Turistas

I do love a weekend.... usually.

This one started off great, and I'll fill ya'll in on that later, but it has not ended on a positive note.

Heather went down to her Mama's on Friday and evidently has brought back a stomach virus. It hit last night. She was up and down all night, and let me just tell ya'll.... it was naaaasty!

I'm not very good in those kind of situations. I just kept the cold bathcloths coming. She was and still is in pitiful shape.

Heather's grandfather used to write these random stories about his life. We have them and they are really entertaining. One time, they went to Mexico and drank some bad water. He said it gave them the "turistas", which is a nice word for "the trots." Heather has herself a massively violent case of the turistas!

So we ended up at the hospital this morning about 5am. They gave her a shot and sent her home. In between puking and pooping spells, she is sleeping.

I certainly hope my brother in law, who didn't keep his sick child at home, and whose child passed this thing along, is having a good Father's Day.

If I end up like Heather, as God as my witness, I will drive down there and kiss him full on the mouth to share the love!

It's my blogoversary!

Wow. I can't believe I have been doing this a whole year! Thanks to those of you who take the time out of your busy lives to read what I write on here.

Thanks especially to my loyal 7 followers: Heather, Katie, Leigh, Chris, Jessica, Heather Ryan, and jr14grau.

I hope you all have enjoyed reading my posts as much as I have enjoyed sharing with you.

Here's to another year!

No problem, mon!

Ok, that last post has got me thinking about Jamaica. I thought I'd share a few memories from our trip to Negril last year.















Maybe it really is time to go back!

Rambling

I am restless.

I keep thinking that I want to go somewhere this weekend but I don't know where. Heather keeps wanting to fly down to Jamaica for the weekend, but I think we need to stay a little bit closer to home.

On the other hand, we really need to stay home and paint our bedroom. We had the house appraised last week, and when the pictures came back in the appraisal, I noticed that our bedroom is really kinda blah. Heather said that she's been trying to tell me that for months.

One other thing about the bedroom picture is that our bed is unmade. Heather had an early doctor's appointment the day the appraiser lady came. She got up first. Then I got up later and was kinda rushed to get ready and out the door for work. We passed each other as I was leaving. Heather didn't go back to the bedroom part of the house again until after the appraiser left. She thought I had made the bed. I thought she would make it since I didn't have time. And neither of us ended up making it.

In my own defense, making that bed is not a quick job, due to the fact that we have about 50 pillows of various sizes piled up on it. So it's not like I could have just thrown the covers up and been done.

Heather called me at work all in a dither when she discovered this housekeeping faux pas. She was mortified. Now I really don't think that had any effect on the appraisal. But now people all over town have seen the pictures and our bed is clearly all messed up. I bet folks at First National Bank are speculating on how we live....

So anyway... we have realized that the room needs to be spruced up a bit, so we started looking at paint colors. Not an easy task. Heather wants a darker color, but will it make the room too dreary? And if we go lighter, what colors do we lean toward? And will the new curtains match the color we pick? So much to think about. Decisions, decisions....

I don't know. We may pick up and go somewhere. Or we may stay home and be productive.

We may even go shop for a new bed. Heather's wanting a sleigh bed.

Whatever we do, ya'll know something crazy will happen. I guess I'll tell you all about it on Monday. I know the suspense is killing you.



Oh yeah.... Happy Birthday to Aidan Benefield! He's 5 today. He's a huge Beatles fan and shares a birthday with Sir Paul McCartney. Cool huh?

We're heading over to Chuck E Cheese this afternoon to celebrate! I'm fairly excited about it.

Hidden Valley

I went home this past weekend. It was Homecoming and Mama and Daddy's church, so I went down Friday night and stayed til Sunday afternoon.

Daddy had the fish ponds open Saturday, and folks were everywhere down there. The weather could not have been nicer. A group from Oak Grove Baptist Church was down having a family day. They caught a bunch of fish, and then fried them up under the pavilion. I think they all had a really good time.




There's Daddy in his hat....






Ribbit~



Hershey was scoutin' out for food. And she even stole one poor girl's ham sandwich!



Black-eyed Susan's



I think this guy had around 60 pounds...






The cabin...



Duck...



Loggers...


When I walked into the kitchen Sunday morning, this is what I found...



Yummmmmmy!

Hot Dawg!

Guess what? The Wii is here!

I know this is probably not a big deal to most of ya'll because you probably already have one of these in your own home, but I never buy video games or things even remotely similar. So this is a big deal for us.

I actually did have a Sega Genesis in college. But that was the result of a long afternoon of happy hour followed by a ridiculously expensive trip to Wal-Mart. It seemed like a good idea to buy it at the time. I'm pretty sure my roommates highly encouraged it. I think it has since gone to live with Sonic the Hedgehog in the barn at Mama and Daddy's.

