Disneyland in the Fall!

Disneyland in the fall is so much fun! We love to head over to Big Thunder Ranch to have some harvest celebrating! They have a barbeque filled with country vittles, a pumpkin patch and carving lessons, a petting zoo (even their well-loved animals are dressed for the occasion!) and a Scaredy-Crow Shack decorated for the season! Don't 'cha know I love vintage Halloween decorations! Of course, after petting the animals there's a washin' up station! The kiddos (big ones too!) can sit and make a craft and color a picture. Woody and Jessie roam the area welcoming everyone! After eating barbeque you can decorate sugar cookies in the shape of pumpkins, bats and cats! Everyone gets exhausted from all the fun! But before you know it we're rearin' to go again, ride some rides and go to Main Street USA to look in all those great windows! Have a fun and happy weekend!

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Fake Family

I just got done reading a fabulous blog entry titled Fake Family by Jen Hatmaker. It was beyond fabulous and I highly recommend you go right now (ok, after you read me) and enjoy it too. I'm not going to tell you anything about it but am going to share my own fake family who lives inside my head...

Fake family eats every meal together at the kitchen table and Sunday meals after church at the dining room table

Real family (the real Hubby, Mom, and two kids) eat sometimes at the kitchen table but sometimes in front of the TV using the coffee table as the dining table and Sunday after church? Oh, Mom flat out refuses to cook then so we are forced to eat out. And I don't even remember the last time we ate in the dining room.

Fake family's two girls are impeccably dressed for the occasion whether it be for school, church or play and there is nary a hair out of place.

Real family's two girls are dressed. Period. If Bethany has clothes on with underwear underneath it is a successful day. As for the hair. Oh. My. Heavens. Bethany has naturally curly (like, in ringlets) hair with a mind of it's own. She also hates (by hates, I mean screams bloody murder) me doing her hair. Some days I just leave it. Hey, the teeth are brushed.

Fake family's house is decorated like a model home and Mom does things to it all day. Like, cleaning and stuff.

Real family's home is a hodgepodge of dishes, laundry and homework papers, Disney characters, Play-Doh, and dog toys, mail, magazines (see the model home referenced above) and i-pods. Please excuse the mess. The children are making memories.

Fake family's time together is spent in museums, parks and educational pursuits.

Real family's time together is spent running errands to keep our heads above water, eating out in the backyard and calling it the park and hoping the kids buy it, an occasional bike ride around the neighborhood, on the porch drinking wine with the neighbors, sitting the kids in front of cartoons so Mom and Dad can have a conversation and going to a movie and being thrilled when the three-year-old falls asleep so then we can too. Yes, we now pay for sleep.

Fake family likes how things look. Real family likes how things feel.

Not sure if you know any fake families? I do. They're all over facebook. This is me, real mom, signing off and asking you to, you know, keep it real.

What's in a Name?

I've been trying out (in my head anyways) a few new names for this blog of mine and have finally settled on Small Town Girl. I live in a small town (no more than ten thousand folks live here) and have since I was nine years old. I've moved around a lot but have always known that this was home.

I love a small town. I love the sense of peace I get from living here. I go to my local market (yep, it's called the Market because it's not a grocery store although they have everything I've ever needed in a pinch!) and run into people I know all the time. Getting the mail at our post office requires more than a quick stop because you must make time to visit everyone you see. And going to eat at one of our six restaurants? Yep, it's a lesson in visiting and catching up with all the neighbors! But I wouldn't have it any other way.

The other night we heard a siren from either a firetruck or an ambulance. We don't get those a lot around here. We all hold our breath, say a quick prayer and hope everyone will be o.k. because the chances are very high that we will know the person who is having the emergency. While we pray for the well-being of our neighbors I also have to confess that we've been praying for a few businesses to cease being in business! We recently got a Smoke Shop here (that's what small town people say when a new anything opens up... "we're getting a such and such...") and we don't have the economy to support it nor do we need a Smoke Shop here. We live in California with strict anti-smoking laws so I'm assuming (o.k., and praying) this shop will close soon.

We also have an unreasonable number of bars in our town. I just counted four. Four. Our main street drives right by one of them and every time we pass Hubby and I make a count of the cars in the parking lot. Last Saturday night at about 8:30pm we drove by and saw no cars in their lot. We were thrilled. Now, mind you, we don't want any bad financial distress to fall on any of our neighbors but we just don't want the bars to make it! Living out about a half-an-hour from the nearest medium-sized city we have a dangerous two-lane highway to travel back and forth on. One (or four) less bars is a safety plus!

Some of the great things we do have here is 1) the best pizza place (best tasting pizza and friendliest atmosphere) 2) small town parades and festivals 3) we are family oriented 4) we have award-winning schools 5) while we may have four bars we also have five churches! 6) we have a very low crime rate and violent crime here is almost non-existent.

So, yes, I am Small Town Girl. I do love big cities, but just to visit. No, I'm not really a 'girl' but it sounded better than 'woman'! I am blessed beyond measure to live here... welcome.

photo: "Trick-r-Treating is safe and fun here too!"

Give Me Some Accountability!!

