A little of this and that

Well this week was pretty typical for me taking care of household chores, watching tv and crafting, and playing with my four legged babies.  School around here has now been in session for atleast 2 weeks so I have started the many times a day task of checking the substitute website looking for jobs.  I still don’t really except much to start opening up til mid September or maybe not even til October.  However, I am trying to keep up with my picture taking and that alone gives me plenty of blog worthy topics.

                 

For my craft of crosstitching I have to have close and direct lighting.  This is the lamp that is behind my left shoulder.  I’m guessing maybe the bulb is too strong for this shade?  LOL  I noticed this yellow spot the other day and when I touched it the shade plastic just crumbled under my finger…oops! 

                      

This is my battle wound from being a dog momma.  We have a retractable leash.  Chip is pretty hyper when people or dogs are around.  The other day he was running around out side, got excited when someone walked near and wrapped around me in the leash.  Sometimes I’m quick enough to escape but not this time.  That thing slices into my leg leaving an angry red slash that stings.  I have several of these battle scar and they never get any easier to handle.

                   

This is my new keychain.  I am so excited about it.  I always have to dig and dig for my keys.  My cousin has one of these tab keychains and I’ve been wanting one.  I havn’t been able to find one in a store so crafty me decided to discuss it with my mom and come up with how to do it.  We bought the stuff for it and laid out the measurements the weekend she was here.  Since I don’t have a sewing machine she took it home with her, sewed it and mailed it to me.  I got it yesterday.  Haven’t gone anywhere yet to get to use it but I did put my keys on it and have it waiting by the door.

         

This is what becomes of Joels dresser scarf and the things on it when you leave Chips bone up there.  He tends to bring his bones to bed with him and sometimes we have to put it up so he’ll stop chewing it and go to sleep.  One night we did and forgot to give it to him the next morning.  Later when I went into the bedroom for something this is what I found.  He preceded to help himself to his bone since noone would help him.  Joel comes home from work in the middle of the night and cleans out his pockets on the dresser while talking to me.  His donut wrapper, money and an earplug are all scattered across the floor all for the likes of a bone.  Silly boy!

More antidotes of chip….he enjoys looking out the window and watching what goes on.  Unfortunantly that doesn’t bode well for things like the blinds.  We have blocked off our other windows so he can’t see out and this one is usually covered by a bush but the bush was recently cut back and thinned a whole bunch so he can see through it pretty good.  If you look close in both pictures you can see I have attempted to defer his desire to look out by covering the corners of the window with poster board.  The picture of the broken blinds is on the left side, there is a coffee table then the other picture is from the right side of the table.  The left corner blocking method has worked but the damage was already done to the blinds.  He just leans over farther and looks past my covered right side corner.  Guess I need bigger piece of posterboard.

So this blog has seemed to be come all about Chips antics.  He is a mess and gets excitable when people/ dogs are around.  But generally he’s a good dog and very sweet and lovable.  He’s a mommas boy.  He has to be by me most of the time and likes to sleep touching me.  If I happen to readjust and don’t get settled back up against him he will move so he is touching me again.  My sweet babyboy .  Look at this picture of him and tell me how a momma can not love that sweet baby face.

By the way if you happen to notice there, that is my husbands ear.  Chip is laying on the back of the couch using Joel’s head as a pillow.  See what I mean, just cuteness.

This blog has ended up mostly being about Chip. But we must not forget I have another sweet baby.  I don’t lover her any less she’s just much MUCH more relaxed and laid back than her little brother.  Therefore she doesn’t have as many interesting opportunities for pictures. My pretty girl Bella.

 

Catching up and cleaning out (iphone pictures)

Ok so I promise I am keeping up with weekly posting I was just busy last weekend and didn’t get it done and kept putting it off during the week.  I have been needing to post some pictures and review some events over the summer anyways and I’ll go ahead and review over the past 2 weeks.

The biggest thing that happened over the summer was the birth of my little brothers daughter, Jesslynn Marie Williams.  I was actually able to be at the hospital the day she was born and saw her within an hour of her birth.  I have gotten to see her a few times since then and when my mom sees her she sends me pictures. 

             1 hour old                                          1 month old

 

                     7 weeks old and napping on Grammie.

                    

                            Talking with Aunt Destinie.

