Here I am!

I haven't disapeared! Just getting ready for Walter's party tomorrow! See you Sunday with lots of fun pictures!! Have a great weekend!

Wednesday night

Michelle at Froggy Bottom Blog tagged me to list 7 weird/random things about myself. I did this once before and spent days answering questions about my 7 weird/random things. Let's see if I can top that! LOL

1. I am a high school drop-out

2. I have a Master's Degree

3. I love oranges but hate orange juice

4. I am married to my brother's best friend's uncle

5. My lucky number is 13

6. I was a grandmother at age 36

7. I know Mover Dave from the Imagination Movers

And now, to tag 7 people to play along!! Well, this is where I either don't get this posted tonight or just cheat and get it done! Ok, so i'm cheating!! I'm tagging EVERYONE!! You and You and You!!!

Walter went to the homeowner's association meeting tonight and came home with our official letter stating that we have 10 days to plant 2 trees (I thought it was tress?) in our yard. Seriously? And he's the homeowner's association president, so couldn't we just say no and not sue ourselves or something? 2 trees. Alrighty then. My neighbor, Leon, wants to give us 6 Crepe Myrtles from his yard that he doesn't want, but he already cut them back to just the branches (something you do to make them grow better later), so I wonder if planting the Crepe Myrtle carnage in our yard will make people happy?

And speaking of Leon!! He's the overly involved in our lives but very nice neighbor next door. In the beginning, Walter's 50th birthday party (coming up Saturday) was a surprise, so I'd asked Leon's brother-in-law to cook a spaghetti jambalaya for the party. Now that Walter knows about the party, Leon's brother-in-law is still cooking for us and they are having a lot of their own family over for the party too. That's all good, but they want to keep the jambalaya pot at their house and I'm worried that people from my house wont want to go over there to get their food!! AHHHHHH!!! Hopefully, it will all work out ok!! I really appreciate them cooking, so I don't want to make a big deal of it. Walter has already mentioned to him twice that we'll be having the food under the tent in the back yard, but I doubt Leon realizes we mean THAT food!! And I saw his wife for the first time yesterday since the swimming pool incident and I asked her to tell her niece not to let the little girl swim in our pool unless someone is SITTING BY THE POOL. She said she would let her know.

And as for my diet, no, you really can't have ANY sugar or bread on the Atkins diet, so I'm totally not on it right now. And yes, I've gained back my 7 lbs!! Will I ever learn??

Wednesday morning

My diet news was pretty funny from my last post, but nobody seemed to notice. If you have a chance, go back and read it!!! I really crack myself up sometimes! And the dieting news is pretty much the same since then!

Ok, to address the question about my height...I'm really not a tall super freak! While I am a tall girl at 5'9, my friend, Lesley, happens to be a short girl at about 5'2. So, we really do look like the "odd couple" when we're together, and I'd never thought about it before, but if you don't know me, I do look like an Amazon next to Lesley in that picture!!

Walter & I went to Sam's tonight to buy stuff for Walter's 50th birthday party on Saturday. We are also skipping steak night this week and went instead to the Texas Roadhouse while we're in the area near Sam's in Baton Rouge. It was really good and I ate lots of bread!!

It's OK To Play With Your Food!!

I got the Pop'rs that I won in Veggie Mom's giveaway at Eat Your Veggies in the mail over the weekend while I was gone!! We tried the taco flavor out tonight since it was "taco night" and they were a hit! The Pop'rs are a lot like Pop Rocks, which were a huge hit with me when I was growing up! I can't wait to try these out on my little picky friends!!! Thanks again Veggie Mom!!!
Lesley & I got back from our weekend trip to Houston around 3:30 yesterday afternoon and we had a really fun time. We were able to have 2 visits with JP - 20 minutes Saturday morning & 20 minutes Sunday morning. He was really glad to see us and was in a really good mood on Saturday and a little down on Sunday. He was telling us about different people that he feels "turned their back on him" when he was looking for help before he went to Houston in 2005, but I tried to explain to him that he was not doing well then and people are not normally willing to help someone who wasn't helping himself. I'm not sure if I made an impact on him, but my sister emailed me last night to say that he CALLED her last night! That may not sound like big news, but he hasn't called anyone but me in 18 months since he has been in jail. Overall, he looked great and seemed to be doing pretty well. I emailed his defense team when I got home after he told me one of them visited with him last week and found out that the trial will most likely happen as planned in December. There are also some other things going on that are positive for him, so we'll see what happens. I will be glad to know the outcome and to be able to plan our lives accordingly!

