Congratulations Ashley!

Ashley graduated on Sunday. We are so proud of her. She received her degree in English Education and has already secured a job at a local High School. She will be teaching English I and English III. She will begin her job after the Christmas Break.

My parents got into town on Saturday and it has been a whirlwind since they arrived. Looking forward to relaxing in the coming days and enjoying some time together. We always enjoy playing cards, dominoes, and board games.

Mom cut up fruit today and made us a big bowl of mixed fruit. We are all loving that. I just finished my menu for the next few days and tomorrow Brittany and mom will get groceries while I finish up my last day of work before the holidays.

On Sunday before the graduation, we had our Christmas service at church. We started by meeting early and having breakfast together and passing out Christmas cards. The service was filled with great music and Terry preached a Christmas message. We always have a great time together. After Ashley's graduation, we went to eat at a wonderful Asian restaurant. Jose's family joined us as well as a few friends. Then, we had to RUSH back home and set up for a reception at Ashley's house - when we got home, friends were already waiting - the rest of the
evening was filled with friends and laughter. Dad brought 6 huge bags of Dippin Dots from the Paducah, KY Dippin Dots plant (where he used to work.) They were a big hit - everyone loves Dippin Dots, especially when they are free!!

Christmas is coming....

Christmas is coming and it is coming fast. Thankfully I feel like I am ahead of the game. Shopping is just about finished, all my gifts are wrapped and under the tree. My decorating is complete. I've already hosted a Christmas Tea at my house and last weekend we spent a day downtown, enjoying Christmas in the Quarter. So, from here on out, I think it will be smooth sailing...just enjoying the holidays!! I must say though, I could not have accomplished those tasks without the help of Brittany! She is so good to help me in preparation for whatever I am trying to accomplish. It is becoming more of a reality each day that soon she will be gone. Only 10 more weeks until her wedding.

Now that is where my stress is being funneled - not the holidays, but the wedding. So much to do. After Christmas, it will be a whirlwind of activity in preparation for her destination wedding. We have put off a lot of the planning, simply because we have been focused on other things. Brittany is taking her last final this morning for this semester, so she will be free after today to pick up the planning again. When she starts back to school in January, she will have all Internet classes, so that will give her the freedom she needs.

Ashley will graduate on December 20th. My parents will be coming down for the graduation and stay through Christmas. We are excited about them coming, they haven't been here since Ashley's wedding last year. We are so proud of Ashley - she completed her student teaching and did an absolutely amazing job! She has already had two high schools offer her positions and is now agonizing over which one to accept.

We are so blessed, and it has been a full and exciting year for us. On top of all of our blessings, the SAINTS are
12-0, and the city of New Orleans is just electric with excitement!!

Fulton Street - downtown.

Gingerbread Streetcar at the Harrah's Hotel lobby.

The lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel.

Our friends that we spent the day with in the Quarter (thank you Brittany for being our photographer and tour director!)

Patty, Johnette and me at the French Market.

Some of the ladies that attended my Christmas tea and Bible study.

Brittany and our little Cooper.

An Autumn Weekend!

Ashley and Brittany as "Kisses" several years ago...I would say they were 6 and 8 in this picture. I didn't make these costumes, although I did make some for them over the years. These were borrowed from my friend Elizabeth, who made them for her and her son Ryan. She shipped them to us, and I shipped some of mine to her over the years.

This weekend is the epitome of Fall....Trick or Treating, College Football, A Cold Front and Time Change!

Tomorrow we will go to our first LSU football game - along with a cold front that will come in tonight. It is in the 80's today and humid. Tomorrow in the 50's....so, I will be digging out the scarves and gloves for the game. I don't have a purple jacket, so no one will see my purple shirt anyway. I am not going to buy a purple scarf and gloves, so I will be one of the few that is not decked out in school colors.

I hate losing an hour of daylight, but there is something comforting about long evenings - it ushers in the holidays. Plus, we get an extra hour of sleep and who couldn't use that?

Memories....will I have any?

I was just thinking the other day....I wonder when that movie - My Sister's Keeper will come out on DVD, since I missed seeing it in the theaters. Then, today, while reading my friend's blog, I saw a link to my blog and clicked on it. I haven't updated it since July. As I read my last post, I read that I did indeed see that movie in the theaters! I am sitting here now trying to remember the ending to the movie - can't remember it.

Scares me sometimes, my lack of memory. Thank goodness for pictures and my mother, who remembers every detail, unless of course it is something that might shed un unfavorable light on her.

I guess I need to look into some sort of vitamins or minerals that can help - let me know if you have any suggestions.

Happy Birthday Ashley!

