Random Pics

I've made numerous posts today - they all have pictures. In this picture, is a semi circle of mushrooms. I was driving down the road and noticed this cool little sight. Turns out that these mushrooms are in a church member's yard. When I got home, I called him to see if I could bring Abbie by his house after school and take pictures. He laughed and said yes.
Abbie sitting in the mushroom circle. We made up a fairy story about them.
Bumblebee on cosmos.

Angel and Abbie
Angel's pretty blue eyes (behind his is a white stuffed animal that looks like part of his body)
Abbie's teddy bear ears - her hairdo. We call them Ewok ears.
Abbie made this little hideout for Little Man.
Buckeyes! We have 10,000 more in a box.

Abbie and Paul playing Star Wars Lego on the Wii.
Yin & Yang
A sample of our concentric circle paintings. Hey, you can sort of see our new green paint in the kitchen - it's actually a bit darker than it appears in the photo
Little Man
Baby - Hey, you can sort of see the new wall color in the sunroom - Westminster Gold, love it!

Around Charleston

Back end of our mules - Jesse and Frank. We enjoyed the carriage ride. In this picture we are waiting our turn to get our carriage ride approved by the city. Only so many carriages can be on the street at any one time. You have to get a kind of license tag before the tour can begin.


Cadets from The Citadel

Isle of Palms

As you can see, the beach was not crowded.
This area is mostly residential - rental homes.
We dug a hole for Abbie.
Not sure why these are foggy - I must have gotten sunscreen on the lens.

Twiggy & Apple

This is Apple.
This is Twiggy. In the background is my beautiful niece, Shanna - these are her puppies.
Abbie loves these dogs, and we are currently pet sitting for Shanna. Abbie is getting a big dose of puppy love.

Fun for Free

You've probably heard the story about the kid who got a cool gift/toy but ended up having the most fun playing with the box. It's so true. In our case, we bought a piece of furniture, and Abbie found a cool use for the discarded box. She put it on a hill in the backyard and started sliding.
Then we moved it to another steep area and added more pieces of cardboard to make a longer run. Can you tell that she slides on the cardboard with another smaller piece of cardboard?
This is as much fun as sledding. I guess we are preparing for our snow adventure in December.
Fun for all ages!
Abbie gives Paul a push, but it doesn't take much - you go down pretty quick!

Our Beach Trip

Annie says she wants to hear about our beach trip. I haven't blogged about it yet because it was absolutely perfect, and I didn't want to gush TOO much! But, okay, I will!
It was a quick trip. We left on Friday around 2 pm, but unfortunately, due to the gas freak out, it took a while to find a gas station without a long line or that was not completely out of gas.
It takes about 5 hours to get to Charleston. After stopping to eat and stretch our legs, we got to our hotel at about 9pm. We immediately went for a walk on the beach. The weather was so nice despite the hurricane happening in the Gulf. The water was still warm; skies clear.
We had a wonderful moonlight walk in the waves and along the shore. Abbie skipped through the water, and it was a perfect night to hold hands. *I told you I would be sappy!*
On Saturday, we spent most of the day on the beach, in the water, and playing in the sand. I'll get around to posting pictures eventually. Later in the afternoon, we drove into Charleston and took a carriage tour of the town. It was only an hour long, but we learned a lot! Then we ate at Hyman's, a famous seafood restaurant and shopped at the open air market. By the time we got back to our hotel, it was dark again. Our hotel had a cafe/bar on either side and had live music outside each night. I enjoyed that. We took another walk on the beach, in the moonlight, holding hands and skipping through the water. We walked further this time in order to savor every moment on the beach that we could.
On Sunday, we spent more time at the beach and got the hotel to extend our check out time. Then we came home. :(
I like Isle of Palms so much better than Myrtle Beach. I grew up spending vacations at Myrtle Beach, and I've always enjoyed it and the many activities there. But now that I'm older, I enjoy the a more laid back environment. At Isle of Palms, there is no cruising down the boulevard, no rowdy teens (at least, not on this visit), no huge hotel skyscrapers, etc. At Isle of Palms, I only saw 3-4 hotels, and they were only 3 stories. The rest of the area was really nice houses on the beach.
This recent trip really got me to thinking about our upcoming big anniversary trip. We had planned to go to Atlantis on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Now, I'm thinking that we might have just as much fun renting a nice house on the beach in Florida. We've always wanted to stay in Seaside or at the Watercolors Resort (both of these are very close to Destin, and we LOVE Destin). So I'm doing my research, and we'll make a decision soon.

