Last week of September

Muhuhahahahahaha!!!!!!!

Here's the week:

- Saturday we had band practice and it sounded pretty good. It does really get better every time. We even kind of played around with a piece of the "Wizards in Winter" thing and it was surprisingly cool. We're going to learn the whole thing now. I finally sneaked a few pics from band practice, but don't tell them I stuck them on here hehehe. We have Rusty and Tripp (singer), Russ (drummer), and you can see Lisa (bass) in the picture of my current keyboard set up.

-Sunday I made sausage biscuits for Tyler's church group thing. He said that everyone was impressed and voted that his was the best breakfast thus far. Yay me! He then went home with a friend from church and I didn't see him til about 8 that night. When I picked him up there were at least 50 kids running around these people's yard and Tyler had someone else's clothes on because he had gotten dirty when they "watered and floured" some kid. I didn't ask a whole lot of questions, but it appeared that they had a lot of fun. Sunday afternoon Terri came over with Dustin and Cody for a spaghetti get together. Trent and Russ came over for a bit too just to hang out.

-Monday evening Keith and Jenifer came over to watch the Saints game with us, which ended up being the game of the year probably. Was a lot of hype and a good game and the Saints won.

-Tuesday I hoped and prayed Tyler's team would win the game but no such luck. It was so DANG close though. 19-13. Tyler played from start til finish again and was completely worn out at the end. Later this week the coach agreed to take him off offense for awhile and just let him play defense, which made him happy. At the game that night I saw something I've never seen. A total infestation of overpopulating crickets - and I found out crickets can indeed fly further than a few feet. The air was so thick with crickets, and they were literally raining down on us. People were running for cover. Never in my life have I seen this, and I'm not exaggerating at all. The place was crawling and flying with crickets. The next day at work, same thing - a parking lot loaded with crickets. The maid at school says that when this happens it means there is going to be a very long hard winter. I'm eager to test that theory this winter.

-Wednesday.......I always have trouble remembering Wednesdays. Oh yeah - Dale got our limb off the house Wednesday afternoon. Was quite a job I think. But I was glad to have it down. And Wednesday was quite a rotten day at work and I was very much looking forward to.....

-Thursday when I got to skip work and go to a music teachers workshop in Madison. The workshop was nice and informative, but I skipped out after lunch.

-And now for the biggest news of the week.........on Thursday afternoon Tanner FINALLY learned to ride a bicycle! We were so happy he and I both nearly cried I think. It just kinda happened. I was cleaning out the garage and cutting some weeds and stuff and he was practicing. I saw him look like he nearly had it so I went over and gave a good push to go fast and from there he just kept going. Hallelujah! He came inside later and wrote on my calendar for Sept.28 to be "National Bicycle Day", to forever go down in history as the day Tanner learned to ride a bike.

-And oh yeah, Rusty is now trying to hot rod the 10 speed.

- Tonight was our restaurant night and we chose to go to Cracker Barrel. We knew there was some reason we never go there but no one could remember what it was. We recalled the food being good, but for some reason we stopped going there. The food was indeed good, what we got of it. Several things we ordered never came. Took forever to get food, and my order was wrong so I had to sit and watch everyone eat while waiting on my right order lol. The waiter told Rusty that the soup of the day was "cham clowder". Then later he came back to tell us sorry but there would not be any cham clowder because when they opened it it was rotten. I don't know how many times he must have called it "cham clowder", and he NEVER once caught himself lol. But, even though the service was sucky (they were packed, we felt sorry the guy), and we never got all our food-not even the cham clowder-we still had fun.
Sunday will be officially October and I'm buying 2 pumpkins. I'll buy 2 more the next weekend. We have big plans on carving pumpkins this year. I want to fill the whole sidewalk or flower bed with them. Or as many as I can logically see buying anyway. And I'm driving to Clinton tomorrow to get a witch's head in a crystal ball that Home Depot has there. Show it to ya next time!

Mid September

Not much news this week. Fast week, no time, no rest, no pictures, just the usual productive week at work/school, etc.

