Sunday night

Cameron & I got home from our weekend trip to Georgia this evening, and all in all, it was a good trip. We got to spend a lot of time with my brother and his family as well as my 2nd cousin & her husband (both are turning 80 this year!) We rode with my mom & step-dad and the trip there & back was pretty uneventful. I was surprised to see what the fuss is all about that Lake Lanier is very LOW. My cousin lives on the lake and has had a BEACH rather than lakefront property for the last couple of years!!!

My cousin's house is behind the trees and all of this beach property is usually Lake Lanier!!!

Most of the owners have "rolling docks" that they push further & further out as the lake dries up! And Atlanta's water supply comes from this lake! Yikes!

I grew up with frequent visits from my cousin & her husband and haven't seen them in several years. I have never been to their house and was really in awe of how beautiful it is. We spent 2 nights there and drove an hour to visit my brother in Atlanta each day. She & Cameron hit it off great and spent most of the weekend playing games and being silly!

Daphne's 1st birthday was a lot of fun! We got to spend a lot of time with her before the party, and that was nice. The big stuffed Elmo that I gave her was definitely her favorite toy! She pulled it to her and gave Elmo a hug when she saw him! It was cute!





Before the cake....
After the cake!!

Walter went crazy working in the yard while I was gone! It was too late to take pictures of his projects this evening (we had to spend some time swinging instead!!), but i'll take some tomorrow. He met us at the Picadilly about 30 minutes from our house and we had dinner with my parents and he brought us home.

And the guy who looked at my car called to say that he found another car and was going to buy it, so i'll have to wait and hope that someone else calls. I really don't have a backup plan if someone buys my car, so that shows me that I need to probably actually go find the car dealer and deal that I want before I go getting rid of my car! But that was an exciting thought for a few days!!!

I go back to work on Wednesday and i'm really ready and excited, although it's hard to give up these lazy summer days!!

Atlanta bound!

Well, I'm all packed and ready to go on my weekend trip to Atlanta. Walter is dropping Cameron & I off with my mom & step-dad at a midway point between their house and ours at around 6am. I really do hate getting up early. Blah. But, it's for a good purpose, so i'll manage! I will have my laptop with me, so I wont be gone completely, assuming my cousin Edna has wireless internet!!

Guess what??? And no, that is NOT a guess!! Guess!!!! Ok, i'll tell you!! I used to have a '96 Mustang GT that I loved with all my heart! Seriously!! When I got the car, my ex-husband accused me of loving the car more than him, and well, look which one was still with me 6 months later!! So, anyway, my Mustang died on the interstate in 2006 and I was forced to get a new car. At the time, Walter had a small pick up truck that was rough to travel in, and I was a student without a job, so I thought I should do the right thing and get a "family car," so I got an '06 Honda CRV. It's cute and all, but it makes me feel old. And i'm really not old. So anyway, last year, Walter got a new truck that is full sized and VERY comfy to travel in, so I got to thinking to myself..."hey self....maybe you should get rid of this thing before you spend too much money on it and get a new Mustang." I like myself when I think like that!! So, it took some convincing, but I finally got Walter on board and we put my Honda up for sale. Nobody called. We put it in the News on Wheels. Nobody called. I decided maybe the time wasn't right, so i've just been driving it with my pouty face and waiting for the right time. Last week, I decided to put it back in the News on Wheels since the '09 Mustangs just came out and maybe I can get a good price on an '08. Well, tonight, somebody called!!! A guy actually came out and looked at my car, test drove it, and went home to talk to his wife about it! Yay!! I'm going to keep my fingers crossed!!!! I have my heart set on one like this:

Have a great weekend!!!

Tuesday

Tonight is the night that our garbage goes out and I'm going to make Leon, my neighbor, sweat it out again! I never said anything to him about last week's phone call because i've avoided him all week so that I wouldn't, and really, he's a nice man and means well, but he's got to back off. The garbage truck comes around noon on Wednesday, so i'll take the garbage out around, oh, say 11:30! I crack myself up sometimes!

Walter & I finished putting the swing together tonight and we love it!!! We still need to buy a dock box to store the cushions and cover in, so we tried the swing out and then put it all away! It is really cute and comfy and we will really be able to enjoy it.

Cathy called tonight to ask me why the river was all red, so I went and looked outside, but the river here was brown, green, & murky like always! After a while she figured out that somebody (Department of Wildlife & Fisheries??) is doing a test of the water flow of the river and put dye in it. So far, it hasn't flowed down our way, but I guess it's something to look forward to!

The 2nd day of the training was interesting today and I'm glad I went. I heard the guy who was presenting the material telling my supervisor about a more in depth training that she should consider having a few key people participate in so that they could work to teach the program to others in the school system and she came and asked me if I was really interested in learning about the program! I said yes, cause I am, and I hope she is considering me to do the extra training. A lot of what the guy taught us made a lot of sense as far as teaching kids replacement behaviors, including teaching them social skills they don't have as well as finding help for them academically when they are misbehaving to prevent having to do work that they are not capable of doing. However, it's easier said than done to go to a teacher and explain that a student needs to go back and have some easier work to build up missing skills, or even to change the classroom environment to support the student's needs, but it's food for thought.

No fever yesterday or today, so I think i'm over it. I have felt a little light headed today, but that is probably because I haven't done much for the last week and then was running around yesterday & today. I plan to sleep late and relax tomorrow. I am having lunch with some friends in Baton Rouge, and then maybe i'll come home and clean the house or something. Facebook took away my Scrabulous game due to some LAWSUIT with Hasbro!! Wahhhh!!! What do they think I'm supposed to do without it? I think I had 15 games going lol.

