I eat the small chips...

...in the basket at mexican restaurants. This drives my daughter crazy. She, of course, loves and eats the big unbroken pieces from the top after she dips them in the hot sauce or chili con queso. But I prefer the smaller ones in the bottom of the basket. I can use them to dip into the hot sauce (even though I really am not a fan of spicy sauces or dips) or guacamole (that I love so much.) These little chips taste the same as the big ones, they're just not always accessible, convenient, and are sometimes flawed. But they taste the same as those big perfect ones on top. I think they're better though because you don't have to break them to eat them and are the perfect size for me.

I thought about this whole chip thing as I waited for my friend at lunch last week. I've had a friend for over twenty years who lives about thirty minutes away. We don't really have a whole lot in common. She was the girlfriend of my hubby's coworker at one time. We remained friends with her even after the coworker parted ways. I think she and I have a bond due to time...even though we live semi-close, we eventually only saw each other about once a year for a decade or so. In the last two to three years, we started meeting more often at a mexican restaurant near where she works for lunch and exchanging information about our lives and finding out what's new with each other.

It's nice to know someone so long that you immediately know certain things like if they're happy or sad or whether they've lost or gained weight. It's also great having an impartial person to be able to vent to about your family, brag about great things happening, or to just sit and talk with (when there is nothing going on.) She's gone through a couple husbands, I've raised a couple girls, we care about our those people close to us...we've become a special support group for two who meet a few times a year.

My friend is like one of the little chips.

Backyard picnic

My kindergartener had planned on having a picnic. We were thinking about going to a park to do it but ended up just doing one in our yard. It was lovely! I sat with my camera and took picture after picture. The kiddos ate their sandwiches, grapes, chips and drank grape kool-aid. I sat this morning and uploaded the pictures and looked for a couple that might stand out. While there were some cute ones, two really stood out for me of my toddler. He was enjoying his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Of all my kiddos, he is the happiest, usually never grumpy (other than when he wakes up, of course) and loves to smile!



I love his little dirty fingernails too! He's just precious!

So proud...

Since about two or three weeks after school started, I was summoned to my kindergartener's class for a parent-teacher conference. There was a gap between my kiddo and the other kids in the class. I had that pit in the bottom of my stomach because I had not studied with him during the summer as I should have. So...we started studying each day to learn the uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet along with the sounds of each with the flash cards that I made. It was slow starting but after a trip to Academy (a local sports store,) where he saw the perfect boots, I found the perfect motivation.

My kiddo loves anything having to do with ranches and cowboys. He loves tractors, construction vehicles, and/or anything related to ranches. These particular boots he saw were the perfect ranch boots. They weren't pointy like cowboy boots but were rather rounded like the boots his dad wears outside to work.

So we practiced each day. Finally, today, he got all of them right! I don't know who was more happy or proud....him, or me! But he felt the feeling of doing something with a goal, practicing, and then the feeling of accomplishment! It was a great feeling! We bought those boots! He didn't have time to wear them though as it was near time to go to bed by the time we got home. But....this weekend, we go to our in-laws farm and they just bought a tractor. That is heaven for my kiddo! I've already made the next set of cards to learn next (numbers and sight words.)

Today was a good day!