*Went to Tyler's game in Clinton. They played so much better as a team and really should have won. I felt they dominated the game, just ended up losing to a couple of lucky plays and never could score ourselves really. Score was 14-6 Clinton. Tyler played awesome as usual though. He is a total thrill to watch. I left work early Tuesday to be on the team of mom's who brought pizza to them before the football game and I enjoyed that also. This time, I had a better clinton map and we got straight to the field, woohoo!
*Last Friday I got my National Anthem Project done at school. It turned out nice, and it was a big relief to be finished with it. We got featured on the front page of Saturday's newspaper. That was what I had really hoped for was recognition for our school. Here is our article http://www.vicksburgpost.com/articles/2006/09/16/news/news02.txt and here is a picture. Aren't we a cute mosaic flag?

*Mom finished Tanner's quilt and Rusty's quilt and gave them to them last week. They are awesome. And of course they are already put to good use around here.

*We heard from Danny and Marilyn this week and they are going to come down for Jonny's wedding in a couple of weeks! We're looking forward to seeing them, specially Marilyn because it's been.........wow, 4 years since we've seen her.
*For weeks I have been fighting the urge to buy pumpkins and ghosts and crap at Wal Mart because it's really just too darn early to be spending money on that kind of stuff. But we all know that Wal Mart does NOT fight fair. I went in this week and they finally got me. Check out our new pumpkin:

They only had ONE left. I HAD to buy it, or else I would never own one at all. You just can't let opportunities like this pass you by. So I allowed myself to buy just that one thing. Oh, and a set of Halloween cups. And...a mask for Tanner. Oh, and some fake bony hand gloves for Tanner. Not only am I a sucker for Halloween, I'm a sucker for Tanner.

*Rusty's dad brought us over some home made bread last Sunday - the day that I went back on my diet. Or tried to anyway. I ended up going back on my diet on MOnday instead. Because the home made bread, well it was still warm from the oven. We visited with him and Rose a bit, then visited them on Thursday evening to try to do something to their computer.

*Wednesday night at 9:00 Tyler and I put together a biology project that was due the next day, that he had known about for a week. He has promised not to do that to me again. But we made 100 on it.

*Monday night I went to a football parents meeting at the field house to talk about getting food to the team before their game because they have to go from noon til 9:00pm without food on game days. So I served on the first food committee Tuesday afternoon (as I already mentioned), and will do it again at another game in Oct. The boys were so incredibly grateful - that made it fun.

Tonight we go to a wedding shower for Steve T., tomorrow is band, Sunday I'll be cooking breakfast for Tyler's Youth group class at church, then cooking dinner for Rusty's side of the family that afternoon. I see a pattern forming here of me providing people with food...hmmm. I may turn into my grandmother prematurely lol. Work is getting exciting. I'm learning to like my job again and to have fun. The 3 years of National Board just about did me in on teaching, but now things are so much better because I have more time to be creative, I can set my own pace, I can experiment with new ideas, and I can actually teach them stuff about music. It's gonna be a fun year.

As busy and tired as I have been all week it just seems like there should be more to write about. But I think I have covered the highlights and the rest is probably just the duller stuff.

2nd week of September

I'm updating a day early this week, because as it turns out I just have the time to do it today. Wednesday around dinner time the entire city lost water, some major pipe burst somewhere. Anyway, only one school in the district has water at all so they cancelled school today. I had a really BIG event planned at school this morning for the celebration of the anniversary of the writing of the National Anthem. The newspaper was coming and everything. But as it turns out, that has to be put off til tomorrow so I guess it will have to be included in next week's update.
Last weekend we did band practice on Saturday. Then we went to Wal Mart where they FINALLY had another ceiling fan to match the one I already bought. So we got it and came home and put them both up. Here is the before and after. Looks so much better with matching light fixtures. It's like a totally different room when you walk in it. I still need draperies though.




















