Weekend in Reveiw II

Friday night we went to Julie's 30th birthday party...

Saturday we went to the Georgia game...


and just like the last weekend review, we are all tired, but we managed to get another good video of David ...

Thanks Laura Jane!

I got a package in the mail today from my good friend Laura Jane. I just love getting good stuff in the mail! Here is what she sent...

A book written by an author local to her area. She has heard good things about it, but has not read it yet. She is on a wait list to get it for herself, and yet she bought one for me, AND...
..she even got it autographed! I tell ya, that Laura Jane is selfless.

How neat is this? I always had a hard time with these name poem/acronyms in school because of the two A's.
Personalized bookmarks. Something I would never do, or buy for myself. She put so much time and thoughtfulness into these gifts.

Dear Laura,

Thank you so much for my birthday package-who cares if its belated when the gifts are so heartfelt? I am very much looking forward to reading the book as I think highly of any recommendation you give. It is always so special to own a book signed by the author-thanks so much for taking the time to do that. I'm so flattered by six compliments for each letter of my name. I truly hope I can live up to those standards. I have to admit that I must not be very astute, because I had to look up what altruistic means ; ) The bookmarks are really fun-I just love anything personalized. I've been so blessed to have met you and kept in touch with you all of these years. Thank you for your constant and unconditional friendship-it means more than you'll ever know.

Love always,

Andrea

One "Tuff" Week

This week has already been a doozie and its only Wednesday! Monday night my sister Lara had to have an emergency appendectomy. Less than 12 hours later they sent her home with instructions not to lift either of her two children for 2-3 weeks. My parents leave tomorrow to go out of town so I'll be spending a good amount of time at her house over the next couple of weeks. (Blog Police-you know where I will be, so no citations, okay?) Then, last night Jason had to take one of his bird dogs, Tuff to the emergency vet. Over several phone conversations between Jason, the vet, and I, the decision was made to put him down. He was 11 years old...and now I will honor him with a story or two... He was a crazy dog, more so than the average pointer. He marched to the beat of his own drum, and had a very distinct personality. I first met Tuff when he was just a puppy. He was Dan's dog and he wanted to name him "Bandit", but Jason won out with his choice. Jason saw him jump off the bed of a truck and fall pretty hard on the concrete. He got right up without so much as a whimper and took off running like nothing happened. He's "Tuff" Jason said, and the name stuck. Dan didn't tell Pat about his newest purchase, but she found out soon enough. Some of the neighborhood children rang the doorbell asking to see the puppy. She tried to send them on their way saying, "I'm sorry, we don't have a puppy", but they responded "Yes you do. We've seen him once already." That was the summer Jason and I first started dating. Once, we took him to the family hunting property and let him run around. He fell in the river and pretty much didn't like water from that day on. Spirit, the only female of Dan's bird dogs did not care for Tuff as he was constantly trying to pursue her. She'd snap at him and let him know where he stood. He'd just shake it off and go on playing which aggravated her even more since she took her hunting very seriously. His persistence finally paid off after a year or two. Spirit and Tuff had a litter together (there are some great pictures of their puppies that I wish I could have gotten my hands on for this post). When Dan died, we couldn't take the bird dogs off Pat's hands soon enough. I can't say I blame her though. It is a lot of work to take care of them which she did when Dan was sick and then she had to wait for us to build our house. What I guess I am trying to say with all of this is that I know it was Tuff's time to go, but it is bittersweet because of all of the memories.

Left: Spirit, Top Right: Tuff

The above stories reminded me that I never told y'all what we decided to name the bird dog puppy Jason bought last summer. If you'll remember one of us liked "Champ" (that was me) the other liked "Boss" (that was Jason). I'm pretty sure Champ got the most votes on the blog, but Jason won out, again. He said that since I got to name Charlie, he wanted to use his name, so that was the end of that. Here are some updated pictures of Boss...

What a difference a year makes, huh?

Book Reviews

Much like mushrooms were an acquired taste for me (I didn't like them as a child, but now I love them), reading books has become an acquired favorite pastime of mine. In school I didn't like being told what to read and when to read it. Now that I can pick and choose what I want to read, and the pace I read it at, I'm a happy girl...

So... I'm probably the last person in a free world to read this book (I haven't seen the movie either). It stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for four years (those were the years I was being forced to read books I wasn't so fond of such as Lord of the Flies). I had no idea what Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was about exactly, but I did know it was set in Savannah, Georgia. Most of you know we used to live in Statesboro. Being that "the Boro" is not exactly a booming metropolis, and Savannah was only 40 minutes away, we spent a lot of time there. The first thing that fascinated me about this book is that it is nonfiction. I love reading about things that actually happened. The second thing that was amazing to me is that I recognized some of the people in the book; Sonny Siler , for example because of his ownership of Uga, Georgia's mascot, but others I knew just from the familiarity of common last names in that area. I loved that I knew of almost every site the author mentions down to the street name. There were also things I didn't know-most of it being about Savannah's history (and some Georgia history for that matter). The third thing I enjoyed about the book was how every thing, every line, every last detail, had a purpose in the book. It really helps if you have a good memory as the book is almost 400 pages and there were things from the very beginning that came full circle in the end. A great read indeed. I highly recommend it.

