a.rose

There is plenty of blame to go around for my Melancholy Monday Morning. It started off great.  I turned the radio on while I was cleaning up after breakfast, and Hallie started doing some awesome syrup dancing.  How could I resist joining in? That's why for two minutes this morning I felt exactly like I remember feeling as a seven year old, when I really thought that I  knew ballet.  Cue longing for my own childhood. Let's blame it on Hallie. Then the radio started playing Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway .  One of the theme songs of my summer in Maine.  Cue reminiscing.  Cue longing for summer vacation, summer jobs, summer romance, summer everything. Let's blame the radio. The song also made me miss friends and family.  I have friends here, yes.  Awesome people who are kind and lovely.  But sometimes I long for the people who knew me pre-wife and mother. The ones who know outrageous, wacky, totally clueless and blonde me.  Not ...

I do not smoke. Nor, in fact, have I ever been tempted to smoke. When we lived in Peoria I got a letter in the mail, addressed to me, one day from Marlboro. Junk mail sure is getting strange, I thought to myself as I tossed it in the trash. Then I got another letter from them.  And another.  Then I started getting small packages.  I just kept throwing them in the trash. Then we moved to Lincoln.  I didn't think much about the Marlboro mail issue. Until I got a large box in the mail, addressed to me.  They had found me. I was dying of curiosity to know what was inside, but in the end I never opened that one either.  I still get small packages every couple of weeks from them.  I have yet to open a single one. So my question is, why does Marlboro think I smoke?  Did they target all Amy Roses across the country, or did they actually follow my move from Peoria to Lincoln? Does anyone else get mail from Marlboro? In other junk mail news, Dev...

The best part about having a three year old in the house who believes she is a princess? That totally makes me Queen.  Bwa ha ha ha ha. Note: As the Queen it's not my responsibility to wipe the ketchup off her face, is it?  I wouldn't mention it, though, if I were you, either way, because of you know, like, "OFF with his head" type reactions and all from the royalty, see. Princess - in - training.

Don't forget to vote for your favorite picture ! It snowed last night. It was also incredibly windy, Nebraska-style, blowing the snow into huge drifts. Devin  has meetings that require him to be at church hours before the girls and I do. He was making tortillas this morning, for our dinner tonight. I was just getting ready to get into the shower when I heard what I thought was the sound of a hundred Vespas hurtling up and down our street. I paused for a moment and listened closer.  I put it all together. My neighbors and their snow plows. I was getting out of the shower.  My hair was wrapped up nice and tight in the towel.  Devin yells upstairs to me, "Uh, I have to go out and shovel the driveway, and then I have to finish the tortillas and then I have to shower and get ready so I can leave in an hour." I quickly got dressed and ran outside to shovel the driveway.  It was imperative that he finish those tortillas.  I got Hallie all bundled up...

When I first started writing my blog Devin didn't have much respect for it. He was all, "what's a blog?" "why would anyone read it?" "why would anyone write one?"  "that's so weird."  And yet write in it I did, and occasionally read it someone would, and the years have gone by and I'm still here and you're still there and gradually Devin has started lightening up.  "I read your blog today," he'll say at dinner, and have some comment on what I wrote.  That turned into, "You should write a blog post about x topic" he would tell me. This afternoon we found ourselves with little to do.  So we all dressed up in pink and brown, charged up the camera and took a few family pictures. Because YIKES we hadn't taken one yet with Hanna in it. How terribly sad. A few minutes ago, in a very authoritative voice he said, "Put both pictures on your blog and have a poll to see which one people like better....

I have notebooks stashed all over my house. I just never know when I am going to be overcome by the urge to write something down, and so I have to have easy access to writing materials.  Most of the time these thoughts end up being blog posts, and that's one of the reasons I love my blog so much - it gives me an actual outlet for expressing these thoughts.  I usually remember all the ideas I have for posts and type them out from my notes right away so they stay fresh the way I wanted them to be.  (It mostly works.) I was flipping through one of my notebooks the other day, and found this bit of randomness and almost couldn't even remember what it was supposed to be about.  But I'll give it my best guess.  Here is what I wrote in my notebook: What is the moon, but an old, pockmarked lump of rock? Hott Gorgeous Beautiful (Attractive) Pretty Cute Devin suggested the following: eye candy, jaw dropping, stunning In my opinion, cute and hott can be inte...