Time for some confessions. 'Cause I need me some accountability. I must figure out how to blog properly. I know you're wondering what that means so I'll tell you. I need to learn how to make my blog look like all the awesome ones I follow (see left side). I need to learn how to post pictures from my camera! I need to be able to pull things up from all over the internet and post them here. I do projects around my home I'd love to show you, I find and collect great ideas from the blog world that I want to share with you! I need to know how! So, during Hubby's next set of days off it is my mission to 'pick his brain' (he's very good on the computer!) and have him show me HOW! If you don't start seeing some of these changes put into place BUG ME!!! "Mindi, what's up, girl? Where are the pics of that great idea you have about framing a pumpkin, that recipe you tried and loved and the ideas for decorating your loft? Get with it, girl!" That's all you need to tell me, but do tell me!!! Give me a week before the accountability begins...

TIME FOR THIS BLOG TO TAKE OFF!!!!

I'm Baaack!!!!!

After an eternity away from you I have decided to come back. I have been so busy with so much going on (see 'new adventure') that something had to give. Sadly, it was you. But if you'll forgive me I am back and back with a new name, a new layout and design and more 'new' coming!

Oh, and I have new habits and addictions to share with you! Normally I wouldn't share such things but in this case I must!

I am a newly found addicted fan of Pinterest! I love going on and 'pinning' all manner of things from glories of changing seasons to ideas for the house to recipes and the like. Anything and everything is available for you to 'pin' onto your boards and categorize and comment on. Once the girls are in bed I have to force myself to go to bed after an hour on Pinterest! Go to Pinterest.com to get a sampling and an invite to join. Once you request an invite it takes just a few days for you to be able to begin pinning away!

We had a great summer and hope yours was as well! Our vacation this year was a road trip to the east coast to see family and have adventures along the way. We had a blast, the girls were good given the hours they spent in the car and we made many many family memories. And....

I HAVE PICTURES!!!!

Left to right from top to bottom:

Hubby rowing a row boat in Central Park, NYC

Mom (me!) and my girls Central Park, NYC

Buglette inside a giant bubble Central Park, NYC

The girls with Grandpa catching a fish, Pennsylvania

The girls at Steel Stacks Bethlehem, PA

Daddy trying to make driving a little more interesting with a pillow pet on his head

The girls on the carousel at Silver Dollar City Branson, MO

Daddy and the girls crossing over the Colorado River just outside of CA

Have a blessed weekend and we'll talk soon!

Mindi

My Place to Yours: DE-STRESSING with Simple Pleasures ...

My Place to Yours: DE-STRESSING with Simple Pleasures ...

Beautiful photos, Susan! I like to de-stress by putting on some spa-like music, lighting a candle and having either a glass of wine or a cup of tea! Works for me! Have a blessed day!

Ch ch ch changes...

Hi. I know, it's been forever since we've talked. Like, before Christmas. Hopefully we're the kind of friends who can go awhile without talking and then pick up right where we left off. So much has happened I don't quite know where to begin. Let's just go in chronological order...

We were in escrow for a new home in our area a few weeks before Christmas. Escrow fell through due to our loan not going through. Have you ever looked and looked for a new house, finally found one, put the bid in, they accepted the bid, you got pre-qualified and opened escrow, thought and planned and dreamt about what to do with said house, began to pack just a little and then your loan fell through? Never happened to you? Well it did to me and it stunk. Then Christmas came and we had a great one, quiet here at our house on Christmas morning then quiet at my mom and dad's for dinner. The night before Savannah and I were in the program at church. I played Mary (or as the director told me, "an older Mary, she's looking back on Jesus' birth". Yes, that was a bit of a blow to my 37 year old ego) and Savannah read the story from the bible. Bethany couldn't get out of her two-year-old mind that her Mommy was Mary, the manger at the front of the church didn't have a baby in it and that her sister was up on stage instead of sitting with her. She literally talked for weeks about that night.

We were blessed in the gift giving/getting part of Christmas. I asked for new luggage and a new camera but told everyone instead of breaking up the requests and ended up with 2 new cameras and 2 new full sets of luggage. Oops! The girls made out like bandits also. We went to play in the snow about an hour away, saw a movie (Bethany's first and she did great!) and had a date night.

On New Year's day I finally sat down at the computer, after getting the previous house out of my mind and ok, out of my heart too, to look at more houses for sale in our area. I stumbled to the listing for the previous house and to my utter surprise saw that they lowered the price of the house by 50 grand! We spent that day gathering any and all money we could, put in a new offer and found out later that week that the house was ours! We had the quickest escrow known to man, about a week and 2 days, and now we are working with our fabulous general contractor to finish the inside. Whew. I'm excited, stressed and exhausted all at the same time.

The house is a new construction foreclosure so we are saving great money every month going from this mortgage to that one. God is good. The new house is a Mediterranean style 2-story and I've been running around trying to get all the inside stuff picked out. Appliances, backsplashes, sinks, faucets, doors, and lights are a few of the items I've had to make decisions for lately.

Which brings me to the other change that will be taking place. This is a really good, exciting one, though, and involves YOU too! My blog will be changing! I follow many decorating/home blogs in bloggerland and I'm changing my blog to be a bit more like those. I will have plenty of pictures of the new house befores and afters, decorating and yet still have stories and quips and pictures of my family. The new blog will have it all! It won't just be about our family life and my life as wife and mommy but will encompass much more.

Through all of these changes will you stay with me? You may not hear from you for a bit until it's all up and running, the new house and the new blog. But I am here. Going crazy. Excited, stressed and exhausted, crazy.