September 28, 2009

This past week has been one hell of a week to say the least. Conducting a school week in an 85 degree plus house is not an easy task. It has brought back memories of when I was in grade school. Back in the "olden days" we didn't have a/c in school classrooms. We had a huge industrial fan that sat at the head of the long hall. I can remember many times sitting at my desk squirming around because it was so hot. I couldn't even concentrate I was so uncomfortable. There is no way that I could have ever learned a damn thing on those days.

Toby has fortunately been on a work week so he has been able to slip out of the house before the temps in the house reach maximum heat.

We have spent most of our week taking cold baths and hanging cold rags around our necks.

As of this moment I am sitting and typing in comfort. The Elgin a/c guy came and pumped me up with some freon and I am sitting pretty for the moment.

I even got a response from the builder I sent a nasty little e-mail to. The builders who built our house are very reputable in Austin so I decided to prey on their reputation. It seemed to have worked because today I got a phone call from the son of the builders. He was very concerned with our a/c issues and is sending someone out this week to check it out. Why didn't I think about contacting the builders months ago???

After scolding myself, I realized that I have never owned any thing brand new before and therefore don't know the protocol. I guess you live and learn.

I am looking forward to our "weekend". I'm thinking a small road trip or maybe even some camping...we will see.

Oh, I snapped this pic earlier tonight. I thought it was really odd because the pic I took was in the east. The sun was setting directly in the west but yet there were sun rays shooting out from the clouds in the east....a mirror reflection of the sun's rays in the west.

I am sure there is a scientific explanation for this although I could never tell you what it was. :-)

Happiness.....

I guess you could call this my grateful Friday post. As of this moment I could find irritation in the fact that my a/c is on the blink once again and I am sitting here typing this in a moderately warm room. Thanks to my fluctuating middle age hormones I will also be very uncomfortable when I hit the sack shortly.

Instead, I will choose to see the beauty in my life. Aside from life's little aggravations I am grateful that I have a roof that I can comfortably afford over my head.

The 15 year old hand-me-down car that I drive rarely lets me down.

My daughter is downstairs eating popcorn and enjoying the Hannah Montana movie with company of her friends.

We have had rain for the past couple of weeks. Nothing great for most folks, but for us here in Central Texas it is an answered prayer.

My son still calls me just as much as I call him. His life is going well and he will be graduating college in December. Who knows what path his life will take beyond that, but I am confident that it will work out to his advantage.

Hubby is still as sweet as he was when I first met him...most of the time. I think he really loves me as much as I love him. :-)

Yes, I can think of many things I can be grateful for.....

Seaworld September 24, 2009

I don't usually participate in homeschool group activities but when I heard about the Seaworld Homeschool Day I couldn't resist. In the two years we have been living here we still have not visited Seaworld. I figured this would give us a great opportunity to get a glimpse at a group rate. It was also a great excuse to do "fun school".

The weather forecast was calling for rain all day so I was a little worried that our fun may get spoiled. We had to be there by 9:30a.m so we left the house around 7:00a.m to give ourselves plenty of time for traffic issues. Traffic is pretty horrendous on I-35 without rain so we knew it would probably be pretty bad with the weather conditions. We also wanted to give ourselves enough time to locate Seaworld.

Although traffic was bumper to bumper part of the way, we made it just in time. It misted and sprinkled rain the whole time we were there but everyone (but Toby) was dressed for the occasion. The weather was also in the lower 60's which was a nice change from the 100 degree temps.

Summer's favorite activity was feeding the dolphins. It was a very up close and personal experience.



They also had the Clydesdale horses there too. I don't know why, but I have absolutely no pics of them...probably because I was so amazed at their size and beauty I was to enthralled to take pics.

We got to feed the seals and sea lions....this guy was the most amusing to me.



Feeding alligators, fish, and turtles....



Feeding flamingos, ducks, and other various fowl creatures....




A Shamu show and Walrus/Seal show......





Here are a couple other miscellaneous pics of our rainy day at Seaworld...





Despite the rain, we had a very positive experience on our first trip to Seaworld, San Antonio. We will be back.

