I forgot to say Thanks... :)

Thanksgiving was Thursday, and I spent the entire week in Atlanta hanging out with my parents and extended family.

There are three things I missed about San Marcos this week-besides the obvious.. roommate, friends.. etc. Those three things are: Cable, High Speed Internet, and good Cell Phone Service! The more and more I thought about those things today on my drive home, the heavier my foot got. Before I knew it, my 6 and 1/2 hour drive turned into a 5 and 1/2 hour drive... and here I am back in my cozy San Marvelous apartment holed up in my room on the computer.

I quickly unpacked in my own very messy unorganized way, showered, ate... and finished the homework I never really worked on this week. Now what? Of course... a Thanksgiving Blog!

The sad thing is that I started to think about all the funny things that happened over Thanksgiving and I realized that nothing I did was at all "Thanksgivingy." Besides the enormous amounts of food and family, I realize that this year I did not once observe the actual meaning of the holiday. I didn't think about the Indians or the Pilgrims.. I didn't sing any Turkey songs from my preschool days... and not ONCE did I think about what I am Thankful for. So here I am a few days late... giving thanks!

1. I am thankful for my friends, that make me laugh everyday! It never fails that on the day I decide I am going to be ticked off at one of my room mates, or give up on one of my close friends... that they seek me out and make me smile. I then forget anything they ever did to make me the slightest bit irritated!! ...I am also thankful that none of them have ditched me for being far more irritating than they ever thought about being ;)

2. I am thankful for my parents who take great care of me! I am very lucky to have parents that have sacrificed a lot for me to have almost everything I could ever want or need! I'm a bit spoiled in that way!!

3. I am thankful for my brothers and my sisters-in-law, I couldn't ask for better role models and friends! I am ESPECIALLY thankful for them this year because they've given me two beautiful nieces and a darn cute nephew whom I love VERY much!

4. I am incredibly thankful for my extended family... there are soo many of them, and they are all very different... and VERY special to me! ...Some more loud and entertaining than others! I am thankful for all the memories that I have of holiday traditions, birthday gatherings, and everthing in between! .... & it just keeps growing!

5. Most importantly, I am thankful for a God who has blessed me with all these things! I am so glad that he has placed me exactly where I am meant to be in this world with these people and this life. Four years ago I was in exactly the same position I am in now, about to graduate high school and clueless about where my life was headed. Look how well that turned out for me! I can't wait to see what he has in store for the next leg of my life :) I am thankful for him because I know I can place my life in his hands and trust him to put me exactly where I need to be!


OK. Now that I've been all sugary and sweet...it's time to move on! It is time to move on because in the midst of my forgetting to be thankful, I was busy visiting with family on Thursday. So now it is time to share, and I'm sorry in advanced-because as you know, I can be inappropriate... & I do not filter :)

Thanksgiving 2009...

My mom, my dad, and I were loners this year and we all went to Aunt Judy's to have our feast with the Griffin side of the family. There were 10 kids under the age of 13, and somewhere in the ballpark of 15-20 adults...

I can't really blog about the whole day in detail because details are fuzzy and the days are running together... so I will bullet the quick bits of what I remember.

• The Cowboys won
• I put on an Aggie jersey that smelled like attic to irritate Flint...
• I found Carson on the roof
• Jana and I spotted Carson on a haystack..little did we know that he was being chased by Brown Sugar... who was really named "Classy," and he may have had to change his underwear sometime after that.
• Jennifer invaded my personal space... a few times.
• Jana may or may not be a MILF
• Mallory has retarded strength... (pet a puppy... kill a puppy), and I found her in a tree.. more than once.
• There was a lot of food..

....and it was good.

....and I did filter a little bit

The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us to become our best while looking our worst. -Marge Kennedy

Jennifer Jo

I'm 4 years old... home from preschool... pacing the halls of our new house. Jason comes in. I am thrilled! Not because Jason is home, but because I know how he got home. He rode home from school with Jennifer, my cousin. I run down the hall to stand on top of the toilet and peer out the window. White Nissan? Check! Sound familiar? I wrote about this is my "Aunt Judy's Back Porch" blog. Since then I have received a specific request to elaborate. ;)

So the series of events go like this... I ask my mom if I can go visit.. she says no, and I call Aunt Judy who says I can come. She puts Macbeth away and I run down the trail. That is where I spent the rest of the day pestering my cousin. I would run into her room(and this is where you can start to be amazed by the things I can remember from my days as a four year old). She had floral wallpaper and a pink striped bedspread and she had 'Good Luck' and 'Congrats' balloons all over her ceiling! She had her megaphone and gigantic pompoms in the corner and I would play with them until I absolutely drove her nuts and my mom forced me to come home.

