Life at Baby Sis's was a getting a little crazy. The triplets aka the bosses) are now 1 1/2 years old and the 3 year old is hitting his 'terror' stage. Needless to say, Baby Sis was feeling pretty frazzled. Baby Sis, Lil Sis, and I decided it was time to run for the hills. The hills being the Lake of the Ozarks. It is not far from home, but far enough that we cannot hear those little urchins whining, crying, biting, pinching. We couldn't even hear the 'kerplunk' from various items being thrown in the toilet or the three little boogers spending playtime splashing in the toilet when we turn our heads for one nano second.

The weekend was great. It was relaxing. Many photos were taken of the beautiful lake and sunsets. Baby Sis was able to get a good start on catching up on her scrapbooking for each of these sweet angels. Oh yeah! Can't forget the fantastic deals found at the outlet mall just around the corner from our condo. Just check out the great Reebok shoes Lil Sis found for 10.99! A steal I'm telling you.

The last evening we spent watching one of the fantastic sunsets that occur right before Fall officially arrives and had fun goofing around. Unfortunately, Baby Sis saw us begin to pack things up and load up the car. You know what this means! We have to go back. SHE has to go back. Baby Sis wasn't quite ready to go back. Panic ensued. She.was.not.ready. She ran. She tried to hide. But, to no avail. We found her. It was the chanting "I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm not ready." that gave her whereabouts away. We dragged her from this dumpster kicking and screaming. Eventually she gave in and we settled in for one last night before the three hour drive home.

It was a great, although short, time away. I think we will have to do this again before the bad weather sets in for the winter. It's just too much fun getting away for a few days with your sisters.

Once I get through the ridiculous amount of photos I took, I'll post a few in the photo album. Until then, we are keeping a close eye on this mommy. We don't want her escaping.

Check out my other place for the Dweeb adventure (oye!).

Dearest Tom,

I'm professing my love for you publicly.  I have loved you since I was in college in the 1970's.   You have always been at the top of my list baby.   I LOVE your new music.   The new CD rocks!   This is the best music you have put out in many years in my humble opinion.  I listen to it constantly.  It's playing in my Media Player now.   It's in my car.  It's on my iPod.  You are addictive Tom!

I have never been able to see you live.  I try eveytime you whizz through Bonner Springs, but the damn kids got in the way or I already had a ticket out of town for an adventure.  This year you didn't even come our way!  What's up with that?  

I think of you everytime my hubby pulls out his Rickenbacker bass.   When he has a Rickenbacker in his eye on Ebay, we laugh wondering if the rumors are true that you are buying all the vintage basses.   Hubby has had his since college.   He won't ever sell it.  

You know I need a big weekend to kick up the dust.  Yeah a big weekend, cause I'll be damned if I rust.  Please feel free to send airline tickets and concert tickets to your next gig.  I'll be there!  And if you come by my door you can sleep on the floor.  Heck you can sleep anywhere you want.  So turn that car around and get your tush back to Kansas.

I must end this letter as I have to beg and plead my husband to learn the new songs so he can sing them to me until you can get here to sing to me, of course.

Kisses,

Sue

If you haven't heard it yet and you like rock and roll (especially Tom Petty and Heartbreakers) you must catch his new CD Highway Companion.   I think it's one of his finest. 

For my rant of the day, go to blogger.

The day is coming upon us. You all know it. We all know where we were and what we were doing when we first heard the news or watched it live on T.V. I know I did, just as I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard President Kennedy was assasinated. I may have been in first grade when that event occurred, but I remember.

It is nearing the fifth anniversary of the deaths of 2,996 Americans by terrorists on our own soil. 9/11.

Each year I watch the specials aired regarding that dreadful day and have noticed it is quickly becoming the same thing every year. Don't get me wrong. We need to be reminded of the heinous acts those days. We do need to see those planes hit the buildings each year. Americans seem to have the attention span of a gnat. But, I am getting very frustrated. I'm sure the Evil that ordered and made this possible gloats each year watching over and over his so called achievement.