Now I'm off to start reading a science fiction book Jason's first cousin wrote that will supposedly also have an up and coming movie based on it...

His style has been described as Dan Brown meets Michael Crichton...should be interesting!

Peer Pressure

Because Katie asked nicely and its been a slow blogging week...

1.) Tell me something you really like about yourself.

I write great thank-you notes. Seriously. Each one is very personalized and unique. I never use cliches. I can also whip em out pretty fast, which is good because I like to send them out ASAP.

2.) If life gave "do-overs", would you have many? Tell me one.

Too many to count. The one that haunts me the most this time of year is not transferring to UGA, after I applied to and got in 3 times. I chickened-out every time.

3.) What would you like to be remembered for after you're gone?

Having given more than I took.

4.) Knowing what you know now, what one piece of wisdom would you like to pass on to future generations?

Don't be in such a hurry to grow up or get to the next phase in life. Enjoy your youth.

5.) Is your life a.) harlequin romance b.) an atlas c.) a mystery d. ) sci-fi e.) other. EXPLAIN your choice.

E-Other. Its a children's book. I am a stay at home mom, so I do kid stuff all day long.

"Of Mice and Men"

Yet another crazy busy weekend for us. It started out pretty good. The basement was pretty much finished and we were all geared up to fry some gamecocks...

Here's our good friends Christy and Matt
Jason and I

The four of us eating at Loco's


So the game went bad. Really bad. As in there was not a single moment when Georgia was winning the game. Ever. Ugh. I so hate losing to Steve Spurrier. He's the only man I know who gets an ego trip when he's booed. We came home depressed. Then I got to thinkin' that I would rather have Matt and Christy with us and lose the game than be without them and win. That's how special these folks are. It just isn't the same without them there. We know each other from high school youth group (which by the way is how I know Tara as well). Matt and Jason were roommates at Georgia and Christy and I would join our then boyfriends for every home game, and we even made it to Georgia/Florida together one year. I didn't have much time to sulk in the loss though as Sunday was David's birthday party. The next morning when I walked out to the kitchen, after getting ready for church, I found that Christy had summed it up pretty well...

A special thanks to Grandma for babysitting David during the game and Sunday when we were getting ready for the party...
David covering Grandma up in balloons. He originally had on a Thomas outfit to go with his party theme, but his diaper leaked during his nap before the party started, so we had to change him. It Figures that would happen..."The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry"
The cake

Joel, Julie, and Elena were so gracious to bring their moon walk.




Presents! Here are some pictures of a few of them...

Basketball goal
Crocs
A toy chainsaw! How crazy is that? It looks so real.Two years old today.
Happy Birthday David! I love you more than words can say. You are the joy of my life. I can't believe its already been two years since you were born (or even one year since last year's party for that matter). Wow. As if right on cue, I've already had several people ask me today when we will have another one...only God knows the answer to that question! At any rate, we've taken a lesson from Becky and decided its only going to be family birthday parties for the next few years. Maybe when he turns 5 we will do a big party again...

Punch Out!

Jason and I decided earlier this year we should go ahead and have our basement finished. One of our neighbors is a builder so we put him to work. There have been many setbacks along the way so its taken a lot longer than we had originally anticipated. We've been sweating bullets all week to see if it indeed would be habitable before our friends Matt and Christy come to stay with us after tomorrow's Georgia game, and for David's birthday party on Sunday. The punch out crew wasn't able to come until next week so we did most of the cleaning up ourselves. There are still a few things they need to come back for, but for the most part it is finished. Here are just a few pictures to show the progress...

The Bar.
Wallpaper behind the bar-its beer labels.
Wallpaper in the bathroom-its supposed to look like stack stone.
Guest bedroom.

I have to tell y'all that I'm usually not a big fan of wallpaper, but we were trying to help out some friends of ours who owned a wallpaper store (that's past-tense-they just sold the store this month). They ended up helping us out by giving us a friends and family discount and I'm really happy with what we picked out. I can't tell you how glad I am that I won't have to wait for construction men to show up at all hours of the day anymore. They would usually come during David's nap and bang hammers right under his room! That was/is quite stressful for me...

Sweet Dreams

I never really thought about what David might dream about until just the other day. After he woke up, and I got him out of his crib, the first thing he said was "choo-choo school". Then, as if I didn't hear him, he put his hands on my cheeks, centered my face with his, made sure I was looking right into his eyes, and repeated the phrase several times. It really didn't surprise me that he would dream about trains...but seriously, train school? Hey, he can get an engineering degree at Georgia too ya know...

Game Day

The fam on game day.

David's new shirt that I swear was made just for him.

Jason, Heath, Clint (ABAC/ UGA forestry school friends) and myself at Loco's.
Saturday in Athens.
Team Huddle
The Red Coats
Well its college football season again-our favorite time of year. Being in Athens for game day never gets old, even though we've been doing it for 8 years now. It costs more now than it did when Jason was an undergrad, but at least we get to sit down during the game ; ) The dawgs won and played very well opening day this year, unlike last year. As always I'm pretty confident about the season...until we travel to Jacksonville that is...