Cameron is going with us to Atlanta this weekend, so i'm excited about that. I will pick him up sometime Thursday. Stacy and I talked about the boys' trouble again last night and are not bringing them to talk to anyone because the 3rd boy corrected the extra trouble he had caused, so the 2 boys are going to be punished at home. So far, Cameron is not allowed to go to the 3rd boys house anymore, ever, period, plus he isn't spending the night away from home AT LEAST until the end of the year, and no peer functions unless it's at the school. He obviously is going to give in to peer pressure and is not capable of making positive decisions when left alone with peers, so, he can earn the privilege to be alone with them. And he's really a good kid. Lawdy be. It's so hard to know if you're doing the right thing with them.

Have a great night!!

Happy Birthday to my Elizabeth!

Today is Elizabeth's birthday!! She is 26 years old today and I am always so very excited to be able to pick up the phone and call to tell her happy birthday!! Until I reunited with Elizabeth, my mom would send me a birthday card every year on Elizabeth's birthday, just to let me know that she'd never forget her and hope that we would be able to know her someday. I don't get the cards anymore, Elizabeth does, and I'm ok with that!!! She is such a big part of my life now and it still amazes me how things turned out and that's just one more thing that I know God has done for me. I called Elizabeth this morning & left her a message letting her know that I have some birthday money for her. She LOVES having money to spend, so unless she has something specific that she wants for her birthday, I usually give her $100 to do what she wants with.

It's kind of nice to have nothing planned for the weekend! I have put myself on the sofa for the entire day with my laptop and a book (still reading A Good Yarn), and hopefully my mystery fever will leave me forever! It's been going away during the day and then sneaking back in the evenings. I'm not feeling bad at all and I don't think I have the stomach virus, so here I am, just resting and hanging out.

Walter is working on the pier today and it looks like he is pretty much finished with it. He is so incredibly smart and talented and i'm glad I have Mr. Wizard (as we affectionately call him) as my very own. He wants to build a covered deck next that will come off of the back porch so that we can move the bbq grill out there and have some more room for entertaining.

I will be leaving on Friday (if i'm cured of the mystery fever) for a weekend in Atlanta for my niece, Daphne's, 1st birthday. I'm going to ride with my mom & step-dad, and Cameron is possibly coming too. That isn't my week with him, so he's supposed to be deciding what he wants to do. It's about an 8 hour drive from here, so it isn't too bad. We will be staying at my cousin's house on Lake Lanier, so i'm excited about that, as well as seeing my cute little niece! I have only seen her once when she was about a month old.

I do appreciate the kind comments about JP and his situation. It is an uncomfortable topic for many people to talk about, but it is my reality and it helps me to talk about it, so hearing positive comments is really helpful to me, so thank you to my commenters!

Questions & Comments:

Chelle asked if Nadda (cat) meows when he's up to his nightly antics. No. And to be honest, he lives his life in "stealth mode" and only comes out of his closet bed if I'm home alone. Lately, he is able to come downstairs when Walter is home and due to the nightly sharing of pudding, they have bonded a little, but otherwise Nadda will freak out and run (picture back claws skidding across the wood floors until he makes it through the house & up the stairs.) Have I mentioned that he is on anxiety medicine? Another interesting thing is that he has JUST started to meow at all in the last few months. Cats learn to meow when they are communicating with people, and he never learned to speak up because he was a feral (wild) cat for the first 5 months of his life. If you don't tame a kitten in the first 8 - 10 weeks of their lives, chances are that their "window is closed" for making friends with people, and in the case like Nadda, where they are still able to make friends, they typically only bond with one person. Recently, I let him go outside with me and now he's started meowing at the door to go back out. He has the FUNNIEST meow i've ever heard, and now that he has learned to do it, he is starting to meow a lot!

Sunday

Walter dropped me off at Walmart this morning while he went to Lowes. Hopefully, I wont have to go shopping again for a couple of weeks. I bought a lot of veggies to snack on and some sugar free jello and string cheese!! I have already lost 4 lbs. since we got back Thursday! 11 more to go!! Today, I made bacon & cheese omelets for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch (no bun for me!) and I baked chicken and some more "pretend mashed potatoes," and asparagus for dinner.

This is Walter's latest project around the house: a shower for rinsing off on the pier. I am quite sure i'll never swim in the river, so I doubt I'll use the shower, but i'm sure the boys will. The next project is the pier and also the screened in porch once our neighbor has time to come over and work on it with Walter. He gave us a price that is about 1/2 of the other bids we got, so i'm excited! He also came up with a plan to put a wall on the end of the porch by the "bad cat" neighbor's house that will block our view of them. When they are on the corner of their porch, they can look right into our house!

Walter & I had a nice swim in the pool this afternoon! It was a beautiful day, but very hot, so we really enjoyed being able to jump in the pool and cool off. The temperature in the water was 90 degrees!!

My mom, step-dad, sister, Cameron, Walter, & I are planning to go to Atlanta around the 1st of August for my niece, Daphne's 1st birthday party! We will be staying with my cousin who has a house on Lake Lanier, so i'm looking forward to the trip! Walter will be out of town on business right before the trip, so he may not end up being able to go, but we'll play it by ear as the trip gets closer. I also may be heading back to Houston in a week or so if JP's co-defendant's trial happens as planned. I want to sit in on that and see what is said and what the verdict is. I am expecting that trial date to be reset too, but it's anybody's guess in the criminal justice system! I got a letter from JP yesterday and he is doing good. He's a little frustrated at the trial being postponed once again and just the not knowing, but he seems to be handling it ok. I sent him some family pictures that he should get soon and that usually helps him feel connected to home. I sure do miss that boy!