a prayer

dear lord:

please give me the strength to make it through gigi's opera singing phase.

amen.

daddy daughter dance

checklist for a daddy-daughter dance

1. have mom curl your hair

2. make sure your dress can twirl

3. get a special surprise of a new dress from grandma hinckley just days before the dance. be sure to show off how beautiful your dress is.

4. have your big sister put some make-up on your face.

5. don't forget to accessorize with purse and most importantly, dad!

grandma muz

my grandma muz passed away on march 4, 2010. here she is at christmas with all the girl great-grandchildren. (when i printed out a copy of this picture before her funeral, fritzy said: "i wanted to be in that picture." i am sad that we won't have another chance for him to have his picture with "GGMa".

anyhoo, grandma muz got ill shortly after christmas. she just kept going in and out of the hospital and the infection kept coming back. it is weird to think that she was ok at christmas and is now gone. i am very grateful that she had her wits about her until the end. she was 85.

we lived 45 minutes away from her when i was growing up. i have many memories playing at the farm where they lived and having her make us dinners. she was a very thoughtful and generous person. i am grateful for her influence in my life.

je regrets

my apologies for my lack of blogging and reading blogs. (turns out i don't like to visit my own blog when i haven't updated my own in forever). after repeatedly telling myself that i should take my blog down if i wasn't going to update it, i have decided maybe i should just. update. the. d*#$. blog. so here i am. i have indeed missed all of you. my thanks to those who responded on my most pathetic previous posts. (kayla, thanks for the kick in the pants; sorry it has taken me so long to actually respond with more.) hopefully, i will give you much better stuff to comment on in the near future.

i have decided to start using nicknames for my children. if i could go back and get my last name out of my URL, i would. since i don't feel like going through the hassle of a new blog, i thought i would at least try and be discrete with their names and bury the old posts with their names on it through a mass pile of new posts. i also continually debate making the blog private, but for now i'll just hope my famine of posts have killed off any psycho strangers that may be reading. (psychos that i personally know and love are always welcome to read!)