{a project & a pea}

the most laid back weekend in forever...to the point where i started to go a little stir crazy, but i can't spend any money because we (the kids and I) are leaving for Virginia in a few days and i need as much of the green stuff for the oily stuff as i can get. i've had a major project on hold since i've moved into the house a year ago and finally got it complete. i had the pictures and the plan, i had the paper, but changed my mind after Basic Grey's Boxer line came out. Ooooh lala! it was so pretty and it went really well in my house. Anyway, as you can tell in the pics. i put these LO's on canvas and modpodged over them, therefore sealing them and hung them in a long hall way in my house, hanging them from black ribbon. They spell out life. I love the way that they look and i had a ton of fun doing them and so glad that they are complete...whoo hoo!

And I cannot NOT post about my night last night, my sweet Olympic, Nascar watching husband was making me crazy watching TV last night. I was so bored out of my skull that I was on the message boards on 2peas (I had scrapped until i thought my brains were going to come out of my eyeballs) and while things were getting a little insanely silly on the NSBR boards, my little friend down the road whose blog that I stalk http://www.creatingpostitnotes.blogspot.com/ (its a cooking blog) because I actually use a lot of the recipes from it. Anyway, she got on 2peas we started chatting back and forth ended up meeting for the 9:45 showing of "Get Smart" which was an unexpected surprise and a lot of fun. Unfortunately, they are moving in a few months. Such a bummer and becoming the story of my life. Anyway, we had a good time and the movie was a hoot.

{rah! rah!..its Saturday!}

this week has gone by in a whirlwind of sheer craziness! Action has been at his Grannies and Pops in Kentucky, so its been very quiet on that front and trust me, that has been like a week at the spa for me....Lex has spent the week at Cheer Camp, but its been day camp and so she's been gone during the day and whiney at night. I have been back to my normal work schedule of Monday and Friday, so my 3 days off were fantastic. I got a huge project done that i will post tomorrow. I got some scrapping done. I rearranged my house, cleaned, did laundry, ran errands, grocery shopped and am starting to recover from all of the travel. I am excited that I also met my new neighbor that moved into my Peachy Pal's house (who i still miss since she had to move to the land of sushi). Anyway, back to my new neighbor, she is a photographer and she is fantastic. I talked with her a long time and she is a lot of fun!! I like fun people. Finding fun people here in hobunk has been quite the challenge. She is not from here, they just moved here and so maybe that's the key. Anyway, I am so very excited to get to know her better. We are considering setting up a bunco group here in the neighborhood. I will say, I love all of my neighbors. They are great, I love my neighborhood. If anyone ever moves here, they are crazy if they move anywhere, but this neighborhood. On tap for today, was Lex's last day of Cheer Camp which the parents could go to and see the routine that they had come up with last week. The girls did a great job, but there's still a lot of progress to take place. I am really excited being an 80's music junkie, but their entire competition routines are based on Michael Jackson songs, you know, before he was a freak and was still cool.

the rest of the day, we are chillin' and waiting for lex's boyfriend to come over, she hasn't seen him since we went to EPCOT. He has been on restriction for most of the summer for a bad grade on his report card. I am hoping that he'll still be able to come over. Enjoy your weekend!!!

{slimy nasty creepy crawly snake story}

I am not much of a reptile person, actually I don't like turtles, snails, frogs (well, we have two African water frogs that I am so afraid to touch), but snakes....I hate snakes, they give me the heebie jeebies. When I was growing up in Orlando, I remember 2 encounters with snakes as a child. The one that I remember the most, and I was quite young (maybe 7 years old) was when we came home and a coral snake was in our house. Actually, in mine and my sister's bedroom. If you know anything about coral snake's they are highly poisonous. I remember my Dad trying to kill the snake while my sister and i sat on the living room couch and my Mother went and got a gun that I didn't even know that we owned. My father yelling at her to put the gun away, he was trying to kill the snake another way. Then my Dad put that snake in a jar with phemaldahyde and sat it on his work desk for years. I now think back on that and think how gross! Why would he do that. Who knows, my Dad is a nut. Secondly, we had a enormous black snake that hung out in our back yard. With our house backing up to the woods, this was not unusual and it lived there for years. My Dad would not kill it because he said that it killed everything else that we didn't want like rodents, etc. That was fine and dandy until we got pet rabbits. Well, you know how that goes. The snake never hurt the rabbits, but I always worried that I would go outside and see half my "Mr. Whiskers" hanging out of that big black snake's mouth.

