WWW 3

The third annual "Wild Women's Weekend" took place at Gulf Shores from July 14-19 this year. Yes, I realize that's longer than a "weekend"; can we help it if Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday got in the way?
There were 12 attendees this year from 8 different states: MI, OH, MO, IN, KY, TX, TN & MS. It's amazing that we all met online. Most people, when hearing we met online, don't wish to know the story. I think they're afraid to find out that we're all a bunch of crazed lesbo-lover mass murderers....or they're afraid that we're not! The imagination, most times, is SO much better than reality, isn't it?
In fact, what brought us women together is Dave Ramsey's website, The Total Money Makeover. The tie that binds is money; we all want more! Actually, we really just want to learn to be better stewards of the money we already have. But it was through this website that we found more than money advice; we found true friends. Women who, had we met on the street, probably never would've given one another a second glance (ok, some of us probably would've made catty remarks about the others!). The Internet's an amazing tool, though; it forces one to get to know a person's heart before seeing the person's body. I LOVE that, and I LOVE my TMMO girls!
I suppose the highlight of the week was The Sailboat Cruise with Captain BJ. Patrick and I had been on this boat when we went to the beach in June, but for some reason, it because a whole different place when I went on it with my 11 girls! There was another family with young children on the boat with us, and you could just hear the parents whispering (hissing!) to their children, "You stay away from the back of this boat! No! Don't you even LOOK back there!"
Most late afternoons were spent in the Gulf, relaxing, talking, and Tracie teaching us that it's ok to pee in the water. The days were spent either shopping, at the pool, on the beach....the beautiful thing about it was that everyone could do exactly what they wanted! There was no pressure from anyone to do anything; everyone was on their own vacation!
We spent one evening at the Hangout. If y'all haven't been there, it's such a FUN place to go! There were kids in strollers and 100 year old people...the Hangout's for everyone. Kids and adults were on the dance floor; heck, there was even an 8 year old playing the accordian in the band! I will warn you, though; if you go and dance, you might want to wear shoes. The "dance floor" is concrete, and though I'm from MS and used to being barefoot, I came home with bloody, peeling, blistered feet. In fact, it was over a week before I was able to wear shoes again (I was forced to wear flip flops to work; I hate it when that happens!).
Perhaps because we were at the beach, this year's WWW actually lived up to it's name. I won't go into detail (what happens at WWW stays at WWW!), but Lena summed it up well in her deep TN drawl, "I tell y'all, trying to keep up with y'all (at the Hangout) was like herding cats! I might as well've been trying to nail jello to a tree!"

Time Gets Away From Us!