This is Ashley's 1st birthday! That was 22 years ago. Ashley is 23 today....I can't believe it.Ashley's pre-school picture. She was 4 years old here..and so cute. This is Ashley at the Children's Museum in New Orleans. She was about 7 years old.

We've started celebrating early. On Sunday evening, we went to Sam and Candace's house for dinner and to play cards. Candace surprised Ashley with a birthday cake.

Last night, we had a girls night, just me, Ashley and Brittany. Brittany cooked dinner, then we went to Cherryberry for some frozen yogurt and to the movie. We saw "My Sister's Keeper."

This evening Ashley has a couple of friends coming over and we are all going to meet at Cheesecake Bistro for dinner. She is at the daycare with Brittany this morning and they are celebrating there, her boss is making a cake for her.

Happy Birthday Ashley! I love you, you have helped complete my life.

The Wedding planning has begun...

We have a date, we have a venue, for both the wedding and reception, and we have......a dress! Can you believe it? We were in Monroe, LA all last week for our annual church convention. Brittany and Ashley were both there as well, so we took advantage of our free time and went shopping. We were just going to look....but she found the perfect dress. It is beautiful.

So - the planning is in full throttle and I am actually looking forward to it slowing down a bit now, since the big items are taken care of.

The date is February 27, 2010. It will be a destination wedding, located in Savannah, GA. They will be getting married in one of the historic squares and the reception will be at The Lady and Sons banquet room. I've already rented a large beach house for our family to vacation in the week leading up to the wedding day. It will of course be a small, intimate affair with family and a few friends who are willing to travel.

Here is a picture of the banquet room from Paula Deen's website. It should be a beautiful place to enjoy the reception.

The heat is on here in Louisiana....a have a few plants outside that look a little weary. My neighbor watered everything while I was gone, but I need to dead head some blooms and cut back some of my plants. This is a busy week, trying to catch up with everything since we were gone last week. We have a wedding this Saturday that will take place in City Park...looking forward to that.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer, so far!

My new dog and some blooms!

Such a beautiful day out today - warm, but lower humidity. Cooper and I went out earlier and gave my plants some love and care. We also took a few pictures. These are one of my hydrangea plants...love the beautiful pink color - these are just some small blooms peaking out from under the leaves...I expect that will be very large.
This hydrangea is just covered in large and medium blooms. It is more of a purple color....see the difference in my two hydrangeas Judy?? One has very stiff leaves and tighter flowers.

This is my Crepe Myrtle tree....I love when it blooms. We planted this from a stick it seems...before Katrina, but it survived.

Some kind of Iris or Lily.....I'm not sure.

My Hibiscus....love hibiscus. I lost about 4 of them to a pink mealy bug that came from Home Depot....I actually had the Department of Agriculture come out to my house and they set some type of wasp loose in my yard to combat them...it was a real danger to Louisiana crops and they didn't want the mealy bugs to get to the Sugar Cane fields and destroy them. My Hibiscus was the furthest west that they could pinpoint with the bug. ..... Thanks Home Depot!! Now I get my plants at Lowes.

And, now to introduce you to my new baby....Cooper.

I already love him so much. He is adorable and smart...but a lot of work! He is such a baby, so much fun, afraid of everything and sticks to us like glue.

The Vet said he is about six months old and very healthy. He will be getting "fixed" this week.

I got him from a garage sale....can you believe it!! They had a sign that said free dog to good home...I was leery about taking him, but he seemed to fit my criteria. I wanted to rescue a dog, a small one, that didn't shed. This family had rescued him from his former home at about 12 weeks...but thy already had three other dogs and just couldn't keep him. I think he was meant for us. He was probably born about the time that Quincy passed.

Oh my goodness.

These pictures were his first day with us....before Jose groomed him for me. His name was Kippy - but I wasn't fond of that name and so I looked at "C" and "K" names with the same first letter sound, so he wouldn't be so confused. Cooper seems to work for him, he responds well.

Here we go again! Brittany's engaged!

Brittany called from Alabama a little while ago. Justin asked her to marry him! We knew that he was going to do it today, but she was totally surprised. This is the only picture I have so far, it is from Brittany's phone. He took her to the park for a picnic and then asked her. She is so excited and wanted to know right away, if we knew about it. She told me that she was so happy that we already knew - it made her feel so good.

So - no details on the date, etc.

Congratulations - Brittany and Justin!

The busy week is over.

