North Carolina keeps calling me

Fr. Hale, the former headmaster of the school I attended and later worked at, turned 90 on April 15th. They threw a party for him and I thought it was as good a reason as any to return to NC, yet again. It just so happened that my nephew was also starring in his high school play that weekend too. Lucky me!

So, of course, I packed up the family and headed to Wilmington and then on to Raleigh. It was a busy weekend, to say the least, but it was alot of fun too.

First, we headed to Wilmington...about 8 hours from home. We got there in time to eat dinner and head off to the play. Rena was my date for the night and Blair stayed at my brothers with the twins.

My brother, father, other nephew, daughter, sister in law and her parents were all there for my nephew's play. It was awesome! I'm so impressed with what high-schoolers can do. The play was a lot of fun and you could tell that they all put so much work into it! Rena made it almost to then end.







My brother cracks me up. A little post-play entertainment! Too funny.

We got up the next morning and headed to Raleigh for Fr. Hale's birthday. I was really hoping to stop and see one of my Aunt's in Wallace AND to pick strawberries, but there just wasn't enough time. We got to the party just in time. I look like crap in this picture, but it's the only one I had of Fr. and Mrs. Hale. There were lots of old teacher, parents and students there. I actually expected to see a lot more people, but it was still fun and I got to see some people I haven't seen in a really long time.

My best friends mother was there. She happens to be my Godmother.

Beverly. Hasn't changed a bit. I've know this woman my whole life. She's quite a character. She and my mother used to work together and then I worked with her for years. I'm not sure what she's saying out of the corner of her mouth, but my guess would be that it's something obscene. I hope my children will have people with this much character in their lives.


Rachel and Riley practicing for their future in the music business. This was at my brother's house, where there's always something cultural to keep us entertained.



The last shot. I tried really hard to get a good picture with all 3 girls. They were done, though and in no mood to cooperate. I really can't blame them. We'd drug them all over the state by this point!



So the play was on Friday night, the birthday party was on Saturday afternoon and we had decided to stay in Raleigh that night instead of heading back to the ATL. We drove out to our old neighborhood and stopped by our backdoor neighbors house. It was so great to visit with them and catch up on everything.

The next day, we tried to find a strawberry patch to go picking but they weren't opened yet. So we headed out to the cemetery to visit my mother's grave and the graves of friends and family. Sounds fun, doesn't it. I always feel like my mother would be pissed if I didn't stop by. hahahaha! I know, it's kinda morbid, but what are you gonna do?

From there, Blair and I parted ways and I headed back home...he headed off to work. Monday morning, the girls were e-x-h-a-u-s-t-e-d! I woke Rena up for school and she just burst into tears and was sobbing while she got dressed for school. I decided she could play hooky and she went back to sleep for 2 more hours. Poor thing, totally partied out!

As usually, it was great to be back in NC. The whole weekend was so much fun and my girls, well they are troopers!

Vacation 2009

So here were are starting our third day of vacation and I'm exhausted already! I would love to say I'm kidding, but I'm not.

It started with the house. I tried to get the house cleaned and everyone packed before we left. The harder I cleaned, the more the girls messed up. Plus it's just a big house with alot of stuff. I swear I don't know how people keep a clean house. I would have to strap the girls in the car and work for hours to get it the way I really want it. Not gonna happen. But hopefully we didn't leave any trash inside (uh,oh, now I'm starting to have doubts) or food laying around to rot and get stinky. Nice thought, huh?

Then I had to make sure the dogs were taken care of. The labs didn't get to go on this trip. It's just not nice to bring 200 pound of dog to someone else's house. Max however, did get to come. My dad and I figured he's about 98 years old and with age come privilege. Max got to come with us as far as my Dad's. Daddy will keep him for me while I'm at my brothers, which makes me happier than leaving him at home and quite honestly, it's easier than taking him to my brothers, where he's not welcomed.

So, house taken care of, then dogs, now it's time to pack. This seems to be a never ending task! How much stuff do we need. Good googly-moogly! Clothes, shoes, toys, sunscreen, lifejackets, bathing suits, food, towels, computer :) phones, cords, bikes...lets just say except for the labs and some pictures, we have no reason to return to Georgia.

So now we're off. We left at 12 after planning to leave at 10. And we got here at 8. That's a long trip, especially with 3 little girls and one old dog. Oh, and we were in 2 vehicles. I drove with the twins and the dog, and Blair drove with Rena.