Tuesday was Tyler's first real football game. We went at 5:00 because Blake's team played first. Got to see Blake play a bit and got a pic or 2. Those who know my brother and his kids will be able to spot him in this picture right a way, especially if you ever saw Chris play football! Looks just like him
















By the time Tyler's game started at 7:00, the sun was pretty much gone and I could not seem to get a picture with good lighting. Gonna have to work on that. But here's the team, and Tyler at the beginning kick off. He played offense and defense that night and did great, but we still ended up losing 12-0. They were disappointed of course. But Tyler has stayed positive. After the game we waited outside the field house forever it seemed like. All the kids were gone and ours still wasn't out. When he finally came out he said that he had stayed behind and cleaned up the mess all the other guys had just left there, tossing their stuff here and there. I had to look closely to make sure that it was TYLER that was telling me this. Cleaning up after other people??? MY son?














The heat finally broke this week. We've had some mornings in the 60's, and supposedly was 57 this morning. Today has been just terrific. I love my house in the fall and I just can't wait for 70 degree highs. I've cleaned house all day, doing all the stuff that does not require water. And the kids have just been hanging around doing nothing much. I really think we all needed the rest - even Rusty, but he had to work anyway unfortunately.
This weekend Tan is supposed to go to Alabama with mom and all we have on schedule is band practice and NFL Sunday.

1st week of September

I have TONS of pictures this week! It was a very busy weekend last weekend. I probably have more pictures than stories to tell about for once. Last Saturday we went to a birthday party for Steve's new stepson at the park. It was a lot of kid fun for sure, but we enjoyed watching Steve be "Daddy" as well - it's all so new hehehe. Here he is helping out and scooping ice cream. We always knew he'd make a great dad!! Yay Steve!
Saturday night we went to Donnie's for a cookout - LeeLee was in town with Kevin and Makayla. Sunday we went for a cookout at Aunt Joni's. Then Sunday evening everyone came to our house for a visit. Here are a bunch of pics from the weekend:

We just had a great time visiting with everyone!

And now for the grand football update!

I went and bought Tyler some new football cleats on Saturday. Found some for $38, got real lucky. He wore the cleats at the Monday practice but then forgot to take them to school on Tuesday, and then again on Wednesday. The high school head coach has taken notice of him this week (not just the 9th grade head coach, but the HIGH SCHOOL head coach!) and asked him Wednesday where his cleats were. He explained that the ones they issued did not fit right and that he had bought some new ones but just kept forgetting to bring them. The coach told him he didn't have to do that, that he would see to it personally that he got cleats. AT the Thursday practice that same coach showed up on the field with a brand new pair of size 14 cleats and gave them to Tyler. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So now he has 2 pair I guess cuz I can't take mine back.
AT the MOnday practice Tyler gave it his all and the coaches really liked it. He was picked as a starter on defense. He was feeling really good, with all the compliments they were giving him.... Then in the last few minutes of practice the coach said......"I know you don't think we've forgotten about that FIGHT do ya?" Geez. We really did think they had forgotten because no one has mentioned it in the whole 5 weeks of school. (He got in a fight in the last game of the year last year and is supposed to be suspended from the first game this year.) So anyway, they told him they were going to let him serve his suspension during this week's jamboree which was not a real game, just like practice plays. So he did NOT get to play Tuesday at the jamboree and it just about killed him having to watch instead of play. Even though Tyler wasn't going to be playing, we still went to the 9th grade football jamboree on Tuesday - what a trip! It was at Clinton Jr. High - I got a map off the net. Of course the map was wrong. We found out later that the Jr. High is now at the old high school, and they've built a new high school. So we arrived at the OLD Clinton Jr. High which was totally empty. Then finally Rusty let me ask for directions and we got it all straight - we were only 30 minutes late getting there. We held our own against Clinton in the first set of plays. Neither team scored. Then we had to go against Madison Central and they CREAMED us. It was painful to watch. Romped over our boys like they weren't even there. But at least they see how much work they need I guess.
But I'm totally excited, can't wait for the games!