Other than the people in my immediate family, Jennifer was probably the most influential person in my life when I was little. This might explain a lot about my personality as I am very influenced by the people around me. Because of this I tend to have multiple personalities. I think that the portion of my personality that comes from Jennifer is the portion that allows me to laugh out loud in a room full of people.. REALLY loud with no reservations. Or to say what I think without being self conscious about how other people will react. These are personality traits that I learned because that is the kind of person Jennifer is, she is confident... and I am very proud to hold a peice of that kind of confidence even if it is just a very small peice!

I spent most of my summers with Jennifer. She babysat me during the days while my mom worked. I would start my day at her house and when lunch time came she would either make me Kraft Blue Box Macaroni and Cheese, or she would bribe me to call Grandmommie and see what she was making for lunch(this worked because I was the youngest and I was impossibly cute, so we always got an invitation). After we ate, we would usually get ready to go the Indian Hills Country Club and I would get ready really fast and then sit in the bathroom impatiently while Jennifer primped and shaved her legs. We would head out to the country club where Jennifer would slather me excessively in sunscreen and then make me wait forever at the side of the pool watching all my friends play as it dried. Eventually I could pull on my floaties and jump in. I would swim until my fingers and toes pruned... and when I took breaks she would send me to the Pro-Shop to get her snacks... I never wanted to leave! As summers went on Jennifer decided I needed to become brave and jump off the diving board like all my friends. I was so scared and she would swim under and catch me... until she decided I should learn to jump off by myself, and she pushed me. I still have issues jumping off diving boards.

Something I didn't notice as a little girl paddling around in floaties at the country club was the looks Jennifer got from all the little boys I hung out with. They know her as 'Jennifer Jo.' If you've ever seen The Sand Lot then you'll remember the boys at the city pool and their infatuation with Wendy Peppercorn. Jennifer Jo was the Wendy Peppercorn of my pool. When she wasn't sunbathing in the summer she was cheering for the Atlanta Rabbits as these same boys ogled her from the stands, I wanted so badly to be a cheerleader just like Jennifer.... and I made myself her permanent sidekick, attached at the hip.

We went to the Forrest Festival together, she took me shopping, we got snow cones, occasionally I got to spend the night at her house, and we fought... a lot. I later realized that 75% of the time my mom was paying her to watch me. I like to think that she hung out with me because she liked having me around.

Well over a decade later I'm still close with my 'big cousin' but these days I consider her much more of a close friend than an idol! I love going home and visiting with her, and my extended family and watching her three beautiful kids grow. In them, particularly her middle child... I see a bit of a role reversal as I pull my car up her driveway and watch a pair of big brown eyes peering out the window and then immediately run out to greet me. I currently have 5 saved voicemails on my cell from the very person behind those big brown eyes. "Hey Lauren? It's me. Umm... I was just wondering when you were coming to my house... I was just gonna let you know... ok bye.. umm this is Maddie."

Daddy Troy :)

Monday, would have been my Grandfathers 86th birthday... I think.. I'm not so good with math! I thought about this when I walked through campus and got a sniff of some ciggarette smoke.. Winston to be more precise. It made me happy/sad...

My mind drifted into a list....

here is the list...

• Easter eggs filled with money.


• Butterfingers.


• 1$ for being sick.


• Hankercheifs.


• False teeth.


• Laughter.


• Farmers tan.


• Johnson.. and his old grey mule named Simon Slick.


• Pulling teeth with a string.


• Rocking chairs.


• The western channel.


• Money hidden in a Christmas Tree.


• Me eating too much rice... and being told my eyes were gonna get squinty.


• Cows being cussed at.
  
• Whistling and the slamming of a screen door.


• Tractors.


• Loafers.


• Coveralls.


• Applesauce cake


• Coffee.. black.


• Tradition....

Do you think they have birthday parties in heaven?

:)

Doll-babies.. Sweet-Milk.. and Homemade Hot Sauce!

I dedicated a blog to my mom, and to my Aunt Judy's back porch, and what I'm finding out is that all my family members are super entertained by my stories about the other family members.. So I'm just gonna go with it.

This one goes out to my Dad. :)

A few things that I've heard all my life that I've learned to love, appreciate... and laugh a little bit when I hear them....