So once we got here, we ate dinner at my dad's. My brother, his wife and one of their sons met us at Daddy's. Then we checked into a hotel and went to sleep.

the girls love their cousin, Mason.

July 4

This is one of my favorite days for a couple of reasons. One, it's my birthday!

(we're all laughing because I said whoever sings the best gets the biggest piece of cake. My brother misunderstood and thought I meant the loudest, so he won, if I'd really said the loudest.)

Two, I love fireworks. Three, I get to spend it with my family. We usually go the the 4th of July festival in Southport, NC where they have a big parade, festival and fireworks.

Well, this year, we weren't really into the whole parade thing. Rachel and Riley complained and whined so much while I was trying to watch the parade, that I finally took them and left and let Rena and her daddy enjoy the rest of it. We ate a little festival food...seriously? $4.00 for a hotdog?...drank a little lemonade, made a quick run through the arts and crafts festival and then headed back to my dad's - Grandaddy's. We swam in the pool for a very short while, ate plums from his plum tree,

my brother and his family came over, we all ate dinner and then my family headed back down to the waterfront for the fireworks display. I actually tried to talk the girls out of going because I was seriously tired by this point, but I'm so glad we went. I really do love sitting on the bow of my Dad's boat watching the fireworks over the ocean. Then, we had a very short, but very long drive back to the hotel. Traffic is a nightmare and it's really hard to believe all those people were down there watching the fireworks too!

Today's agenda? Heading up the beach to my brother's and out on the boat for a little sand and water time.

Hopefully I'll be able to upload some pictures to share soon.

Hope you all had a nice relaxing 4th.

Wish you were here!

We are in Sanibel Island, Florida this week and it's been beautiful. I'm not sure, but I think we might have picked the hottest week to head to south Florida. Blair is working in the area, so he's not really on vacation, but I am! Kind of.


The pool is right out our back door and the beach is just a few short steps away. Who could ask for anything more? A bar close by, you say? Well, they have one right there at the pool! It's all very laid back and cool.



The expression on this womans face cracks me up. That's Rena jumping in, sans thloatie.



Despite the fact that we have access to a pool 7 days a week in Georgia, that's where my girls would rather spend their time. So, we've been in the pool everyday! Rena has learned to swim all by herself! I'm both petrified and excited all at the same time. She's quite proud of herself and I have to give her the freedom to test herself without turning back and relying on the floatie...or thloatie, as it's refered to in our household.





Rachel has been dubbed 'Rachel the Brave' this week. She is driving me absolutely CRAZY and I spend half the day yelling at her, despite all of my behavior management knowledge. However, her feisty little personality really pays off for her. At the pool, they had a log-rolling contest. Rena tried it first, and then Rachel decided to give it a try. You know what I'm talking about? You stand on a log, in this case a styrofoam blue 'log' and try not to fall off. Well, Rachel probably didn't last 2 seconds, but the whole pool cheered for her! They were all shouting "yea, Rachel". I'm not kidding. Earlier on the quest for bravery was the waterslide. Rena also had tackled this first and I finally talked Rachel and Riley into going down. They both ended up loving it.





Riley has turned into a scaredy cat this week. Poor thing. We were coming home from dinner one night and one of those lovely Japanese beetles landed on her. If 2 year olds regularly had heart attacks, Riley would have been on her way to meet her maker. Thank God he made her with a strong heart, if not a brave spirit! She completely freaked out and cried the rest of the way home. Now, don't get me wrong, I hate the little boogers too, but they are really nothing to freak out about. They do tend to get stuck in some odd places, but at least they seem to have a sense of direction, unlike those damn June bugs that bounce off your head in the summer. Can't wait til Riley sees one of those!





Then there are the ants. To my children, all ants are fire ants and evidently they have gone from being prey to predator. I've tried to tell my girls that the ants can't catch them, but they are having none of it. At least Rena has reason to fear ants. When she was 2, maybe 3, she was bitten by about 100 of the things at one time. Welcome to Georgia. So OF COURSE, she's scared of them. Riley might have been bitten by one at some point, but really one or two is no big deal. Rachel the Brave will step in to save her sisters from anything with an exoskeleton. One swift stomp of the foot, and that is that!

The next thing that has Riley freaked out are the holes in the walkway. I don't think this is a Steven King kind of fear. The fact is we went out to an old beach house and the boardwalk to it wasn't in the best shape. I'm really not sure how, but one of the boards came up and landed on Riley's foot, scaring her to death. Today, we were walking across another boardwalk when she noticed the holes. You know, the space between the board. That gave her yet another thing to fret about!

