The Birthday Week

Happy Birthday!!!!

What a week! Last Saturday we had a birthday party for Tanner here at the house. We had him, Drew, Cody, Dustin, Connor, Brooke, and Naomi here - they had a lot of fun. We hooked up the sprinkler under the trampoline and they had a blast lol. After the party Mom and Pat took us to El Sombrero for mine and Tan's birthday and we had a great time there too. They had the mariachi band playing that night and they were awesome. Once again, Brooke was the only one bold enough to get up and dance with them when they asked - and none of us had a camera! We had a real good time and good food. Now for the photos:

On Sunday we went to our little band practice thingy that half the folks forgot to come to. But we had a good time just those of us who were there. On my actual birthday I ended up having to sit at the driver's license office to renew my license. They won't let you do it online twice in a row, and I did it online in 2002. I kinda wanted a new picture anyway thinking it would now be tons better than the last picture since I've lost weight and all. But to my dismay I really could not see the big dramatic difference that I had hope for. Maybe looked a little more like an Indian squaw. Here is my DL pic from 1998 (that was reused in 2002) and my DL pic from this week.

I don't know. I guess nobody's DL pic is supposed to be a great pic anyway. More like a mugshot lol.

Sometime in the middle of this week, I think it was my mother who called and snapped me out of my world of denial by mentioning she had looked at the school calendar and noticed I had to go back to work on August 1. I said yeah, yeah, I know. Then I started doing my math and realized.........oh my! That means that next week is my LAST week off!!! Curses!!!! The very next day I got the letter in the mail I get every year from my boss saying "hope you had a great summer, but now it's time to come back!". So I guess I can no longer put it out of mind. The last day of school I was so stressed from this year that I told myself I"m leaving here and not looking back - and I will NOT come up here at all this summer, and I will NOT come back a few days early to do ANYTHING. I swore I would not step foot on that property until the day my contract forced me to. And what did I do this week.........I went up there and got a couple of books to start doing some planning from.

Once I realized that the end is near, it hit me that I had one more thing that I had planned to do this summer - paint Tyler's room. So I got straight to work stripping off the wallpaper. I kinda of pulled a "Tom Sawyer" on three little boys - making my work look like so much fun that they were DYING to try it. So I let them, only it didn't last but about 15 minutes. I got the paper off and it was amazing how DIRTY the wall was that had not been covered with wallpaper. Was really gross.

When I was getting these pictures off my camera I noticed Tyler and his friend had taken a few for their myspace site I guess. So here is Tyler and Thomas, looking totally cool. But I told Tyler the sheep dog look has got to go before school starts.

I guess I made up for having no pics last week. But before I go, a blast from the past pic:

Since I was talking about DL pics, I found this old high school ID pic of me in the 10th grade lol. Wonder what ever happened to my first driver's license?

July 2nd Week

Tanner finally came home Sunday, but wanted to spend the night with Mamaw and Papaw so we didn't get him back til Monday. He has spent the rest of the week being bored. I think he became so accustomed to having Brooke around and having the undivided attention of grandparents that coming home was somewhat of a disappointment hehe. But finally on Thursday, Drew was back too so they can keep each other busy.
Took Tyler to the liver specialist again and we were told Tyler has Gilbert's Syndrome, which is nothing really. It's a hereditary condition in which the liver is "slow". It doesn't filter as quickly as most peoples so sometimes a back up of bilirubin can happen in the blood causing some mild jaundice. This condition never turns into anything bad, and there is nothing to fix it. It's just good to know you have it down the line in case anything else ever happens to you and you'll know that you're prone to jaundice. The doctor told Tyler - "see you back here when you're 50". So I guess we're good to go.
It's been a pretty uneventful week of rest. Nothing special has happened really so I have not even had the camera off the dock. Shame on me again! So I will just give a "nutshell" report of our week:

- taught Tanner how to play electronic battleship.
- Tanner taught me how to use the clubpenguin.com. it's actually kinda cool.
- Tyler went to a "slip-n-slide" party at the church. They built the biggest slip-n-slide I have ever seen in my life. Half a football field long I'd bet.
- cleaned Tyler's room, cleaned out the closet, etc.
- watched "Hide and Creep" and "Date Movie".
- hooked up cable in my bedroom to my new TV
- took Tyler to El Sombrero to eat with friends on Thursday.
- went on a small shopping spree at JCPennys. Got Rusty shoes and some shirts. Got Tyler 3 pair of jeans for school. Got me some really cool stuff for nearly nothing off the sale racks.
- tried to figure out if Dale has West Nile Virus or not. I think he does. Who knows.
- mowed grass and weed-eated again on Friday.
- Brooke spent the day with us on Friday and had a good time playing with Tanner and Drew.

The coming week will bring mine and Tanner's birthday, so should be a good week for pictures.

4th of July week

We left last Friday going to the lakehouse for 5 days. We had a really good time - Rusty did some fishing (fish weren't biting though of course), we got to ride the jet ski once, and we got to do a good bit of swimming, sunning, reading, and the guys got a little playstation time in. Tanner got to shoot some fireworks, and we went out in the boat and saw some fireworks on the lake. We visited with a lot of family at the lakehouse. We also went to get-together at the cabin and visited with my family there. We enjoyed the whole trip, and I mostly have pictures from all that this week:

We came home on Wednesday, but left Tanner there to go to the family reunion in Arkansas with Mamaw and Papaw and Brooke. We've just been kind of resting since then I guess. Rusty had the week off for vacation and has enjoyed the heck out of it. Last night (Friday) we went to see the much anticipated movie "Pirates of the Caribbean II". Went all the way to Clinton. We've been waiting to see this movie for months. But it was a totaly disappointment! Don't waste your money seeing it at the theatre. All it is is a segue to Pirates III which comes out NEXT summer. It totally leaves you hanging on the end, and totally pisses ya off. I was actually angry after watching it.

Anyway. Rusty had more dental work this week. I had to go see if my "tube tieing" procedure worked - and it did NOT. I have one tube that is not blocked. So my doctor says let's just give it another 3 months to seal up and we'll test it again. Meanwhile, he talked me into another Depo shot which I am already regretting. Tyler goes back to the liver doctor next week to see if the jaundice went down after he stopped the antibiotic, so we hope that goes well. And Tanner, well he's just fit as a fiddle I guess hehehe. And basically that about sums up our week of the 4th of July!

Blast from the past: A 5 generations photo from about 1982-ish I think. Mom was younger than I am now. Mamaw was younger than Mom is now. Time flies lol.