Win Friends and Influence People... This comes from a book, but I'm pretty sure my dad didn't actually read the book. Even so it was a staple phrase in my years of being dropped off to Elementary School and Jr. High... and even sometimes when I shot through the kitchen...late... in High School.

"You're probably not drinking enough water..." If you've ever seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, then you'll remember how the father thought Windex was a cure for everything... dirty windows?... Windex! Wake up the morning of your wedding with a mountainous zit on your forehead? ... Windex! For my dad, the common solution is either Duct Tape, or water. Growing Pains? ...Drink more Water! Complaining about how your hair and nails won't grow fast enough? ...No drinking enough water!! Headache? .. WATER! This one is probably true, but until recently it just annoyed me because of my preference for Kool-Aide and Dr. Pepper!


"Goin' Down The River Stories..." My mom used to read me bedtime stories, sometimes. I like to complain and say my mother never loved me enough and she didn't ever read me books.. but sometimes she did. All the other times though, my dad would come in and make up his own. These were the times when I would come into the living room and complain about how I was hot, or hungry, or I couldn't sleep. Mom would usually tell me to go back to bed, but dad has a solution for everything. Solution #1- One leg in... one leg out(this cured the hotness problem). Solution #2- Midnight snack.. usually a heaping bowl of ice cream or a coke float(a really nutritious way to solve my late night hunger)... & Solution #3-Goin' Down the River Story... and all I remember about these stories is that they were all about floating down a really calm river in a canoe and after that... I usually fell asleep. Those stories are pretty different than my real life experiences in a canoe, for example our trip to Broken Bow, OK where there are pictures of me laying in the bottom of a canoe is sheer panic because of the rapid water. Other than that, my pre-college canoeing experiences are slim to none, even though a staple at our house was to have a canoe in our backyard or garage. We would take it out once every two years maybe... This is because my dad grew up an army brat and never got to have a canoe growing up(and always wanted one), so we have always had one that he either built, bought, or traded up.


Kool-Aide Ice Cubes... Red ones. My dad has always talked about Kool-Aide ice cubes and occasionally we would have them when I was little. This meaning I would have 2 or 3 and my dad would race me for the rest of the tray. I've always been pretty impressed by how fast my dad can take down cold stuff, his explanation being that Uncle Cliff always snuck in and got all the Kool-Aide cubes in the middle of the night and.. "He never got all he wanted." Because of this I gave my dad a gift certificate for a lifetime supply of Kool-Aide Ice cubes... a tub of Cherry Kool-Aide, and an ice tray in his stocking a few years ago. He has it hidden and pulls it out for me every time I come home. My mom really enjoys listening to the noises we make while eating them. :)



"That was pretty good... what there was of it.." This is a phrase you might hear him say after a small snack, or after Thanksgiving dinner when all our stomachs are protruding into the table and we can't breathe...

"Why don't you wrap this up and put it in your purse.." a common suggestion to my mother about leftover food at restaurants... I don't know why.

To finish this up... let's throw in a few words that you may have never heard, most likely because my dad made them up. (Hence the title of this blog)

• Doll-baby
• Sweet-milk
• Bow-Ribbons
• Foldin-Money
• Head Sweatin' Salsa(which apparently we all "shovel")

...just to name a few.

Dad- if you're reading this, you are either laughing or you are annoyed with me... either way just remember... Mom's was worse!!! & Although I have said multiple times that I am becoming my mother(see "Morphing into Mom")...when I wake up in the morning.. big T-shirt, hair pulled back, no make-up. I'm sometimes a bit taken aback upon glancing into the mirror, because I look just like you!! I LOVE YOU DADDY!!!!!!!!!!! :)

30 Things Update!

So, sometime last spring I wrote 30 things I would like to do before I turn 30. It's amazing to me to look back and see how much can change in a year. It's even more weird to thing of where I was, when I moved to San Marcos almost four years ago. I was one of those people who said I would NEVER change when I went to college.. but I did, for the better I think. The way I think about EVERYTHING is different, but for the most part my goals are all the same ... Love God, Love others.. nothing else matters :)

Here are some of the things from my list of 30 that I have either done or that I'm working on :)

