Ten Things that Tick Me Off:
10. People that park their cars in the street rather than in their driveways causing me to have to play chicken with the cars coming from the opposite direction.
And, those cars that are coming from the other way that KNOW it is my turn to run the gauntlet of parked cars but refuse to wait their turn and let me go before them.
9. Bloggers that do not allow the RSS feedburners to capture their whole blog into my Google-reader, but only a little snippet of their post. Guess what? Your blog has now been removed from my reader.
8. Mosquitoes that bite my little baby on the eyelid causing her eye to almost swell shut.
7. People that constantly ignore processes and policies at work, and their management that levies no consequences so they have no incentive to follow them.
6. Weather forecasters that really have no clue about where a hurricane might strike, but elect to freak people out with their doom and gloom. (I think they are in cahoots with the grocery stores to prompt people to buy gross amounts of water, batteries, and canned tuna.)
5. The absurd way our chosen political candidates campaign. Rather than relying on the merits of their own platform, they instead choose to highlight and focus on their opponents ‘faults’ and take every little sound-bite completely out of context to suit their purpose of trashing the others reputation.
And, it doesn’t matter whether they have a D or an R next to their name – both sides do it all the time and it is disgusting.
4. The promises our chosen political candidates make to the voters that sound great on paper, but they don’t have a reasonable plan of action behind it to back it up nor do they explain any of the negative consequences. It is seriously like an elementary school election – No school on Fridays! Ice cream parties and movies everyday! No more spelling tests!
Kind of like the whole ‘raising of minimum wage’ that Congress has been highlighting recently. It sounds fine and dandy in theory, but they neglect to tell you that when you raise the cost of labor, guess what? You in turn raise the cost of manufacturing and producing goods and services thus negating any ‘relief’ of a wage increase. Genius. Sign me up for that bandwagon.
3. The fact that cake and cookies are so bad for the waistline but are oh so delicious. I have no willpower.
2. Email forwards where people do not remove the previous lists and lists of email addresses that have also received the forward.
1. The fact that my birthday month is almost over. And, the fact that I will be *gulp* 20-10 next year. Ug.
I think I'm ready for a four-day weekend, what do you think?!
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Five weeks to go until VACATION! At this time in exactly five weeks, I plan to be sitting at my conveniently-located-on-the-Fort Lauderdale-waterway hotel waiting for the local water taxi to take me on a boat tour of the “Venice of America”.
My only big worry about this trip is leaving Carissa behind for eleven whole days while we are out of the country. I know she is going to be just fine and probably won’t even want to come back home with us after spending all that time being spoiled by her grandparents, but it is still eating at me.
We are planning to apply for her passport this Friday since we are taking a full-family cruise in January. It will probably arrive in time for the October cruise – just in case I have one of those crazy-mommy moments and decide she is coming along!
Travis says no way. But, he is planning to hook-up our webcam at mom’s house so we can check in on my sugar-bear. Every day even if I feel like it.
Let me just tell you how cute this child of mine was last night. Travis had put her to bed, but at about 10:15 I heard her door open and little feet shuffling out the door. I met her at the top of stairs where she was holding her stuffed Goofy and plastic Duck from Word World.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Can I come sleep in Momma’s bed for a little while? Preas?” She answered, with just the slightest hint of a lip poking out and those big blue eyes just pleading with my brown ones.
Now, if you can resist that, you are made of much sterner stuff than I am. Down the stairs we went.
Daddy fluffed up her pillow, we got Goofy situated, and I tucked her in with the blanket right under her chin. Just how she likes it to be.
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Dee and Jake’s wedding was this past Saturday! All three of us participated – I was matron of honor, Travis was a groomsman, and Carissa was the little flower girl.
Most everyone knows that we had some –ahem – problems coaxing Carissa into dresses. But, she put on her little white dress this weekend without a hitch, walked right down that aisle to her momma, and promptly asked for the Thomas train that was promised to her if she did it successfully.
Carissa actually had several little bribes throughout the weekend – a Cars set if she performed her rehearsal dinner duties, a James engine if she put the dress on, a Gordon if she took pictures, the aforementioned Thomas was for walking down the aisle, and a Cranky for walking back up the aisle to the narthex.
Yes, we are creating a monster…. But she did what she was supposed to do, so I will count this as a parenting success story in my book.
Everyone ate, drank, and danced at the reception; my speech/toast went over well; and there was only one fire to be put out. Literally.
All in all, it was a great engagement and wedding. We had fun getting to know our friends and their friends better, participating in all the parties, and just sharing this special time with two of our favorite people.
But…. I am really glad it is over, and I can start getting back to my normal life! My TIVO is full and needs some loving before it forgets what shows I like.
