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Milestones

Happy 2013!

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My blogging surge hasn’t happened.

But I did get around to making a Happy New Year card which is really just a very belated Christmas card.

I’m fine with that and I kind of like it that way.

humphreys 2012 holiday card blog v2

If you have really great eyesight and can actually read the tiny print, please know that the actual card I mailed to friends and family did not say “SB” and “Scary Baby”. Just trying to respect the 13 year old’s privacy regarding internet strangers.

It has been 5 years since I started this blog and 5 years since I sent a holiday card. Probably not a coincidence as I felt everyone could get the Humpfreeze updates on the blog.

And perhaps because we had not taken a decent family photo since Scary Baby was one.

I’m still working on 2012 highlights and getting them on the blog for the sake of our family history. The timeline pressure is all mine and I can go at my own pace knowing that all that I have recorded in the past 20+ years is more than many take the time to do and release some of my guilt over my giant blogging gaps this year.

I’m not ready to stop but I still can’t figure out how to start again.

Thanks for hanging around here and reading when I do post. I love every comment and email I receive.

Happy New Year – may 2013 be the best year yet for you and your loved ones!!

xoxo

Blogging Milestone

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While November of this year will mark my 5 year blogging anniversary, today marks a different milestone.

500th blog post!

I’m sure that many bloggers hit that mark much more quickly than I have. I’ve gone through surges of regular, consistent blogging. And I’ve been inconsistent and gone missing for weeks because real life comes first and I can’t always blog about it.

I’ve blogged through the ups and downs of the teen years of our first three darlings. This flew in the face of the millions of mommy blogs out there with young babies and toddlers. I see them now questioning how much they can blog as their kids hit middle and high school. They are getting uncomfortable with blogging. It is a parenting season that can be the hardest.

I’m here to say to hang on – there is a light at the end of the tunnel and we can see it. With our strategic family planning, those teens are now “the twenties” which is reason to celebrate. My parenting goal was to get them to 18 so they could be solely responsible for their own actions.

Then PhilBillPaul and I woke up on April 22nd of this year, only to find we are fully immersed in raising teen #4. Scary Baby at 13 may be more work than the first batch of 3.

The blog material never ends. It’s the time it takes and trying to figure out the balance of real life and some level of privacy.

The good news – I’m still not drinking.

The bad news – I’m still not drinking.

Special thanks to my friend Leigh Anne who encouraged me to start a blog. Thanks to my friends who keep up with me through the blog. Thanks to my new friends who found a kindred spirit through the blog. Thanks to everyone who has ever left a comment because the “google gods” pay attention to that.

We’re having an ice cream celebration here.

Photo by Scary Baby who believes ice cream is a grocery staple.

Disclaimer: We did have 7 college kids here on Thursday night and they made sundaes. Just didn’t want you to think it was all for us. My favorites are in order from the bottom to the top.

This blog has become our online digital family photo album where I can write the stories and upload photos and then print the whole blog as a book to add to our shelf of family scrapbooks.

Capture the stories. Even the bad ones. It’s what makes us family. And some day, sooner than later, I hope you will be able to laugh about the times that make us all stronger.

Birthday Milestone

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Those tiny babies arrived 4 weeks early.

They tested everything I knew about being a woman, a wife and a mother and continue to test me still.

The darling twins…

…are 21 today.

They have shared so much more than a birthday in their twenty one years of being sister twins.

I hope today, especially, they will remember all the special memories they have created together.

In case they are still reading the blog…

Dad and I are so proud of you and love you both more than we can convey with mere words.

I hope you will celebrate and be safe and get along!

Yeah, you know I like to keep it real here on the blog and the darling twins continue to argue and fight while living in a house in the mountains this summer with five ten more people than we can count.

Any suggestions for a sweet, memorable milestone birthday gift? When I consulted my friend Google, gifts like over-sized flasks, engraved shot glasses, beer mugs and hangover cures came up. I found these items to be neither sweet nor memorable. I was looking for something that might not be associated with drinking alcohol. Pretty sure their friends will take care of the drinking themed gifts.

I’m notorious for late birthday gifts and this one won’t be the exception.

Side note: Late birthday gifts can be more memorable when they are not mixed in with the pile on the actual day. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

PhilBillPaul had no suggestions. I’m looking for something meaningful and my goal is to give it to them by their actual July due date. Takes the pressure off. We saw them this weekend so chances are good we won’t see them again until July anyway.

Do you remember what you got for your 21st birthday? Share here please–I need some inspiration! (as long as it wasn’t a car or a condo.)

My Favorite Beach

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Just when I think I’ve got a regular blog rhythm going on…

Something interrupts the rhythm and the blog suffers neglect.

This time it was a last minute beach trip with one darling twin.

I’m not complaining.

In the rarest of moments, I was able to travel with just one Humpfreeze child and we got to spend 4 decadent nights at the beach.

It was a grand early Mother’s Day present and I’d like to make it a new tradition. One child and mom on a trip.

For those of you who had one child instead of 2, 3 or {gasp} 4, this may sound like no big deal but for me it was lovely one-on-one time with my darling Roger Leroy.

I even had the joy of forcing asking her to wear a dress to dinner.

Sorry Rachel but I had to put it on the blog for posterity’s sake.

COPYRIGHT WARNING to Rachel’s friends: Lifting pictures from the blog and posting them on Facebook is stealing. 😉

She preferred gym shorts and cruising around in the golf cart.

The beach in Destin was gorgeous. It rivals many beautiful beaches we’ve been fortunate enough to visit.

No pictures of the water but Rachel described the crystal clear water as looking like an ad on television for a tropical vacation in the Caribbean. She’s right!

I love that it is less than a six hour drive from our house. We stopped going in the crowded summer and I can confidently say that May and September are my favorite times to visit.

New way to spell Humpfreeze just in…

I’m still going with Humpfreeze but this comes in 2nd place for most creative.

Thanks Errin & Doug for outstanding accommodations!

A belated but heartfelt Happy Mother’s Day to all my women friends. I hope you had a wonderful day.

Our Last Tween

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We enjoyed 22 months of teenage-free living and then, darn it, if that Scary Baby didn’t go and turn 13 and put us back in that parenting mode. Again.

Though really, her tween years counted double since she had three teen siblings for those years.

The tween and teen years really put the toddler years to shame. Oh how I yearn for those cute, funny days.

Alas, we can’t turn back time and here we are with a teenager once again.

We continue to keep birthdays pretty low key around here at the Humpfreeze house and have never caved to the peer pressure of extravagant, expensive parties and typically opt for family celebrations.

After her birthday weekend was spent with the grandmothers, she patiently waited two weeks to have a few friends over for dinner and a movie at home.

She picked the menu.

Fruit kabob appetizers. She was inspired to make kabobs when she found the funky skewers at a garage sale the weekend before for the bargain price of 50¢.

Chinese carryout – sesame chicken and fried rice.

And a birthday cake.

Selected by her via the Publix website.

Ebony & Ivory cake.

The chocolate pudding was suspiciously missing between the layers as described on their website but the cake was otherwise good.

Side note: I’d personally recommend the Chocolate Ganache Supreme instead. I also have a few customer service tips for Publix about the bakery clerk taking the cake order over the phone. Very surprised to get anything less than stellar customer service from Publix. (Especially since my 3 darling Twenties were forced to work there by their mean parents so they could learn the art of stellar customer service.)

Now we look forward to the next five years with our new teenager. She has so much potential and we can only hope her elderly senior citizen parents can live through it.

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