I was too proud of my new patio!!! I had not even had anyone over yet for a dinner or a get-together or anything, and now we have no table to sit at! A stupid summer storm blew up out of nowhere yesterday afternoon. I did not even realize it was windy, but apparently it was like some kind of straight-line winds and my beautiful new red umbrella smashed my much anticipated and shopped for glass table. I don’t know if the wind picked up the umbrella and then slammed the table down and broke it or if the pressure on the pole shattered the glass. Either way it’s broken. We heard the most awful noise and I immediately thought, ‘that sounded like glass breaking, but no!!” Todd thought it sounded like a shotgun. We went out and the umbrella was up against the brick wall and glass was everywhere. He has to wrestle the umbrella to get it closed. Thankfully it is not broken too. But my table!!! Waaaahhhhh!!
Caeden and Lael have been begging to get out the huge waterslide now for weeks. I keep putting them off, it is a big pain – I guess I am just being lazy. Anyway, Todd worked out a deal with them today. He put out the Slip&Slide (which is a breeze to set up) at the bottom of the slide of the playset. Turn on the water add the kids and that equals several hours of fun!
Oh and last night – we had a movie under the stars! Todd brought home the projector from work and he set up a screen on the side of the playset. Caeden and Lael chose Narnia to watch, and we got blankets and chairs and were ready. When it finally got dark, we started the movie. It was awesome! Caeden fell asleep about 1/2 hour into it, that poor kid can just not stay awake much past 9:00!
hard to believe!! 14 short years ago I became a Mom for the first time. In some ways it does seem like just yesterday I was holding that sweet bald baby in my arms and other times it seems like a lifetime away. Well, technically it was a lifetime, Chace’s!! Anyway, I am so proud of the young man that Chace has become. He is really a great kid. He mentioned the other day that he is now a freshman – 9th grade next year!! He will still be at Liberty, but a Freshman, he now has a title, not just 7th grader or 8th grader! eeeeekkk!
Todd had Field Boss Duty at Palmer Park on Chace’s birthday so we decided to celebrate with his birthday dinner Friday night. He did ask for a special dinner on his birthday, one like MiMi makes. Uh-oh – he wants hamburger steak with grilled onions and mashed potatoes. I am on the spot, I don’t want to mess it up, I mean it is his birthday after all! So, I make it and he says it is good, of course, he is always sweet about anything I make, but he does admit that there is something special about the food that grandmothers cook. Nena had her specialties that nobody could duplicate, Grandmother did also. LaLa has some delicious dishes and MiMi too. Maybe one day I will rank up there with ‘the masters’, automatically when you become a grandmother your cooking gets elevated.
Friday night after Caeden’s game we went out, Chace wanted Dylan to go, of course. He had chosen Sakura to eat. Chace missed out when we went there a few months ago, but he loves Japanese food, especially when they cook it on the hibachi right in front of you. Our chef tonight was really really good. He put on a great show and the food was absolutely delicious. If you are in Madison or Huntsville, you should really check them out!!
All three kids had dentist appointments today. Hurray for no cavities! Caeden needs to have 3 teeth pulled, Lael has 3 that are loose (which she is ecstatic about because she has lost NONE, and Caeden has already lost 3!) and Chace needs braces soon. We have known this for a long time, so no surprise there. I made an appointment to have Caeden’s teeth pulled and another one to have the impressions and X-rays done for Chace’s braces. Whew!
This dentist office is amazing though. They just moved into a new office and it is the coolest. There are two sections in the waiting room, one boring one with chairs, magazines and the tv’s. The other half is like a McDonald’s playplace, complete with slides and tubes and full of happy kids. There is also a tv there playing cartoons, and some sort of game system built into the wall. I’ve never been to a doctor/dentist appointment and heard the kids say “Aaaww Mom, already? I’m not ready!” when they call their names to go back. That happened today – they wanted to stay and play!
Every weekend for many many months, we talk about cleaning out the garage but we always seemed to find some excuse! It was either too cold, too hot, raining, too many activities already on schedule, or Todd was working or something! Finally, we said FOR REAL! we are going to do it! Our garage was embarrassing it was such a disaster! We started Saturday morning pulling stuff out and trying to organize what we wanted to keep on the driveway. We filled up the truck and the van with stuff for GoodWill and quickly filled up our trash can, very very quickly. It’s amazing how much literal trash we had stashed here and there, like pizza boxes! I mean, who keeps 14 pizza boxes in their garage? Ok, maybe not 14, but too many I assure you!! Dark came much too quickly Saturday night and we had to put all the keepers back in the garage. Sunday we started again with the same process, pull everything out and try to organize it. More trash and more trips to GoodWill. The twins were discovering toys they never knew they had, Todd and discovered lots of stuff that we had forgotten we had. Chace was conspicuously absent.