2. Write a children's book... and teach a child to read it. I did this, but only because I had to for a class. BUT I am tutoring a 3rd grader who is a struggling reader.
7. Learn patience. I don't know that I'll ever become an incredibly patient person.. but working on this one...
8. Be accused of being the coolest aunt ever. I haven't had this happen yet, but some of the smiles and giggles I get could be translated to state this :)
11. Learn to play guitar. I did this! Pretty proud of myself.. not quite concert ready yet .. but still practicing!
13. Sing "Let's Give Em' Somethin to Talk About" on Karaoke... In front of a large crowd! Somebody spiked my sonic drink one night.. it happened.. I'm not ashamed..
15. Learn to chop vegetables like a chef. I haven't chopped off my fingers yet.. and I cook a lot.
17. Learn to throw the perfect spiral... farther than 5 yards. I think I threw a decent one 5 &1/2 one day ;)
20. Watch all of American Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time. 20ish down.. a lot to go!
21. Smoke a Cigar.. (or at least take a picture holding one). Did this... it wasn't that horrible.. it's amazing the experiences that pile up after your 21st birthday!
24. Sit by myself contently all day... preferably outside.
27. Learn to country dance.. without killing some poor boys feet.
28. Give more compliments. This is something I'm still working on :) I'm doing okay..
29. Ride a horse really fast... like in an old western. Chelsea is gonna help me on this one.. I have been feeding Cort lots of carrots.. and sometimes he gives me pony rides back to the barn when I'm too lazy to walk :)
30 Learn to love more like Jesus loved. This one is impossible.. but I love it!



Now. I have ONE more I want to add to my 30 things... I want to go to a Cowboys game in the new stadium.. or a game anywhere.. I just think it's necessary... How can we arrange this?

Holla.

Let me splain somethin to ya :)

Aunt Judy's back porch. Some of my greatest memories have happened there. My maternal grandparents have seven grandchildren, and if you ask any of them about where there favorite childhood memories took place they would probably say Grandmommie and Daddy Troy's house. Going there in my immediate family was always described as going "up the hill," but being that the closest of these cousins is twelve years older than me, you can imagine that my fondest memories took place a little later, and in fact they took place somewhere else... "down the hill." By the time I was born, our family became too crowded to have gatherings at my grandparents, therefore we shifted locations to Aunt Judy's house- and that's where my story(or shall I say stories) begins.

When I was in four-year-old preschool, Aunt Judy was my teacher... she was my teacher, my aunt, and my next door neighbor. She was also the mother of my cousin, Jennifer, whom I was obsessed with(if you ask Jennifer she would probably say I still am a little bit). So every afternoon after school I would stand on the toilet in our bathroom and watch as the little white Honda(I think it was a Honda) would tear down the driveway. I would run to the kitchen, or den, or wherever my mom was and ask to go to Aunt Judy's. My precious mother would always say something to the affect of "No, she's already had enough of you today." I would then proceed to go in my tiny closet of a bedroom that is now literally used as a room for ironing, and sulk. After I sulked I would sneak away with the phone, call Aunt Judy and ask her if I could come over, and she always said yes. Immediately, she would put Macbeth away(her large and in charge St. Bernard), because I was absolutely terrified of him, and I would start marching up the trail. And I would stay there until Jennifer was absolutely sick of me or until I heard my mom screaming at me from the other side.

The other great part about Aunt Judy's house, specifically the back porch, is that you don't actually have to be there to know what's going on. Although there is about an acre between my back yard and hers, you can still hear things. You hear things because my Aunt Judy and Uncle Charlie are loud people, and they passed this trait down to their children(more-so their daughters). So when I was younger, I would go sit on my swing set, or in my playhouse, and listen... which now that I think about it seems pretty inappropriate, but I kept myself informed. ;)

You see, I'm a talker, especially around people I know well. I've never listened well in class, and I always got in trouble for talking when I was younger. Sometimes my dad would pay me to be quiet or tell me to quit "rattling." Didn't they know that all they had to do was send me next door? The only listening skills I possess were learned sitting around on a porch swing, eyes wide open and mouth wide shut. I learned things about people as a four-year old that four year olds shouldn't know... and what they tried to hide from me, they spelled... little did they know I was brilliant. I caught every word.

And one more thing. Easter Egg hunts. They actually happened in the back yard, but since I was the youngest mine was always hidden in plain sight so I'd snatch it, and then I would sit with Grandmommie and Daddy Troy on the porch and watch everyone else find their eggs. Grandmommie, my mom, Aunt Jan, and Aunt Judy would always try to coax Daddy Troy into telling the older kids where there eggs were.. it never worked. You pretty much had to be there to understand how entertaining this was.. especially the year it rained.

