A Heavy Heart

This is Shane. I write to you all today to tell you my Dad died last night. He had been fishing at West Point Lake and had come home early because he hadn't had too much success. A storm had come through earlier in the week and snapped some trees out at his house. He was on the tractor trying to clean up some of the mess. My step-brother went to check on him when it started to get dark and he was slumped over in the seat, an apparent heart attack. Thank you all so much for your prayers and concern.

To my Dad:

Thank you so much for all you have done for me. Thank you for your kindness, your mercy and your forgiveness. Thank you for showering me with your love and for showing me the right way to be a man because that is what you were, a great man. I will miss you.

Shane

"Hairy rope, don't be a dope"

So I finally made it out of the house today. I was getting a little stir crazy. Shane, the boys, and I went out to eat some Mexican. Ever since Monday night I have been cooped up in the house because of the horrid case of poison ivy that developed all over my face. I didn't want to go out of the house and run the risk of possibly scaring innocent people. I'm so thankful I didn't have to go back and forth to Dalton's little school since he was out this week. My face is screaming for moisturizer, but I've been going without because I've been trying to dry this thing up along with using a couple tubes of anti-itch cream. I had always heard the saying, "Leaves of three, let it be", but I had never heard the saying "Hairy rope, don't be a dope." I'm not making that up. Anyway, the above picture was similar to what our poison ivy looked like- a long hairy rope extending the entire length of a pine tree that Shane cut down. Shane broke out a little on his arms as well. Both of our rashes are beginning to look a lot better.

The Burn Pile

That's right. We have a burn pile. Some people just put their limbs and sticks or whatever out by the side of the road for the city/county to pick up, but not us. What is the fun in that?! We have that service available but we choose to have a burn pile. We live in a somewhat wooded lot which was very grown up with brush and unwanted vines when we bought the lot and built the house. We've cleared out a lot of it, but there's still a good bit of limbs that fall or vines we continue to pull out of trees so instead of hauling all this to the road we have a big pile of limbs that we burn. We can only burn from October through the end of April. We'll get the proper permit online, throw some gas on it, then light her up. Woo-Hoo, What a big time we'll have!!! This past Saturday was one such big day. The boys love it when we burn it. They love throwing random sticks on the burning pile. The burn permit is important because the Neighborhood Nazis will sure call the fire department on you. We've had the fire department show up a couple of times because of one of our neighbors calling them. It's not that we live in the kind of neighborhood where we're the only ones that do this. Everyone around here does this. (ours is the biggest pile of limbs though) Anyway, once we got into a little bit of trouble because of the burn pile. We had only lived here about 9 months and we burned a pile of limbs one Saturday. Well, the next Monday I left with the boys to go to Wal-Mart and I returned to find almost all of my backyard was in flames. It was so much that I had to call the fire department to come out. They had a huge fire truck and a smaller fire truck out here trying to put it out. At the bottom of the burn pile apparently were some smoldering ashes that weren't completely put out. It seems like something always happens when we burn it. This past Saturday I was helping Shane put some more limbs on the fire when he gave me a really thick vine to fold up so that it would be small enough to go in the fire. Gloveless, I broke it up and pushed it together then threw it on the pile. A couple of days later Shane tells me that he thinks that was poison ivy. Of course now my face and pretty much only my face is completely splotchy and itchy from it. Lovely. Sorry, no pictures of that. Fortunately though, Dalton has this week off for a winter break so I probably won't be going anywhere to show off my new itchy face.

Death on Wheels Part II: Colby's Turn

My mom with Colby

Well, I decided to finally let Colby have a turn at the skates that he received for Christmas. His skates are much different than Dalton's- much easier to skate on. Actually there wasn't a whole lot of skating going on. It was more like walking on wheels, but definitely good for his first skates. I don't think he ever even fell. Dalton's skates on the other hand are the Mac-Daddy of roller skates. I don't think I ever had any that were that nice- maybe when I had roller blades.

All of the skating the boys have been doing lately has gotten me to thinking about when I first learned to skate. I believe the first time I ever went skating was at the Bibb Skate Arena in south Macon. I think the place is still in business too although it looks a little run down. I know I was a bit older than Dalton when I first went to the skating rink, probably about 8 or 9. I was never all that great at it. I never won any races or the limbo. Then came roller blading. I was in college when I first got a pair of roller blades. For some reason, I had to deck myself out in the knee pads and wrist guards. Safety first I guess. I probably looked like a dork. It was a lot of fun back in the day roller blading around the VSU campus and also around the graveyard that was close by. I wonder what happened to my roller blades?

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Valentine's Day is special to me because it is the day, eight years ago, that my sweetheart asked me to marry him. Baby, I love you soooo much and I'm so proud that I'm married to you. You're my best friend and I have so much fun when I'm with you. Can't wait to continue to spend the rest of our lives together!

Amy

Well, I guess I'm it.

This is one way of finally getting me to participate in this blog. This is Shane, Amy's husband, who is finally posting for the first time, if you don't count the UGA countdown clock below. Amy has tagged me, so here are the directions once again: Share five random and/or weird facts about yourself; Share the five top places on your “want to see or want to see again” list; Tag five people at the end.

