I LOVE it!

Unfortunately right now  there are a few things in my life that I DON'T love. I decided the only way to make this any better is to think of things that I do love.

I love God
I love Cracker Jacks
I love that no one can make me laugh harder than my husband.

I love that my parents rock.- I mean REALLY rock. I do not know 2 better and more unselfish people.

I love that my 7 year old gave her allowance out  of her little purse, to a homeless man, unprompted (now I am tearing up)

I love when you open a new jar of peanut butter and it is smooth

I love the smell of cigarette smoke outside.  (odd....yes.)

I love my house.

I love my dog- she is AWESOME

I love that my 2 year old sees beautiful things in the store and asks me if I painted them.  :)

I love Hobby Lobby. alot.
I love campfires.

I love that I went to camp as a kid. WONDERFUL and I will send mine too

I love that I went to a big ten college. Boiler up baby.
I love the smell of paint

I love  Hot Tamales.  It is my favorite candy.
I love Sangria.
I love spinach salad.
I love Ben Folds.
I love that my husband loves me no matter how crazy I am
I love that I can be sad and hold it in around everyone but him... being around him forces me to be myself.
I love that my best friend has been that since we were 16. 
I love coffee.
I love my family, immediate and extended.....they are such a blessing!
I love when I catch a sniff of someone wearing Drakkar cologne.  It smells like Jr. High.
I love seeing people's happy pictures on facebook.
I love running.
I love my toenails painted.
"I love lamp, I love table...."
I love singing in the shower, loud.
I love staying up late.
I love the smell of Dreft, it makes me almost melt.
I love my close friends- really - LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them. I think this only child thing gave me a big heart to love my friends HUGE, like sisters.  There is not much I wouldn't do for them.
I love that my seven year old is so much like her dad, it is fun to watch.
I love watching my kids dance together.
I love that I can still remember my high school locker combination, and most of my grade school and high school friends phone numbers from then. odd huh? Wish I could find my keys.

See...now don't I feel better? See how much love there is.....it is everywhere. Make a list of the things you love and I bet it will make you feel better too.
Blessings-
Lindsay

Here we go....

Ok this blog entry is going to be mostly about ME! (Selfish? Nope...sometimes you have to do that!)
Since I can remember, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up......artist. I can't imagine doing anything else.  Sometimes you have a picture of what a career looks like that isn't accurate.  I have been a graphic designer, I have been a muralist, and I have been a stay at home mom. All of these jobs include art, but more of it was about painting and creating other peoples ideas.  I have a notebook full of ideas of my own that I would like to do, but for who? what would I do with them when they are done? Would anyone spend $ for them?  Then these serious questions are interupted by one of my girls smacking the other one and the other one screaming. Who am I kidding? I am not in the stage of life to make this work.  Maybe later........

until...my AMAZING friend Stacia called me last week.  The call went a little something like this.  "Lindsay, would you like to share a booth with me at the covered bridge festival?"  Me: " Helping you sell your flowers?" (she makes AMAZINGLY beautiful things!) then slowly getting it that I could do my own things and sell them! I almost peed!  I have hardly thought of anything else.  Isn't God awesome! Just when you resign that "it is just going to be this way"  it changes!!!

I have a few projects that I am in the middle of here, then I am CREATING things!!!!  I will be posting things and in a whirl wind of ART!!!!!

What a summer!

Can you believe that summer is going so quickly???  Can you believe that I have completely ignored the blog? I can. My girls and I have been super busy this summer!

I should probably update on J and her singing experience. She did AWESOME! It was one of the hottest days of the summer and all of Mark's family was here visiting J was PUMPED and not  really too nervous.  I will try to post the video of her.  My little freckle faced baby marched up on stage and sang without any background music.  She did not make the finals but I think she was so proud of how she did.  We were approached by a few people that offered to be her vocal coach.  That is overwhelming, not sure if that is where we are headed.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEDy6lo7OWU

J has been wanting to do face painting lately, not sure why but, sounds good to me.  After I painted the girls faces we went to Lowes to look at appliances.  They wanted to keep the paint on.  This is what they looked like at Lowes....

DO you think that Mark lost any negotiating power when his kids look like zoo animals?

Hmmmmm....what else have we been up to? I have been working on a few repainting things for Js room

Here is the finished product

Her room is mostly pink and lime green, she wanted a little zebra print, I figured that a little bit couldn't hurt!

M and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary! We bought ourselves Jack Johnson and G-Love tickets. It was AWESOME!!!! We had amazing seats and it was an awesome show!

Here is our view from our seats...

The one and only G-Love (without the special sauce)

Here is Mr. Jack Johnson...

Here we are happy and very hot.....

We also went to see Tom Petty this summer! Here are a few snapshots from that awesome evening.

I have so many more things to write about...some happy, some sad, but will continue more later, I don't want to overload ya!

Blessings,

L

confession....??

  J told me quite awhile back that she wanted to play tennis this summer.   AWESOME! I support her learning a lifelong sport. I asked around about tennis lessons and heard that a local country club offered reaonably priced lessons.  I signed her up, and her lesson was this morning.