Now, my next encounter was a few nights ago and it still gives me the heebies just thinking about it. I was walking home in the dusk by myself in my neighborhood. I was walking at a pretty good pace and I looked down right under the street light and saw that less than a foot in front of me was a rattle snake with his tail up and his head bobbing at me. He was quite defensive. It scared the pee out of me! Obviously, I ran home. I am not a "runner", but I may have it in me after all. I told my husband about the snake and he put on his flip flops (not such a smart choice, I thought, but that's just me!) and he got a ho (a GARDEN ho) and off we went. I figured that slimey nasty little booger would have taken off after his encounter with me. But no, he was in the same place and he fought Mark to the death, he put his tail up and was striking. Truth be told, I am so glad that my son is not out and about playing like he normally would be because they are obviously out there. By the next morning, the birds had picked his bones...Anyway, that is my slimey nasty creepy crawly snake story. Sleep well and watch where you step!

{the bomb, mia, rockstars, & rattlers}

Okay, rockstars we are not, but party animals....maybe! I get that I haven't blogged in awhile and I wasn't supposed to blog while on vacation, but my FIL had wireless and I had some time in the evening. Who knew! So, I will catch up on the last almost a week now (OMG, I have been zooming!) We went to Atlanta last Friday, on the road again with some MapQuest directions that were the bomb (yes, I know its no longer "cool" to say that, but I'm old so its okay) and we got there and then sat for hours in Atlanta traffic. We got Action from camp, who absolutely loved it by the way!!! If anyone is looking for a week long camp to send their child this is the "bomb" (yes, I said it again!!). I didn't mention it prior him going to camp because well, hello, this is the world wide web and I didn't really want to broadcast where my "little ray of sonshine" was located without his "mommy" for an entire week. So, anyway, he went to Camp Woodlands in Cleveland, Georgia. Its a Christian camp with a lot of outdoor activities including zip lining, jet skiing, the big pillow thing in the middle of the lake (i can't remember what that is called), plus a ton of other activities. He loved it!

On Saturday, Mark, Lex, & I went to one (if not the BEST) Broadway show that i have ever seen....Mamma Mia. Lion King was at the top and it might have just gotten kicked out of first place with this hit! If you get the opportunity to see this, I was laughing my butt of the entire time and we had killer seats, practically wiping the actors sweat off of us, he he he. It was so much fun!! The highlight was in our efforts to avoid the masses after the play and make it back to the subway, in turn we ran into all of the actors coming out from backstage and Lex got their autographs and talked with her. They were awesome and so nice. The main characters really were super. Later that night, we totally rocked out at Mark's Aunt Kate's birthday party (the whole reason for heading to Atlanta). Her DJ and the "entertainment" portion of the evening was so very much fun!!! I danced like a maniac and so did Lex, I think that even Mark broke a sweat...

Wow! What a long post...I won't go on with the rest of the week..I guess that makes you a bunch of loosers!! My week includes my personal encounter with a rattlesnake by myself at night. I will post about that tomorrow. I have just been so busy having a life here as of late. All in all our vacation was great, on the road a lot, really broke and our Action stayed with Mark's parents to work with his Grandpa cleaning the horse stables (he loves it, its great character building), so its been quiet around here without our "sexybeast"Axe wearing dude.

{the babies}

we've got new babies in the family. i love babies. Mark's brother's wife and Mark's sister both had babies within a few weeks of each other and so it was great to get to see them while visiting in Kentucky. They are both beautiful and will probably be thick as thieves growing up because they are so close in age, that in itself is a wonderful thing. Thursday was just a great day visiting with family and snuggling with babies.......

{vino}

an afternoon spent at a vineyard here in Kentucky. Funny, you don't think of Kentucky as wine country, but there are a few wine fields and even though Kentucky is horse country, it is absolutely beautiful. If you have never gotten a chance to visit, you definitely should, you won't be sorry. I also noticed that there are some beautiful wine fields and chateu's near Atlanta. I think that Napa Valley may have a little East Coast competition if this trend continues. The vineyard that we visited wasn't very big, it was quite the Mom & Pop operation, but we really enjoyed the wine tasting and the wine was very good. We bought several to take home and several for Mark's aunt whose birthday is this weekend. The vineyard also had a place where they had Shakespear in the park type of plays, you can bring your own picnics and watch plays in the evenings in a park like setting, but its "terraced" so most people could see. I just loved it, maybe one day we can get back and see the play.