I guess I went a little picture happy this week. But I'll be glad I did one day huh?

The rest of the week has been spent resting from the weekend I guess. We have watched some TV, learned some songs, just the boring stuff. I'll end with yet more pictures, these are just a few I took of the river while we were there last Saturday. Until next week........

Last week of August

Ok here goes....

Last Friday night we accepted an invitation from Ken and some others to go to a dance at their church. All four of us went. We ate some good food and danced one slow dance. But mostly we just visited with people. Tanner ran wild with Drew and Connor. And Tyler stayed in the kiddy room with the little kids since Caley didn't come that night. I don't really care much about dancing. And Tyler certainly wasn't going to dance. But TANNER - he danced the night away. Photos are 1. Kathy/Kevin, Heather/Ken, Rusty/me 2. Me/Rusty 3. Tanner and Drew cuttin' a rug 4. Tyler and Connor 5. Steven and Tricia (my high school friends who have the 2nd oldest marriage. Mandy and Perry have the oldest, me and Rusty have the 3rd oldest to my knowledge.)

So that was our Friday excitement. Saturday, we played at the warehouse minus a singer - his truck broke down or something. Anyway, we actually got more done I think. We go again tomorrow. The rest of the week has been the basic routine mostly. My house has now returned to its "mid-school-year appearance" - laundry folded on the furniture, everything else in need of cleaning or repair, blankets in all the various places that I collapse in each evening. Starting to feel normal around here again. Sunday, I don't reckon we did much of nothing but go to church. Tuesday was back to school night at my school so I had to go back up there at 6. I was looking forward to sitting in my room and playing piano like I usually do, since I have no homeroom or anything. But I got drafted to sit at the table and try to get people to sign up in the PTO. So that sucked. We made Wednesday our monthly family outing night. It was the day before payday, so that was close enough. We went to eat at the China Buffet.
Afterwards we went and rented 2 movies that we have already seen: Benchwarmers and Deuce Bigalow European Gigolo. And we got some ice cream at Baskin Robbins. Even TYLER, who HATES ice cream, ordered ice cream. But I found out as we got in the car that he really didn't want it - he had just ordered it so Rusty could eat it and have TWO ice creams. Anyway. Some pics of Tanner at the Baskin Robbins playground and, oddly enough, an interesting sunset over the Kroger parking lot/cemetery thing.

And that's the end of this week in pictures.

Thursday I went grocery shopping and got Tanner a computer desk also. I always love that first of the month grocery shopping trip where it sorta feels like money is no object. lol. But I have had the hours of 5pm Thursday til 5am Friday officially removed from the record books, and marked as unworthy of existence. One of those not so pleasant husband/wife evenings where ya just can't agree on anything and you feel like choking each other to death. Luckily, neither of us are dead. And it's now Friday evening. We survived yet another semi-annual argument.

Tyler has grown very frustrated with the football situation this week. We've been in school for 4 full weeks now.They just got their pads this week, only dressed out in them twice this week. They JUST chose starting offense on THURSDAY. The coach did not even show up today (Friday). The first game is this coming TUESDAY. They still have not chosen the starting defense, so they have to go to football practice on MONDAY which is LABOR DAY so that the starting defense can be chosen! The day before game 1! They issued him pants that don't fit, shoes that don't fit and have no inner soles in them. The first day of wearing the shoes he has a huge blister on his foot. So I'm going to have to go buy him some football cleats myself. HE's just disappointed in the effort being put forth by the coaches. And I have to say that I am too. Yesterday he wanted to quit and go to WC he was so upset. He says the coaches ignore the 9th graders and put all their effort into the high school team. I told him it's just one year, HANG IN THERE. But geez, it IS disappointing when football is your whole world and you have someone that doesn't seem to care trying to lead you.

Limb update: insurance company said they were sending me a nice size check by the end of this week - it's still not here. That small limb, it's still on the roof as of now.

So, it's Friday evening now. I decided to end the week with a nice fat Pina Colada. I do like pina coladas. Just not getting caught in the rain.