Please Note~ Important Clarification
In making my list of 7 random things about me, I seem to have been a bit vague on #6.
6. When my children were young, I'd celebrate the start of school every year with a picnic brunch at the park with friends. Always done with china, crystal and mimosas. LOL, the secret life of sahm's.
Which then lead to my dahlin' friend J.P.'s comment, "You had picnics with your kids with mimosas? Girl, if I managed to drive through McDonald's, we were living high on the hog! Don't tell my kids how deprived they were!"
Now I don't quite know if the confusion comes from my old, rambling, unorganized brain or the fact that J.P. is a blonde and still has itty bitty babies at her feet during the course of the day but I didn't want to take any chances and have people think that I was frolicking in the park with drunken children (my children have fallen into the lagoon way to many times without alcohol being involved and BTW only when they were under their father's supervision). But I digress...
I had a circle of close friends that were SAHM's and while we all dearly love our children and fully embraced the decision to be SAHM's, it can get rough. You sometimes feel like life is a continuous cycle of fish sticks, mountains of smelly laundry and hearing the same knock knock joke 372x a day. We all dreamed of real conversation, actually using the wedding china instead of color coded tupperware snack sets (hey, I have 4 kids, color coded made life easier!) and to hear something in the background other than Raffi's Baby Beluga and Sharon, Lois and Bram's Elephant Show. So we started a tradition, on the first day that ALL of our children were in school every year, we'd meet at Lafreniere Park ...9:30am, backside (before W. Napoleon was cut through), behind the shelter, on a gentle rise that overlooked the lagoon. We'd each come with our contribution, menu always the same, coffee, mimosas, fresh fruit, cheeses, croissants, REAL butter (this is when I gave up margarine forever) and the tiny jars of the most exotic jellies we could find (NO Welch's grape allowed), all served on crystal, china and silver, always on the quilt my Granny handpieced for my wedding gift. NO children in sight, wonderful, rejuvenating, a much needed reward for making it through the summer months and always giving me renewed energy and enthusiasm for my chosen life path. While I'm reminiscing about the good old days, guess I could also share something else we used to do, Friday afternoons...those were special to. No homework was a cause for celebration, my kids' treat for the week was always a video rental for Friday night and either pizza or sandwiches so with no cooking and no homework, our afternoons opened wide up. The moms would head straight to my house when they picked their kids up from school, we'd throw them all in the backyard and sit out on the deck with coffee or margaritas and relax. LOL, it was always a mass exodus at 5, giving me just enough time to erase all signs of our leisure before Jim walked in from work. Snort, he always thought me waiting for him on the deck with a glass of wine and nibbles was "HIS" special treat, little did the poor man know that he was getting the leftovers. I am so busted if he ever reads my blog but remembering makes me smile and also makes me miss Deb, Lula and Johnnie. Course those were the ones that were always here, every week, others came when they had the chance and the laughter and commotion generally drew some neighbors into the mix. Makes me realize just how much has slipped through my fingers over the years, think I'll have to make it up to the redneck and surprise him with our old Friday evening tradition but before he gets home, I'm going to dig out Deb's number and give her a call.
LOL and I have to add...poor dear J.P. so drug out my old soapbox when she brought up the funding...Girlfriend, it takes no money to live with a touch of grace! Believe me, my wallet would have laughed at the thought of McDonald's for 4 kids. People used to be amazed that my kids grew up only using cloth napkins, geez, I couldn't afford paper towels!!! And once a week we had dinner by candlelight, not only did it have a calming effect on my wild tribe but it also made the third straight night of chicken thigh quarters less noticeable on the plate and an added perk was Jim didn't notice if the house wasn't quite up to snuff that day. Guess it just boils down to making an effort to slow down, enjoy today, use your "good" things, don't live "waiting" .....damndamndamn, Jeanne, girl, I so have to thank you! Wow, I sat down to just explain our back to school picnic and was hit by so many precious memories and the huge epiphany that I certainly have not been living what I believed so strongly about when I was younger. LOL, sonofagun, this blog thing is way better than therapy, course I always knew friends were, just didn't realize that the blogging lessens the physical distance between friends. Might not be the same as us sitting on the deck together but I'll take what I can get.

Tagged by Heather... 7 random facts about me...snort, where do I even start???
1. I have hugely eclectic taste in music. The stack of cd's sitting on my desk right now include Fats Domino, Paul Potts, Cowboy Mouth, Louie Armstrong, Chris Daughtry, Guns&Roses, Tom Jones, Rosemary Clooney, couple of 80's mixes and an Aquabooty mix (gift from dahlin' Tomas).
Just can't deal with country or the growly screaming crap, no clue what that's even considered.
2. At the age of 12, wrecked a motorcycle, was in the hospital for 2 weeks, leg brace for 3 months and had plastic surgery for the scars...done by Dr. Colon (LOL, it's a small world Heather!).
3. Once sang Maggie May in front of Rod Stewart. The look of horror on his face still makes me snicker, his bass player thought it was hysterical though.
4. My father owned a working farm and made me pick cucumbers during the summer for spending money, really quite tramatic for a city girl.
5. Met my hubby the day after my 14th b'day and been with him ever since, that's 32 yrs and counting.
6. When my children were young, I'd celebrate the start of school every year with a picnic brunch at the park with friends. Always done with china, crystal and mimosas. LOL, the secret life of sahm's.
7. All through school my nickname was ___, geez, like I'm gonna share that! We'll go with this one instead....Beaucoup years ago I really wanted to start quilting but went with scrapbooking because I thought paper would be cheaper and take up less space. Ha, little did I know!