I know I talk about Muncie a lot, but I've figured out why.  If living in Brasil molded me into who I am now, then my time in Muncie refined me.  (As I follow that train of thought I come to the conclusion that my time at Purdue then polished me.  I guess that just leaves my life as wife and mother.  Ah, but of course.  That is my time to shine , yes?  Oh, brilliant.) That is not what I am here to talk about today though, so back to Muncie.  I got ahold of all my yearbooks from high school.  OH good times.  Want a peak into what people wrote in my yearbook? I'll leave out all the "have a great summers", shall I? - For a girl in which I want to get a hook up. - Wes (His handwriting was so bad this easily could have said "book up"... not really sure.) - Stay a smart doof, with your cheesy self. - Alison - I've always loved you. - Shaw - Remember I love you very much. - Shaw, the following year. (How sweet.) - Don't let anything bit...

Do you love skype as much as I do?  Check out these gems. Meet Brookston and Everett.  Love these guys.  Meet Cosmo. Meet Baby Jill and Aunt Mimi. Check out Jill skyping with Hallie and Hanna. I really really really love my skype.

There are days when I just don't feel all that well.  Last Monday was one of those days.  I call my approach to rearing my children on these days "parenting of least resistance".  Which is to say, that I relax and if what they are getting into isn't a. flammable b. sharp c. poisonous d. prone to extreme staining I probably don't put up much of a fuss.  This is highly different from my normal style of parenting, which to my surprise when I became a parent is much more controlling than I thought  would be.  Like, "don't put those panties on your head."  What kind of a rule is that? Who cares if she wants to have panties on her head?  This is what my head says to me on days like last Monday.  My normal voice says, "Make her get those panties off her head right now." Anyway.  On this Monday last week, this day which was definitely a "parenting of least resistance", Hallie got into my bathroom drawers and got out all my makeup. ...

Some people, so I hear, can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Some people, it is rumored, can't pat their head and rub their tummy at the same time. I had always been afraid that I couldn't possibly ski and stay alive at the same time.  Which is why I found myself, on Christmas Day, standing on top of Christmas Mountain Village, crying like a baby.  Crying because I knew that the only good way to get down from the mountain was by skiing, which way I knew meant certain death.  Crying because I had not properly said goodbye to Devin, or my babies, or my mother, or my sister, or my grandmother, or my grandfather, and it was Christmas after all, and I was just too young to die. Turns out, I was wrong. Turns out, I can ski and stay alive at the same time. Turns out I didn't rip my knee caps off my body either, which fear might also have contributed to the tears. My sister was so disappointed when I came back from skiing hours later that day.  Not disappointe...

Did you know that a large chunk of my childhood smells like flowers, and fruit, and the smell of an overcrowded bus on a sweltering hot, humid day? It looks like beaches and fireworks, gumbas, coatis , and sloths, bidets and cockroaches. It feels like rain and heat, soccer and dancing, smiling and singing. It tastes like feijoada, brigadeiros, and guarana. It is huge chocolate eggs for Easter, sweating on the beach for Christmas, lighting candles in the sand for New Year's, presents on Children's Day, a week off of school for Carnaval, it is giving figas to friends, it is the ciaza, and dust, buildings made of concrete and stone, it is awkwardness and growth. Sometimes, I want a taste of that again. Wouldn't you?  So last night for dinner I made feijoada.  With orange slices on the side. Because my childhood was one part Freddy Flinstone glasses from Pizza Hut, and one part feijoada with orange slices. Hanna is tasting a chocolate covered pretzel, and Hallie i...

Phew, it's about time we got some testosterone in this family.  I just pray that Hallie, Annibelle, Emily, Jill, Hanna, Callie and to-be-named Baby Girl Boling will be kind to him. But who knows, just because he's the first doesn't mean he'll be the last. We are so excited to have you little boy Daniel, and I love you very very much.

Here's to the next ten years being as great as the last ten. AND Happy Birthday Daddy.