Like mother, like daughter

Coach, MVP..."What about me?" you might ask. The nickname, MVP, fits perfectly for our most valuable, irreplaceable offspring and seeing how the hubby is staring up is third season of coaching girls basketball, the aka of Coach suits him oh so well. But what's my little bloggy pet name? My wheels have been turning. I mean, I love being a mother but I don't want to just be referred to as "Mom" and miss out on all this nicknaming fun. I've actually had many nicknames in my life, many that still replace my given name to this day more often than not. But I think it's time for a new one. A blog one. And one not quite as embarrassing as Gertrude.

How about Cheerleader?

I like it.

I think I briefly mentioned this in my first post and I think it works. I'm sure my dear, sweet hubby might disagree with me on some days feeling as though the word "cheer" could be replaced with "grouchy" or "moody" and "leader" with "dictator" but I think Cheerleader has a nice ring to it. So there we have it - Coach, MVP and Cheerleader. And I write all this to let you know how proud I am of MVP who decided to follow in her momma's footsteps for a bit. She took off her MVP hat and became a Cheerleader for a day. For Halloween, she proudly displayed her black and gold and shouted "Hawkeye!" She makes her mother (and father) proud. Until she tries to sneak way too much candy...

Busted!

Rah, Rah!

Story Time

Who needs nursery rhymes, "Moo, Baa, La La La" or "Peek-a-Baby" when you have the sports page? Okay, we have all of those books too and MVP reads them/gets them read to her regularly but on this day the big game was way more important than learning that a cow says "Moo" and three singing pigs say "La, La, La!" Well at least on this day the big game was more important to Dad and MVP went along with it as he told her all about who would be starting and what the weather would be like at kickoff.


By the way, our team won!!! And yep, MVP got to read about all the highlights of the victory in the next day's paper as well.

Not me!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I have definitely not spent hours and hours on company time reading and laughing quietly to myself at tons of past "not me" posts because I am definitely not a long time "not me" reader/laugher but first time poster because I've always been too chicken to post before.
But everyone needs a good laugh at themselves, right? And there's a first time for everything. So here it goes.
Sorry though...you won't be laughing at me because I have it all together and most definitely did not walk around the house the other morning trying to get ready for work wearing only a very short, fleece zip-up sweatshirt because my nice, tush covering, long robe was being washed. And then a couple days later I surely wasn't the one to wear a similar fleece zip-up around all day with the tags still on and tucked into the pocket because I had just purchased it and wasn't sure I wanted to keep it. No, not me.
I am also not the one who dressed in an outfit yesterday, only to fall asleep in it while watching TV, get up in the morning, take a shower and proceed to put on that same outfit. No, that was my friend - not me. She did want you to know that she did have the decency to put on new under garments, however.

Huddle Up

Since starting this blog, I've been thinking a little of just that - the start of the blog, and mainly how I landed on the name and portrayal of our family as Team Grier. As I've thought about it I've realized something that our pastor said to us on our wedding day has stuck with me and is most likely leading to this team together attitude. Our pastor was the pastor I grew up in the church with and the father of my best friend. I spent many church camps with him and attended many sleep overs at his house where Atari was played and dance parties were held. He lead the youth group that both Coach and I attended throughout high school. He lead the spiritually powerful TEC (Teens Encounter Christ) weekend I attended as a teenager. He lead us on a retreat to the Rockies. He lead us in prayer. He lead us to God. And on a side note, he also just lead our service on Sunday. He came back to fill the pulpit as our current pastor is on vacation. What a treat to reconnect with someone so influential to us and to yet again hear one of those junior sermons that brought back so many memories of my past. Along this path, needless to say, he got to know us really well as we did of him. For this reason, he made our wedding very intimate and personal.....and yep, full of sports.
It was the summer of 2004 and our big day fell in the middle of the Summer Olympics that were held in Greece, the birthplace of ancient sporting history. Michael Phelps had just won his sixth gold medal. Two bronze were already packed in his suitcase. In a great act of selflessness and a huge portrayal of teamwork, Phelps gave up his qualified spot on the gold medal bond 4x100 meter relay to his teammate who he felt deserved the chance to compete more than himself. Our pastor noted that our marriage would need to reflect the gesture that Phelps had shown. Putting the other spouse's needs before our own. Submitting to each other daily. He told us and all of our friends and family gathered with us on that day, that he could picture how we'd start each day. He said he saw Coach and I standing with three little ones (apparently Pastor J is a bit of an over achiever, a dad of three himself but I'm thinking two tykes would be sufficient...maybe he was counting Tuffy). Anyhoo, he commented on how he saw us all gathering in a huddle, hands in the middle and yelling "Go Griers'!" as we broke to tackle the day. "Go Grier's!" Not just "Go Coach!" or "Go MVP!" or "Go Tuf!" but "Go Griers'!" We are in this together. With the most important member of our team being our Heavenly Father. I like to picture this huddle, that Pastor J described to us that day, with an extra set of hands - the hands of God. Right on top of the huddle. Or on those "worse" or "poorer" days that we vowed to keep, I picture His hands on the bottom holding the huddle up. And instead of saying "Go Griers'!" we'll shout at the top of our lungs "Go God!"
Go God and lead us! Go God and use us! Go God and thank you for your unselfish act, the greatest of them all!
So with that, our beautifully, touching ceremony was brought to a close just as all are with a, you know, oh so traditional quote from baseball great Yogi Berra...."It ain't over til it's over."
And with that, I guess this post is over too. Have a great "Go Team!" kind of week full of huddles and submissive acts of selflessness.