Last post was in May, and it's now August 1. Holy Smokes, time really does have wings!
So what's happened lately? I suppose the biggest news is that Pete's gone to Basic Camp at Ft. Benning. I can't believe how much I miss him! He left on Tuesday 7/21. He wasn't supposed to leave 'til Wednesday, and he had everything planned out. Going-away party Monday night, Tuesday would be spent with his friends that couldn't make it to the party, Tuesday night would be with us and his girlfriend,Cat, on Beale St in Memphis, then he'd leave Wed. I'd go to work as planned Wed morning so I woulnd't make a fool of myself, and Patrick would drive him to the Recruiting Center.
Then he got the call Monday, in typical Army fashion, that he had to leave Tuesday afternoon. Pete tracked me down at work and he was so upset; we both cried over his plans gone awry. I stayed teary-eyed all day long, my heart breaking because he wasn't going to see some of his friends as planned.
We had the party Monday night as planned, and it was well-attended. Pete's got TONS of friends and they can all eat TONS! In the first 1/2 hour we'd gone through 25 pounds of hamburgers!!!! Evidently Pete was expecting them all to eat tons, though, because I made the mistake of sending him to the store to buy the food. I gave him a list and said, "Add whatever else you want." Tip for the future: don't ever say those words to a teen! The boy ended up getting 2 huge containers of mustard, 2 huge bottles of ketchup, and a GALLON of pickles, as well as a 5 lb bag of mini Reese's and a 5 lb bag of M&Ms. I had "chips & dip" on the list, so he got the dip and about 8 containers of various flavors of Pringles. Ok, son.....Pringles aren't exactly the kind of "dippin' chips" I had in mind, but since I didn't specify I'll take the hit! LOL
The party "ended" at 10, at least at our house. They carried it to Huddle House 'til around 2am. Lucky folks at Huddle House! :)
Tuesday morning we took him (with Cat) to Huddle House for brunch. I'm pretty sure we were better behaved than Pete & his buddies the night before! Around 11, I decided to take the cowardly way out, though, and Mabry and I left them to go shopping. I just couldn't sit there and pretend life was just ducky anymore, and I didn't wanna make a blubblering idiot out of myself in public! So we said our goodbyes at Huddle House, and I haven't seen him since.
He doesn't have an address yet, but we did get a letter from him earlier this week. His letter sounded upbeat, and it almost sounds like he finds his Drill Instructors amusing. He's been "smoked" twice, and in the telling of it he made it sound pretty funny. He's such a great writer, and I can't wait to hear from him again. Of course, Cat has had THREE letters (that I'm aware of) and one phone call (which she missed). I told Pete before he left that if time would only allow him to call one person, he should call Cat if that's who he wants to call. Then Cat is to call me and let me know how he is. I remember what it's like to be the girlfriend! :)
One thing we did at his party was have everyone write him a note/letter in a notebook. MY plan was to mail him one every day (which would kinda take the heat off of me in figuring out what to write him!). But the boy found the notebook, took all the letters out and took them with him. Now I'm glad he did that, as I imagine they're getting him through these first couple weeks while he waits to get an address.
So...now we wait to hear from him. Hopefully he'll call soon with an address so we can start writing him. I'll let everyone know when we hear in case anyone else is interested in writing him! :)

FREE TOTS!!!

Evidently when you go to Sonic dressed in a flower bra they give ya free tots. I didn't try it, but Pete & CJ did and were rewarded for their efforts. Sonic better hope word doesn't get out; otherwise everybody in town will go to Dollar Tree to buy a flower bra, drive to Sonic and claim their free tots!

Thinking about getting a nose job....

I'm told with a good surgeon we could look like this:

Where to start?

This was quite an exciting week around here, not to mention somewhat busy. Monday night was graduation at the kids' old school, Marshall Academy in Holly Springs. We went to see old friends and had a great time catching up with folks over there (though most didn't recognize me!).
On the way over there we found out that Mom was coming to our house the next day for Pete's graduation. Oh, boy....as she talked, I just kept picturing my house in my head. Or more to the point, I kept picturing the MESS in my house! I knew there was no way to get it looking decent before she got here (Patrick and I had to work Tuesday, leaving the kids home alone to "clean". Since I never really taught them, I knew we were sunk!). But we were so blessed to have her here and really enjoyed the quick visit. She got here Tuesday evening around 5, we left for Pete's graduation at 6:30, then dinner, then home to bed. Mom was gone by 7:45 Wed. morning.
I was reffing the water-balloon volleyball game, standing a safe 5 feet from the jello pool, when I caught a flash out of the corner of my eye. Next thing I knew I was flying through the air in Eric's arms, right into the pool! I had no time to brace myself so there was very little damage done (Patrick's first question was whether I "popped" anything!). Thus my first foray into the jello-wrestling, and it's awesome! In fact, if it didn't need to be an outdoor sport, I'd bring all the stuff to my sister Leslie's house and we'd do it for a new Thanksgiving activity! OMG the kids would have a BLAST (so would the adults!).
At some point during the party my neighbor Eric decided it was time for Ryan to have a haircut. So he recruited one of the kids' friends to help, and they duct taped him TIGHT to minimize the fight. Then Eric carried him outside to a chair and duct taped him to that, also. Then he whipped out the clippers and began to shave Ryan's head! I gotta give it Ryan.....he took it like a man! :)
The week's over now and all we have to do is clean up from the party....still. I picked up tons of stuff tonight, but we still have 50 gallons of Jello to dispose of!! That stuff is STILL the same consistency it was Wednesday night, so I had to call to find out how to get rid of it. That's probably something I should've considered before I bought it, huh?
Oh yeah, also on the agenda this weekend (besides disposing of the Jello) is cleaning the hot tub. Funny (or NOT) how that jello just clings to EVERY inch of you, even fully clothed! Put 6 or 7 teens in a hot tub after they've been wrestling, and well...it ain't pretty! I think there's probably a brownie or 2 floating around in there, as well. I know it's brownie, because I witnessed the act myself. Christy threw the brownie to Pete, who dropped it in the hot tub. When he said, "Where'd it go?" someone else said, "There it is!" and everyone else yelled, That's not a brownie!!!" Teens are so much fun!

