Not long ago,

And yet it is so hard to remember that my little boys were so very sick. Thanks to all the MTMC NICU staff.....and you Debbie, you helped quiet so many new mommy nerves.

LETTER TO EDITOR: Adams' nursery benefited children | dnj.com | The Daily News Journal

One of the best nurses that we had during our 5 1/2 weeks in the NICU with my "Whimpy White Boys" passed away late last week. the community has lost a quiet hero. Please read the below as written by a local Peds doc.



LETTER TO EDITOR: Adams' nursery benefited children dnj.com The Daily News Journal:


"On occasion, the death of a member of our community requires more than an obituary notice. We are fortunate to have fellow citizens who sacrifice for us for years in relative anonymity. Ms. Debbie Adams was just such a person, and the children of Rutherford County and their parents should pause at her passing to give her their thanks. For 39 years, Ms. Adams worked at Middle Tennessee Medical Center — many of them as the head of the neonatal unit. During her service, she was the person primarily responsible for developing the nursery into a unit recognized throughout Middle Tennessee for its excellence.

This accomplishment was fueled by her fierce dedication to quality care for her young patients. Because of her nursery's reputation, she was often asked by Vanderbilt's NICU to accept the care of sick newborns, when their beds were full. Ms. Adams did everything she could to assure that MTMC's administration, doctors and nurses provided quality care for every patient in her nursery.

She never sought notoriety or a 'thank you' from any of us, as she provided our community with a healthier place to raise our families. Our thoughts are with her family now, as we remember this remarkable woman.

Joseph A. Little, M.D."

Spring has Sprung pt2

My husband has been working hard the past two weekends to save $800.00
worth of manual immigrant labor

Front flower bed sans flowers.....this was a wreck of a place 3 weeks ago

My fountain that I fixed.

Nathan spreading pine needles- he leaves one job and comes home to have me crack with whip, yep he is wearing a Burberry suit.......Immigrant help lurking...

I did this!

My new lilac tree that will be planted in out new burm......without immigrant help no less.

In an ode to my upcoming birthday, my "birthflower" if their is a thing...The Lily of the Valley. I accept gifts. And I will be 34! Holy mother of Mary

For Shawna, these were Terra Cotta color, faded plastic. So John spraypainted these black along with my arm and half of the neighborhood.

Spring has Sprung!

Spring is in full swing around the Summar House!

We have started out first season of Flag Football! So far the kids are really loving it. They had their first game last Saturday. We are lucky to have one of the boys' cousins on their team.

We also have spent the last two weekends working in the yard. And clearly by "we" I mean Nathan and the kids. They have cleaned out all of the landscaping, treated it with chemicals and have placed pine straw in the place of mulch. Nathan says we are shaking it up a bit. We also planted three bushes outside our fence. I do not know why we did that but we did. I also had Nathan buy me a lilac tree. It smells so pretty and should be planted by the weekend!

I have also fixed the fountain! Now I have to have someone come and place electricity to it and get rid of the ORANGE extension cord.

My part of spring is planting all the containers! That was fun! I spent the past two afternoons with the kids outside planting pots. John was my big helper yesterday and EE was my helper today.

I am also so excited as is Millie- to have new steel gates ordered! They should be here in about three weeks! Then I will not have to worry about Millie making good with the neighbors.....

I hope that you all are enjoying your springtime activities!

Busy day!

The past two days have been so busy~

Sometimes I wish that I could have a to do list that only had things to do with me and what I wanted to have happen and actually get that list completed! Instead my list is about 80% other people's stuff and only about 50% done at any given point. I suppose that having the kids home for two weeks will make a list long and being gone for one of those weeks is sabotage....

I have such a treat in having Nathan's brother and sister staying with us for the evening and with me for the day tomorrow. Nathans dad has Carli who is 17 and Cameron who is 14. What do you do with teenagers? Cameron will be going to cub scouts with Nathan and the boys this evening. Other than that I will cook dinner and visit with Carli.

Nathan's dad is in Chicago for a consult for his prostate cancer. We are hoping that he learns what he needs to know and that he faces this battle head on...