Here was the issue.... I looked up the address before we left and it was at 126th street and River Road. Sigh.
This was the location of my grandfather's farm.... years ago.  The farm has since  been turned into subdivisions and country clubs....it also turns the stomachs of alot of my family.  I don't think any of them expected the land to sit vacant, it is a product of the growing Indianapolis.... but ....

Let me clarify, I am not the country club type.  I am also not the "farming" type or one to volunteer to "rough it",  I sit in the middle of these two very different groups.  I pulled up and realized that the tennis courts I would be watching J practice on were only feet away from my grandpa's barn, that is still standing and now housing golf carts.  I walked all around the barn, on one side was a golf course and the other a pool where a very loud coach screamed at the summer swim club.  It made me sad.  I had a real  hard time being there, like I was a traitor or something.  

The only thing I could compare it to is if you had a favorite local restaraunt or bar and went back after years and years and found it had been turned into a McDonalds.  Today I felt like I had walked  in and ordered a cheeseburger at said McDonalds.  It is a lame an minimizing comparison but the only thing I could think of.  There was no one there today to lame blame on.  I just felt very uncomfortable. To top it off I went and got gas at BP today.  My hippie score is at a total negative. 

I know the history of the farm myself, but wanted to see today if there was anything on the internet about it. I found this awesome essay written by my awesome cousin- I have read this before, but it seemed fitting today.  Please read this, it is very impressive!  http://www.wabash.edu/magazine/displaystory.cfm?news_id=1279

I will be taking J to more tennis lessons, this time I will be asking the grounds keepers if they have any of the wood from the barns that might have come off chipped or what not. I can use this in a future art project in my house.  It makes me feel like less of a traitor. :)

I hope everyone is having a great summer and I will be posting about my squirrely girls tomorrow. 

Blessings,
Lindsay

7.

I LOVE watching my seven year old be seven.  There is no high school musical in my house, no iCarly, no Hannah Montana. (Don't worry we do have Spongebob and Phineus and Ferb)  This is not because I am a control freak, it is because I want my sweet gal to be seven as long as she can.  There is plenty of time for her to figure out that she should like boys and roll your eyes at adults.  I love that she really thought the dance party out (mentioned in a previous post)  and thought it would work.  She saw nothing wrong with charging people to dance with her and her sister.   At seven I remember clear as day thinking that my friend Laura and I were going to dig an underground club house.  We were serious about it.  My mom gave us shovels and said , Go for it!  We made drawings (lots and lots)  and had NO doubt that it would be the coolest thing EVER. 

There are times when the real world comes dangerously close to the 7 year old world.  Times that she has serious questions about life and death and I can see her figuring out that things aren't as rosey as she thought they were. 

We sponsor a child that lives in India, J helped us pick out which child we were going to sponsor.  We thought it would be a good lesson that she knows some kids are not as blessed as she is, you need to help when you can, and think about how to responsibly spend your money.   I thought she would pick a girl her age and go on with her day.  She looked at every kid, about an hour later with tears in her eyes she picked a girl.  I asked if she was ok, she said I just don't understand how all these kids need help, why can't they get it?  There were many questions about why the child we sponsored doesn't have toys, or even enough food.   Sigh....lessons that she needs to learn but I wish it was always a dance party.    I know that she will lose the seven-ness of it all, but until then I love listening to her plan things and will try my best to be the mom that hands her the shovel and says Go for it!!! :) (thanks mom!)
Blessings-
Lindsay

Can I tell ya?

I am pretty sure that I have the cutest and most awesome kids in the world.  NO I am not biased. Wanna see?...

Oh yeah and as husbands go... I have also hit the double jackpot!

SIGH..... I am so blessed!

really!!!

Well....she did it!

To conclude my earlier post, J had her audition for our towns "American Idol".  She was so excited!  We arrived early and she got her little number. I looked around, she was defintely the youngest one there.  They called her number and off she went.  I waited in the lobby for her as they wanted them to audtion without parents.  That little freckle faced 7 year old marched back there with zero nerves!  She skipped back about 30 minutes later and said it went really well. The next day I got an e-mail telling me that she made the semi-finals! WOOOO HOOOO!    This means that she gets to sing at the towns 4th of July festival.  After that then the finalists are chosen and they will sing right before the fireworks display. 

I am pretty sure this is the mnost excited I have seen her. She is spends all of her free time singing!

Well almost all of her time.....this was on our front door

I will translate for you...it says  "DANCE PARTY- right now. $1.00 per person" then our address is listed below.    With a straight face I asked her- "J- tell me how you are expecting this to work?"

J-"Well mom people will drive by and see the sign and stop for my dance party."

me-"So let me get this straight- you are hoping strangers will drive by,see the sign, come into our house, dance, then hand you a dollar?-

J-"yep, pretty much"

In case you were wondering we have yet to have strangers dance in my house and pay us money.  If they do, you wil be the first to find out.  :)

L- is her normal self = a 2 year old. 

She threw an EPIC fit today. WHEW!

I will have more happy things to post about her on a different day, you know when she is not cutting molars!

Off to make dinner....yummm steak!