I'm writing all this down because this weekend I actually contemplated driving 6 hours to Atlanta, TX just to go spend two straight days on Aunt Judy's back porch. After multiple texts and Facebook posts from my cousins taunting me. "Wine and visiting on the back porch... jealous?" Heck yeah! I'm jealous. Do you know how much information I probably missed out on? Luckily I had a good twenty minute conversation with my mom this afternoon and she caught me up on the key points, even so I feel very out of the loop.

Over the past ten years, Aunt Judy's back porch has evolved into something completely different. The volume level has increased ten times(if that was even possible), you can almost count on the fact that if every member of our family is there that Aunt Judy will be "splainin somethin" to ya by sunset, and you MUST have good reflexes, because at any moment a tennis ball, football, t-ball, or some sort of toy WILL whiz by your head. The dogs have gotten much smaller. There are a lot more people. There is even more food. I love it.

Some things never change, the noise, the fun, the fellowship. These days, when I go home for a visit. one might catch me in what is now the guest bathroom staring out the window(I don't have to stand on the toilet anymore :) waiting for them to come... all the loaded suburbans filled with my favorite folks ready to take a perfectly clean house and turn it upside down. I run out the door and start making my way "down the hill." Good times to be had by all!



Since I obviously love lists... it only makes sense that I would write a list of top ten favorite porch memories, but that would be a novel with each item being a chapter.. and I'm not a novelist... I'm just a person who randomly gets spurts of energy at midnight- and it hurts my hand to write a lot in a journal, instead I type it up and share it with whoever might read it. But there is one short.. kind of funny memory that popped into my head :)

...Aunt Judy, Leon, and I are hanging out on the back porch(Leon is a wandering Basset Hound that existed about 5 years ago). Uncle Charlie walks out and says..."Get out of my chair, Dumbass!" My eyes widen.. My heart stops and little bit... and I hop up and run to the swing. He was talking to the dog. :)

27 dresses? Pfftttt... I'm soo gonna beat that.

I don't know when, but at some point in the past few years when it comes up in conversation- I have have found myself more than once making this statement... "I don't really like girls, I just prefer to hang out with guys." I have two brothers and a lot of my friends are boys and I pride myself with that for some reason... I guess I think that is cool? It wasn't until the last time I regurgitated that fact, that I realized that it's completely ironic. I dislike girls? Hmmm... I was a cheerleader in high school, in fact-I was the captain of the cheerleaders. These days I am an active member of a sorority, and I live with three girls. So, let's think about this... either I am a miserable person who is surrounded by people of a particular gender that I despise, or I am lying to myself and I really don't dislike girls as much as I've said. What is it?

Well, I know this much... girls like me. I have a lot of friends, and a lot of those friends are female. I also have a lot of female family members, and a lot of those people are married, and guess what? I've been in their weddings... 7 to be exact. I was in all seven weddings before I was 16 years old.

At my apartment, one of my room mates owns the movie "27 Dresses," I don't know who's it is but it's one of the usuals we pop in on a rainy day, so I pretty much have the key points memorized. Katherine Heigl plays Jane, a young woman who has served as a bridesmaid 27 times.... obviously there is much more to the story line than this(watching her sister be swept off her feet by a guy SHE has been obsessing over for years and having said sister steal her dream wedding, finding out her imaginary dream guy/wedding columnist writer dude is a complete jerk... and feeling like "she just found out her favorite love song was written about a sandwich..." all very relatable), but let's talk comparisons. The movie opens up with Jane in a bind, because she somehow agreed to be an attendant in two weddings on the same night... back and forth and back and forth until she is discovered and tacky wedding writer/dream guy finds her out and later realizes she has served in now 27 wedding parties!

Flash back to my life... Lauren Edwards, 21 years old, has already been in 7 weddings, and over the years a lot of my friends have mentioned that one day in the far off future they would like me to be in there wedding. Well, it's starting. In the past week I have been asked to be a bridesmaid twice, those weddings both falling within the same week(by the way I'm not bitter, I'm pretty excited about it :). The only thing I seem to be missing to completely parallel my life to this character is a themed wedding or two. I had really been holding out for some big hats or a geisha costume dress, but no luck yet. Anyhow, Jane/Kate Heigl... it's on. I'm assuming the average young woman with a lot of friends participates in about 5-10 weddings in her 20's... that's just my guess, I haven't taken and polls nor do I have any hard evidence. Either way I'm thinking I'm already well above average, because at 22 I'll have been a part of 9 weddings... that's 9 down 19 to go to surpass Jane. I'm just sayin.