It's time. It's time to recognize the victims. The victims of 9/11. Sure their names are many walls, memorials, listed on internet web sites, etc, but we need to put a face to each name. This was personal. I want to know who these people were. If this happened to one of my sisters or my husband or God forbid my daughters, I would scream out to the world what they have lost. Each year we see some of the families of the victims of 9/11. They are the same faces every year. I know, I watch them. What about the others? Every single person had a family and loved ones who are still in mourning with their loss. Majority of families had no remains to bury, as I understand. When those buildings came down, everything became dust. Could you find closure? I'm sorry, but it's not the same as losing a loved one in our normal lives. This was a terrorist attack that destroyed many families. I hope I'm getting my point across. I do feel strongly about this.

So I had an itch. I wanted to do something. I had no idea what at this point. As I was surfing around the other night, I stumbled across THIS space. I was intrigued. It didn't take me long before I found myself entering my email address and receiving the name of a victim of 9/11 to honor. Here is how it works:

---

PLEASE CONSIDER DOING THIS. DON'T LET ANYONE'S NAME BE LEFT FACELESS ON THAT LIST WHEN ALL TRIBUTES ARE POSTED ON 9/11.

CONTACT ME OR THE PERSON ON THIS BLOG FOR MORE INFORMATION. THIS MOVEMENT IS BEING DONE BY ALL THE WONDERFUL PEOPLE IN BLOGOSPHERE. TAKE A MOMENT AND AT LEAST THINK ABOUT IT AND CHECK THIS WEB SPACE OUT.

Thanks for listening to me. This is just too important. It's time the tide shifts to the victims and not all on fireballs and planes hitting WTC.

OKAY, OKAY, I'll stop now. Thank you guys. *kisses*

what is up with all the fonts and colors in this post?????  MSN??  Are you there??  What are doing now?   Sorry, this looks bizarre.  Once again, I seem to not have control over this post.  OYE!

The state of our world right now is very troubling.  As some of you may remember, my sister took three of her daughters to Italy in June for a convention at Vatican City for Catholic Girls Challenge (a Catholic Girls Group).  They fell in love in with Rome.  They had their audience with the Holy Father and visited as many points of interest as possible during their stay.

After two weeks in Rome, my sister and her two younger girls (junior high age) headed back home.  The oldest daughter who is now a senior in high school accompanied her group and headed for a second destination for the third week.  Israel.  Yikes was my first reaction.  This was before all the action going on over there now, but you just never know when a suicide bomber is going to pop up in that country. 

As it turns out, my niece fell in love with Israel!  She LOVED Israel.  She loved Israel more than Rome!  She loved the people, the country.  It's a little piece of heaven.  I have not yet been able to sit her down and pick her brain about her trip there.  She is a teenager.  But soon I'm going to strap her to a chair and interrogate her.  She returned to the United States about a week before all hell broke loose over there.  I can't even think about her being there if the bombing had been going on.

I have watched the news constantly with the turmoil there and Discovery Time Channel which has aired their specials regarding the wall being built in Israel to keep the suicide bombers out, a report on Hamas and their 'side' of the story, etc.  I run all this information through my head and I can't make sense out of what the extremists are doing there.  I feel so horrible for the innocent people. 

As Dweeb and I discuss these issues (yes, an actual conversation going on), he wonders "as Rodney King said 'Why can't we all just get along?"  My response is "Someone needs to get on the hotline to Austin Powers and the fembots.  Let's nip this in the bud".  It's so overwhelming, the dorkiness creeps up more than usual around here. 

I think I need to go find my niece.  Maybe she can shed a little light.

___________________

NOW GET OVER TO THE OTHER SPACE TO CHECK OUT WHAT I'M REALLY THINKING ABOUT LIFE!  http://jayhawkfever.blogspot.com     GO AHEAD!  DO IT NOW!  PLEASE!

 

Saturday began quiet.  We both had projects we had begun and so we toiled on those awhile.  Myself...  I have created one hot mess in the living room.  It's time to get caught up with three years of scrapbooking for Blondie, Jaden, Reece, and the scrapbooks I am making for my two grandchilren who were placed for adoption.  I want them to have their baby books and the life story of their mom (the incomprable DQ) when they are old enough to want to know where they come from.   Yeah.  I know.  You should see my living room!  After looking at the mess I made and tired of trying to figure everything out and where I ended three years ago, Dweeb and I got in the car, with the top down because it was GORGEOUS outside, and headed to the Plaza.  When you live in Kansas City and you have the itch for the 'real' city, you head to the Plaza.  That's as close as we get.  It has ornate buildings, great shopping, concerts in the courtyards, and more fountains than other place in the U.S.  It really is relaxing.  After a few hours of wandering the Plaza we felt like normal people.  Which is not normal by any means.

