Happiness Is a Warm Snoopy, originally uploaded by blondemom.

Hubby and I went to a fabulous restaurant last night (thank you hubby’s staff for the generous gift certificate) and were in for the evening by 9 o’clock. We stopped on the way home to rent a movie and buy a pot roast at the grocery. I picked up some Christmas lights on clearance for 75 cents a box and threw a load of laundry on when we got home.

We are so married.

The meal started out with a sinfully delicious bowl of lobster bisque and dessert was a trio of hand-painted truffles, the last of which was filled with deliciously rich caramel. Oh My Lord!

I don’t really associate New Year’s Eve with a lot of tradition, but we always buy Freixenet champagne in the familiar black bottle. This goes back ten plus years when we were dating and he was wooing me with bed and breakfast getaways to St. Augustine. (He was living in Jacksonville Beach at the time.) We have crystal champagne flutes that were a wedding gift that we always break out for the bubbly. We watched the ball drop on Times Square with Dick Clark, who I am thrilled to see is still running the show.

I wanted to post this picture of me from 1972 because the look on my face is sheer happiness. I want to be that kind of happy. 2007 was filled with some pretty stressful moments and I wasn’t always proud of the way I handled them. It’s time to leave all that behind.

I hope all of you experience this kind of childlike joy in 2008.

Happy New Year!

p.s. Brand spankin’ new baby boy congrats to two of my long-time bloggy friends, Nicole and Colleen!

Buddha Baby, originally uploaded by blondemom.

Happy 37th birthday to the hubby! There’s no one else I’d want to eat fried pickles with at Sportsman’s Grille.

I love you babe with all my heart and then some.

Saturday night the hubby and I were engaged in some nocturnal activities and we decided to go in our front living room, which is a safe distance from the girls’ bedrooms as well as the den, which is favorited by the dogs, who tend to fling themselves at our feet or on to our laps for haunch scratching if he and I so much as glance at each other past 9 p.m.

I got up from the loveseat to turn off our Christmas tree lights and my foot kicked a small plastic object on wheels.

Suddenly a circus tune started merrily blasting away from a toy train as if we were under the Big Top. Let’s just say the timing was really off.

Foreplay is pretty much doomed if the only toys in the vicinity are from Fisher Price.

p.s. Did someone misplace their order for an extra helping of Monday? We have no hot water and both Miss A and the hubby are under the weather. This is the third Monday in a row I have requested to work from home. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to attempt to go into the office at all, but then I do like to dabble in occasional adult conversation.

Secure in his Masculinity, originally uploaded by blondemom.

Single ladies take note.

If you can imagine your boyfriend allowing his little girls to play daddy makeover during prime NFL Sunday TV time, then he’s husband material.

If he also cooks and makes an awesome margarita? I hear they have drive thru weddings in Vegas.

Today is boob Friday for me, oh joy! I have a mammogram and a follow-up appointment at the Nashville Breast Center. I’m actually looking forward to having time to sit down and read this awesome book.

p.s. I have on my porn star mom tight jeans today (but no spike heeled boots or crazy fur pimp hat) partly because they were the only clean pair. Time to do laundry or lose five pounds.

The hubby and I went walking at the Y today after lunch and he rode with me afterwards to pick Miss C up from school.

As he was walking up the sidewalk in the rain to get Miss C I saw a woman I can only describe as Porn Star Mommy walking her son back to her SUV, which was parked directly behind us. She was wearing the tightest blue jeans I have ever seen in MAH LIFE. She was one with her denim. I don’t even know how she was able to walk. She also had on spike heeled black boots, some major (as Posh Spice would say) makeup, and some kind of crazy white fur hat.

The hubby climbs back in the passenger’s side of our car after helping Miss C get in her booster seat.

“Well you just missed P-O-R-N Star Mommy wearing the world’s tightest blue jeans.”

(I spell out porn for fear Miss C will pick up on that P word and recite it to her kindergarten teacher during celebrate the letter P week.)

“Oh man, I missed her.”

“Yep. I was going to point her out to you.”

