My Girl

Are you ever sometimes smitten with one of your children? Like more so than usual? I'm smitten with Noe lately. I am fascinated at how social she is. I am intrigued by her obsession with the Jonas Brothers. I adore the pictures she draws of her holidng hands with Nick. Or Kevin. Or Joe. You know, the Jonas Brothers. I love that she recently asked for a mirror to hang up in her locker at school. She wants to make sure her hair looks good during the day. I love these glimpses of her emergent independence.

I love her.

Here's How It Works

This is our family blog. It is private. It is replacing my previous family blog.
You are seeing it because I like you, and you are in my circle of trust. Okay, that's probably a little dramatic, but then again, maybe not so much.

This is where you will see pictures and stories about our family. The other blog, at eggplant-is-her-game.blogspot.com, is my new vague and nondescript public blog. I will have two blogs. You don't have to read both if you don't want to. Well, yes you do, actually. I only post about twice a week anyhow, so it will probably come down to once here and once publicly.

Enjoy.

And The Winner Is...

Sorry, this is the only clip I can find of this tune. It's lame.



And, WOW... you guys do not know your music. Annemarie- mad props to you. You were the only one who got it right. I'll send your cd out this week. Impressive.

Tunesday: Sampling vs. Remaking; PLUS: A GIVEAWAY!

There's a difference between an artist remaking a song (think Tribute Albums) and an artist sampling a song. For me, a remake is really great if it's as good as the original. (Mary J. Blige's remake of Chaka Khan's Sweet Thing is an example.) Sometimes, a remake can actually exceed the original in listening pleasure. (Beyonce and Luther remade The Closer I Get To You, which for me completely tops Roberta Flack's version). Are you catching on? Sampling, however, is different from remaking a song.

One of my favorite things to do is find a sample from an old song in the background of a newer song. I'm talking a little LESS obvious than Vanilla Ice's infamous "Under Pressure, Pressure, Baby". There is so much music out there that has snippets of classic old tunes. It's a never-ending adventure.

Anyway. I love me some LL. I saw him once in concert, and while he doesn't hold a candle to the phenomenally sexy man I'm married to, he is still a piece of art. One of my favorite songs by him is "Hey Lover." This song is classic; it's only made better by the fact that Boys II Men throw their smooth harmony all over the place. Love them too. I wanted to post the video, but in true LL style, it's... shall we say... a bit racy? Yes. We shall say that. So below you will find only the audio clip.

CHALLENGE: If you can tell me the name of the song he sampled here, to include the artist, I will burn you a cd with all of the Tunesday hits up to this point. As you know, I use comment moderation. So I will simply store all the comments this week instead of publishing them, so no one can see anyone else's replies. Comments will be posted when the winner is announced at the end of the week. AND NO CHEATING. You can't google the answer. Where's the fun in that??

Confessions of a Recovering Micromanager

I have read your blogs, friends. I have seen your Hellacious Holidays. I am here to bestow upon you the great wisdom that is mine. The catchphrase itself is old, yes. But its veracity still rings true.
Wait for it....

LESS

IS

MORE.

I thoroughly enjoyed Halloween this year. Here's how I did it:
1. I told the kids they had 15 minutes to find a costume at Walmart, while I stepped around the corner aisle to pick up some candy. If after 15 minutes, they had no costume, then they would have to make do with whatever they could find at home.
2. I gave them their own makeup and said, "Have fun with this!"
3. I didn't sign up to bring treats to any of their class parties.
4. I sent my oldest trick-or-treating with all his friends.
5. I took my youngest two to the dorms on campus, where they went through 11 floors of college kids who all called them "cute" and "scary".
6. Let them come home and run around the neighborhood a bit, while I sat in the van "making sure they were safe."

And then we were done.

I even felt so confident in my down-sized holiday, that when my husband hinted around that the USC/Oregon game may conflict with trick-or-treating, I nobly said to him, "Honey, if you would like to skip trick-or-treating and stay home to watch the game, I am totally fine with that." To which he replied, "Babe, I was planning on staying home to watch the game anyway." To which I mentally screamed, "Oh, HELL no, he DIT'INT!" But out loud, I said, "This would be a good opportunity for you to tell me how much you appreciate my kind gesture, and that you hate to miss out on the festivities, but since you can clearly see I have it all under control, then you will graciously accept my offer and really owe me one."

He conceded I might be right.

But I digress. The entire point of this post is that really, the kids are more than happy to do it all themselves. Could I have made them look cuter? Probably. Could I have sewn a more clever costume? Probably. Could I have wowed the teacher and other classroom moms by making some of the unbelievably clever goodies I've seen floating around? For sure. But I would've loathed the entire process because it would have eaten up all my free time. In the end, they still got a ton of candy, and had a blast in the process. The husband enjoyed watching the game (although I'm sure Ilene's husband enjoyed it more...) and I had a stress-free holiday.

This is the first year I've tried this approach, and it worked well for me. I highly recommend it.