We then headed back to my SIL's house for dinner , margaritas and diggin' in dirt. Well, my little nephew did the dirt diggin' and the adult's delighted in the margaritas and played a few games of "Apples to Apples", which is a lot of fun. Its the firt time that I've played that game, but its one I might pick up for future "adult" parties.

{year of the locust}

Believe it or not, but these are DEAD,
these are the shells of the locust.eeww.

We are in Kentucky, we finally made it. We are writing our thank you cards to google maps and yahoo maps as we speak....LOL!! We came during a huge locust break out.. Appparently, approx. every 15 years there is a big swarm of them that come up from the ground....biblical porportions and they have just taken over. They die and leave their entire shell just wherever, on trees, on plants, on whereever they may be. They make a horrible crickety noise, but if one gets upset and gets stuck in the car with you (guess how I know this), they make a horrible screatching noise. No wonder the Egyptians hated them so much, they are freaky!! On the other hand, they have started to thin out somewhat. My in-laws said that you literally had to run in from your car to your house and check yourself to make sure that you weren't taking any of them in with you. My little 23 month old nephew on the other hand thought that they were so coooll.... He loved picking at the dead one's and hoping that the live one's would get on his stick. Oh, to be young and nieve again. Pops (my FIL) took him outside and let him play in the creek behind their house. It was great to just spend the day with everyone and some downtime with my SIL and my nephew. Its great to see how much he's grown and how much he's talking now. He can say so much its amazing. And he's smart as a whip, I just loved playing with him...

{yahoo....my butt!}

well, the good news is that Action is @ camp, the bad news is that we spent hours in a tiny town trying to find it. We used Yahoo map directions and they were so wrong that we barely got out of my cousins driveway before things went terribly awry. The camp is 45 minutes from my cousins house, but it took us 2 hours until we pulled up to the camp... We kept stopping in this little tinytown asking for directions to this very well known, or so we thought camp, and we kept getting the craziest directions and the locals totally acted like they knew exactly where this place was and we would follow the directions and they were totally wacked! Finally, we found a place that had a map of the area and it was the simplest one turn off the main road to find. Seriously, I was nearly in tears by the time that we got there. I was ready to mow over a stinken cow, I just didn't care at that point. Mark said that he felt like we we're in the town of Deliverance..(can you hear the banjos??) I think its time for a GPS and then up the road for 2 hours on a very, very curvy thru the mountains, one right after the other no-man's land highway until we finally hit the main highway on our way to Kentucky. But we finally made it and all is good.

Action and his cousin are at a camp that has a ton to do and I am so excited for them because it is going to be such a great experience for them both, but in the same instance I am more worried than I ever imagined that i would be. I have several times today wondered what he was doing, wondering if was a good enough swimmer, wondering if the other boys were going to be nice to him. I need to cut the apron strings, but it won't matter how old my boy is, he will always be my baby. He will always be that little boy that loved Pooh Bear and would not go to sleep until I rocked him. He will always be that little boy that would sneak lollipops and try to convince me that the reason that they had "changed colors" is because the more you lick them the colors change. And I am still wondering if he's brushing his teeth and now I've added washing the lake water out of his hair...

{madison,braves, & the cousins]

on the road we are....and having a blast. we got off yesterday to quite a late start, but decided to take a side trip which was a little more scenic. my mom had told me about the town of madison, ga, which is the town that sherman refused to burn during the civil war. Sherman was childhood friends with the mayor of the town's brother and they had come to a gentleman's agreement that he wouldn't burn the town after burnind down Atlanta on his march to Charleston. So, the town is absolutely beautiful and quaint and full of antebellam homes, i got quite a few pictures, including a beautiful "gingerbread" house and when I say gingerbread house, i am referring to the incredible trim work done on the house. After visiting madison, we made it to my cousins house and we have just had the best visit. we made a last minute decision to go to an Atlanta Braves game today and it was so much fun!! The Braves played the Phillies and lost in the 9th inning which totally stunk, but it made for an exciting game. It was 110 degrees in the shade, well, not in the shade which is where our seats were. We got so lucky, we bought these package tickets which included parking, program, hot dogs, drink, and seats for one really good price. After getting there we realized that our seats we're most excellent! We had air conditioned seating and private restaraunts and stuff right behind our seats which were completely shaded, i didn't even break a sweat!! The kids had a great time together and at the end, they ran the bases and got limited edition bats made by Home Depot. how fun is that? i am loving that the cousins have had this time together and i have had this time with my cousin that i don't get very often. tomorrow we are off to take action & Jay to camp. i hope that they brush their teeth.....