Most for the summer Joel worked and I hung around the house.  For a while it was fun not having a schedule and doing what I wanted.  But by July I was done with it and ready for some routine.  We had a couple of family reunions, Istayed a few days with my cousin outside of Little Rock, and then spent about a week and a half with my mom and grandparents.  A few weeks after I came home Joel and I went to a birthday party and this was the big attraction.  An inflatable water slide that was like 32 ft. tall.  The stairs were pretty steep and hard to get up so I didn’t make it too many times but the few I did sure made my arms and legs sore the next few days.

Joel and I both stayed for a while but since Joel had worked the night before he went home early to be with the dogs and I stayed with my cousin.  Chip is pretty use to snuggling with his momma at night and since I wasn’t there his daddy had to fill in.

         

The last weekend in August my cousin was in town. {I am the oldest grandchild, she is the second oldest, 6 years younger than me.  As I’ve said in a previous post as kids we lived less than a mile apart and played together a lot, we moved apart for many years then last year moved back into the same town again.  She has since moved 2 hours away but comes back just about every other weekend. }We spend a lot of time together when she’s in town, I’ve gone to stay with her a couple times, and when we are not together we are constantly texting or on the phone together.  This past weekend we went shopping and out to eat.  I had a strawberry daiquiri but the picture didn’t turn out that great. This is her enjoying her peach sangria and one of  the pants I bought that are too long on me. (I tried wearing them anyways but they really drag the ground LOL. I also bought 2 other pairs of pants that have the same problem, but mom hemmed them for me this weekend.)

This weekend, the first of September, my mom came for the long weekend to visit.  My dogs love them some Grammie.  They understand when I say Grammie is coming and run to the window to look for her but don’t understand the part about in a few hours so they’d run to the window every time they heard something hoping it was her. 

Mom got here early Saturday morning.  We did some shopping for craft supplies, visited my local grandparents where my brother, his wife and my niece Jesslynn were also visiting for a few hours then took them to my great aunt who’s only seen pictures of Jesslynn.  We had been out many hours and were wore out so we got a pizza then came home to watch the movie The Help and mom hemmed my long pants to better fit my short legs.  We got up Sunday morning and went grocery shopping.  Came home, unloaded groceries and rested.  Once we rested up we made supper and did a few projects around the house. 

Mom left about lunch time today(Monday) and I’ve spent the rest of the time napping and catching up on tv.  I love when I get to spend time with my mom.  Though it makes the next week after seem quiet and lonely once she’s gone back home (and I don’t watch at much tv and get really behind LOL )

Nothing big planned for this week as of right now.  I need to get the house back in shape and finish up some of our house projects and put up some decorations we worked on over the weekend.  I’ll need to rest up too cause my cousin will be in town next weekend and she always keeps me on the go.  When will I get a quiet lazy weekend at home again?  Not real sure yet.

The Great Carrot Experiment

 

At some point, maybe mid week, I need to do a review of my summer because several things happened since I last blogged in March.  But for now here’s my review of the week. Nothing major just several little activities.

My family has always gone to a very small church.  Like to have 10 people in attendance is a crowd and rare for us.  I guess sometime way back before I was around people that knew each other but moved away still stayed in touch and also had small churches so my family would visit these other churches every few months and  vise versa.  One being near Shreveport, Louisiana and the other near Dallas, Texas. Due to the pastors death and his wifes poor health the Louisiana church as disbanded but the Texas church is still going strong and my grandparents still hold this tradition of making the pilgrimage to a service once a month.  That is a long trip for anyone (I remember long car rides with naps and lots of reading time growing up) but especially for the older folks.  So my grandparents usually make the trip a 2 day affair staying with someone along the way.  Where I am currently living is about halfway for them so they tend to stay with us Saturday night.  When we first moved here, because me nor Joel are vary handy, we would always have a to do list for my grandpa.  Things like that have settled so lately we just watch tv or maybe play cards or something.  Well my grandparents are the type that it has to get way into the heat of the summer before they will turn on the AC and even then they keep it still pretty warm to the average person.  I wonder if I keep my house (set at 75 degrees)  too cold for them?  This is generally how they sit when at my house wrapped up in blankets or in sweaters.

