family game night.

ahhh. the joy of monopoly...

NOT!

sorry parker brothers, i'm not a fan. i've tried since i was a little girl, but you stress.me.out. maybe it's the too close parallel between real and imaginary life spending for me. or the fact that the volume of voices when playing is at an all time high and always sound defensive and high-pitched. or the fact that the game NeVER seems to end, i don't know.
i snapped this photo after i couldn't take it anymore and stomped off in true mama kat fit fashion when another episode of whoever smelt it dealt it snuck into this marathon event. the dogs even seemed to participate in this game.
i do have to give you kudos though for engaging these 4 fellows:(as pictured from left to right)

• the-plaid-jacket-wearing-slick-used-car-salesman-who's-constantly-screaming,"WHaT?!"-because-he's-too-busy-trying-to-swindle-someone-to-notice-someone-else-has-landed-on-his-property-and-the-next-person's-gone-so-he-doesn't-get-paid-guy
• the-always-calculating-i'm-gonna-regret-that-move-aren't-i-and-i-will-NEVeR-let-ANY-detail-of-this-or-any-game-go-unnoticed-guy
• the-eternal-grand-master-of-the-bank-and-we-don't-need-the-stinkin-rules-cause-i-make-them-real-estate-risk-taker-guy
• the-sure-i-only-have-4-bucks-left-and-build-motels-in-the-hood-but-will-somehow-manage-to-whip-your-butts-because-i've-been-running-a-black market-pencil-ring-in-my-locker-at-school-guy 

good times, my friends. good times.


gotta love boys.
 

thank you, margaret elizabeth.

more things change in 19 years than just your body...

enter my prom dress from 1991.
of course a big night out is just another reason to shop for a girl...anything is a reason to shop for a girl, right?! apparently not 19 years later. ReALLY dreading the thought of trying on dress after dress for a super fancy one time event is not even remotely exciting anymore...it's dreadful. my body is different, i know i'll never where the dress again and when i look at the price tags all i really see is sports registration fees, camp registrations, my costco and sam's receipts & anything else that pertains to three crazy monkeys and a dog that continues to eat things that aren't food.
am i boring or what?!
well, i saw this sparkly thing in the closet, tucked my skin and stretched out parts into some spanx and AMAZING, it still fits!
and even better... no $ spent and had a blast with my original prom date (hubba hubba) and family watching my amazing sister-in-law light up the room and keep us in awe again!

thank you betsy for always bringing the life to everything, especially this old dress, but more importantly, always to our hearts!
we love you and are so proud of you!
xoxo,
sanford

ps socks were not part of the actual night-out attire.
i'm not that lame...

yet ;)

"in your face, mom!"

i've never been happier to hear those words :)
after all my complaining and dread, cheers to my boys for rising to the challenge of doing science fair with their procrastinator mother and coming out on top.
thank you for teaching me!
i shall eat crow for dinner.
xo,
mama kat

 

dear it's-required-and-we're-taking-a-grade-science-fair-people.

i am NoT your number one fan! okay, so maybe i am a science teacher. so maybe i do love the scientific method and experiments and making mistakes and learning from them and getting messy and wearing super-goobery goggles and my black rubber boots and cute aprons, BUT i do not now nor ever did like the science fair. i am pretty close to loathing it or as my close friend, senor thesaurus, would say, i feel repugnance toward it.
not sure if you're aware of this, i'm somewhat of a professional crastinator. 
professional crastinator - one who waits until the very last second to do anything, but still gets it done. one who will do anything and everything he/she can to put off work, including writing definitions into the Urban Dictionary. one who procrastinates in every aspect in his or her life.[shout out to urban dictionary :)]

 apparently, the pain of having to turn one of these suckers in does not go away after you graduate!
yeah, yeah...i love my kids, i definitely chose to have them & completely understand what a gift and blessing each one is (i really do mean that!), but because of them  

YOU STILL HAUNT ME!!!

you stress me out! it is pretty much a fact that i can never do the same thing twice or at least not even remotely in the same way...have you been to my house?! the floor plan is different every week! have you ever known me to have the ability to do something by-the-book or follow rules ever? do you realize what you have just now passed on to my three children? or really what won't be passed on?

phew. i feel a little better getting that off my chest. thanks.

well i'll have you know that i'm really trying to overcome my disability somehow....maybe i'll start by making a list of new, fresh science fair project ideas...

hmm. 