I have several pictures to post, to tell the story of the last couple of days. On Wednesday, we had a crawfish boil together. It was to hard to get all six of us together to go out and eat because of timing, work, graduation, etc. So Brittany asked for a crawfish boil. Jose is the crawfish cook and I prepped the food, while Terry set up the yard. Justin came in from Alabama for a quick trip to be here for Brittany's graduation. They left this morning. There is a conference at Justin's church and he missed the first night, but has to be there for the remaining services. He is the worship leader at a church in Birmingham. As part of Brittany's graduation gift, we bought her a plane ticket to fly home next week. She rode back to Alabama with Justin and will spend a week with his family.

On Thursday, Terry and Justin went to breakfast, while Brittany packed and then Justin took Brittany to get her a manicure for Graduation. We went to Pancho's for an early dinner before Graduation...then on to the Lakefront Arena. I loved seeing Brittany achieve her honor, but it gets a little boring sitting and watching 600 other students that you do not know achieve theirs as well!

After the Ceremony we went to Cherryberry for a little celebration dessert.

It was a busy 48 hours. We are proud of Brittany, out of high school, she spent a year in Baltimore being trained and doing urban mission work, then she went to Kansas City to work for a while with a Music Ministry Team and all the while she was doing some sort of schooling, either through Lee University or taking Internet classes through Delgado. She came home, started working and taking full loads to complete her Associates Degree of Science in Business Administration. She plans on continuing her education.

I am looking forward to summer with the girls. Ashley is going to take the summer off before she starts her student teaching in August and Brittany will work full time, but she has a flexible schedule, so we can plan some fun things this summer.

Jose enjoying a little golf practice while waiting for the water to boil.

Crawfish races before the boil.....Ashley's crawfish (Ruby) won!Yum!Eating at Pancho's before the Graduation Ceremony.Brittany is the one waving in the middle!

My girls were amazing on Mother's Day. They planned a menu and cooked a wonderful meal for us. They filled the area with flowers that Brittany arranged and Ashley decorated the homemade red velvet cake that Brittany baked. They both worked together on preparing the meal. It was such a nice relaxing afternoon. I brought all the flowers home and I am enjoying them in every room. That was a great Idea Brittay, to make several arrangements in all sizes. Thanks!

Here are some of my flowers in my tiny little garden. These are Lilies of the Nile...oh, the real name is Agapanthus(I looked that up for Judy!)

I just love them, they grow so tall and keep blooming through June, they start in mid April. I have them in deep purple, lavender and white. Also, the hummingbirds love to visit these plants.

This is one of my hydrangeas. I just planted it last year and it has gotten so big and so many blooms..I keep cutting them off and putting them around the house. When I planted it last year, the blooms were bright blue, but I think it has something to do with the acid in the soil, as to what color they will be....I don't know.

We are looking forward to a busy week ahead. Brittany will graduate with her Associates in Business this Wednesday.. We are having a crawfish boil for her tomorrow night. Justin will be coming for her graduation tomorrow as well.

Please pray for my friend Kathy Isaacs, who has recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 Colon Cancer. I hate cancer...I have had so many friends and family that have had to battle that terrible disease. She will begin aggressive treatment soon and my prayer is that she will not have the bad side effects. We are believing the God will heal her.

My parents had a terrible storm come through Southern Illinois last week and they have been without electricity for several days. My nieces home has also suffered damage and they lost all of the trees in their yard, except one. Their trees were huge, so the clean up effort is extensive. They are still without electricity as well.

I am reading Elizabeth Edward's new book, Resilience...it is very good.

I was named Mother of the Year!

Check out this link. Terry nominated me for Mother of the Year! What a great guy!~

Happy Mother's Day!

A few weeks ago, we went through all of the book boxes we had in our attic. We kept some, sold some, gave a lot away and we also found some treasures.

I found a journal that I had written in early 1993. At that time my girls were 6 and 4. There are some very funny stories in that journal, some things I have no recollection of and many of the events I had totally forgotten until I read my writings. It makes me really sad that I have not kept more journals over the years.

I thought an excerpt from my entry on February 4, 1993 was appropriate for Mother's Day. Ashley would have been 6 years old and in 1st or 2nd grade. Brittany was probably at home with Terry and I was doing some substitute teaching at the time. On this day, I was subbing at a middle school. This is a portion of the entry:

"I love my kids so much. Sitting in this class and looking at all these kids, I realize that no one can love a child as much as their own parent. So as much as Ashley is liked by her teacher and friends, she must have a certain insecurity when she is not with me, and I realize that I have a certain insecurity when I am not with them."

I love that I wrote that. I love my girls and I still feel that same connection. Even now, 16 years later, they will text me while they are in class at their University...."About to take my final, pray for me"........"when I get home, I want to take a nap"......."let's watch a movie tonight"........"do you want to sit outside in the swing when I get home?" I love that we still need each other as much today as we did back then.

Happy Mother's Day!