It is fun to watch her overcome her fears though. She did manage to overcome her fears of the waterslide. I really wish I had gotten it on video. When she started moving at the top, there were serious signs of fear on her face. Once she hit the water, it was all good and she had the biggest smile! It was great!

So only a few more short hours until we hit the road again. I'm going to miss it here. I NEED to be by the beach.

Big Apple Circus

Last Thursday, we went to the Big Apple Circus. A family event. Actually, a pretty rare occurance for us. It was GREAT! If they ever come near you, you should go. It's a one ring circus and no one sits more that 50 feet, that's right, feet, from the ring. It's small, but the performance was great. They had clowns, animal acts and acrobats. My girls were entralled. Rena laughed through the whole thing, Riley was fascinated with the acrobats and Rachel loved the music. All three of them were focused on the show most of the 2 hours. Blair and I were too. While I thought the whole thing was great, my favorite part had to be the end of the show when the acrobats stole the show. They did all the flipping, jumping death-defying acts you could want. Their skill was incredible and breath-taking. Most of what the did involved stilts. Now, if you popped me up in the air like they did to these guys, I would probably do all the flips and turns too. Probably not as gracefully. And I can pretty much guarentee that I wouldn't be able to 'stick the landing' on 2 sticks, muchless one. That's right. One guy did it on one stilt. Now that's impressive. If you get a chance, google them and see if they are coming your way soon. I think it was $29.00 apiece and the twins got in free. Worth every penny. And we got to spend time together as a family. Priceless.

The Visit

My Dad and 2 of my Aunts came to visit. Yeah! I was so excited that they were coming. It's the first time my Aunts had come and it's been awhile since my Dad has visited. Now, in true, old-people fashion, they didn't stay very long, despite my pleas to stay 'just one more day'. They got here at about 4:00 on Thursday and left at noon on Saturday. What's that? 44 hours? It took them 8 and 1/2 hours to get home.

Anyway, they helped out alot, even though they didn't think they did. Unfortunately, I got sick while they were here and felt like crap on friday. The girls had fun with them. It was busy, busy, busy. And loud! My goodness. I think part of the chaos feeling for those 44 hours was that everyone was on different schedules. That's also alot of people under one roof! Plus this house carries sound funny and it's hard to hear. All the sounds get jumbled together.

The only thing we did was eat! My Aunt Jewrell brought a wonderful coconut cake. There wasn't much left by the time they left. My Aunt Devilla enjoyed playing with her Grandnieces and my Dad slept. I think his sisters wore him out!

Even though it was a short visit, it at least gave me something to look forward to. I still don't quite consider this place home, so it was nice to have a bright spot, no matter how brief.

Thanksgiving

This year we decided to go to Asheville for Thanksgiving. We tried to get our whole family to meet us there, but it ended up being only Blair's parents. That was fine and we had a great time with them. Rena, in particular, LOVES her grandmother...and the feeling is mutual. We stayed in a hotel and they were across the hall from us, so Rena liked to spend time over there by herself. She was even going to spend the night with them one night, but she changed her mind at the last minute. I was secretly glad. I don't really like being away from my children.

Blair has an Uncle that lives there and we got to meet him and his wife for the first time. We had a really nice visit and they went with us to the Grove Park Inn to see the gingerbread houses. It was truly an amazing site, especially when you consider that they are completely edible. I didn't get any pictures, but I did come away with some cool ideas. I'd love to get my children and the neighborhood kids together to make some houses...it's the old teacher in me!

We also went to the Biltmore house. If you have never been it really is worth the trip. What a cool place. It's probably one of my favorite places to visit. Grandmom and I toured the house while Grandpop and Daddy watched the girls nap. It's all decked out for Christmas and it really got me in the Christmas spirit. We also took a carriage ride around the estate. This was probably my favorite part. I love being out in the woods and we got a whole different view of the house.

My big plan, and ultimate goal for this trip was to get a Christmas Card worthy picture of the girls. Not an easy task. For one thing, it takes and act of congress just to get them all dressed. Then you factor in hair that is actually brushed and 'fixed', clean faces and shoes that are actually on, and you're talking about a full days work! I had picked out the perfect outfits for them, complete with tights, shoes and headband....and then, Grandmom trumped me! She brought beautiful little red smocked Christmas dresses for the girls. They are too cute and I decided that maybe these would be the dresses I would use. Even though I had no hair paraphernalia to go with them. It didn't matter though, because it ended up being too cold to put them in either set of dresses. Not only that, but our timing was waaayyyyy off and we couldn't get everyone happy and awake and still enough to get a picture. So, I'll have to figure out another setting for our pictures.

