On our way

You can't tell by the happy photos above, but both Dee and I felt like we didn't know what we were doing for much of the day. The packing at our respective houses went agonizingly slow. I was up and down the stairs countless times. In and out of almost every room in the house...all day long.

We intended to leave at 2, but changed it to 3. I was finally ready by 3:30. We stopped for a little shopping at Charming Charlie and then went to Pappadeaux for dinner.

An old friend, Arla, came in with a friend and was led to the table next to ours. What a nice surprise! We hadn't seen Arla in years, since we gave up our theatre tickets.

So, now we are at La Quinta...ready for bed and a good night's rest before flying off to Jekyll Island tomorrow. Wanda and Carole will meet us there late tomorrow afternoon. We will spend two days there on our own. The tour starts on the 12th.

We will be touring Savannah and then we'll travel up to Charleston where the tour ends on the 19th. I know we're going to have a wonderful time!

Happy Easter and all that jazz!

What I should be doing is packing...instead of looking at Facebook and blogs.  And yet, here I am.  Well, I'll get to it in a few minutes.

We had Easter dinner at Carolyn's, as usual.  Robin and Chad arrived in time to visit for a couple of hours before they headed to Chad's grandmother's for dinner with his side of the family.  The Garners and the Bubelas all attended 7 AM mass.  I'm not sure when the Easter bunny took care of business, but when they all arrived back from church, both families had lots of eggs to find.

Meanwhile, I was busy in my kitchen.  My job was the ham, potato salad, deviled eggs, and roasted broccoli and cauliflower.  It was all ready to be transported by 9:30 or so.  Of course, by the time I got there, all the eggs had been found.  Kate lured me outside, however, and instructed me to close my eyes and bend over at the waist.  I did so, unsuspecting of any shenanigans, and was rewarded by a confetti egg being cracked into the back of my head...followed by peals of laughter from Kate.  Monkey!

Carolyn and I worked quickly to finish preparing our dinner...she made two pans of cornbread, macaroni and cheese for any fussy eaters, and a poppyseed cake.  Wendy brought a big salad with all sorts of add-in veggies. We definitely had full plates!

We were hurrying up every chance we got because the Bubelas had an afternoon Easter egg hunt to attend and Carolyn wanted Jax to be able to take his nap.  So, we planned to serve dinner before noon and have Jax upstairs by one.  And I think that actually happened.

The bad thing, though, was that Jax missed Wendy's birthday cake.  He LOVES singing Happy Birthday and blowing out the candles.  For the last few birthdays (not his) he has been the one to blow the candles out.  As soon as that last note is sung, he starts blowing.  The actual birthday honoree has to be pretty quick to blow their own candles out.  It's very funny to see.  He always makes sure he's right by the birthday honoree.  But, we had to sing and blow without him this time.

It has become a tradition lately for us to have the wrong age on our cakes, which may prove to be a problem at some time in later years.

We ended our time together with a rousing game of duck, duck, goose, with the added option of smashing a confetti egg on the goose!

And now I'll go start organizing and packing for my 10 day trip to Georgia and South Carolina with Dee, Carole, and Wanda.

Valentine Surprise

When I answered a knock at the front door on Valentine's Day, I didn't expect to see someone delivering flowers.  The technician who had just finished installing our upgraded Dishnet system had  left moments earlier, so I thought he might have forgotten to give me something relating to the installation.

But no, it was flowers.  My first thought, as I placed it in the kitchen, was "Why the hell did Wayne send flowers?"  I smiled at my bad attitude while I retrieved the large card stuck in the middle of the pink, blue, and white flowers...completely missing the significance of the colors of the flowers and ribbon.

Pink and blue carnations, white daisies, pink and blue ribbon. 

I pulled the card out, took note of the photos of Robin and Chad and then read the upper left hand corner, "Coming soon to a crib near you...August 2012".  Still didn't quite get it.  But, a split second later I jerked my head up to look at the vase of flowers again...then jerked it back down again to reread the card.  (It's a wonder I didn't get whiplash!) 

Baby Hensley, how could I miss that?

Oddly, now that I think of it, my first response was to text Robin to let her know how excited I was and to ask when the due date was.  The odd part was texting instead of calling.  ???  It wasn't until I had already sent that text that I noticed the ultrasound image in the middle of the card.  It was at that time that I also realized that the due date was in August (late August).  She was at 12 weeks on Valentine's Day.  Robin and Chad have known since Christmas Eve, but have managed to keep the secret all this time!

A few weeks ago, Robin  and Chad invited us to come to their house for dinner.  It was in the middle of the week.  I didn't think anything about it, but our smart little Kate (I was at Carolyn's when Robin called to invite us) wondered why we were going there for dinner.  I kept thinking about it and wondered if they were going to announce a pregnancy.  We visited and had drinks before dinner.  I noticed that Robin poured a glass of wine for herself, so we were just there to have dinner...no surprise announcement.

As we were about to leave, I turned to Robin and commented that you can tell who's pregnant these days, because they wouldn't be drinking.  I also told her about my thought that maybe they were making an announcement.  Either I wasn't paying attention, or Robin didn't blush, which would have been her usual response.  She was drinking non-alcoholic wine, by the way.

She told me later that the first person she told was a waiter at a party they went to.  She told him she was pregnant but no one else knew and she didn't want them to figure it out by noticing that she was not drinking.  She told him that whatever she ordered was to be non-alcoholic. 