• how many science fair projects does it take to send my mom to the looney bin?
• how many loads of clean laundry do you need to dump in a pile before they fold themselves and put themselves away?
• which is more painful: the thought of cleaning the bathrooms, the thought of no diet coke, the thought of ever being a den leader again, or the thought of a clown coming straight at you?

those are just a few ideas to get a head start for next year's science fair. aren't you proud of me?!

woohoo. i am pumped!

spitefully yours,

sanford

disclaimer: aside from the above rant, i am extremely proud of my boys and their hard work on their science fair projects this year! they deserve huge extra credit or some special judges' award for having to work with me! ;)

nine.

you, jack, are nine today!!! happy birthday to my little jackie-poo-poo! this is one of my favorite pictures of you. 

 

your smile is shining through your eyes and your chubby cheeks and your precious blonde curls. and as betsy has pointed out, it's amazing that there is not a ball in sight! :) your are action. you are non-stop...thinking and doing. you are sports and mud and outside. you are always with bare feet :)

you are deep and curious. you remember details...a lot of details...very specific details. you love to completely involve yourself in whatever your interest is...sports, legos, cars, racetracks, sandcastles, you name it. you love to say, "okay, just one more time..." you love to play football, especially with your dog. you sometimes fight with your brothers, but will watch out for each of them and protect them with all of your might.

here's lolo doing the same for you :)

you like to dress up as yourself for halloween...

 

you are a fan of food just like your mom...

 

i was supposed to get back to you about my favorite thing about your year 8 and i have to say i think it was watching and listening to you think about your favorite things about your year 8 :)

you make me smile. you are loved and fill our lives so much. i'm amazed at how you've grown in so many ways.

happy birthday my sweet jack!!!

xoxo,

mama kat

a message to mister in miami from the bruddas.

remember that dad?




here is SIX years later...

can't wait to share the fun with you soon!
xo,
the knuckleheads, mama kat, the old lady, mosby-moo & pedro

missing my valentine.

 

fingers crossed for your new flight home tomorrow

xoxo

....more

happy friday.

 

i heart you sun. your light makes everything right.
xo

dear trusty rain boots.

please give me the umph and sass to FiNALLY start my day. i have been poor-pitying-me for a week now.
yes, i may apparently be some medical freak of nature in the girly issues department. and, yes, this past week has not been the most comfortable to manuver in clothing of any type and modesty has CoMPLETeLY gone out the window.
but it's time to suck it up chickadee!
let's put our big girl panties on (sorry mister, no pun intented there ;) ) and clean and work and hang with my family and stop whining.
so, awesome-fantabulous rain boots, shall we begin our day? i think we shall :)

last one in the puddle's a rotten egg!!!

peace out.
sanford

i am THE best mother e-ver.

here is some work my sweetest little first grade angel brought home today.

hmm.

"mom, maybe we need to watch what we say in front of him."

-logan

btw...apparently that nice little tiger at the bottom is not saying what i thought he was saying...

"I'm going to eat you little punk!" said the tiger

ahhhhhhh.

still a little disturbing, but better.

okay. maybe i have a problem...

this was breakfast today.

 

really.

and maybe even more sad is that the picture doesn't even show how i truly wanted to shed a tear because they didn't have vanilla zingers and so i had to settle on the twinkies.

i cannot believe i'm going to utter these words...

i want to cry because my sewing machine is broken.

there i said it. i feel better now.

dear lego people.

thank you for legos. i'll have to admit, you have not always been my friends. i may have cursed your name a few times as i stepped on one or two of your fine products that so amazingly camouflage themselves on the floor. i may have lost my mind cool on occasion because your products never seemed to find their way back into their designated place. and i may have to admit that i could have possibly 'accidentally' sucked up a few of your brilliant pieces of creativity in my friend, dyson, and not exactly felt too terribly bad and may have actually smiled just a little...
but, today, lego people i want to THAnK YOU!
thank you for making 3 boys plan together, work together, clean up together, organize together, laugh together, plot against their mom together and build upon dad's childhood memories together. i am not sure who actually enjoys this new sanctuary more, dad or child. no matter, you have made one mom's heart smile at the sight of each and every little product you make knowing how you make her guys feel.
xoxo
-sanford

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

btw...our lego city can kick your lego city's behind.

just sayin'

dear candid camera.

did you have to pay your crew overtime to stake out my house this past week? i know you were there. there the other day for when the national championship football game went from a really fun family rivalry...

to an out-of-control sibling brawl...

and there yesterday when i spent a good hour and a half or so chasing a soap-filled monster dog around the backyard like a psycho.

