Proof of a life well-lived, Instagram-style

If you have an iPhone and you have not downloaded the Instagram app, you are light years behind your peers and missing a way to waste a significant amount of time that also makes you feel like an artist. So these are some of my favorites, most of which have shown up before in some social medium, but here they are again, sometimes cleverly captioned. 



My Aunt Marilyn took this picture of Corey and me dancing at my cousin Ainsley's wedding in Bunkie. My family knows how to throw a frigging party. Be jealous if you're reading this and not related to my mother.



Sometimes Dixie Girl comes and stays with us on the weekends. Or when her mama has to work late. This is Murphy's best cousin.

So by now it's no secret that when you get a conduct mark at school, you write lines. For me. Not for St. Jude. I keep them in a drawer in my office upstairs.

Jake keeps pulling his teeth. He's also tugging on a section of the front of his hair so much that he's giving himself a bald spot there. We keep telling him that we're going to have to shave all his long luxurious hair off. In reality, shorter hair would only show the bald spot more, and that's not something I'm willing to torture my fifth grader with.

This is Murphy stealing the Throne of the Man of the House. I do not know what I did with myself before I had this dog. He's the only person in this house who sits still while I give him 500 kisses in the same spot on his face.

When Dixie Girl stays on Saturdays, she does not sleep on the pull out with the boys. She's smart and sleeps in the hole in the bed that Corey leaves. On nights that she sleeps over when there is no slumber party, she sleeps in the bed with me and Uncle Corey. She makes me sleep in the middle.

This is one of my favorite pictures in life.

I'm pretty sure that Landen and I had gotten in a fight this night and he came down after his bath to make up with me. Murphy does not let a child near me without him being present to supervise, so here I am with a child, a dog and a computer in my chair with me.

Jake goes to football practice every week to climb trees at LSU. I want to have a whole bunch of these to show him if he decides to break my heart and not go there one day.

I took this picture of them waiting, waiting to be picked up by their grandparents for a Beaumont weekend. We're all friends here, people, so I can tell you that we were sick and tired of being around each other and they were as ready to leave us as we were not to have to get up and feed anyone the next morning.

This is Daisy. She lives with my parents but Corey and I got her when I was seventeen years old. Usually when we go to Jena we bring Murphy, so we do not see her much. We ran away from everyone this particular weekend and she spent the entire time laying on our heads.

There are very few things that make me want to abandon city life for country living. The sky is one of them. We do not have an empty skyline for great sunsets in Baton Rouge. We also rarely see stars.

Corey never met my friend Maggie's husband Trane, but I've talked about them enough to keep Corey inspired. He wears a KIA bracelet for Trane. You can read about Trane here. He was a big deal as a human being.

My sister is obsessed with Trombone Shorty. A few weeks ago she had to take the boys to school for me, and she tried to make them believers. Landen does not have my taste in music.

I hope that whenever he's a devastatingly handsome teenager, he does not realize how good looking he is. There'll be no living with him after that.

The reason I know (not always feel) that Corey and I are doing a good job with these boys is because every night they sleep like this - soundly and securely - with the peace that only comes from knowing what the next day will be.  We're not 100% sure we have that for ourselves as adults, so it's a smashing success that we are able to give it to the boys.