Smashing Bugs

I try to instill respect for all life in Summer. This respect includes bugs too. I will admit that I do not always practice what I preach. When I lived in Roach Heaven, Alabama I had absolutely no qualms about smashing a roach...or at least having my son or Toby do the dirty deed for me.

Summer takes all animal life pretty seriously. We don't even kill the scorpions that tend to want to crawl under the sheets with us at night.

The other night I noticed a very tiny spider in the corner of the bathroom. I nonchalantly took a piece of toilet paper and wiped the spider with web out of the corner and threw it into the toilet. Summer let out a wail. You would have thought that I had killed her pet the way she was reacting. She cried for an hour. She had obviously built some sort of relationship with this "corner spider".

All I could think was what kind of monster I must have created and how her dad gets to miss out on these drama shows.

It did get me to thinking....why did I feel o.k about ending the tiny spiders life??? Why does it not bother me to destroy an ant bed?? They are just as much a living thing as a cricket, scorpion, snake, rabbit, and on up to the largest animal you can think of.

Why is it always so easy to smash the little guy?? What makes the little guys life less of a life than the big guy?? Every living thing no matter how disgusting or aggravating they are play an important part in life.

In all species it has always been o.k to smash the little guy just because he is little. Does being little make something or someone appear unimportant???

Just a little food for thought......

What in The World Are You Grateful For????

Today is officially celebrated as World Gratitude Day, a day where we are invited to honor a person or group that has made a difference in our lives and has endeavored to make the world a more grateful place to enjoy.

Quite honestly, at this moment of now I am pretty pissed off. My a/c is once again malfunctioning for the 3rd time this year. The icing on the cake is that my daughter has made my life a pure hell this evening.

At this moment of now, I am finding it pretty hard to be thankful for anything. I am doing my best to see the silver lining. This is what I am coming up with...

At least my a/c is functioning enough that I am just a little uncomfortable...no sweat beads yet. I won't think about the fact that my a/c has been running non-stop without shutting down for the past two days and as a result my power bill will probably be as much as a months worth of groceries....no, I will not think about that. I won't even think about the fact that it may cost me another $400 to have it "repaired" again. How convenient that the warranty on the work that was done a few months ago expired a mere week ago....no, I won't think about that. It's only 80 degrees in my home right now.....not 95. That I am thankful for.

Next...

Summer has always been a difficult child to say the least, but at least she is physically healthy and...........I know there is something else, but for the life of me I can't really think of anything at the moment. I am blinded by my irritation of her at the moment.

Aside from the aggravations that arose at the end of my day, I am thankful the beginning of my day was spent with a few of my favorite girlfriends. :-)







Yes, no matter what irritations I have had today I know there are equal things to be thankful for. Tomorrow is going to be a good, good day. :-)

Mini Vacation - September 15-17, 2009

September....the time of year that a large portion of our nations states are experiencing a cool front. To us, it's the perfect time of year to hit the beach, which is exactly what we did.

Kids are back in school and tourist season is over. No excessive crowds...a dream come true.

We have chosen the Corpus Christi/Padre Island area to be our new beach location. Once you are raised along the coastline as long as we have been, it gets sort of ingrained in your soul. The coast is like a drug to us.

So Corpus Christi/Padre Island it was.

On our trip we visited the Texas State Aquarium. I give the aquarium a thumbs up.







At the aquarium we also enjoyed the observation deck. There is the U.S.S. Lexington...it is on our list of things to see on our next trip to Corpus...







Here we are at Padre Island. Gotta miss the humidity and heat of the coastline. There were a few jelly fish washed on shore but that didn't stop Toby and Summer from taking the plunge. As for myself, I spent my time taking pictures, walking the beach, scouring for seashells, and cleansing my soul the coastal atmosphere brings.







We also enjoyed some very yummy seafood at Catfish Charlie's during our visit.

I really feel "at home" in Corpus Christi. Coincidentally, the owner of the tattoo shop Toby now works for also owns a a couple shops in Corpus Christi. Hmmmm.....how convenient. Don't tell Summer, but Corpus Christi is on my list of places to live. I think it just may be my next relocation destination. :-)

The Most Important Job on Earth

You hear it all the time..."Mothers have the most important job on Earth". Hmmmmm....you would never know it. I am lucky enough to be one of those women that have been on both ends of the spectrum. While raising my son, I worked out of the home for 11 years. As of this moment, I have been a stay at home mom for almost the same amount of time.