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Carissa and I were playing with an alphabet puzzle this afternoon. As she put the letters back into the correct slot, I would ask her to identify the letter and name something that started with that letter.
“A is for Ant.”
“B is for Ball.”
“C is for Carissa.”
“D is for Dominos.”
I’ve never been prouder.
All we need to do now is determine if she prefers "straight dominoes" from her Wilkerson gene-pool or "42" from her Cherry side. Or maybe she will just master both.
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I celebrated my 25th birthday again on Friday! This year was pretty special since it fell on 08.08.08. Did you happen to notice that China even had a huge celebration complete with dancers, drummers, singers, and fireworks?
I love my birthday. More so than any of the holidays even because it is MY day and MY day only. I get to pick what I want for dinner, what kind of cake I want, and all the presents are for me. Yes, I am self-centered and completely unproductive on my birthday.
Travis was being very secretive about what he had planned for me this year. He would only say that we were going somewhere out of town for the weekend.
What did he do? He had coordinated with my mom and Pat for a weekend in Louisiana! We arrived at the L'Auberge du Lac resort at 8pm, headed to the 8th floor, and were surprised with cupcakes (yellow cake with chocolate icing) in a figure-8 pattern and 8 balloons! We also had wine, flowers, Shiner beers, and a basket of munchies.
The cupcakes spelled out ‘Happy Birthday Jond’ – Carissa had already eaten the A!
Carissa and Pa had been down at the pool all afternoon so they were gathered up, and the present opening commenced. My parents gave me a card with 8 bills in it, Pat had 8 boxes wrapped up in pretty purple and blue paper that included 8 dollars in each plus some extra gifts from her and Odie, and Travis and Carissa had 8 presents for me too!
Notice any theme??
Carissa was very excited when I opened up my Godiva chocolate. She insisted that we break into it right away and have a sample taste! She also showed off to everyone the Yankee candle she picked out all by herself for me. I also got my Breaking Dawn book, a travel Panasonic water-pic, lotions, and money for the slots from Travis.
After the presents, my parents, Pat, and Carissa loaded up and headed over to Delta Downs where they had a room. Travis and I headed down to enjoy the seafood buffet. They had every kind of seafood you could want – four kinds of crab legs, boiled shrimp, fried everything, fresh oysters, multiple varieties of gumbo, stir-frys, all kinds of grilled fish, along with the regular buffet items like an Asian station, a carving station, a salad bar, and a dessert bar. It was delicious! I especially enjoyed the grilled swordfish, the shrimp and okra gumbo, and the boiled shrimp had a great spicy taste. Travis ate his weight in king crab legs.
The next morning, I had a massage scheduled at the salon. Let me tell you – it was probably the BEST massage I have ever had. The spa was gorgeous, the masseur was perfect, the relaxation lounge was tranquil, and the steam shower was steaming! The little touches that they did like having your bathrode in a warmer when your massage was complete made it really over the top. It was so wonderful to be pampered like royalty!
After my massage and steam shower, I went back up to the room and picked out Travis, Carissa, and my dad down at the pool from our pool-view floor-to-ceiling window. I headed down that way and was greeted with a huge smile and eskimo kiss from my daughter.
The pool area at L'Auberge really reminds me a lot of the Vegas resorts. Three different pool areas plus a lazy river. It was incredible. The pool we were at had a sun deck in the pool that was up to about Carissa’s knees. She splashed and crawled all over that and had a great time.
We had to check out by noon, so we packed up and headed over to Delta Downs. We ate some lunch at the café with Pat, and then Travis, Carissa, and I went upstairs for a cat-nap.
After our nap, Pat and Carissa explored the hotel (the highlight being the five lizards out by the pool), and Travis and I hit the casino. Travis found a machine that let him play for several hours which also happened to be right next to the projection TV that was showing pre-season football and practically within arms reach of the free beer booth. Yeah – he was in hog-heaven! If only he would have actually walked away with some winnings, it would have really been perfection!
Later that night, we found my parents who had been playing the ‘Red-Hot’ machines for several hours. My mom is funny in a casino – she loves to talk to her machines, squeals at nothing, and does happy dances and waves her hands around when she hits for anything. She even talks to her neighbors’ machines, I assume to give them some good ju-ju too.
We got up the next morning and were ready to head on home. Travis took us on a lovely tour of the back-roads of Orange, TX looking for a Denny’s or IHOP. We ended up settling on a Waffle House and had a delicious breakfast.
All in all, I had a great birthday! A great big THANKS to everyone that helped put it together, especially to Pat who cashed in some of her freebies on the hotel rooms! It was totally awesome. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful family that spoils me so much!
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