Author: Big Mama

  • School days, school days…I don’t know the rest of the words

    There’s something about August that always makes me a little excited. August is a big month in our house because we have Caroline’s birthday, my birthday and our wedding anniversary. I know it’s hotter than blue blazes, as my grandfather used to say, but to me it signals the beginning of the end of summer. As much as I love summer, I get ready for it to be over.

    Caroline and I went to Target this morning (Oh Target, how I love you, the ultimate friend of moms everywhere) and the aisles were lined with new notebooks, backpacks, pencil holders and new school shoes. It took me back to the days of going school supply shopping with my mom. I loved getting fresh new crayons, pencils with erasers yet to be chewed, clean notebooks. It’s not that I loved school that much, in fact I was known to play sick numerous times throughout my academic career, it’s just the newness, the freshness, the beginning of a new year.

    Once I got to college, I loved August because it signaled the start of college football season. There is nothing better than walking across campus and hearing the band practice and seeing the football team on the field getting ready for the upcoming season. It always made me so anxious for the glorious three months of Saturdays where all my friends and I would be in the stands at Kyle Field.

    Now, I love August because it’s the month I had my daughter, it’s the month that I know she’ll be going back to preschool giving me two free days a week, it’s the month when the sports page starts reporting on Aggie football, and it’s the month that as hot as it may be, lets me know that summer and this heat will eventually end.

    So, welcome back August my old friend. It’s good to see you again.

  • She has saved me a fortune in therapy bills

    My friend Gulley has been my closest friend since we first met in college over fifteen years ago. She was a freshman and lived in the dorm (or the “D” as we called it so it wouldn’t sound so dorky). I was a sophomore and lived in an apartment off campus. We were both Diamond Darlings (bat girls for the baseball team at Texas A&M) and bonded over dinner at our Christmas formal where we were competing for who had the worst date. I promise you I won, hands down, because my date was wearing a sweater vest and that’s the best thing I can say.

    Together we survived our wild college days, graduated, moved to different cities, met the men we ended up marrying (neither of whom wears sweater vests), and are now blessed enough to be raising our kids together because we live less than 2 miles away from each other.

    If one of us hasn’t called the other by 10 a.m. it’s because it’s either a weekend morning so we’re spending quality time with the family or the phones aren’t working. I don’t even want to talk about the phone bills we ran up back in the days we lived in separate cities and long distance wasn’t free.

    So that’s who Gulley is and I’ll be referencing her quite a bit because y’all she is funny and various members of her family could be a blog entry all by themselves. My husband’s friends make fun of me because for the last 10 years that I’ve known them I’ll start a story with “My friend Gulley says…” and they’re like “yeah, we know you have a friend named Gulley”.

    Now at this point in my blogging dynasty, I’m sure most people reading know exactly who Gulley is, but there’s a little background for y’all that don’t know “my friend Gulley”.

  • My delicate flower


    I have become increasingly aware throughout the almost 3 years of Caroline’s life that she is not quite the girly girl I thought she would be. Now don’t get me wrong, the girl can wear a tiara and carry a purse like nobody’s business. She’s also picked up some of my expressions so that now some mornings when I’m getting dressed she’ll say “Turn around, Mama. Oh, that dress looks just darlin’ on you!”

    But the biggest part of her personality is definitely not a frou-frou kind of girl. She will pick up any bug, dead or alive, to examine it a little closer. Let’s not even talk about my horror watching her carry around her new pet roach. She loves to get dirty, wet, messy, and will definitely tell me “no bows today, Mama”. She really is the best of both worlds. In fact, for her birthday party this week we are having hot pink polka dot cupcakes at her request, but everyone will also be wearing pirate hats


    A couple of weeks ago she spent the morning with her Daddy and when I got home from running errands, she ran up to me and showed me this snail that she had found. I said “Oh, isn’t he sweet. That’s real nice.” (That’s not really what I was thinking, but I’m trying to be supportive of her interests) Then she says “watch what I can do, Mama” and she proceeds to put the snail on our sidewalk and smash it with her tennis shoes. She thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.

    Then this morning we were looking through this coffee table book of animals from Africa. She usually just likes the lions and elephants, but today she noticed the cape buffalo. “What’s those, Mama?”. I told her those are big buffalo. She said “I’d like to shoot that puffawo and eat it for dinner”. Her daddy will be so proud.

  • Can I get a dream bar?

    In case you’ve been up nights wondering, I just wanted to let you know the grill at the pool has reopened. The bees are gone and order has been restored to my universe.

  • Who swims at 7 a.m.?

    I just got off the phone with my dad. Caroline went to eat Mexican food with them and spent the night last night. So, really between Sea World and a sleepover at Mimi and Bops’ house, it was the BEST day ever. For both of us.

    Anyway, I called to see how they were doing and to make sure Caroline wasn’t missing me too much. Um, yeah right. They didn’t answer the phone so I knew immediately where they were. IN THE POOL.

    She loves spending the night over there for many reasons, all of which include her being a little catered to (but that’s what grandparents do, so no complaints). But the biggest reason she loves being there is that she can talk my dad into getting in the pool with her as soon as she wakes up, which is usually 6:30-7 p.m. Now, I know we’re in Texas, but the pool is cold that early in the morning! That, my friends, is true love.

  • We’re going to Sea World

    Actually we went to Sea World yesterday. I packed everything I could possibly think of in the world’s largest pool bag, loaded the stroller and off we went. Caroline talked a mile a minute the entire way there. The only time she wasn’t talking she was singing in that sing-song voice inherent to kids “we’re going to Sea World, we’re going to Sea World”. I thought her head might explode from all the joy.

    We went to Sea World earlier this summer and after we got home all she talked about were the monkeys. “My favorite part was the monkeys, Mama”, “where do those monkeys live, Mama?” Now we saw whales, dolphins, alligators, Nemo fish, Dory fish but there was nary a monkey in sight. I couldn’t believe I had spent money to go to Sea World so that she could be excited over monkeys that didn’t exist.

    That night my dad came over and she was regaling him with stories from our day and she said “Bops, those monkeys did flips and jumped so high”. It was at that point I realized the “monkeys” were actually people dressed in full head to toe unitards that did indeed jump from very high diving platforms and swam with the dolphins.

    So first thing yesterday, we went to see the monkeys. She loved it, but her favorite part of the day (and mine) was going to see Shamu. I swear that I teared up watching the excitement on her face as she sat in Bops’ lap and watched Shamu jump and flip and do all that other Shamu stuff. Without even looking away for a minute, she said “Oh Mama, when I get big I’m going to swim with that Shamu”. And you know what, I think she will because no matter what, I want her to know that she can do anything she puts her mind to.