Second Son's graduation has me thinking about how I show up as a mom. I tell you, it's not how I thought I would back before I was one. When I became a mother, something inside me changed. Something went a little left. It's like a secret code was activated and now inside me lives a fierce warrior. When pushed, she pushes back. Hard.

Three years ago, I wrote about the value of a high school diploma. On this morning of Second Son's high school graduation, I'm proud to say he was one of the students who decided to flip the bird at me and cross over to the other side of the room.

Ok, where did we leave off? Oh yeah – Memorial Day weekend…. Well, Sweet Pea was here that weekend, but it did not stop the manual labor efforts in the backyard. While Second Son and I continued work on building gates for the deck, Sweet Pea and PDD went swimming in the kiddie pool: Tuesday after work, Oldest Son had one of his co-workers climb the...

Yesterday (Saturday) morning, we got up early and met my BFF Patsy at IHOP for breakfast at 8.

We tackled the repair of the privacy fence on Saturday. Second Son decided we should just get it out of the way, so I called Baby Sis to see if she’d go to Lowe’s with me to get the lumber (she’s got a truck, I don’t) and called Dad to see if he’d bring extra tools and come in to supervise and engineer the project. We got started about...

Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net is running a series this month called 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, and I've decided to follow along. He was going to start the series on the 1st, but ended up having to delay the start to the 6th. Warmed my heart to see a big-time blogger have to give himself a little more time to get his act together. I'll likely be doing this in spurts and batches because, as you know if you've hung around here any length of time at all, I have "issues" trying to blog daily. :)

Oldest Son did not stop with the cabinet/desk project. On Sunday afternoon, in another fit of he-manliness, he built this in my front yard: I will be sure to take another picture later in the summer when the sedum is in full bloom. It grows fast, and will drape itself down over the limestone. That’ll be really pretty. Speaking of pretty, PDD knows I L-O-V-E...

I guess last you heard from me, the kids were enjoying snow days without any snow and we were roughin’ it without a furnace for two days. Damn – that was almost 3 weeks ago. Well, I’m not even going to offer up any kind of excuse (if any of you are still out there) because there are only really two things that keep me away from here: 1) being sick...

In keeping with this week’s theme, I give you a Halloween past at our...

All pictures are clickable for a larger view. “Live at the Improv” (where the improv is bathtime in Grandma’s kitchen sink instead of the bathtub) Oldest Son was jealous of all the time his daughter spent in my lap Friday evening. So, after she went to sleep, he wanted his turn. Not to be outdone, Second Son had to have his turn, too. And of...