 

i looked so sweet in my black wellies and hundred year old jammie pants and knubbly-not-so-matching-fuschia shirt. my hair was even finer all bobby-pinned back except for the stub of a ponytail i insist on wearing. my look was even complimented by the white-trash yelling i was doing as i sped around the pool after this...

only to land smack dab in his poop.
if you'll noticed the white, round speck in the above picture, it is the seashell i so cleverly pretended was food to lure the bubbled houdini back to my lair.
GOTCHA! he totally fell for it and i had him by the collar until he skinnied his wet neck enough to slip out of it and run off to roll around in the leaves...classic candid camera.
when do the episodes air?

-sanford

road trip family style part two: we're finally here! yay! pow! what?! and good-bye :(

 WaRnING: ReALLY LoNG POsT!!!
okay, now i will ramble.
well, some time has passed since my last entry and to say a lot has happened would be an understatement. and in true procrastinator style, i put off writing this 'because there was a lot and when will i actually have a chunk of time big enough to upload pictures, write and not forget anything?' and then more stuff happens and then i have to stress about that and now it's going to be even worse...you get the picture. BUT i am breaking the cycle of my lazy-procrastinator-psycho-babble and journaling about the events over our past few weeks...because usually at this point, that would have been the end of my blogging career due to too much trouble and worry and actually not going through with something i set out to do and i'm TRyING to change my ways. one baby step at a time.
so...today i will  add the pictures and a few (HA!) details from our colorado roadtrip to see grandpa ed; grandma cheryl; brother/uncle nick; brother/uncle joe; and sweet, crazy, i-bark-insanely-at-ceiling fans, bear....phew!

so back on the road we went after our fine comfort inn breakfast.

wednedsay afternoon, we finally had arrived.

fortunately, we did not have a drive like this from the night before in the storm.

and, thankfully, we did not end up like this like so many others.

 

as soon as we got there, out they went into the snow and had a blast. not sure who enjoyed it more...those with two legs or those with four :)

 

 

 

 

a pretty nice christmas eve if i must say so myself :)

....begin christmas morning.....and AcTION!!!

the dreaded picture pose before spying all of santa's goodies.

 

and now the goodies

and betsy even sent us an e-mail picture of these goodies santa left at our house in dallas so parts wouldn't get lost in colorado. boy, that santa is sneaky and smart! and look at my sweet avery girl who was left at home. think she enjoyed the peace? :)

now here begin's the action. if you look back at the picture of the boys on the stairs you will notice a happy, smiling fischer. fast forward a few hours and here is what you will see a few hours later...

"mom, my throat hurts"

hmmm. there seems to be an egg growing on the left side of your throat, no fever. let's take some advil and see what happens...

an hour or so later...hello e.r.

pobre fischer :(

an hour or so even later...hello second e.r. and even more swelling and new puzzled doctors.

an ultrasound, antibiotics, warm compresses and EVeRY hard sour candy that dad could find at the-only-7-11-open-on-christmas-day-in-boulder later this trouper was diagnosed with a blocked blah-blah-blah gland and thankfully it was determined to be swelling outward not inward....yay!!! we can finally take him 'home' to enjoy what is left of christmas. mister and i felt so bad for him, not to mention how bad we felt for our other two we weren't able to be with and the family we had to come visit that we weren't seeing either. and 'home' we went to eat leftover dinner standing up and exhausted. as we were about to partake in yummy red roosters...

'mister, look at logan...'

sweet! 103 temp. "were's the advil?"

with one day left, we enjoyed our time together.

sadly, sunday, we were on the road again. back to new toys, more snow in dallas...what?!..., the old lady and more winter break adventures.

here is the awesome sunrise that we witnessed as we turned out of dad's neighborhood to travel home...amazing!

i'd now like to say a few thank you's...

thank you new mexico for providing a much safer and definitely more scenic route than kansas.

thank you to uncle david who knit these nice, warm, cozy hats for us this christmas...mine rocked on mosby-potty-pit-stops!

 thank you to dad for teaching my dog to do this...

'huh? what? i'm not supposed to be up here? i think my ears are clogged from the altitude..."

my husband is so pleased.

thank you for anyone who has read this far :)

and finally, thank you to this guy

who safely guided us home and put up with THIS

for several days in the car.

i heart you, man :)

xoxo

peace out!