Our trip itself was a lot of fun. We got off to a late start because of Baton Rouge traffic. I picked Lesley up at 5 and what should have been a 4 hour trip took us 6 hours! It took nearly 2 hours just to get out of Baton Rouge!!! We were not able to meet Kim & Shayne in Lake Charles for dinner because it would have been 9pm before we got there!! So, it was about 11:30 when we rolled up to our hotel. We stayed at a new hotel that is in a shopping mall and was a bit fancy for our tastes, but we stayed there and tried to fit in, although I'm sure we seemed like the Beverly Hillbillys to the people at the hotel. Being that the hotel is built on top of some of the mall stores, for safety's sake, you can't just go inside the hotel without your room key/card after a certain time at night. And then, you don't just walk into the hotel lobby like one would expect, but instead, you walk into a room that seems to be some sort of waiting area/storage room, then take an elevator using your room card to the 2nd floor, where the elevator opens up into the lobby. Which is what you really expect to find when you walk on up to the hotel in the first place. So, it's 11:30 pm and we wander up to the hotel lobby, which isn't really a lobby, but just a locked waiting room, then we wander around trying to figure out where to go or what to do. The brains of the operation, Lesley, decides to read the sign on the door. I'm sure I would have thought of that sooner or later, but yeah, so anyway, the sign says to use your room card (which we don't have yet) to get in or ring the bell for service. Ummm, ok, so I ring the bell and the lady asks my name and I have to try to explain what it is I want. "Yeah, um, we can't find the lobby of the hotel." She asks if I have a reservation, then says she will buzz us in, then we should take the elevator to the 2nd floor where we will find the lobby. And sure enough! The elevator opens and there is a hotel lobby! We get checked in, get our room card, and the lady tells us that you have to use the room card to take the elevator, so we get in the elevator to head up to the 4th floor. After the elevator door closes, I try the card over and over and over in the slot thingie, and nothing happens. Lesley tries it a few times, then we break out in the giggles because it's been 5 minutes and when the elevator door opens back up, the lady will realize we are still standing in the elevator trying to figure out how to use the card!! So, then the elevator door opens and we see the lady looking at us! Lesley waves and the lady realizes that it is still US in the elevator trying to figure out how to use the card!! She had to come and show us that we were inserting the card upside down! We were quite embarrassed and went on up to our room. We were ready to go to bed since it was so late, so I turned on the air conditioner and went to get in my bed, then the a/c went off. So I turned it up to high and went to get in my bed, and it went off. So, Lesley went to try to turn it on and it would go right off. And it wasn't cool in the room, so we really wanted it to come on. We searched high & low for a button or switch to make it stay on. We were getting ready to call the lady in the lobby who no doubt already thought we were idiots, when I saw a note on the a/c unit that said, "the thermostat on the wall works along with the fan on this window unit." It took us a few more minutes to find a thermostat on the wall, and by then we were in fits of hysterical laughter, but we did manage to cool the room off and go to bed!! Here is a view of the mall outside of our window and the cool room we had!



We visited JP Saturday morning and then went to my sister's house to visit her, my brother-in-law, Kevin, and my great-nephew, Elijah. Kevin, raises homing pigeons, so Lesley got the pigeon tour while we were there.


We went back to our hotel and were VERY lazy all afternoon, then went to walk around the mall and found a Starbucks!! Then Donna, Kevin, & Elijah met us at the mall for dinner at the Red Robin. And yes, we saw the Red Robin! Wooooo!!

We visited JP again Sunday morning, then headed home. And I might add that while gas in Baton Rouge is $3.50 per gallon, I bought gas in Houston for $2.92 per gallon! What's up with that???


We were going to have lunch with Kim & Shayne on our way home Sunday, but Kim wasn't feeling good, so we'll have to make another trip soon!! It was a fun weekend to spend with Lesley and it was great to see JP! I doubt I will get back over there before the trial date.

The diet is going well. I made sure to eat everything in sight over the weekend so that Lesley didn't feel pressured to eat my low-carb diet. And then today, I had a low-carb Slim Fast for breakfast, peanut M&M's for lunch, and a king sized Reeses Peanut Butter Cup for a late afternoon snack. I'm pretty sure I lost some weight, but that may have only been from throwing away the bags of garbage that all the food came in. I may have to reassess my diet in the next day or two.

Work was good today. I saw a few kids, did a Why Try group, got some paper work taken care of for some of my kids and was relatively productive. I have meetings all afternoon tomorrow, so that will keep me entertained.

I hope you enjoyed my weekend story! Have a great night! I have to get busy catching up on my blog reading!!

Home Sweet Home!!

I am home and we had a great visit! I will post all of the details and some pictures tomorrow when I get a chance! JP is looking great and was really happy to see us. I talked to a member of his defense team tonight and it seems certain that a December 1st trial will be taking place, so start saying your prayers for him now, please!! We need all we can get!!

Thursday

Don't miss me too much, but I don't plan to blog again until Sunday when I come home from my weekend trip with my friend, Lesley, to visit JP in Houston. I am going to pick her up tomorrow after work and we'll hit the road!! I will be looking forward to catching up with everyone when I get back!

