My slip must be showing which means my husband wasn't truthful with me....

This post may be more for those of you that remember the strict clothing guidelines of my mother and grandmother’s generation…it’s also the same generations that have caused me to never ever even think about white before Easter or after Labor Day no matter how many times Clinton and Stacy say it is ok. It’s not going to happen in my world. So….Do people still wear slips anymore? I still do, but maybe that is because I don’t like my underwear showing through my dresses and skirts….or the fact I can still see my mom and Grandma Ewing looking over the dresses I was trying on for Easter and knowing a slip was non-negotiable. Obviously others don’t have the same worries because I’ve seen countless pairs of undies through many a skirt this season. I remember always wearing a slip with my dresses when I was younger. Always. It was also a huge deal to make sure it wasn’t showing. A fatal wardrobe flaw was to have a slip longer than your skirt. Yikes. Anytime I got a dress that had a liner built in I was in heaven.


This summer has pretty much been the year I turned Amish. I wear a skirt or a dress all the time. Maxi dresses are my absolute favorites. It makes me wonder why Little House on the Prairie clothing ever went out of style. It must have been a man that thought shorter skirts would be way better. Really, we women need to band together more and say No to short dresses. Try on a maxi dress. It hides the flaws on your legs….bruises, chub, stark white, etc. They are wonderful.

This summer the thought of putting on my much loved denim capris is painful (not the 105 degree weather has anything to do with that). I love my dresses this year. I have a skirt that I bought years and years ago but due to the fact it’s mostly white and has to be dry cleaned I didn’t wear it much. Also the fact it had a fancy enough top to require my heeled navy sandals that left me writhing in pain just looking at them didn’t help it’s cause any either. I was almost ready to give it away this year but then I had an epiphany. Why not switch out the fancy Navy sweater for a nicer navy t-shirt which would dress it down enough I could wear flat sandals. Genius. If only I thought about it 4 years and 6 varicose veins earlier. So one trip to Old Navy later I was set.

Until I wore it again for the first time. With Camryn. Then I remembered the other problem-Dry Clean Only. White skirt. So I decided to try washing it. Oh and I forgot to mention, this skirt had a built in liner. It was just a white cotton skirt. If I washed it on delicate and lined dried it how bad could it be?

As I watched the skirt dry it seemed to get shorter as the liner got longer. It was also pretty wrinkled. All it needed was a good ironing and it would straighten right out. I ironed it and the problem seemed to be solved. I packed it away for our trip. When we went out to eat with my mom and Steve on Friday night in Oklahoma City I wore the skirt. Something didn’t feel right. I thought it was because the bathroom was about 150 degrees and I couldn’t tell if my skin wasn’t drying after my shower or if I was profusely sweating again. I thought the liner was sticking because it felt twisted.

After we got home I decided to leave the skirt out and wear it again today. Normally I wash and sanitize all articles that have entered a hotel room, but since this skirt is so high maintenance I wanted one more wear. I got a glimpse of myself in the full length mirror and thought I saw the liner peeping out from the hem. It was my first day back after 7 days off….I was ready early for a change….all my other good clothes and/or corresponding non-showing underthings were still in the to be sanitized and de-bedbugged pile I decided to go with it. Here is where the lie came in. I asked Jay if he could see the skirt liner. He said just a little. I asked him if it looked ok or if I should change. He barely looked at me and said it was fine.  I know what he was thinking....I need to get out of here now and if she changes it will delay me another 10 minutes so I'm going to tell her you don't even notice it and then make a quick getaway....

Apparently it was not fine by the look I got from a lady around my grandmothers age at the post office today. She gawked at my liner. Clearly could not take her eyes off of it and then she gave me a little smirk. In her mind I was classified in the category of all that is wrong with today’s society….I was letting my slip show. First it is the slip, then an occasional bra strap next thing you know we are all letting whale tails show. Really!!! I always make sure my slip is not showing. Today (in the words of Jay’s Aunt Mary) was a bad fashion day.

Men (my husband) don’t understand what my fashion error said today. But how can we expect guys to understand women’s fashion when they go into any store and pick up 34x36 pants and they fit…no matter the store, the brand, the cut, the price. They fit. I let my grandmother down…but then again if it would’ve been my grandma getting stared at she would’ve adjusted her glasses with her middle finger and moved on. She’s been gone for 5 ½ years and I still miss her. Actually I just realized this is the skirt I wore to her funeral….

Home!!

After 5 states...
Almost 3000 miles...
26 hours of driving time...
1 broken cologne bottle, 1 broken picture frame, 1 broken camera (all at the hands of Camryn)...
1 stolen book which was later snuck back in to the store and placed on the shelf...
One awesome rented mini van which is making me rethink my stance on owning one...
One moment of thinking I had lost my boy in Mall if America (but he was still in line for a ride, I had chest pains for awhile
after that incident)

We are home!!

It was a great trip but it was also great pulling up to our house yesterday afternoon.


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Vacation Day #2.....Mall of America

After an hour long crying fit from Camryn and a particularly traumatizing diaper change at Barnes & Noble I forgot to put back the Chronicles of Narnia book Cade and I were contemplating. It was hidden by the sun shade in the stroller. I remembered it after we got back to the hotel. Jay said he saw it when he was tearing down the stroller but he thought I'd bought it. Nothing like stealing a book written by a Christian author. We've been discussing various approaches on how to return the book. Do we walk in and admit it and then purchase it or just put the book back on the shelf? C.S. Lewis would be proud.