It's been difficult getting around to visit everyone and leave comments the last week and a half because I am on medication for this pesky shingles.  When I take the pain medication, I can't think, talk straight, read well, or comment coherently.  Hence, I roam around like an idiot through blogland.  (Watch your comments Blondie)   It is getting better though.  Hopefully, I have turned the corner now.  I don't take the pain medication nearly as much.   Of course, my lucid time is spent doing necessary things like bathing, grocery shopping, dishes...  you get the picture.   It's only on my left side.  Weird.  I still have a bit of a hitch in my giddyup, but definitely getting better.  So today I was very brave and did not take the meds.  I went to Baby Sis' instead so we could get the Bosses (triplets) and Jack out of the house.  All four had a bad case of cabin fever.  She.cannot.do.it.alone.  It takes at least two adults to take all these little people out at one time.  I gladly went.  I love my Bosses and Jack. 

 

It is so hot now, we had to get them to water.  The swimming pool is a last resort since the trips are only 16 months old.  We discovered a Water Spray area at a park near the Plaza.   This place was perfect!  No drowning, no Dictator jumping in the deep end, just run around the spouts of water and have fun!  The pictures say it all.  Of course, Bubba found the one mud puddle and thought that was the best thing since popsicles!  They really should have more of these around town.  It's great for small kids. 

 

The kids had a blast and I survived.  Of course, now I'm back in my home and on the medication and entering never never land.  So keep cool this weekend!  It's going to be a hot one!

I found this article today while perusing our worthless city newspaper that now resembles a USA Today. 

 

- WASHINGTON | Psilocybin, the active ingredient of “magic mushrooms,” expands the mind. After a thousand years of use, that is now scientifically official. The chemical promoted a mystical experience in two-thirds of people who took it for the first time, a study said. It confirms what hippies have long said: Taking psilocybin is a reality-bending and perhaps life-changing substance. The study, published Tuesday in the journal Psychopharmacology, is the first controlled trial of a substance used for centuries by natives of Mexico and Central America to produce mystical insights. It is also nearly the first research on a psychedelic drug in this country since the 1960s.

 

Well, what do you know!  Pfft!  And our parents thought we were just stoned!  Any baby boomers feel like givin' it another go and having a reality-bending, mind altering, and MYSTICAL experience?  Timothy Leary may be turning over in his grave in disappointment that the magical and mystical experience did not result from LSD..

 

Go ahead.. call your parents... tell them "I told you so!".

Do you see what I'm talking about?  My sister and I are dressed alike.  This is not unusual with little girls.  I'm sure you have all done that with daughters who are close in age.  But my mother couldn't break the cycle.  It didn't stop here.  It continued with ferocity.  As more girls were born, it became more difficult to tell us apart!  Mom couldn't stop!  It was an obsession to dress us all alike when we were not in our Catholic school uniforms! 

 

 

So can you see the pattern here?  Look at this!  SHAMEFUL! We were all dressed alike constantly.  When she couldn't get exact copies, she would get us outfits that were the same only different colors. 

In this picture, you can see the cycle continuing with even Lil Sis in the brown outfit sitting next my brother.

Being determined to 'break the cycle' I burned all my look alike outfits as a young teen.  I was FREE AT LAST!  But I think the rebellion of us older girls against this identity theft abuse sent mom into a tailspin.  She became lost and didn't know what to do with Lil Sis and Baby Sis.  Poor things.  I'm not sure if we helped them or hurt them. 

Look at the sight of these poor girls.  This is how they dressed most of the time.  It's a wonder they didn't end up in some commune somewhere or even Berkely!  Mom obviously was lost without dressing us all alike. 

 

This is a warning to you moms out there.  Don't dress your kids alike past the age of 4. PLEASE!  It only torments your daughters and steals their sense of self.  And don't let it slip to the point your children look like they just crawled out from under a bridge somewhere either. 

 

Okay...  I feel better now.  Have a great weekend!