In other news, Nathan has full out nasty shingles. They are all over his back and are gross. Luckily due to his YOUNG age (ha!) he has not had that bad of a battle with pain as yet. However I find it really funny that he suffers from a geriatric disease. I think that he has shingles because of the stress that he has at work, with family and say no, not home! Poor man!

Where have you been?

Hoste Easter at my house....

Made my final cake for cake class

Skiing in Park City UT!

Loved visiting the snow!

and this is all in the wrong order chronologically...ugh! More of my Park CIty UT vacation can be seen on Slide.com

Kids are back to school in the morning (can I get an Amen?) Nathan has shingles.....and did yard work all this weekend. I will be happy to get back on a schedule.

Another Cake

OK so, I made a cake for my nephews birthday. It was a joint party with one of his girl friends. They are three and so cute. I must say, with the help of Melissa, we did a really good job for a couple of chicks that just started.

Then my mom has a group of friends that are just beyond glorious. They are just gems. So they all eat on Tuesday evening ie Steel Magnolias or Fried Green Tomatos. So they have started asking for diffent types of cakes. Now I am in course 2 and we do not have to make cakes each week. I will continue to make mom's friends cake until they are asking me for my old "fat" clothes....HA! Because I love them and they take really good care of one another and I do not have the heart to tell them no....So next week, chocolate/Peanut Butter.

What a busy week I have! We are redoing the yard. Our delightful neighbor is tired of our nasty bermuda grass growing over into his yard and honestly, we have so many clover, thatch etc, we need to do something. So we have decided to look into sod. We are also having the gates to our yard replaced with metal gates becuase the crack heads that built our fence were crackheads and our gates are "crap" honestly. We are also getting rid of Nathan's rock garden and the container garden and perhaps laying another aggrigate pad for tables or grilling space...who knows.

I also had to take Ethan's bike into the shop becuase he has hit something so hard that it bent the chain holder thing. Boys. I have also had both Parent/Teacher conferences this week. I have two children that are very smart and one that is a goof ball and just really enjoying himself all too much! I am thinking tha I work in a high school this Friday, and next Friday....we shall see.

In other news, nathan is leaving for a hiking trip on Saturday morning. He will be gone for a few days. He is so excited! Like a child. The boys are going to visit their grandparents. So with that happening. Melissa and I are having our own little scrapping retreat upstairs. So excited, like a child.

Sylvia Weinstock, eat your Cake!

The more "refined" cake of new

This is where I started!

I have indeed come a long way baby! So Sylvia Weinstock, eat your cake and I will eat mine. (not really my mom and her friends are gonna eat it but anyway....)






Here is a comparison from where I came from 5 weeks ago

From the Ashes, Rise the new...

Week 3 Cake

Hi all! I gloriously submit my weeek 3 cake. It is a white cake, with buttercream filling. I made buttercream chocolate icing and decorated it with drop flowers. When I came home from class, Nathan complete with 6 brackets of braces ate 1/4 of my cake. The remaining cake will be eaten by mom & her friends at dinner tonight. We are also signing up for Class II. I am kinda liking it now that I have some idea of what I am doing....

I am also enjoying part of my day witha little nugget named Sarah who is graciously pointing out how dirty my floors are...So fun having a baby in the house! Especially this one!

Oh My Goodness!

Was that sun that we saw in Middle Tennessee yesterday? Indeed it was and the Summar family spent a good part of the day outside because, guess what? It is overcast again today. It rained last night but is still 50 degrees today, the only parts of me that are complaining are my hair and my knees. We went for a 4 mile hike on the greenway yesterday and ended up at the Bark Park. O my goodness! I could live there. I think that I am going to become unofficial mayer of Barkville TN! That was so fun. The kids spent their time on the greenway rollerblading or biking, Nathan and I walked, picked up fallen kids and enjoyed some time in the nice outdoors.

The kids are almost done with the 2010 model of the PineWood Derby. They are coming along nicely, we race next weekend. I do not know who is more excited, Nathan or the kids... hmmm!

Nathan is also getting braces today. Yep that is correct, Nathan, my 35 year old husband is getting some heavy metal. This should be funny. The kids are gonna be so jeolous! They are at the stage where they are envious of the kids in their class that are getting Palet expenaders, so imagine when your dad get braces! The horror!