Nothing says vacation success like shoplifting.


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Our 4th

I wasn’t sure if I was going to post this or not, but I have finally decided I will. I'm to a place where I can think about it without my palms sweating. And the purpose of the blog was to be honest about adopting and parenting. So this post is for all of you good parents who have an off day here and there on occasion. Some will read these words and be horrified, others will read it and think “whew, at least I’m not that bad.” As a preface – Jay and I do watch our kids very closely. But things just seem to keep happening to Camryn that never happened to Cade…..But like Jay said Wednesday could’ve been a bad day – but really it wasn’t because everyone went to bed that night in one piece.


Jay and I were parental failures on Wednesday. It started when we decided to go to Springfield for lunch and a Sam’s trip. Cade put Camryn in the car and told me he couldn’t get her fastened. I told him I’d do it in a minute. Then Jay couldn’t find his dang Johnny Spencer hat (which that hat could be a post on it’s own, Johnny only had a few made advertising his bid for public office and he trusted Jay enough to give him one but I keep crushing the hat by accident.  Wednesday I found it under a basket in our storage cabinet in the laundry room) so I had to search for it for him. Then we had to switch out some laundry and grab the diaper bag, etc. You probably know where I’m going with this….we were about 20 miles down the road, on I-44, when Cade yells “Camryn’s not hooked up”. I thought I handled it pretty well. My first instinct was to screech the brakes and whip the car over on the side of the interstate, but I saw the next exit was 1 mile away. Instead I calmly took that exit and came to a slow easy stop and got her hooked up. I drove off thanking God that we had not been in an accident prior to us realizing she was not fastened.

We ate lunch and made another stop with out incident. Then we went to Sam’s. Everything was going fine until we were ready to checkout. I remembered we needed milk. I told them to wait and I’d be right back. My parting words to Jay were “keep your hands on Camryn”. As I’m walking back with the milk I heard Camryn crying and I knew something had happened. As I turned down the aisle and saw three shoppers with their hands over their mouths I knew she had fallen out of the cart. Jay was holding her and he looked terrible. He turned his head for a half second and Camryn plopped out of the cart onto the concrete. Thankfully there were no broken bones and no blood. I gave her a bottle and she appeared to be fine. Jay quickly returned all of our cold items so we could checkout and head to Urgent Care. We wanted to have her head checked to make sure she didn’t have a skull fracture or concussion since she had a goose egg growing out of the side of her head.

While Jay was putting the stuff up and checking out (we opened up one of the gallons of milk so she could take a bottle so we had to pay for it) I took the kids to the car. Cade was in panic mode. I was trying hard to squelch my panic, but he has making it worse. I think he asked me 20 times if she was going to go blind. I’ve pondered off and on about why Cade picked blindness as the ailment he focused on. Finally today it came to me. Recently we were watching Little House on the Prairie and he asked me why Mary was blind. Since I’m such a TV nerd I told him about how hers was nerve damage but her husband Adam’s was from a trauma. I told him about how on another episode Adam hit his head again and regained his eyesight. Mystery solved.

We got to Urgent Care and ended up not having to wait very long. Camryn was her normal self – talking, walking, smiling, no ill-feelings towards her parents. Jay and I were a little worse for the wear, but at least Camryn was good. Cade was still pretty upset, which meant he was talking. A lot.  Which made Jay and I even more tired.

We got back in the room and the nurse came in to find out what had happened and get Camryn’s health history. I was so exhausted from the fall and Cade asking me if she was going to go blind that I had a hard time thinking. The nurse asked me if there was any significant health history. I was so mentally slow it took me a moment to sort our what the nurse might need to know and what she didn’t necessarily need to know….like she is adopted (no), she has had nursemaid elbow twice (no), she fell in the bathtub once (no), etc. Since it was taking me awhile to go through the mental checklist Cade decided to put in his two cents. He said “well she did eat a Cascade Action Pack last week”. Jay stared daggers at Cade. Thank you Cade for making us sound even worse than we already felt. Yes, one day last week she took a bite out of one of those action packs before Jay could get her stopped. She then proceeded to vomit up the entire contents of her stomach. Just FYI- kids eat those things all the time and it is ok per Poison Control. After the nurse left we sent Cade back out to the waiting room. We didn’t need any more of his “help” while we were there.

The doctor looked her over and said she didn’t see anything that was concerning –which is what we thought to, but it helps to have a professionals opinion. They sent us home with a list of things to watch for and she hasn’t had any of the symptoms on the printout. Again, we were thanking God that He kept her safe.

Lyle and Jania had invited us over that evening and we still went because we decided we wanted more adults to help us watch her. Cade and Ty were outside shooting off minor fireworks. Cade came in and said something had hit him in the face. I think a piece of something broke off and hit him. Thank goodness it wasn’t a few inches higher or we would’ve been going back to the ER that evening. Cade wisely decided he was done with fireworks without us telling him it was time to quit. What a day.

For those keeping track since December we’ve had

2 ER Visits

2 Urgent Care Visits and

2 Poison Control calls

It is a good thing I color my hair or otherwise I think it would be all gray. I’m not sure if Camryn is more active than Cade or if it’s because Jay and I are 9 years slower with her, but she is certainly a handful. I jokingly told Jay that the reason why we ended up with Camryn was because God knew she needed parents with a good insurance plan!!

Is there anything better..

Then a weekend at home?








Cade was kicking his feet under the covers. Camryn was imitating.

And Camryn learned a new word...No!

It was a big weekend!