Juno Tic Tacs

September means that we are now picking up buckeyes when we take a walk around the neighborhood. Picking up buckeyes is an annual event that Abbie and I look forward to - I have to say that I get as excited as Abbie does. It's like finding Easter eggs or sharks teeth on the beach or any other unexpected treasure. When I see that dark brown chestnut color shining between the grass blades, I get a little tingle.
When we first started picking up buckeyes, we only knew of one tree in the neighborhood. A year later, we discovered another tree, and this has caused our finds to multiply. The trees are very different - one tree only drops a few buckeys, but they are really big! The other tree's buckeyes are smaller but way more plentiful.
Yesterday, I had to make myself stop picking them up b/c our bag was about to break. It was hard to walk away from the motherload!
Each day that we pick up buckeyes, we leave 3-4 on the doorstep of my friend's house. Abbie usually puts the buckeyes on the doorstep, rings the doorbell, then runs to catch up with us on our walk. My friend's children like finding the surprises. My friend decided she would start collecting them in a bowl for a fall display.
Yesterday, my niece was visiting and we decided to take her with us on our daily walk and daily buckeye pickup. (The location of the buckeye trees is a well guarded secret.) My niece started talking about the scene in Juno when Juno stuffs her friend's mailbox with packs of Tic Tacs. Needless to say, a lightbulb went off in my head.
We wrote 4 rhyminig clues and put the clues and one buckeye in a baggie. We snuck to my friends house and tried to be stealthy in broad daylight while we hid the clues. The last clue was supposed to lead them to their mailbox. We stuffed the mailbox with a gazillion buckeyes and made sure that they would all come tumbling out when the mailbox was opened. Abbie ran to the door and left the first clue and rang the doorbell. While she was running to our hiding place, she lost both flip flops in their yard, but the girl kept running!
It was really fun to stuff their mailbox, but it was also pretty exciting to be crouched down behind the hill waiting for them to make the final discovery. Sometimes, one of us would pop up to see which clue they were working on. We were like gophers! We have a lot of walkers in our neighborhood so we had to "act casual" while being stealthy and crouching - not easy!
My friend had a good laugh about her mailbox, and told her daughter not take the buckeyes out until she took a picture - it's a scrapbooking moment.
When we got home, we told Paul all about our adventure. He wondered what kind of "box" we hid the buckeyes in. I told him, "the federally-owned-you're-going-to-jail-if-you-tamper-with-it mailbox."

Amazing

It doesn't take much to amaze me (usually).
Today, I was typing the board minutes from a recent school board meeting.
I learned how to type in high school - on a typewriter, before keyboarding or computers were mainstream. It wasn't too hard to learn, but I was never the fastest or the most accurate.
It amazes me that I can look a paper (and not the keyboard or the computer screen), and the words race from the paper to my eyes through my brain and out to my fingers. And if I really, really, really relax my mind and don't think about what my fingers are doing, I can type fairly accurately. I am totally unconscious of what my fingers are doing yet they are hitting the right key every time. I just think that is nifty!
Of course, when I look at the screen or down at the keyboard, that's when my typing gets all wonky and slow.
It makes me wonder...if I really, really, really relax my mind, could I teleport like Hiro Nakamura? Hmmm...

Charleston

Believe it or not, we are heading out of town this weekend for an impromptu trip to the beach. We'll be in the Charleston area. It is only 5 hours from here. I didn't know that until I went in February with a friend to her beach house there. I wish I had known all this time that Charleston was so close. It is one cool little southern beach town!
If you've never been, the historic buildings are pretty awesome. After my February trip, I came home with a thirst for more knowledge about the civil war and slavery. I consumed several books and videos while trying to get answers to my questions. I love research (when it is something I want to know).
We'll be staying on the beach. We'll arrive Friday and leave Sunday - too short for me but better than nothing! Yay - I get my annual beach fix!
The coolest thing is that this was mostly Paul's idea (he's more of the stay-at-home type person). And Abbie gets some credit because she made a special wish on a "wishing fluff" and the wish came true.

Living with a Genius

Sometimes, it is hard to live with a creative genius. I thought I'd give some props to my dear husband.
I 've already told about his fun treasure hunts. Very creative! Now to the next thing -
Whenever there is a potluck at work, he comes home and announces his meal responsibility to me - usually the night before...after I've finished cooking....when I'm ready to put my feet up. Ugh! I've gotten really tired of this, and he knows it. But last week, he gave me plenty of notice that he had volunteered to take my special caramel brownies to work. I bought all the ingredients that we would need. Then I told him that I would help HIM make the brownies.
We watch Food Network quite a bit, but he still has trouble moving around the kitchen. It's fun to watch.
When we get to the part about adding the chocolate morsels, he gets a crazy idea to substitue m&m's! I said it sounded like a fine idea, but I couldn't predict how they would turn out since I had never done it that way.
We did it his way, and the brownies were more fabulous than usual! I think the outer shell of the m&m's kept the chocolate from melting all the way and there was a nice chocolate chunk in each bite. Now, why couldn't I have thought of this?
Oh well, I enjoyed the results!
We've decided to make the brownies once a month and change up the ingredients each time. Next time, I think we'll use white chocolate morsels (and maybe macadamia nuts). And caramel, lots of caramel.