I am not a big fan of cooking so when I decided to make a downhome Southern style dinner last night of comfort foods in celebration of fall, summer heat be damned, I knew the hubby would be tickled, to say the least. He is the master chef of Casa Blonde Mom Blog.

I made meatloaf seasoned with a dash of beer, onion, green pepper, and tasty bread crumbs from an onion roll, an awesome creamy macaroni and cheese recipe from Southern Living, and turnip greens stew. Now the turnip greens stew is made from frozen greens, but for me this meal was the equivalent of a big freakin’ deal.

I made everything but a dessert. Just as well, as the macaroni and cheese probably has 9,000 fat grams. But oh is it foodgasmic.

The hubby came in from work shortly after 6 and I had dinner ready and the dishwasher was whirring in the background. Of course to accomplish this dynamic feat of domesticity, the girls were plopped in front of the TV as a distraction. Hey, something’s got to give if I’m going to channel Martha Stewart on a weekday.

“So, would you just explode with joy if I’d also made dessert, like homemade apple pie?” I asked, knowing he was thrilled to see dinner ready for a change, instead of the grill pre-lit with nothing on it.

“Well, you know I’m not big on sweets,” responded the hubby. “I mean…I like beer.”

I’ve been on the OSD (Oh Sh*t Diet) with our annual summer trip to the beach getting closer. The excuse for my mid-section flabalanche, “I’ve had two babies,” is getting a little old now that Miss A is not only starting to use the potty some, but is telling me specifically what type of potty she wants (Dora, thank you very much.)

About a month ago I decided to be proactive about losing the five pounds I’ve been saying I need to lose for the past two years. Since I’m lazy and really hate going to the gym, I started walking more with the hubby and the girls and I also cut out all my “treats.” Drastic times call for drastic measures.

I quit fixing my near nightly bowl of ice cream even though the BEST stuff I’ve tried in a while is Blue Bunny Banana Split sugar free. And I don’t do sugar free, people. My mother-in-law tried it and didn’t care for it, but I could have eaten the entire carton in one sitting. I’ve also cut out Cokes and beer and wine and fast food and pretty much anything “bad.” No wonder I’ve been one cranky mama. Who knew that sugar, fat, and alcohol made me so happy?

The hubby has also really been watching what he eats and getting up early every day and walking. He’s having a lot more success with the OSD than me.

Why is it that men can eliminate a few things from their diet and lose five pounds in no time?

I think I’ve lost one pound and that’ s on a good day and only if I weigh a la naturelle.

Waterfall, originally uploaded by blondemom.

Operation Head to the Mountains Without the Kids or Cell Phone Service or Internet Access for 48 hours was a rousing success!

The hubby and I went to the North Georgia Mountains this weekend. We have never spent the night away from both girls and we wanted to get away for a little belated 10th anniversary celebration without Dora, Diego, or Boots interrupting our thought processes. Plus, we’re going to the beach with the girls in a few weeks and we figured we’d start resting up now.

It sounds cliche, but it was indeed a luxury to lounge in bed, on the couch, and on the front porch of the cabin without anyone pushing the mama concierge button for juice, snacks, or assistance in the potty. We went hiking on Saturday and saw several beautiful waterfalls and a gorgeous mountain lake. We also scoped out Helen, Georgia, for a possible family trip this fall or next spring. We stayed in a cabin in Blairsville, Georgia, a rural area on the other side of the Chattahoochee National Forest. The hubby surprised me by booking the exact cabin we had stayed in 12 years ago when we were a few months away from becoming engaged. We marveled a lot this weekend about how much our lives have changed in that time. Way back in 1995, he was living in Florida and had faxed the directions to me at my office in Nashville because neither of us had e-mail. (Gasp.) I’m still amazed that I found the cabin by myself back then after we retraced my original trip along the meandering highway that follows the Ocoee River because neither of us had cell phones at that time, either. (Double gasp.)

Blairsville is in a dry county, so we bought our favorite champagne and some wine before we headed out of town. We also made a Target run. Priorities, people. Priorities.

Any way this morning on the trip home we realized we had committed the ultimate vacation foul. We left a nearly full bottle of Merlot on the counter in our cabin.