Our first huddle

"Go Girlfriends!"

Beauty Mark

MVP and I were without the assistance of Coach this morning as he had to go into work early. This type of morning usually results in total chaos as I run around trying to find my underwear, a diaper for MVP and a treat for Tuf all while trying to perfectly time everything so there isn't excessive barking or crying. And overall there was success on this fall morning that, might I mention, was a little too winter like for my liking (okay, that's a whole other topic but come on now...35 degrees and it's not even the middle of October...and the "S" word has been thrown around a couple times already by several local weathermen and women...give me a break...or Hawaii!) Anyhoo, I digress...back to this wonderful fall morning. I actually got up early enough to get myself ready for work, had time to give MVP a bath since her diaper did not happen to hold the gallon of wetness she dispersed last night, and fed her breakfast which is usually a parental duty that gets passed on to our sweet daycare provider. But I've learned that the one thing that can control the above mentioned excessive crying is juice and Cheerios. So into the highchair she went so I could have some undisturbed time for those final touches. I made sure she was happily enjoying her cereal and banana and then went back to dry my hair and put on clothes. Then I returned to this sight which made my day!
The best part...she didn't have a clue!

Counteracting the mom memory

Hello.

Welcome to our (probably more like my) blog. I say my due to the fact that my dear hubby is self-proclaimed as technically challenged. Attaching a file to an email is a bit of a struggle for him that causes raised blood pressure so blogging would surely set him straight into cardiac arrest. I can hear him now, "Blog? What is that? Is that like another game you play similar to Bunco?" Oh, gotta love him but I'm guessing he will not frequent the site or be sharing many posts. So back to my blog....just wanted to welcome anyone out there reading this, if you are, you are reading my attempt to put our life in print and counteract my momnesia. I've never had a great memory and since the addition of our daughter over a year ago and the busier life that comes along with little babes, the already minuscule spot in my brain dedicated to memory got even smaller....might be the only spot on my body getting smaller, but I digress.

We are Team Grier. We are a family of three, living in a small town amongst bean fields and pig confinements. We are all madly in love with eachother - well, on good days that is. We have a dog. Like sports (hence, the namesake of "Team Grier"), bleed black and gold and can oftentimes be found yelling at refs - or wait that might just be me, the hubby tries to behave himself a little more, but I on the other hand....you gotta make those blow-out games interesting somehow, right? (I'm kinda chuckling at myself as I write this - I'm writing it as though someone is actually reading it but really it's just me - and that is just fine - after all I don't want my momnesia to make me forget that I live with two goofballs, have a dog and most likely have a football game to go to tonight.) The above mentioned 14-month old daughter is the allstar of our team...although still undecided on what hand to do a layup with and a little wobbly on two legs yet, she is still our MVP. A MVP that is getting more and more persistent and spirited by the day. She's very good at sharing kisses, clicking her tongue, signing "more" when it means she gets more Goldfish crackers and tooting - all very important traits of a skilled athlete. Her Coach (aka Dad), is my husband of 5 years and has been that certain special someone in my life for about 15 years now. Yep, we were highschool sweethearts, you know one of those stories - he was the quarterback and I was the cheerleader, well sorta, never officially in the skirt with the pom poms but always a fan. After all the Friday night football games and high school dances were over, we went off to college and I decided I was still a fan of that Coach and could be for a very long time. So we got married, moved into a nice but wet apartment, got our Tuf Guy, moved out of the apartment before we were flooded out, moved into our first, imaculently clean, move-in-ready house just in time to get pregnant, have our MVP and never have a clean house again.

That pretty much sums it up. Many pictures and more detailed, memory inducing posts to come at a later date - maybe even one on Bunco....