They...whoever "they" are, say you can never appreciate the dark unless you have seen the light or vice versa. I have experienced both sides. The working mom and the dutiful stay at home mom topped off with some extra duties called homeschooling.

In comparison, most of the time I find my stay at home "job" unrelentless work. I learned a long time ago there is no such thing as a "break" being a SAHM. Well, that is unless you want to dump your kids off for the public school system to take care of every day. Growing up I always wondered what my mom did while my brother and I were at school. The house was always a wreck when we got home....I guess she ate bom boms and watched Oprah all day. :-)

My daughter bucks and procrastinates as much as I will tolerate in her school work and acts as though I am torturing her, while most of the time hubby acts as though I am the maid, babysitter, and prostitute all rolled into one that God has sent down personally just for him. Lucky man.

I have often wondered how women with more than one child do it. Even though I do the best I can being a stay at home mom I know that I am not cut out for it.

As with all darkness there is a light - it is great not to have a boss..I am the boss. I CAN take a couple of days off without the fear of getting fired...after all who would want my job? I can come and go as I please and I don't ever have to worry about missing my kid because she is always with me. I guess these things are what make it all worth it in the end.

Yes, I am a stay at home homeschooling mom. The pay sucks, I get no recognition and no one even cares to ask me "What did you do today" because everyone knows what we did. Nothing notable at all. No interesting stories. Get up, prepare meals, lesson plans, school work, chores, etc. Now how interesting can that be???

The best I can hope for is that my daughter will grow up and give as much love and care to her family as I have tried to give to mine. That will be the payoff....

Just Stuff...Sept. 10 and 11, 2009

Another cloudy day called for another walk in the park on Thursday. I picked a park that was close to the library where I had to pick up some books. We have gone to this park before on playdate. The girls like the park and it's also a nice shady park.

Before we left I looked up the park online and saw that it had 4 miles of trails. Hmmmm.....I had never noticed that much trail but I was willing to go in search of it.

Well, we never found the 4 mile trail (I later learned that is was .4 miles)but we did have a good time walking the dry creek bed. We would have never gotten to see stuff like this at the bottom if the creek had been full.....



One of our favorite things to do around here is search for the fossils in the rock.




It has been raining here for the past two days! I wouldn't ordinarily like being trapped in the house for two days but the rain is a very welcome sight to us here in Central Texas.

I took this pic this morning of the hummingbirds at the feeder. It was misting rain and they were swarming the sweet drink. They were so busy drinking they were oblivious to me standing there in the rain taking pics of them....

A Walk in the Park

The weather was overcast this morning shielding us from the hot Texas blazing sun so I decided that we would enjoy the outdoors and walk some trails. I don't think anyone else in my family enjoys walking as much as I do, but atleast they never complain too much. I really would prefer to walk much more than I do but there other obligations that need to be tended to - I take what I can get.

Last time we were in Pflugerville I decided to pick up a map of the city at the Welcome Center. I figured since I frequent the area a good bit and it's also the city where Toby is employed I should familiarize myself with the streets....as if I need any more maps to add to my glove compartment.

While I was there I picked up a trail map. I have been itchin' to walk the trails around Pfluger Park for a few months so that was our destination for the day.

Although we walked a couple of miles it really didn't seem like it. Gilleland Creek runs right alongside the trail so we spent alot of time investigating the creekside. There were also a couple of parks we passed along the way that Summer insisted on stoppping at. There were many things to investigate along the trails. We even found a tree FULL of mistletoe. In Alabama, mistletoe was always in the very tops of the trees, I don't know why it was hanging so low in the branches of this Pecan tree.

Here is Toby giving Summer a kiss under the mistletoe...



Thankfully, one of the parks along the way had a water mister. Even though the sun was not shining it was a somewhat humid day. Here we are at Bohls Park..







Here are a few more miscellaneous pics of our walk.

I just added this pic of these wildflowers for no other reason other than I have never seen two totally different flowers reside on the same plant....