken aback at times when PJ WANTS to hold me or cuddle or sit beside or HAS to have Momma console her.

I'm like.....Whaaaaaaa?

Oh.....THIS is what motherhood should be like! I think I might like it.

That may shock some of you when thinking back at all the post from the years about PG.  I dearly love that child and God has rocked my world with her, but to say that I've had "fun" as a mother with her would be an outright lie. It has been a struggle to "feel" motherly with her.

God is granting me some favor and allowing me to get the sweetness of motherhood from the little bitty one.  He has plans for both girls in our family, no doubt.  Just different ways.

PandaPop.  What in this world would I do without him?

Implode probably.

He thinks I'm so strong.  I think I'd be a wild woman, strung out, dead or a Mormon.

There's a post in that statement just waiting to come to print. Hold on.

I don't want to be....without him.

Spruced up the back yard a bit with a new flowerbed put in by PP and a friend. He has plans to build me a new lovely wooden pergola on the patio, but it takes funds that are going to fix the A/C in the Tahoe that went kaput last summer. It's getting hot again and we.need.the.cool.air while driving.

Can I just tell you how TICKED I was that PP bought this blue and green Crayola sand (now teal)??!! I was going for the $2.97 version of regular beige play sand at the Wal**Mart. They didn't have any. So he purchased the colored sand. FOR $7.48 A BAG!!!!!!!! And the bag was a THIRD the size of the regular sand. I couldn't believe it!!!

Now I love the sand.

It is sooooo pretty and fun and sandy and beautiful and gets wet nicely and pretty and I love the sand.

OK....look below. Have you read or seen The Hunger Games? I got on the reading bandwagon just before the movie opened. Good reads and great distraction from real life.

I'm getting better with real life.  That is ANOTHER post waiting to happen.  I have so much to say and so little time to say it.  I have several people ask when I was going to write again on here. Since it doesn't show up in news feeders after going private then I have to go and TELL all of you that I've posted.

That's weird.

Arrogant?

Well.....whatever it is....thanks for caring about me enough to want to keep up.

More to come.  Way, way more to come.

****OH.....adoption....we SHOULD be adopting PJ in May.  We're not holding our breath.****

We Are an American Family

When reading a Strawberry Shortcake book to PJ this afternoon I noticed that the friends of Strawberry look just like my little family. I absolutely couldn't resist taking a pic and making this my new FB Timeline cover pic. Too cute!!!

OH--I Missed My Mind

So did you enjoy that confession from the last post? Pretty blunt, huh?  I noticed only two of my peeps left comments.

Sweet.

There are several of you others out there.

Where are the comments?

Just reading for pleasure?

Maybe this will make you smile.

PandaJoy has a darling repertoire of vocabulary she uses on a daily basis like any three year old finding her way in the world of lingo.  I do think I fall down on the floor every single time she says, "Oh. I missed my mind."

She means that she has since changed her mind from whatever jibber-jabber she had previously mumble out just moments before or even days before.  If I offer her a choice between applesauce or a cheese stick she might choose the cheese stick. Upon completion of the cheese stick she announces that she "missed her mind" and now has decided that she wants applesauce instead.

She's already chosen and eaten the cheese stick.

**************************************

Yeah, um...PandaMom, do you want to eat the fattening food at the pizza buffet or be a size 6?

I want to eat the buffet at Pizza Inn along with the chocolate chip cookie pizza dessert platter.

Gulp.

Oh, wait.

I missed my mind.

I want to be a size 6.

Sorry. Too late. You already chose the pizza.

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Since I have no real means of discipling this child in any manner of which I'm accustomed I've had to come up with real sweet, creative ways of handling her.  They are probably the more healthy, sane ways that would have worked on me when I was growing up rather than the fear induced do-what-the-hell-I-say-or-else type of nurturing I got.

And there's another post for that.  Now that I'm private.

Anyway, one of my leveraging devices is to make the Little Bitty clean up her room before I will read a book to her at night.  This has caused many a melt-down right at bed time when I am tired of the day....and her. I do love that child, but she has worn.me.down.to.the.bone. Though you can't tell from the blubber on my buttocks.

Today I told her in order to watch ANOTHER Dora on Netflix she had to clean her room.  Really? Poor child....having to clean her room multiple times a day must be a witch on her psyche, but remember, it's all I got.

Of course, being three she tends to forget what her task at hand is and starts playing.  I'm not mean.  I give some leeway.  After an appropriate amount of time I ask her if she's done cleaning and she says, "yes".

I ask her the series of simplified questions that I always ask so that I don't walk all the way up Mt. Everest  just to see crap strewn all over her floor which in turn sends me into a mental breakdown and I want to bite nails.  You'll see I have issues.  I've gone private.  There's more to me than the Pandaleidoscope Pollyanna.

I give her another chance to "clean" her room, but this time I start making my way up the stairs to see for myself because I'm getting tired of waiting. As I round the corner fully expecting to see a cleared floor since she so desperately wants to see Doot-doot-doot-doot-Dora I find the room completely crapped out in a mess.  She hadn't done a blessed thing except play.....more. Which is totally fine, because who wants to clean up her room in the middle of the stinkin' day just to get it all back out again after the great movie is done? I don't blame her.

As she heard my footsteps approaching she yelled, "I'm cleaning!!!"

Yeah, right and I'm a size 6.

I look at the top of her shelves and see that size 6 Barbie must have missed her mind, too. She did have clothes on the last time I saw her.  She'd rather relax than clean.  Moving chairs off the bed was just way too much.

We go through the whole meltdown, talking gently to her, working through the trauma, going potty, getting back up stairs, getting on the bed for a nap and boom.......room is still dirty.

She missed her mind.

She decided to play instead of clean.

I'm like that, too.

I'd way rather play than fold clothes, mop, do the dishes, take the dog out, work on business stuff or pretty much anything.

I start out with a great plan and a list and all the gumption in the world.  Then reality sets in.

I miss my mind.  A lot.