I am back to cake class tonight. We are making clown cakes that I made last week on my own. I must say, I think I did ok on my own last week, we shall see what I learn. Melissa and I have decided that we will take class 2 and see what happens. My cake this week, drum roll please, has chocolate icing! Oh yea, I am getting really good!

Year Two

Well I was not going to write anything for fear of some water works-but there have been water works all day so, why not.

It has been two years since my daddy died. It on this day that, at the time, I did not know now profoundly my life would change.

I am not really certain that the second year is any easier than the first. The loss is still painful. I think the second year you know with all certainty that life will never be the same and the loss will not subside.

I will say that death often times seperates a family. And while we have all made adjustments to the loss of dad, we have made it through with our love and appreciation that we have one another still. We still have our GG and through her we have dad.

We are a Blessed bunch of people and I feel like adad would be really proud.

Hey No Clowning Around!

OK so cake class was canceled this week because of the little bit of snow that we got. Well making a cake (just he white part of the icing not the decorations) takes me a good day so to have the class canceled was a blow to the schedule. I went ahead and made the cake that we were supposed to make in class and this is how it came out. I must say, I have impressed myself. So next week I will make a very similar cake however I am going to TRY and make chocolate icing! Exotic I know but we shall see!

Bite Me!

Look what I did! I made a descent looking cake. It helps when you:

1-make the frosting correctly

2-understand instruction

So the cake says Bite Me. It is a cake! You are supposed to bite it. I am giving it to my mom and her Tuesday night friends, who all eat together. This way, I do not have to eat it, and I do not have to deal with kids who are bouncing off the walls after havin eaten cake.

High Hopes Dashed in an instant!

Careers are made and broken in an instant or within a couple of tubes of homemade frosting. I think that my cake career is over....don't get me wrong but by the pics posted within, I feel certain that I will be writing checks for cakes for the rest of my life. I can BAKE a cake, no problem. I can even pull a "from scratch" number. I can make homemade buttercream icing as it turns out...I cannot however apply said frosting in any sort of manner that is appealing to the eye. I will continue the whole class, loyal friend that I am. I just do not see myself signing up for more tarte torture in the future. I can tell with every amount of certainty, I have no patience for this! Stay tuned.....this is only just begun.

Cake Part Deux

I would like to give a shout out to my homies over in Japan! I had no idea that I had an international following. If you look at my last post, the comments, I think that that is Japanese. Since I do not speak not write Japanese, I am going to turn off my free for all comments. You will not have to comment and it will ask me to approve it or not. I mean lets face it no one that reads my blog needs Japanese Viagra.

Who knew that you could learn so much from a cake lady. I learned so much that if you think that you wanna save money by making you own cakes, go to the class at Michael's! It is like $20.00 and I feel like I have already gotten my money's worth. That being said, I have yet to complete my first cake. I have baked it and it has a crown (ack! I have to trim it off)- I have made two batches of icing....I will post pics when I am done......Probably next week.

Next Up!

I have always felt that the more that you learn when you grow older, the better person you are going to be when you even older. Also the more well rounded you are as an individual, the better person you are in the end. Life is a never ending process of learning and showing thru your actions what you have learned.

That being said, I am starting a new endeavor....Cake Class. All that stuff about being a better person and learning and being well rounded, sounds good....however I am just hoping that I don't get kicked out of cake Class or have the cake monster as a teacher. I am a member of my scrapping group, and after 3 years they are used to me, my mouth and my sense of humor....I am safe there. I am a little nervous about being in a crafty in a situation with people I do not know moreover they do not know me (poor people).

Cake Class is at Michaels-It is every Monday in the month of February. Cake Class is 2 hours of frosting, cake and things that I should not be around. Why do I torture myself? I have heard that once you spend enough time around cake and icing and all that is YUM O that you then find it to be not so YUM O....I will let you know.

Now some people think that I am crafty, creative and can make and do things that some people cannot. I happen to think that I am crazy in some of the things that I think I can do. For every thing that I have made with some success, ther are more than a dozen things that I have 1- tried to make, or 2- attempted to make and it failed-miserably. I never dreamed that I would want to decorate a cake. However if it gets me out of the house, spending time with my friends, and if there is a chance that I will be OK at it, it is worth a try.