Five random/weird facts:
1. Spelling is one of my pet peeves; I know you are now going back over everything I have written to see if I have spelled something wrong. If you find something, please tell me so I can edit this post and get it right. I spell check my emails. My goal is to hit "send", and the email sends immediately because the spell check has completed and found nothing wrong. I will read this post a minimum of five times before I post to check for spelling errors.

2. I am an 80's heavy metal freak. Poison, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Warrant, Guns N Roses, etc. That's right, I lov'em all. Barry Jordan used to pick me up for school and he made me listen to Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet" album at least 500 times. I got hooked.

3. I have played every position on the field for my high school football team. That is not a testament to how good I was, just how bad our team was. My junior and senior years we were a combined 2-16. We beat the same team both years.

4. I used to play the piano and the tenor sax before I became cool. Now I wish I could play both.

5. I have a huge scar on my left shoulder because my roommate in college dared me to burn myself with a cigarette lighter. He DARED me;I couldn't back down from that. Believe it or not, I was completely sober.

Five places in the US:
(Just for the record, Amy took a lot of mine)
1. New York. Never been. I think it would be pretty cool.
2. D.C.
3. Las Vegas
4. Montana or Wyoming
5. Alaska

Five places outside the US:

1. Holy Land
2. Europe, probably just the high spots: London, Paris, etc.
3. Antarctica. I know what you're thinking, but it has to be just incredible to experience.
4. Hunting deer or elk in Canada
5. Like Amy, I love the Caribbean.

So there it is, folks. Drink it in.

Tagged

I've been blog tagged. My friend Jawan indicated on her blog that she has tagged me. Usually I delete these types of emails when I get them in my mail unless they're really good, but since this was up on Jawan's blog for all of the blog world to see I feel obligated to share my list. LOL Here are her directions: Share five random and/or weird facts about yourself; Share the five top places on your “want to see or want to see again” list; Tag five people at the end.

1. I once went bungee jumping in Panama City.
2. I threw up the morning of my wedding day. At least it was in the morning and not during the ceremony.
   
3. I am addicted to coke. Not the drug, the drink. If there was one thing that I would need counseling or intervention for to have to get off of, it would be for cokes/carbonated beverages. If I try to stop drinking them, after a couple of days I will become irritable and will get headaches. My beverage of choice is Coca-Cola, but if not available, anything will do.
   
4. I once held the state record in the long jump.
   
5. I'm a huge Georgia Bulldogs fan. I could probably name most all of the starters from this past year's football team as well as various statistics about them. This is probably one of the things that Shane loves about me.
   

The following places I want to go are in no particular order, just the order in which they popped into my head.

Places I want to go in the USA

1. Vail Colorado- skiing
2. Alaska -probably on a cruise
3. St. John- US Virgin Islands This is where Shane and I went on our honeymoon and it was awesome. I'd love to go back there someday
4. I'd love to visit the historic landmarks in Washington DC and basically most of the places that were visited in the movie National Treasure
5. Hawaii

Places outside of the USA

1. Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort in Canada - Supposedly this is this best skiing in North America. Can you tell that skiing is on my mind right now?
2. Israel/Holy Land area
3. Pretty much any island in the Caribbean such as St. Lucia, Aruba, British Virgin Islands, Barbados
4. Australia/New Zealand
5. Tahiti

Well, since I only know 2 other people that have blogs that haven't already been named, I will tag Robin and Amy H. I'll also name Shane because he's supposed to be contributing to this blog as well and I just want to see if he'll do it.

Death on Wheels

He's up!!!!

He's down

Getting ready

Dalton and Colby both received some roller skates for Christmas. I had been putting off letting them try them out because I could just picture them falling and breaking a limb or scraping up their entire faces. I finally decided to let Dalton try out his skates today since the weather was still great. He had a really hard time, but I guess you've got to start somewhere. I had to hold him up pretty much the entire time. I'm surprised he was able to stand upright long enough for me to snap the picture. I guess that was pretty good progress for the first time. Colby was napping while I was helping Dalton, but maybe Colby can try his out sometime soon as well.

The John Deere Brothers

I love warm weather. It seems like this winter has been colder than normal, and I think I've realized that I just don't think I'd be able to hack living much farther north than Atlanta. I just hate being stuck in the house because it's too cold to go out or having to bundle up and then bundle the kids up to go out. Today it was in the 70s so the boys and I had ourselves a little picnic in the backyard. Then, we went to the fence next to us and fed a couple of the neighbor's ponies. It's kind of fun that our neighbors behind us and next to us have ponies and other animals.

Under the Weather

I was feeling very under the weather this weekend so my sweet husband decided to take the boys to his mom's house Saturday to spend some time with her for the day. I'm so thankful that our families live nearby and that his mom kept them. I was able to get some much needed rest. I ended up sleeping on and off until about 2:00 and then around 4:00 I decided I'd do something productive and get some ironing done. I popped in a movie, The Notebook, and while watching it made a little bit of a dent in all the ironing that needs to be done. I so hate to iron. Anyway, hopefully I'm on the upswing from the funk that I've had this weekend. I haven't had this much sleep in a long, long time.