My dogs love fighting over I mean chewing on bones.  A while back my grannie suggested I try them with carrots and see how that went over.  I once had the sliced carrot chips I was trying for a healthy snack and attempted to share with the dogs but they didn’t seem to know what to do with the carrots all they did was leave a shredded carrot mess in the floor.  But I had some long carrots so I thought we’d try the great carrot experiment again.  They again shredded them into the carpet at first but finally got the hang of how to eat them and seem to love them. 

    

This week was my uncles ex wife’s birthday.  She is the mother of the cousin I’m really close to and spend a lot of time with so despite that she is no longer legally my aunt we see each other a lot and I still call her Aunt. Also we happen to live in the same town now.  My cousin doesn’t live in this town but she wanted to order some flowers for her mom’s birthday.  Delivery costs are expensive so she asked if I’d be the delivery person.  I thought it was a pretty arrangement so just thought I’d share. 

Here is a project I’ve worked on this past week.

Moving and rearranging furniture in our guest bedroom uh my husbands game room.  I need to exercise more I know.  I just don’t like the temperatures to go out and walk the trail at the park that’s RIGHT across the street from us.  I also don’t like exercising in front of other people hence I don’t use the gym that’s RIGHT around the corner from us.  I love me some TV.  I’ve always said if I had a treadmill I’d set it up near the TV and walk and watch my shows.  I finally was given a treadmill recently so I’m trying it out.  Like I haven’t even told my grannie about it yet because I don’t want her constantly asking me if I’ve used it if it’s not going to work out for me.  But I’m proud to say I’ve used it Monday-Thursday of this week. As you can see the machine is set at an incline which makes it a harder workout.  Plus this girl is in terrible shape.  My daily goal is a very small amount and I actually walk a little then have to take a rest break to make sure I’m not going to die catch my breath then I go again til I’ve reach my goal.  If you noticed (I know my mom will) I said I only walked Monday - Thursday.  Friday I went grocery shopping for like an hour and a half so I’m sure I walked my daily goal.  Saturday Joel and I went and walked the entire mall so again probably made my daily goal so I didn’t want to push myself so I substituted those activities for treadmill walking.  Originally thought I’d take Sunday off to rest but I kinda feel the need to use it since I havn’t done the machine in 2 days I don’t want to break my routine. 

Well that about concludes my activities for the week other than the normal house cleaning chores.  So I will sign off and leave you with pictures of a few of my dogs silly sleeping habits.

      

Chip laying on the back of the couch but needing to be close to me so he curls his head into the side of my neck.  Not the most comfortable for me but hey he’s cute and sweet just wanting to lay close to his momma so I let it ride til I’m really hurting.

Bella being covered by a blanket was actually an accident but she didn’t’ seem to mind.  Looks pretty spoiled and pampered.

Let’s try this yet again…

Well here I am yet again trying to get back on the blogging thing and making excuses for why I stopped.  Really there isn’t a great excuse just get over it and appreciate that I’m back.  But if I did feel so inclined to excuse myself  then here it is…

A blog with all words is kinda boring.  The pictures are what brings it to life.  Even if only a picture or two.  So I dug out my camera that I havn’t used in years and started taking pictures.  This was not ideal because it’s an old camera not one of the newer sleeker small cameras and I’d tend to not have near by when there was a picture opportunity. Also I have to hook it up to the computer to transfer pictures.  Well I have recently gotten a tool for which I now often take pictures to send to my mom so I thought I don’t have that excuse for not blogging now.

Ok the afore mentioned “tool” for picture taking.  I am feeling really excited because I finally got an iphone.

                    

Now I’m pretty cheap and just can’t out right afford an iphone an all that comes with it. This has been a several month process of finding and gathering the needed parts at low prices.  My cousin and her husband upgraded to iphone 4’s a while back so we bought their 3’s from them.  After some investigation we have found for our needs and uses of a cell phone straightalk works best for us.  Joel immediately got his phone set up for service and he got an otter box because he’s kinda clumsy sometimes. 

                     

We have wifi at home so I just ran on wifi to use the phone to play games on and  such like that.  A few months later we both have fully functional cell phones (I did finally get service so I can take my phone around with me, which also gives me more chances to photograph things) and I also got an otter box.  For the longest time we just shared a charger but we also now have 2 house chargers and a car charger….Movin on up….

 

Alright that’s enough for my first day back.  I’ll probably only post once a week but you never know now that I have an easy, always with me way to photograph things. I might photograph and blog about what I eat and when I go shopping lol.  Give me some shout outs so I know your interested!