I do appreciate the fact that they waited until they were at 12 weeks to announce it...to anybody.   It would have been so hard to have to keep that secret for 5 or 6 weeks!

What a wonderful Valentine's Day surprise!

Janna's Pride Build Dedication

I sent an email to the girlfriends that are on the "girl's night out" list.  Well, first I sent the email, forgetting to attach the video.  Then, I sent another email letting everyone know that I noticed my goof and that another email with the video attached was being sent.  Then I sent the video.

This morning I heard from one of the girlfriends who said she did not get the video, so I thought I might just upload it here, since it's a pretty large file.

For background (for the one or two people who read this blog and didn't know Janna), please click here to read Janna's story.

Each of us who contributed to the project, in whatever way, feels a wonderful sense of honoring all that was important to Janna.

I had already published this post when I realized that I should have included some of the earlier pictures of the project.  So, before you get to the dedication video...here's the earlier part of the story in pictures.
 

Launch Party - Sept. 30, 2011

Dee and Wanda at the Launch Party

Me and Wanda

What a pretty venue for a party!

Came the longest distance...Audrey, from Norway...in blue sleeveless on the left

I'm not sure what was going on here...something exciting, I guess!

1st Day of Build - October 1, 2011

Ready to get to work!  Rosayn, Jean, Wanda, Dee

Jim & Carole

First wall up!

Many hands make easy work of moving walls

Good 1st day's work

 October 29, 2011 - Another work day

Window installation instructions

Jim, Scott and Wayne

Scott, in the hat

Natalie on the inside while Virgie and crew install the bathroom window.

Oops! Pay no attention to the fact that we had to uninstall this window due to the lack of tar paper on the left side.

Wanda, Virgie, Hannah and Maggie, me and Dee

Scott and others, on the roof

Natalie, surveying what will be her new home.

Carole and Dee

I think we were cheering someone finally getting a nail hammered in.

Dedication - January 21, 2012

In the house---Wanda

There's that bathroom window we installed!

One of the bedrooms

Wanda had just presented one of Janna's butterfly wing photos to Natalie.

Wanda had just presented the house keys to Natalie

Natalie presents a hammer to the next habitat home owner

And now...finally...the video!

Super-productive

I have been super productive today. Well, "super" might not actually apply, I have been productive...certainly, more so than my usual self.  I set my alarm for 7:30 because Carolyn and I had appointments for facials at 10:30 this morning.

In preparation for being in the proximity of Lowes, I placed items in the car to be returned/exchanged there yesterday.  I ate my usual good breakfast this morning, cleaned up the kitchen and by a little before 9 o'clock I headed upstairs to get ready to leave.

While I hadn't heard from Carolyn about what time we were leaving, which was a bit unusual, I thought "We've done this so many times we don't really need to talk about it".  Suddenly, it occurred to me, though, that maybe our appointment is at 10 instead of 10:30, so I picked up my phone and opened the calendar. Just about the time the calendar opened, I thought to myself, "Wait a minute...maybe that appointment is next week."  And...of course it is.

I called Carolyn and confirmed that the appointment is not today and that was when I started getting productive.

• I've washed, dried and put away four loads of laundry

• I put away the remains of Zane spending the night with us a couple of weeks ago.

• I've made my bed with freshly laundered sheets.

• I did a sewing repair on a pair of shorts

• I put away a number of items that were in the wrong places

Now I'm in desperate need of a cup of coffee and maybe a slice of the beer bread that I made last night.

I also need to remove the items there were going to Lowe's from the car. Dee and I are going to Austin on Saturday and we are taking my car. Hopefully, I will remember to put them back in the car when we actually do go get our facials next week.

Yay, me!  Although....looking at my accomplishments, I'm sure that "super" isn't necessary.  Just plain "productive" will do.

Helpful Hint

I bought new fancy schmancy landline phones last week. The reviews I read online described the phone as being "easy to use and intuitive". The reviewers must have been way more technically savvy than I, and I don't think I'm a slouch in that department. I'm progressing, however, and I think I'll be fairly proficient in short order.

One of the cool features (maybe the main cool feature) is that it links with another Bluetooth device such as my cell phone or a headset. So if my cell phone rings, I can answer it using my house phone, thus reducing the radiation my poor brain is exposed to.

Once I had registered (paired) my cell phone to the house phone, I was able to transfer all my cell phone contacts to the house phone. The new house phone holds over 3000 numbers. The one it's replacing held only 100. It's still limited to only 16 characters in a name, though. That seems very restrictive to me, as well as puzzling.  One would think that technology had progressed way beyond the 16 character limit.  Maybe it has, but it isn't available for the $120 I paid for the base/answering/4 handset/bluetooth unit I bought. The limit means that while I might have three or four numbers for a contact, (they are all listed separately on the house phone, because that's the way the phone does it) but not enough room to indicate what device ("cell", "home", "work", "fax", etc.) the number calls.  Seriously? It will put the last few characters on a 2nd line and then the rest of the line is blank. Why can't I use the rest of the line?  Makes no sense to me.

I'm still reading the 98 page manual, but I wanted to
share the helpful instruction that might have been necessary in 1875. This could now be filed under the
"phone calls for dummies" section.

Rain!

Whoo-hoo! We actually have water standing all around the yard. It rained really hard for a little while. The English's pasture, across the road from us, has a lot of standing water… It's almost covered. The cows, standing near the hay, look perplexed. Who knows? Maybe they've never seen rain before. They're probably out there discussing it right now.

Meanwhile, I'm just enjoying the sound and the look of the long-awaited rain.