The Great Garage Clean-up and ER Visit

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 Baseball

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.

Huntsville – #1

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.”

Our Soccer Chick

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!

PTA Board Member

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!

First Day at the Pool!

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.

Teacher Appreciation

This week is Teacher Apprecation at Columbia. All week long the teachers are getting pampered by breakfast, lunches and gifts. Both of the twins teachers are wonderful, we could not be more pleased! So, of course I wanted to do something special for them. But, I wanted to do something a little different. I couldn’t think of anything original or creative until I remembered the Colorful Cupcake Party we did for the twins at their preschool, 5th Bday. I bought tons of colored candies and sprinkles and stuff, and separated them all by color, each child got to decorate their cupcake however they wanted. Anyway, for a teacher appreciation gift I decided to buy M&M’s and separate by color. Lael helped out with this, but Caeden could not be bothered. Then we layered them in a container and wrote a little note, titled “You’re Like a Rainbow, Every Color Works Together to Make something Beautiful.” I jotted down some thoughts about how each color signified a wonderful way that they are a wonderful teacher.

natural bridge

I never know what I am going to see while doing inspections outside of Huntsville. When I am out and about in Stevenson, Bridgeport, New Market, Gurley, Paint Rock, New Hope……there is plenty to see! While I was headed to an inspection up on top of one of the little mountains out in Grant AL, I passed the most awesome thing I’ve seen in a while – a natural bridge. It also had the cutest house nestled right up next to it, gardens all around, trails going to and fro and just basically looked like a picture out of some fantasy storybook. I fully expected to see fairies flitting about on toadstools or something. When I cam back down the mountain, I stopped for some photos.

Schools Re-open!

Thank Goodness!! Of course Chace is happy though, since the middle schools were only closed for 2 days, he thought that was totally unfair!! The CDC has decided that this seems to be a much milder case than they had originally feared so they said we could re-open. Yay! Caeden has come down with something though, he has been running a bit of a fever, and I’ve called the doctor twice now to see if I should bring him in, but they said to just wait it out, because his fever is not terribly high and he has no other symptons. Now, we get to wait and see what they are going to decide about making up the missed days.

My Birthday and More Swine Flu!

My birthday arrived amidst a flurry of emails, phone calls and news conferences about the swine flu. It seems like that is what everyone is talking about! We learned today that we have probable cases now in West Madison, Madison, Horizon and Heritage Elementary Schools. That is all the elementary schools except for Columbia (ours) and Rainbow. This is the latest from the city about our schools:

In today’s meeting at the Emergency Management Agency, the state and local public health officers determined that Madison City elementary schools (all of them to include Rainbow and Columbia) will be closed 14 days. This decision, made by the health officers, was in agreement with the Center for Disease Center’s Interim Guidelines for K-12 School Dismissal. However, it was agreed that the situation for our elementary schools may be reassessed Saturday, May 9.

14 days!?!? what?!?!? It’s not summer yet, I’m not ready!! I still have several more weeks left of peace and quiet before my home is invaded every single day by snack munching, juice guzzling, dirt tracking, noise making lil gremlins!

On a side note – I am 35 today! I am on the downslope to old – closer to 40 than 30 now!!