Now to show off my babies.  I usually have several picture of them to post. They are my world and I have lots and lots of pictures of them because not only are they so cute they are usually near by.

          

Be sure to read both posts….

For some reason It posted March’s update then December-Janurary’s update on top of that.  So be sure to keep going and read the second one because it’s new also.

December- Janurary catch up blog

Well I could make plenty of excuses of why I havn’t blogged since before Christmas but no point in wasting your time.  Suffice it to say I’m here now and going to try much better to be consistent with my postings.  For this blog I’ll briefly update you on what’s been going on in the past few months. 

DECEMBER- We went to our hometown for a few days and had several gatherings with our families.  In the past Joel’s not been working and I have gotten 2 weeks off for Christmas break.  Now with Joel working we only get a few days off to go home for visits.  But we are now SOOO much closer to home we can go home more often and my family comes to visit a lot.

JANURARY- My cousin’s maternal grandmother passed away so my grandparents came to town for the funeral.  They stayed with us.  Though we spent most of the time at the viewing or services we did have a little time just to sit at home and visit and watch the puppies devour their papaw. 

The beginning of Janurary I FINALLY got sub training for 2 more districts and began with some single day subbing situations.  Then one day, at the end of Janurary, by pure luck I got a single day job that turned into a 6 week long term situation in one classroom.  Turned out the teacher had to have emergency surgery and would be out 6 weeks for recovery.  I worked from the end of Janurary till the beginning of March.

FEBRUARY- We didn’t do much in February because I was back to working every day and very much out of shape and routine so I wanted to spend my weekends lazing on the couch and had to spend some weekend time cleaning house that wasn’t getting done during the week.

Early February my mom came to visit for my birthday.  We just stayed around the house.  A typical and perfect visit for us is taking turns on the computer, playing the wii, playing scrabble on my kindle and just talking. 

Well March was pretty busy so I’ll save that for it’s own post.  I apologize for an all words post.  My camera quit working and we have gone down to just one cell phone which Joel takes to work.  So I have no way to take pictures.  However my mom recently loaned me her old camera.  I hope to take lots of pictures so I’ll have things to post. I know pictures makes a blog more interesting.

Here are some picture of my babies though.

Bella with her head buried in the pillows.  I guess my light was in her eyes.

Chip guarding both of the bones so Bella can’t get them.

March catch up blog

 

MARCH- Within the first few days of March my long term subbing ended.  Though I have been teaching full time for the past 5 years, I didn’t work at all from June-September.  Then from September -Janurary I only worked individual sub days usually no more than 3 days a week.  So being back to full time all day every day for 6 weeks I was WORE OUT!  Once that was over I planned to take a whole week of not working to rest up.  But a few days in to that I missed getting out of the house and having something to do so I picked up a few individual days again.

As I said earlier we are now much closer to our hometown, where both our families live, so we go home more often and my family comes to visit a lot.  Early March my grandparents came to spend a few hours with us.  They were on their way to a church in Quitman, TX that is connected with ours.  They tend to stop in Texarkana for the night to stay with family as a half way point.  Since they had stayed with us in Janurary they chose this visit to stay with my great aunt (grannie’s little sister) but they spent a few hours with us me. (Unfortunanlty for him but nice on the paychecks, Joel’s been working Saturday’s lately so he missed my grandparents) We drove down to the lake that’s like 15 minutes from my house to explore because my grandmothers family reunion will be there this summer.

A weekend later we went home for a visit.  We hadn’t been home since Christmas.  Also we had an old friend that had moved out of state coming into town for that weekend as well so we wanted to see her and her baby. On short 2 day weekend visits like these Joel and I usually split up and spend the time with our own families.  He dropped me and the dogs off at my grandparents and he went to his grandparents.  I visited with my grandparents for a few hours then headed to my parents (who live right down the road). The dogs enjoy going their because my parents have lots of dogs they can play with.  Also my parents have a fenced in dog pen connected to the house with a ramp and their own doggy door.  My dogs are able to come and go as they please and not have to be leashed and taken out. I’m definantly not complaining lol. Saturday I got up and went to my friends house to visit.  They moved just a few weeks after her baby was born so at around 7 months old she’s babbling and crawling and so much bigger than when I saw her last. This friendship is fairly new and has an interesting background.  This girl is actually my sister’s age and they are very close friends.  Years ago the two were practically inseparable.  Christina and I didn’t fight or anything we just never really spent time together.  I guess the jealous pull of each wanting their own time with my sister.  But as we’ve all gotten older we’ve gotten over that and Christina and I have spent a bit of time together.  Interesting the turns life makes.  Anyways move visiting and game playing with my family before heading home Sunday.