Congrats, Ryan!

Ryan turned 15 a couple weeks ago, which means he's "permit-able". Pete took him to get his permit the day after his birthday, only to find out that there's a special application that we, his parents, had to fill out and sign. So they picked up the application, brought it home for Patrick to fill out, and headed back to the DMV (nearest one is 20 miles away)with Mabry. Got to the DMV, where Ryan realized that he forgot the application his dad had just signed!
Earlier this week, Pete took Ryan back to the DMV with the application. Ryan got to the window, handed the papers over to the lady, who promptly wrote "VOID" on the application because it wasn't notarized!. Oh, boy, was Ryan ticked off!(To be fair, he had every reason to be ticked; on the bottom of the application is a place to get it notarized, and Patrick didn't think it needed to be done. That in itself was an argument between Patrick and I, but we won't go there right now! :) )
So, Friday being my birthday, I took off work, spent $70 getting my hair done, checked Ryan out of school, got his application notarized and took him to the DMV. You'd think having JUST had my hair done that I wouldn't want to get it messy, but it was such a pretty day we drove Mimi with the top down and my hair flying free. When we got to the DMV, I realized that MY license expired that day. What a pretty picture I made.....NOT!
Anyway, Ryan took his test, passed, and got his permit. He didn't get to drive home, though, because Mimi's a stick. Ryan barely has a clue about an automatic, so I wasn't even gonna attempt letting him drive Mimi! I let him drive me around yesterday in Sparky (our '94 F150), and I've got to admit I quite enjoyed having my sunglasses fly off my face twice. I'm sure eventually the boy will get the hang of those brakes!

Graduation Party: Take One

I should have known. Nothing much else was going right so far: I'd paid $33 for express shipping from Oriental Trading only to provide them with the WRONG address (correct home street address, but with my work city/state!)I discovered my mistake Friday evening and was told (praise God!) that the box was in Batesville and I could go pick it up. That was 6:30 Friday, Batesville's 20 minutes away, and the FedEx closes at 7pm. I was up to my elbows in hamburger meat (making patties for burgers), so I yelled to Pete to finish the burgers as I ran out the door. Crisis averted! Got all the buckets filled Friday night for his party on Saturday. We're SET!
Saturday morning we're awoken by loud thunderstorms and rain beating against the windows. No sweat, I thought; party's at 5 so surely it'll clear up. And it did....right up 'til 4 pm, AFTER we'd set evertyhing up for the party (luckily not the jello yet). Promptly at 4 the bottom fell out of the sky and thunder & lightening came quickly & fiercely. It rained for hours! No way could we have had to games we'd planned on, so we moved on to Plan B. Everyone still showed up, so we projected movies onto the wall. They ate hotdogs (thanks, Patrick, for grilling them in the rain!), chips, about a million canned drinks, and cake. The music was so loud, and there really was no room in here for adults. So we (7 adults) did the practical thing: we took all the alcohol next door to Angie's house and sat on her (covered) pack patio, leaving our house to the kids! :)
When we came back they were playing a game they made up that involved lots of leis and the ceiling fan!
Later this week we're going to do it all again. We've still got plenty of food & drinks, so we're just gonna pick a sunny day, call all our friends, and have another party!