My 2 Cents--Sorta Rant

So, I've been reading my friends blogs and such about the election and the candidates. Personally, I'm a McCain/Palin fan. Don't care all that much about him (I think he's the lesser of 2 evils), but I LOVE her!!

She is not the governor of some sissy state. Oh, no. She's the top dog in a very tough, male state. They may not have a huge population, but they're not going to put up with any crap. I respect her decisions regarding her youngest child. I know how hard it is to work my job with three kids. I can't imagine running for the #2 job in our country while having 4 children at home, the youngest being 6 months old. Not only is he 6 months old, but he also has Downs. And, on top of this, her oldest son (which makes #5) was just shipped off to war. I respect her not hiding anything about her pregnant daughter. As an adult, I realize the unrealistic expectation of 100% abstinance for everyone, but she taught her daughter what she believed. When her daughter made the choices that she made and is dealing with the consequences, Palin is there to support her 100%.

The thing that I like the most is that she's actually SERVED her term. Unlike Obama. He has only been in attendance to do his JOB 150-someodd days! The rest of the time he's been out campaigning. Now, McCain has been out the same amount of time over the past couple of years. The difference is the YEARS of experience he has going into it. I can overlook the differences in what Obama says and his voting record if he had the years to back it up. I understand that people's opinions and views change as the get older based on life experiences and such. But, he doesn't have the time to back that up.

I have no illusions that I'm going to sway anyone to my side that has already made up their mind. No more than I can have my opinion swayed. These aren't the only reasons I'm not voting for Obama. There's lots of other reasons that would only inflame opinions and get me ugly comments that I don't want. What I do want is for people to know what they want and what they believe. DON'T just vote for one of them because you don't want the other party in office!!! Study the issues that are important to you, where each candidate stands, and vote accordingly. I may not agree with your decision, but I and (and will) respect someone who votes their convictions. That's what this great country is about. Giving us each the ability to have a decision on how our country is run and by who. And if you don't vote, don't let me hear you whine about it later!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!! I LOVE YOU JON!!!!!!!!

Back in the day, I was the BIGGEST NKOTB fan there was!!!! For those of you who weren't a pre-teen girl in the early 90's, that's the New Kids On The Block. I had buttons and watches and EVERY cd and cassette tape and games and t-shirts and posters and posters and posters and a few more posters and watched the cartoon and knew every song by heart. I went to see them when the No More Games tour was going on, and they were my very first concert. I'll never forget getting to go see it. It was awesome. Even though I was at the far end of the arena and up in the nose bleed, Jon pointed at me!!!!! Can you tell he was my favorite. I mean, come on!! He's a Sagiterious, and I'm a Libra!! That's my perfect love match!! I was convinced that one day I was going to bump into him on the oh so busy streets of Arab, he was going to fall madly in love with me, we were going to get marrid, and have lots of wonderful little babies. BTW, I was like 12!! Then they broke up in '94 (yes, I know the year!). Well, for the last 15+ years, I've had a secret. I never stopped loving NKOTB!! Yes, I'll admit it. When I got an iPod for Christmas a couple of Christmas's ago, that was the first thing I downloaded from iTunes. I have listened and listened and listened to it too!! Then again, I am a sucker for anybody I loved back then. Tommy Page, NKOTB, Richard Marx, Roxette, even Milli Vanilli!! Anyway, back in April, I heard NKOTB was reuniting! It was like I was that 12 year old SCREAMING girl at her very first concert. My mom has recorded every time they've been on morning shows. Right now, I just finished watching the new VH1 Behind the Music special. Now it's the first few songs from their new tour. This is the closest I get to be to that. Stinkin shows are sold out and tickets are like $1 million!! Okay, closer to $200, but might as well be a million!! I can't wait to get the new CD! I'm going to ask Santa to put it in my stocking. I'd really love if he'd give me concert tickets, but I'm not going to push my luck. So, how many other closet Blockheads are out there? Is anybody else loving them being back together? *Step by step, oh baby...gotta get to you girllllllll* Ahhhhhhhh, I love the music from my childhood!! :) I hate that the concert is ending! I WANT MORE!!!!!