Last week was Arkansas’ spring break.  To work with my mom’s given time off my dad had a back surgery scheduled for that Tuesday in Dallas. However his surgery was postponed. But he then had another doctors appointment in Dallas on Friday.  Since they originally planned to be away from home for the week they decided to continue on their spring break away from home.  My dad stayed with his parents, here in Texarkana and my mom came and stayed with me.  So my mom was here from Tuesday afternoon all the way to Friday morning.  We had a WONDERFUL time! I love spending time with my mom.  As I said in a previous blog a perfect visit for us is just talking, playing the wii,taking turns on the computer and playing scrabble on my kindle.  This long visit was no different.  Though Thursday we did go to Hobby Lobby for some home décor supplies.  We spent Thursday afternoon crafting and decoration my house.  Pictures to come soon.

Here are my sleeping babies.  They wrestle and play for a while and wore themselves out. If I’m sitting on the couch and Bella is stretched out there’s little room for Chip so he lays on the back of the couch. Here the pillows were stacked so he could rest his head on them but often he lays behind me with his head on my shoulder.

 

Christmas Decorating

 

FRIDAY after Thanksgiving we were still at my parents house.  Many years ago my mom was given a country inn village piece.  Ever since this has been a growning village with them adding pieces and expanding the village.  It now is so large it takes nearly a whole day to set up and fills an entire room.  A fun thing about the village is that it’s different each year.  Added pieces, being put in a new room and different arrangement of the pieces keeps it exciting to see each year.  Each year it’s put up right after Thanksgiving so this year was to be no different.  I began unpacking the pieces and dividing them as country or town pieces while mom began setting up tables and my dad was cutting boards to make table extensions.  We actually left before the whole thing was complete so it will be fun to go back closer to Christmas and see how it was finished this year. I don’t have any pictures at this time but I’ll try to get some posted sometime.

This began inspiring me to decorate my own place for the first time in years.  We were in a town the past 3 years that was 5 hours from home.  Noone would ever come visit (we always came home for a few weeks for the holidays) so there was no real reason for me to decorate.  This year being we live closer and having family that lives in the same town as us, there’s a chance we’ll have visitors so I’m going to decorate. I havn’t decorate in years so I’ve kinda forgotten a lot of what decorations I have. Also at the end of the holidays last year our friends were planning on going with a new theme and getting new stuff for the next year so they graciously gave us some of the decorations they were no longer going to be using.  Some of our stuff is still in storage at my grandparents and since decorating I’ve realized I’m missing some decorations so my decorations are a little sparse and only mostly in the living room area but they make me feel merry for the holidays. Here are some pictures. ENJOY!

 

The front door and catch all shelf. Joel complains about the santa hat blocking his view of the clock but I thought it was too cute to take down.  He was also disappointed to find that cookie tin was for decoration only and there were no cookies in it. He He!

The telephone shelf in the hallway between the two bedrooms

  

The backdoor/dining room/kitchen entry. The wreath was made by my mother from handprints of my students from my very first preschool class in 2006.

 

A few snowmen to smile at as I wash dishes

The sun makes it a little hard to see but it was too dark to take pictures at night. It’s a simple strand of white lights with silver tinsel. 

 

Despite the fact that we don’t use our dining room table, I really wanted to display these dishes.  It’s actually convenient since we don’t use the table I can keep the display set up at all times and don’t have to move it for meals.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!

THE THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY

 

GATHERING #1

Every year for Thanksgiving my grannie’s (maternal grandmother) family rents out the building my hometown neighborhood uses for community events. It’s a big open one room building with an old fashioned pot belly wood stove.  It was a large buffet table down the middle for tons of food which tends to be covered every time I’m there. This was one of our low number years with just over 30 people there.  We have some family from out of state that weren’t in travel health so we missed them this year.   I try my best to be good and not over heat but it’s so hard. since we do the meal pot luck style I want to try a little of it all. After the meal there are games and stories and picture sharing. Always a good time.