Blair's parents ended up leaving on Saturday morning, so we had the day to ourselves. We spent most of the time lounging around the hotel room, but we did make it back to the Biltmore house to check out the winery and eat at the bistro. We had some time to kill, so we went to the barnyard. Now, I'm a farmer at heart and would spend all of my time in places like this. Seriously. They were bringing the horses in from the pasture, and we got to pet the Clydesdales. These are some humongous animals. There were 2 of them and the one we were petting was much more interested in where the other one was. He seemed a little skittish to me, but what do I know. The girls were interested in the baby chicks. We didn't get to hold them, but we liked looking at them anyway. I noticed that there were eggs in baskets on the wall. I asked the .....farmer? if they were real. Now, he probably thought I was an idiot for asking such a question, but I just couldn't believe that they would give the public access to the fresh eggs that had just been laid by the hens next door. But they do. (Evidently they have never encountered curious, and unsupervised boys). Too cool! I could have stayed there all day. Instead, we attemped to eat a nice dinner at way too late an hour.

After the farmyard, we headed to the Bistro for dinner. The girls started off pretty good. Rachel, who has never shown any real interest in coloring on paper (walls, heck yeah!, paper, not so much) colored intently until dinner arrived. Rena, who had been a perfect little lady (especially with lots of praise from Grandmom and her newly found Uncle) was also coloring and entertaining herself pretty well. Riley needed a little more attention, but she was doing pretty well too. However by the time dinner arrived, they were done. The whole time I ate my dinner, Riley was laying on the bench kicking me. Rena an Rachel spend a good deal of time under the table retrieving dropped crayons and silverware. Someone's milk was also spilled under the table and, evidently, wiped up by all three coats. We were drawing the wrong kind of attention. The women at the table behind me engaged me in conversation about raising children and remembering those days. Her grown daughters were with her...and were arguing with their mother about how far apart in age they were. Once we got up, Rachel proceeded with her standard 'wallowing on the public floor' dance that I have come to expect. Luckily, I'm bigger than them all, and at this point, if necessary, I can carry all three at the same time. I didn't have too. I only had to carry one, screaming, flailing, Rachel. She wasn't upset. She just borders on ferrel sometimes.

The next morning we were on our way back home. The girls were tired and the trip worked out perfectly. They fell asleep about 30 minute into the trip and woke up about 30 minutes before we got home. I didn't get the perfect Christmas picture, but I did have a very nice Thanksgiving.

Pictures of the girls

My Dad keeps asking me if I've posted anything new. He doesn't want to read about our life, I'm sure. He just wants to see pictures of his granddaughters. Well, here you go!

Aunt Mamie

I've been checking out Ancestry.com web site and finding my roots. Not for any particular reason. My mother's maiden name is rather unusual, so it makes it easy to research that kind of thing. Anyway, I was checking out her side of the family and I started thinking about my Aunt Mamie. Actually, she's my great Aunt Mamie. She and her family lived in Beaufort, NC. Every summer, we spent part of the time down in Atlantic Beach, which is just a few miles from Beaufort, and we would go and visit my mother's family. These were my mother's aunts, uncles and cousins. But Aunt Mamie was my favorite. She lived in a trailor beside her son and daughter-in-law's house. They lived on a farm. I think this might be where I actually fell in love with a farm. There was a dirt road that led to their houses and, being at the beach, it was really made of soft sand which felt great to summer's bare feet. The fields were across the street from the houses and they would always let us pick watermelons to take home. Feral cats lived under the house and there was always a new litter of wild, untouchable kittens. It was always warm and there was always tea.

Aunt Mamie was my Grandfather's sister and they looked a little alike. She was very sweet and always had a smile on her face...much like I remember my Grandfather. She had a bird that could do tricks. She had found that bird and given it a good home. She loved him. And that was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

My mother was an only child, and after she died, we completely lost touch with her family. It's a shame really. I did learn that my Aunt Mamie didn't die until 1995. that was a full 5 years after my mother died. I think she was about 98 when she died. I would have loved to have seen her again. Her son and his wife still live in the same place. At least I think they do. I should probably look them up, don't you think?