Occasionally, when Brittain goes to visit her Gramy and Papa, they will send me pictures taken from the visit. I keep all the pictures that I take in a certain place, so most of the time any other pictures get lost on my computer. I decided to go back through some of my emails from Gramy to find these pictures and choose some of them to share on the blog. These are some of my favorites they took. As you can tell, they go all the way back to this past Christmas!

This next set of pictures were taken the night of the last Griffin Choral Arts concert. For past concerts, sometimes I would take Brittain with me to stay in the nursery, and sometimes she would go to Gramy and Papa’s. Whenever Amanda would attend a concert and bring Kyla Rose, the two of them always went to the nursery together and had a great time. This particular concert, Brittain wasn’t wanting to go to the nursery, but she did want to play with Kyla. So, I had the great idea of asking Gramy and Papa if they minded keeping BOTH of them! As always, they graciously accepted. Reanna was also there and the 3 of them had the time of their lives. (Gramy and Papa are still recovering, I think.)

Brittain assisted in picking cherries from Gramy and Papa’s cherry tree. Then, she even got to help make the pie.

I’ve been trying to think of some creative way to “unveil” this blog and the opportunity presented itself tonight in a funny way, so I’m going with it.

All of you know my mom…or “Mimi” as she is referred to here. But do you know that she’s a writer? And by writer, I mean she’s the ACTUAL writer in the family. The one who encouraged us to go after our dreams and be the best while she let her talents go by the wayside.

When we were thinking of gift ideas for Mama’s last birthday, giving her her own blog seemed the most obvious choice. Fortunately for me, I know right where to go to find someone to develop a custom blog for one of the most special people in my life. That’s right, the good people at the company I work for, Stone Soup Technology, developed this blog for my mom. Was she excited about it? Oh yes, she was…and it only took her about 3 months to actually write her first post.

Why?

Because we are Too Much Sugar for a Dime. Doot started calling us that a while back and there’s never a situation where that phrase doesn’t apply. It pretty much applies to every situation in our lives. In fact, the blog? Yep, I realized it was “too much sugar for a dime” when it took mama 3 days to post one single post because she was determined that she was going to “justify the margins.” And 3 days later? She ended up with a messed up post because she made it much more difficult than it should have been. But, you know what? Unfortunately, I think that’s us. We make things much more difficult than they should be. Hence, toomuchsugarforadime.com. It’s just too perfect when it comes to describing us.

Mama and I suddenly feel like we’re racing to the finish line when it comes to posting something. Now that we both have blogs, we both want to write about the same things, and this past weekend visiting Cecilia was one of them. I went over to my parents house tonight, and Mama forced me to sit and read what she had written. Then, just a few minutes ago, I texted her and told her that she BETTER sit down and read mine now. And you know what? She did. And this is what she texted me back in response:

“valerie this is fabulous. i don’t really think mine is good enough…i hope people don’t compare them. i can’t believe you surpassed me! but i am happy bout it since i thought after high school u would be illiterate. LOL. I need to change something. i didn’t tell enuf of the weekend and we r both telling some of same stuff. i’ll figure it out. yours is great.”

Wow…so how thankful am I that I turned out okay? Because boy would I be embarrassed right now.

To all my previous teachers who might be reading this, please accept my deepest apologies that my mom assisted, and occasionally completely wrote some of my papers. Of course, this should be a real tribute to your ability to teach in the classroom because apparently that’s all I really needed.

Seriously, you should check it out. She’s funny. And, the cartoon? Yeah, that’s me, Cecilia and Mama. That’s what I look like, right?