GATHERING #2

At the same time as my grannie’s meal is my husbands family meal.  This year we decided to split up.  I went to my family and he went to his.  After mine started slowing down I planned to leave and join his family.  Unfortunantly I didn’t get out soon enough and by time I got to town Joel said his family was going their separate ways.  So I just went to his grandparents house and was able to visit with his mom and grandparents for a while. Just visiting, no eating.  Probably not a bad thing, allow my stomach to rest. But knowing I had another meal to get to shortly I didn’t indulge in the desserts at my family meal planning to eat that part at his families gathering.  Oh well, though my sweet tooth suffered my tummy was probably thankful.

GATHERING #3

In order to accommodate all the other family gatherings my mom and dad saved their meal for supper time.  And because there would be so much turkey eating mom decided to go in another direction.  My sisters boyfriend planned to bring teriyaki wings he made so mom went for an Asian thanksgiving themed meal.  We had wontons and   It’s THURSDAY-maternal grandmother family, husbands missed but visited, my parents/sister,

Well I was too busy eating and visiting for any picture taking. Sorry.  But as always here’s my babies.

Bella chewing on her bone.

Chip chewing his bone and holding one in reserve LOL

The Week of Thanksgiving

Ok So I warned you in the last blog that it would be a while before I blogged again due to the Thanksgiving holiday and being away from the computer. I have made notes to myself to remind me what I can blog. I think I’ll break it down into a few shorter smaller (who are we kidding they will be lengthy) posts.  Please comment.  I want to know who (if anyone) is reading.  Are they too long, boring,tedious? I need some feedback.  If your comment doesn’t show up please email or Facebook me and let me know so I can fix things if there is a problem.

The SUNDAY before Thanksgiving I did some grocery shopping and bought some bottled water.  Ours tastes nasty.  My grandpa calls it “turtle tracks”. So we have been taste tasting various sources of water to find the best tasting. My “big” project of the day was rearranging the lights in the living room for optimal lighting. As I have stated before I’m a crafter and a tv watcher.  I have to have light pointed directly at me from behind so my hands don’t make shadows on my work. From “my spot” in the corner of the couch where I can rest my right arm on the arm rest the light leaves a terrible glare on the tv.  So I have moved the tv into the corner of the room at an angle and have added some lighting.  In order to get the best light behind me in the middle of the couch I had to do some creative set up.  Can anyone figure out what I used as my behind the couch “table”?

    

     (Bella in corner, TV mid wall)                           (Bella mid wall, TV in corner)

                               

(“table’ behind couch, tall lamp farthest from “my spot”, small lamp directly over my left shoulder, 3 bulb lamp over right shoulder)

MONDAY started early.  To be off for Thanksgiving Joel’s work has revamped their hours for the week.  He is working 3 days for 10 hours starting at 6 a.m.  We live about 20 minutes from his work, and he’s a slow riser so that mean up at 5 every day this week.  Thank goodness I was able to go back to bed. LOL since the schools are closed this week for the holidays.

The weather was forecasting rain but it was only a light drizzle so I ran out to take care of some business. My luck that was when it began to pour. I could hardly see the road, wipers going like crazy. 

I have no notes from TUESDAY and it’s been so long I can’t remember what I did then. Probably nothing much.

As soon as Joel got home WEDNESDAY afternoon we were heading home for Thanksgiving with our families. I spend the morning getting the house ready to sit empty for a few days.  Early afternoon I started packing. We had intentionally not said anything to the dogs cause they go crazy. Well still not saying anything, only getting out the suitcases they knew something was up.  They kept looking at me as if to ask “What’s going on?  you don’t use those things much.”  As I got several things packed and began stacking them in the Living Room to go to the car, they got the idea and started going crazy running around the house.  They knew we were going on a trip.  Though they hate the trip no matter how long or short they love the idea of “going”.  We were able to head out shortly after 5 and we were only going 2 hours away.  Much easier trip than the 5 hours we’ve done the last 3 years.  however due to the time change it’s dark by 5.  Our entire trip was in the dark which made me tired and made it feel like a 5 hour trip.

                     

(I couldn’t get a good picture of their crazy running around, this was the best to show their eagerness to head to Grammie’s)

 

Well this is long enough so I’ll put the holiday/vacation festivities in another blog. Catch it too.