It has almost gotten dark, so we decided to pack it up for another day. I had just gotten the veggies and shrimp out to throw on the grill when we heard one of those screams that you just KNOW is bad, it means that somebody is hurt. Todd went outside to see what happened, expecting to find a scraped knee or black eye or something. He comes in carrying Lael with his hand cupped under her chin and blood everywhere. I see the gaping wound and know immediately that we are headed to the ER. Todd takes her to the bathroom to see how bad it is and try to clean a bit of the grit out. Caeden is tagging along behind telling the story of how Lael wrecked her turtle bike, she was going too fast etc. Todd is so much better at that kind of thing than me, so I go to her bedroom to get some clothes, because she is wearing her swimsuit still and I didn’t know how long we would have to wait in the ER. We get her clothes changed and I grab a book and some crayons and paper and off we go. We get there and it’s not terribly crowded, yay! They get her to a room and the doctor comes in and says yes, she needs stitches. of course she does!! we knew that! The doctor tells her she needs about 3, but they won’t hurt. He did say that the shot to deaden the area will hurt a little. He has me hold her hands and Todd her feet, I suppose to keep her from flailing and wiggling but she did not move a muscle. The only movement was the big crocodile tears rolling down her cheeks! We got her stitched up and then went to Hardees to get the milkshake Todd promised her.
Caeden is having fun playing baseball again this year. We have a lot of the same team members from last year, so that is cool. They are still cute and funny as they chase the balls all over the field. But, they have definitely improved from last year. At least now the entire team doesn’t try to catch every single ball!! They mostly stay in their positions.
Kiplinger’s Personal Finance has ranked Huntsville No. 1 on its list of the 10 best cities of 2009. That is way cool! I knew I liked it here, but it’s nice to see that others thinks it’s a great city too! Here is the article:
Population: 378,057
Income Growth: 9.7%
Cost of Living Index: 91
Median Household Income: $51,275
Percentage of Workforce in Creative Class: 40%Talk about a bulletproof economy. This northern Alabama city represents critical mass for the nation’s missile-defense and aerospace industries. The medical and life-sciences industries are thriving, too. Thousands of new jobs are pouring into town. With a few exceptions, business in Huntsville is so healthy that Mayor Tommy Battle has a pleasant problem: “We have more jobs than we can fill.”
Huntsville owes much of its red-blooded vitality to the U.S. Army, which employs more than 14,000 people, mostly civilians, at the 38,000-acre Redstone Arsenal. “If a soldier drives it, eats it or shoots it, we’re involved — beans to bullets,” says Dan O’Boyle, arsenal spokesman.
As part of an ongoing consolidation of army bases and personnel — known as BRAC, the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process — the arsenal will hire 5,000 more people over the next few years, and another 5,000 jobs will be added indirectly to the area.
As for aerospace, Huntsville isn’t called Rocket City for nothing. The giant rocket replica that pierces the Huntsville skyline not only makes a handy reference point for out-of-towners but also represents Huntsville’s storied — and still strong — role in space exploration. The site of the historic test launch of the Saturn V rocket, which put the U.S. space mission one step closer to the moon, Huntsville houses an original Saturn V at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and hosts thousands of students each year at the center’s Space Camp. The Marshall Space Flight Center, part of NASA, employs 2,500 scientists, many of whom are working on the next moon launch.
All those scientists and engineers create a bubbling brew of brainpower that attracts other intellectuals. Says Rick Davis, director of Cummings Research Park, “Smart people come here.” Huntsville encourages the influx by offering companies below-market real estate prices and room to grow at Cummings, which encompasses 3,800 acres. The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, a recent arrival, represents Huntsville’s foray into the next frontier. HudsonAlpha translates the results of the Human Genome Project into the development of new, targeted medicines. Says director Richard Myers, “In five years, we will all be taking our genomic sequence with us to the doctor’s office.”
Not every sector in Huntsville is booming. Car sales have plummeted in recent months, and home sales have slowed, especially for houses priced at $300,000 and up. Still, Huntsville’s otherwise strong economy, combined with a scenic, mountain-view setting, a historical downtown, top-quality museums and a 110-acre botanical garden, encourages residents to stay put and newcomers to stream in. Says Battle: “This place never misses a beat.”
Lael decided she wanted to play soccer again. She and Caeden both played in the fall and both loved it. Caeden chose baseball this Spring, and Lael chose soccer again. She is the smallest girl on her team, but she more than makes up for her size! She is right in the middle of all the action which anyone who knows her would believe!
It’s official, I’ve lost my mind! no seriously, I’ve just been elected to the PTA Board at Columbia. Most people would think that is crazy, but I think it will be fun. I love to be involved at the school, and in this way I can really make a difference. I am the Secretary, so it won’t require much public speaking, which I detest, so that is good!
We made it to the pool today. The twins have been dying to go since it opened on the 1st. I kept telling them it was going to be cold – but they didn’t believe me. They believe it now after jumping in and freezing! They played it brave for a while, but then had to climb out and wrap up in a towel. They spent most of the remainder of the time playing on the pool deck and eating snacks.