I met Walter at his office after work today and we got free flu shots. We've been getting the flu shot for several years now and never get the flu anymore, thank goodness. I had a great day at work today too. I managed to see all of my kids this week (I currently have 26 on my caseload) and worked with my "runner" to finish a test after he shut down in class and wouldn't work on it. He really has been doing good and the melt downs are fewer each week that goes by. I am going with our parent advocate to the home of my severly emotionally disturbed student after work tomorrow to see what kind of resources we can find for these grandparents. Overall, it was a good day and I have a few meetings tomorrow, then I'll be on my way for the weekend!

Bug at Day By Day and Anissa at Queen Bee gave me this award yesterday! Thank you Bug and Anissa!!

Now that I have been honored with this award, I am supposed to pass it on to 7 other deserving blogs.

Then, with the following award I have to answer the following questions with one word answers. Once the questions are answered, THEN...I must pass this award on to seven people. I will now complete the task at hand! Have fun!! The questions are as follows:
1. Where is your cell phone? Chair
2. Where is your significant other? Sofa
3. Your hair color? Brown
4. Your mother? Annette
5. Your father? Blah
6. Your favorite thing? Food
7. Your dream last night? Gone
8. Your dream/goal? Family
9. The room you're in? Living
10. Your hobby? Computer
11. Your fear? Snakes
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Here
13. Where were you last night? Home
14. What you're not? Short
15. One of your wish-list items? Sammy
16. Where you grew up? Louisiana
17. The last thing you did? Dinner
18. What are you wearing? Jeans
19. Your TV? On
20. Your pet? Giant
21. Your computer? Laptop
22. Your mood? Happy
23. Missing someone? Yes
24. Your car? Mustang
25. Something you're not wearing? Socks
26. Favorite store? Walmart
27. Your summer? FREE!!
28. Love someone? Yes
29. Your favorite color? Blue
30. When is the last time you laughed? Dinner
31. Last time you cried? Unsure

Now, to pass the award to 7 people...I am not usually an award cheater, but I just gave out a bazillion awards this week, so I am going to offer this award to anyone on my blog list who wants to accept it!! I love all the blogs that are there!!

Cameron's dad called today to see if it was ok to let Cameron go to his friend's house (the one who's house the 3 boys snuck out of over the summer at 4am) to spend the night. When we agreed on the punishment (other things happened - not just the sneaking out), one of the consequences was that he is not allowed back at the friend's house at all. There is no adult supervision and it is not a safe environment. So, yeah, he wants to know if it's ok to let Cameron go back over there. Ummm...hello?? As parents, we have to protect our child and allowing him to sleep at a house where there is no supervision is not going to happen! The kid has an older brother who drinks, who drives, and who has driven my child around!! Are you kidding me?? No, not only is he not going back over there, but if he LETS him and something happens, I told him I will make it VERY clear that we were aware of the unsafe environment, yet he allowed Cameron to go there. I suggested that he invite the kids to HIS house - something he has done ONCE in 10 years. I don't have anything against the kids and they are all at our house often - remember the 8 day stay during the hurricane?? Yeah, I don't keep him from his friends, who are good kids, but I wont allow him to be in danger. Surprisingly, he agreed, but I am pretty sure he felt the same way but didn't want to be the bad guy.

Anyway, that's all for now. Have a great weekend!

Wednesday

Today was a busy day at work and my brain is taking the night off to rest and read Eclipse! I got a phone call from a teacher last night about my severly emtionally disturbed student and an upcoming 3 day suspension, and due to family problems, I have stepped in to try to provide some support to the grandparents who are raising this young man. It is a very difficult situation. I met with a couple of my students and led 2 Why Try groups. My boss did come to observe me today and showed up for one of the groups, which went well. After work, I did my first "home visit" to get a parent to sign a release form that I really need to have, so that was interesting. All in all, I felt really worn out by the end of the day. It's hard not to take these kids' problems home with you. On a happier note, I am one of the few people who make phone calls to parents for positive reasons and I'm making sure I've done that for my kids who are really trying and making improvements this year. It really means a lot for the parents to get a call from the school that is GOOD!

Walter, Cathy, Brent, & I went to go to Hilltop tonight but there must have been an accident or something near here. The traffic headed that way was not moving at all, so we went another direction into a different town and had dinner at Outback, which made me miss my friend, Kelley!!! But, it was really good!! And Walter was eating bread and cheating on his diet like crazy, so I ordered their Chocolate Thunder from Down Under dessert!!!! Yum!!!!! Ha Ha I guess I showed him!!!! Actually, he & Brent ordered it too, so I wasn't the only pig, but so much for the diet, at least until I come back from Houston this weekend.

Well, seriously, my brain is taking the night off, so that's all I've got for now!!