So anyway, we have friends who have Wii's. Endless hours of fun. And thanks to dear, sweet, Katie B, one afternoon Heather got hooked just enough to agree that we needed one. So I jumped all over that.

Now here's what I do most of the time. I go online and think about things I want to buy. If it's something big, like a boat or a car, I'll build my own and add things to it. But of course I'd never buy a boat or car online. Other things though, such as a pile of books at Amazon, or kitchen gadgets at Williams Sonoma, or cool loaded up cameras, or cool new clothes, often find themselves in my cart, but in reality are often not purchased. That's kinda how things started with the Wii.

Except I actually hit the Send button.

That's also how I got the Daniel Moore and my Blackberry. I had them in the cart about a dozen times, but just couldn't hit that Send button to spend the money.

Until I finally had enough of myself and just did it.

No regrets. Just cool stuff, right? Yeah....

So back to the Wii. We got it all hooked up and played Carnival Games. Then I hooked up the Wii Fit.

Hehe.

It plumped us right up. We spend a long time picking out our little Wii people. Then that damned Wii Fit made us fat. When Heather's person grew, she looked all around at her new large waistline and then out at us as if to say, "Where the hell did that come from?"

That's ok though. Gives us a starting point. And things to work on. Lots of things.

So we did some yoga. Wow. Not as easy as it looks.

Then we did step aerobics. That one took Ms Coordination some getting used to.

Then we played this soccer game but I kept getting hit in the head with shoes and panda heads. I know... weird.

We walked a tightrope, skied, jogged, and did some twisting and stretching stuff. And I can feel it today.

And I can't wait to get home.

Ya'll get ready. I am going to be soooo buff.

Later....

Gators, Mules, and Pork Chops

As usual, we ran around like crazy this weekend.

I had some dear friends from high school, Jodi & Kara, in town last week. They were here because their daughters are mascots for Clarke Prep in Grove Hill, and were attending camp at the Capstone. We had a great time catching up on old times and basically just doing nothing.

Friday night, the girls were being evaluated, so I joined Kara and Jodi in Coleman Coliseum to watch. It was hilarious! There were all sorts of mascots. Tigers, bears, eagles, a hornet, and even a red devil. They milled through the crowd and danced around on stage and basically did what mascots do... get the crowd involved. The gators both did great, and I hope they took home all sorts of awards Saturday morning. These pics were made with my phone so they are a bit blurred. Sorry.




Then Saturday, I got up and met Adam down at Southeastern Auctions for a nursery action. We've been down there before to the boat auctions, and I had shopped the nursery several times for various things. I think they are remodeling the nursery side, and needed to clean everything out. There were some great deals to be had. I ended up with a couple of apple trees and a couple of plum bushes. We were out there a couple of hours or so, then I paid for my items and headed home. I'm sure the auction went on all day. They were cleaning house!



When I got home, Heather was ready to start her day, so we rode over to Gordo to the annual Mule Day and Chicken Festival. We got there after the mule parade, but I know that it had occured, because the evidence was still in the streets.


We walked around and visited the vendors, and I realized that I was about to starve. So I got me a rib-eye sandwich from the Pickens County Cattlemen's Association and wolfed it down like I hadn't eaten in weeks. We ran into a couple of friends, Ansley and Tanner, who were there for the festivities as well, and hung out with them for a little while. Heather decided that she wanted a blooming onion. So I decided that I needed some chicken on a stick. The onion, although very slow in the making, was great. My chicken was kinda iffy. But I ate most of it anyway and we found us a spot in the shade to side and tore that onion up. My gosh, it was good!





Barney Fife was even making his rounds, keeping the streets of Gordo safe!



On the way back to the car, we stopped by Solid Rock Church's booth for homemade icecream! Wow! What better way to spend a hot June afternoon....

Shortly after we got home, Chris and Jessica called and invited over for dinner. I thought they were tied up with Chris' 20th High School reunion, but they had gotten done with all of that on Friday night. So we stopped at Publix and picked up a key lime pie, and headed over to their house. Chris grilled some pork chops, and we had squash and baked potatoes, and once again stuffed ourselves.

They have a wren who has built a nest in one of Jessica's hanging pots. Five little baby birds have hatched and those things sang just about the whole time. We sat out and watch that mama bird take care and feed her babies. And then Heather's random mind told us how birds reproduce. I'm not even going to go into that on here. If you wanna know, Google will be glad to tell you.

Sunday afternoon was veg-out time. We ate chili dogs for lunch. I do love a chili dog. Then we watched "Surfer Dude" with Matthew McConaughey, and did nothing the rest of the day.

Obviously nobody was concerned about losing weight this weekend. We are back on track today though.

Heather is home today. Hopefully the new Wii and Wii Fit is being delivered. That'll help with our waistlines. We shall see.

Hope you all have a good week.