It Just Had to Be Done

Friday night, we went to a PG movie titled, "Henry Poole Was Here." We were happily settled into our seats, snarfing candy and soda. About 10 minutes into the movie, 5 teenage girls came in and sat to the upper right of us - across the aisle. They rarely looked at the screen, were turned around talking to the girls behind them, had their cell phones open so the lcd screens were shining brightly, were not talking quietly, were calling people (probably each other), did not have their cell phones on vibrate, went up and down the aisle, went to the bathroom en masse (yet were not gone long enough to have actually done anything).......At some point, I poked Paul and said, "you've got to say something." He was sitting in the aisle seat after all. Another couple in the theater "shushed" them two different times which did no good. I really, really tried to ignore them but couldn't. I poked Paul again and told him to "do" something.
Next, one girl gets up and walks to the front of the theater and does a cartwheel. That was it! I was on my feet.
As I got up, I noticed another man in the back getting up and going out too. I was so glad - I was going to go back up his complaint. [In the meantime, the girls were cleaning up their act when they saw two adults get up right after the cartwheel incident.]
The man got to the popcorn counter ahead of me (that is the only place an employee was located - this is a smallish theater that was pretty dead for a Friday night), and I was just dying to hear what he was going to say.......
He said, "Could I have some more popcorn, please?"
Wha??!!???
I stood there, waiting for him to continue while I noticed that my heart was racing.
But he just stood there, asking for "some more butter too, please."
Wha??!!!???
My heart was hammering because I was going to have to be the one with the balls!
So I said to him, "are you in the Henry Poole movie?" and "are those girls up front bothering you?"
I made to sure to ask him if he were in the same theater (even though I knew he was) in order to establish that I was not with him.
I looked at the young girl behind the counter and calmly told her what was going on. She about tripped over herself as she was going to find a manager.
When I went back into the theater, the girls were looking back at me and the (neutered) man. They saw that he had popcorn and that I had nothing. They probably suspected that I tattled on them.
In about 5 minutes, someone came in and sternly told them to straighten up or they could leave. They said, "yes, ma'am." and were pretty good the rest of the movie.
In the truck on the way home, I recounted the incident at the popcorn counter to Paul. I admitted my disgust at having to be the one to tattle (no one wants to be a narc). But I also told him and Abbie that I was proud of myself for doing it. Abbie told me she was glad I did it, and that made me feel better. Paul tried to wiggle out of it by saying, "we were that age once...we probably did that a few times..." And he called me a narc! I started to feel a little guilty. But I think I did the right thing. It's one thing to talk and be on your phone during a movie and get in and out of your seat and to disregard shushing - that is disrespectful. But it is absurd to be cartwheeling in front of the movie screen like you own the place.
I told Paul about this post and how "man"kind had let me down. He asked, "You were upset that I didn't do anything?" And I said yes.
He smiled and smugly said, "I understand kids and their need to fool around."
:)

Guess What?

Last night was Abbie's back-to-school picnic. Her teacher told us that Abbie came up to her the other day and said,
Abbie: "Guess what, Ms. Holley."
Ms. Holley: "What?"
Abbie: "I'm a rascal!"
Ms. Holley: "You are?"
Abbie: "Yeah, and I get it from my dad."

Warning *Litter Box Zone* Under Construction

Whew! I think I have the litter boxes under control now. Maybe....
I spent hours today working on a new set up. Emptying and cleaning the boxes and installing new ones with brand new litter.
First of all, the biodegradeable corn stuff isn't working out. On the surface, it was working (clumps fine, smells nice in the bag), but we've been getting whiffs of ode de poo for the last several days even though I scoop regularly. Is that sharing too much to admit to that smell being in our house?
Anyhoo, I went back to my old brand of litter, Scoop Away. I went to the pet store today and literally spent 1/2 an hour or more staring at and analyzing new litter boxes. My current set up is one covered litter box and one regular-pan-type-open litter box. There were so many options, but I finally chose a new box to replace the pan-type-open box. The new box doesn't have a high step to get in, but it does have a clear cover, and a flap on the door which supposedly helps with odor control.
And I bought a new mat for them to step on as they exit the litter box. I'm sure I could have found a cheaper and similar non-slip mat at Walmart, but I didn't want to make another stop.
Is all this worth it for 2 cute new kittens? Jury's still out, but we do love them an awful lot. I do miss the days of having an indoor/outdoor cat with no litter box to scoop (Samantha/Molly/Ellie). But the turmoil of finding out your cat has been run over (Molly), or accidentally running over your cat as you pull in the garage (a constant worry with Molly), or wondering if your cat is lost (Baby/Ellie) may be worth having indoor only cats. We shall see!

Allergies

After visiting a specialist, Paul has finally learned which foods he should avoid (his stomach will thank him). I've been trying to get him to make this appointment for several years now, and after one recent 3 am wake up, he decided he can't deal with this when he gets old.
Luckily, he does not have any #4 allergies (anaphylactic shock). But he has several #2's. The way the doctor described it that any of these food items on their own would probably not bother him, but when you stack them throughout the day (wheat at breakfast, tomatoes at lunch, strawberries and carrots at dinner), it could cause him to have a reaction. Makes sense!
So he's just supposed to avoid certain foods. As well as MSG and other preservatives (I knew that stuff was bad for you). And he's supposed to make sure that his food is well cooked and should avoid eating raw fruits and veggies if possible.
Turns out that the doctor knew his dad pretty well, and he was very nice to us. This doctor was also a "close talker" (remember that from Seinfeld?).
I have never seen an allergy test done, and I went just so I could watch. Interesting!