{TGIF & hasta la vista!}

Thank Goodness Its Friday!! And we hit the road for our vacation tomorrow! This week has been so incredibly busy and not the fun busy that I like, but I have just had the best "time" with my kids. I usually get on here and tell you how much I want the beatings to begin, but it has been quite a pleasant week. I think part of it, at least for the moment, is Action is starting to mature a bit. Or maybe its because the beatings are starting to work, just kidding. We head out tomorrow to Atlanta to see my cousin, pick up her son and take him and Action for their week at camp. In the meantime, the rest of us are going to Kentucky, whoo-hoo!! We have not been back to Mark's hometown for nearly 2 years. It is unbelievable. We are very excited because both Mark's brother and Mark's sister have had babies in the last few months (actually his sister is having her's today.....and its going to be a girl...I love baby girls!) Then back to Atlanta to pick up Action and attend a birthday party with some of Mark's relatives that the kids haven't seen in 8 years or so. We are really looking forward to it, so if my posts are sketchy or just not here in the next week, that's why! But I will post pics etc. when I return.

Regarding Lex's moles, she is doing okay, they actually biopsied one of them. They think its okay, but it was a little "suspicious". Mark's toe curling boo boo is still hurting, but healing. I know that some of you have asked about him and I so appreciate it and i know that he does too. Poor guy, its been a week for him. Lots on his work front, he is really needing and looking forward to this time away more than most know. Have a great weekend everyone...

{holy moley!}

it has been the busiest last few days!!! there has not been time to get my head together to do any posting. We have been busy getting stuff together for Action to go away to camp next week. He is very excited, he is going to go "away" to camp with his cousin that is his age and loves to hang out with, but they don't usually get to spend a lot of time together because we don't see him very much. His mother is my first cousin and we we're super close as kids and teenagers and it really makes me sad that our boys don't really even know each other when we we're two peas in a pod growing up. The boys will hopefully get to know each other well and even more so they will LIKE each other by the end of next week while they are away at camp.

On the other hand, I have spent most of my time running, running, running and I would love to say in my Nike's on the road, loosing weight for the next marathon, BUT in reality it has been in my car to the doctor's office, school's, post office's...Ugh! Both kids and I have had a ton of doctor appointments this week. Action had a ton of shots that had to be done, I had some "catch up" stuff, and Lex has some mole's that need to be removed and that is actually being done TODAY in about an hour. Holy moley, the poor kid has quite a few mole's and 2 that are just in really bad places and one that has gotten really big. Neither one is pre-cancerous or anything like that, but the doctor thinks that it should be taken off. So, I've got one on Tylenol because of all of his shots, the other that will probably be on Tylenol in a few hours on the couch and I will be whizzing thru the house mad dashing cleaning and doing laundry because I have to go back to work tomorrow which might be a relief from the last few days! NOT! Even with all of the insanity of the last few days of being so busy, I love it. I love being a Mom, i love being with my kids.

{pickin' boogers & toe curling boo boo's}

Kickin' off the weekend on one of the hottest day's of 2008 with a project of finishing up painting the back room of the house. I am usually the paint supervisor because Mark doesn't like me to paint, I'm not sure why. I know that when I did a wall in my scrapbook/den room that was chocolate brown it came out drippy, but honestly it was the paint. This weekend Mark had to go into work and we had one roller left and just a few walls, he had done the "cutting" in and I said that I've got to finish it up and he reluctantly agreed, and woo-hoo i was in, but boy oh boy, I am out of shape because I am sore again today (after 2 days). The only thing that i had a huge irritation with is the paint boogers that would come onto the wall that i would have to pick off, what causes those? Mark said it was the tray, but I just couldn't figure out how a tray would cause big globby boogers to come onto the wall when painting.

And then for the boo-boo portion of the weekend, poor Markie poo..... he fell off of his bike and has the biggest toe curling bruises to prove it. He went to the doc this AM and spent the biggest portion of his morning to find out that he has deeeply bruised ribs, gave him Tylenol, Tylenol 4, and sent him back to work. He has been moaning in pain for 2 days. Poor guy, hopefully he starts to heal soon..