Now about the being OK at it....not a chance. I will do this course and probably not attempt another one. From what I understand and what I can see to be the truth perhaps....Cake decorating takes some amount of patience. Patience is a virtue..a virtue that was not graced on these old bones. I have NO patience and so far in life I have made it by just fine.

So come on Cake, let's see what happens to you!

A day of snow!

I took these pics at about one o'clock today. It has only been snowing since 10am. They say that we are supposed to get about 5 inches. Yea Winter! Love it, now if Nathan would just leave work!hmmmm.

A Baby Shower!

Brandy, Misty, Abby, Kelly, Katie and Me!

My Sister and Mother in law, Katie, Brandy and Linda-Me too!

Abby, her mom Rita and Kelly, Abby's sister!

I had a busy week last week, mostly cleaning my house. I held a baby shower for Nathan's cousin, Abby. Abby is expecting her second son in March. Abby and Nathan have another beautiful son, Dylan who is going to be such a wonderful big brother. We had such a wonderful time eating, visiting and showering Abby with lots of gifts.

Showering the Evolution....

There has been so so many things written about the importance of showering as a parent. After you give birth to this, or in my case these, precious angels- your whole routine changes. We all know this! The showering, the need for showering the time of showering changes and the complexity of showering changes completely.

When the kids were small I would shower when they were asleep at night or shower when they were napping. Nathan would either be home or I would have the monitor close at hand. Not to say the monitor was on...but close. I could shower as long as the kids were asleep. At preschool age, I was the mom that dropped their kids off to school in my pajamas no hair done, no make up done just me. And while my kids did go to the "it" pre school in our town, you know the type, the one where you are seen and to be seen....I still was just me, scary! At pick up though I was a new woman, showered, hair make up the whole nine yards! And I was seen, just for probably being the wild mom who was very frank about child rearing. Weekdays my routine is: Monday, Thursday and Friday I take the kids to school, in my work out gear, then head to the gym....come home shower start the day. Tuesday and Weds I have to shower before school because I work at school and feel like I should probably smell better than the elementary school restroom. The weekends, Nathan is home so he can cut them off at the pass.

Point is no matter where we are in our years, as moms one of our only private times is in the shower. My kids know that when I am in my shower or if you hear water running, I am busy. I am probably not going to want to talk to you nor am I available for homework help when I am in the shower. Under no circumstances am I available for referring, goose egg nursing or arguing about who did what when and where! Now most people close and lock the bathroom door and go about their business. Well when I shower it happens to be the only time that Millie (our dog) is hungry. Her food bowl is in the bathroom & what am I supposed to do make her starve?? I think not!

My children also know that, barring a fire that they cannot fight themselves, I am off limits during running water shower time! They are also aware of the do not enter until the water has cut off & I am dried off policy. Only then can you yell from around the corner. I am determined not to scar the kids for life my seeing me in various states of undress...I scar myself each day so imagine being 8 and a male. Bless!

Imagine why last Saturday one of my little darlings started yelling at me from around said corner. Well when you have water in your ears, the shower running and the door closed (Millie not too hungry that day) YELLING! So I said WHAT?!?!? Then the door cracks open...garble garble garble! is stated! What?!?! I am smelling for smoke, wondering if they have tied their dad up..really what do you want?! SHOOT! Open the door John! What is wrong? What can you possible need that 1- dad cannot do for you or 2- cannot possibly wait until shampoo is out of my eyes? He says: " Mom can I play Guitar Hero?" "John-dear (thru gritted teeth) where is your dad?" "He is on the bed. Can I play?" NO!

So recap, my shower is interrupted, shampoo in the eyes, Nathan in the next room, water running, Nathan in the next room, Guitar Hero, door opening, Yelling! Oh my goodness. When I dressed and came out of the restroom-Nathan was still on the bed and had somehow blocked the sight of John entering the room, yelling at me, my yelling at John..etc...he looked at me as to say "What?" Then he said he was sorry.

So sorry that he will indeed be placing John in counseling for the sight he saw....Bless his heart.

Summar Christmas