Girls Night In

Charming's sister-in-law invited the girls and I to a Mary Kay party, so we turned it into a girls night in!! Lightening is spending the night with Charming, so Belle, Tink, and I are on our own!! We went to the sil's party. The girls didn't really get to do anything because we were doing skin care stuff. I promised them, if they would be nice about it, when we got home we would pull out all the Libby Lu make-up. That did it!!! They were perfect angels all night!!! Didn't complain about anything!!! LOL Belle has a set of twins that are her friends from school and Girl Scouts. Back at the first of the year, they invited her to a Libby Lu birthday party. One of the things that she brought home was some face mask (not my favorite thing!). I've been promising her for months that we would have a girls night and use it. So, tonight we gave ourselves facials with the face mask, then the girls started playing make-up. They've had a great time, and it has been a lot of fun. I love to see them have so much fun. And, of course, mommy had to take pictures of her two beauties. I HATE my picture, but I might as well throw me in there too!! Let you all see me at my absolute worst!! LOL

Here's the before face mask for all of us. Belle is in the Hannah Montana PJ's, Tink's in the white shirt, and I think I'm pretty obvious.


Here's the pics of all of us with the face masks. I think I like the one of all three of us best! I don't know what I look like, but something akin to the creature from the gray lagoon!!!! I would only let these pictures be seen by those I love the most, so NOOOOOOOOOO making fun of me!!! LOL

All in all, it was a fun night. I try to remember that they're not going to want to have nights like this very often. Right now, we're watching the new Ariel movie. They're enjoying the extra features. I know the older Belle gets, the less and less we'll be able to do this.

I'm just surprised about Charming & Lightening. :) Charming offered to watch him for me. Then he got this new job and we didn't think he'd get to. Well, then it worked out that he could. When we were working out the details, he told me just to let Lightning spend the night. There was no need in getting him out all late and such. I was shocked!!!! I have no problem letting him do that, but I was surprised he offered. It was nice. So, they're out having there boys night, and we're having our girls night. It's good all the way around. Now I just have to get up in the morning and get him. We'll see how he handles the whole night!! New experiences are fun!!!! LOL

First Day of School

We've had big happenings here in our humble abode. The first day of school was last Monday. That means Belle started 2nd grade, and Tink started Kindergarden. Belle has gotten right into the groove. She likes her new teacher and loves seeing her friends again. She's in a class with most of the people she's always been with. She seems to be in a class of mainly girls. There's only 4 or 5 boys in her class. She is a little upset about one thing though. Her best friend has been withdrawn to be homeschooled. Other than that, she's okay with everyone in her class. She's happy that the little boy who has a crush on her is in the other class. Last week, they had it pretty easy. She had a few homework assignments, but they were all easy things. Things like, write 5 sentences about yourself. Since that is Belle's favorite topic, those were a piece of cake. Basically, we're just getting back into the groove. Our only serious problem is the bus. We have a new driver who keeps running earlier and earlier and earlier. I'm going to have to have a little talk with her in the morning about all this. She was 20 minutes earlier today than she was last Monday. If we don't get something settled tomorrow morning, I will be calling the bus superintendant and let him settle it!!


Then we have little Tink starting her first year of school. She was a little nervous on her first day. We took lots of pictures and have really talked school up to her. Our school system is weird with the way they do kindergardeners. All kids (from K-12) go to school on the first day for about an hour. Then kindergarden has "phase in." I HATE phase in. This is how Tink's schedule looks. August 4th was their hour day. On the 5th, Tink and I went to school together. They let them have that first day with mom or dad so that they get a little more comfortable with everything. We went to music class and guidance together. Then we went back to Tink's classroom. From there, the teachers took the kids back upstairs to play. They left them with the aide and came back to do paperwork and talk to us. Then they brought the kids back and we all ate lunch together. After that we were all free to go about 11. Tink was supposed to go back to school on Friday the 8th. She didn't make it though. She was running a fever. I had spoken to her teacher on Thursday night at an open house (she was Belle's teacher too). She told me that if Tink was still sick she could just come on Tuesday. So, she's going back tomorrow, the 12th. She goes back on the 14th, and then school finally starts with its regular schedule on the 19th. She's finally excited about it. When I got home from work this afternoon, she informed me she already had all her clothes picked out for tomorrow. She's a mess!!


Lightning is excited to have his sisters in school and his Mosh (my mom) all to himself!! It's going to be a fun year for him too. I don't know that he's going to know what to do with himself. So far, he's been watching a lot of Voltron. We're borrowing all of them from Charming, and it is Lightning's favorite thing to watch. I think he could watch it morning, noon, and night if we let him. He loves his show about the "Mighty Robot." I think part of the appeal to him is that they are Charming's movies. He adores that man. Lightning is always saying, "He my buddy." So all in all, we should be having a fun and exciting school year. I'm sure you'll be hearing more about our adventures as the year goes on. :)

Saturday Adventure

The other day, I told Charming he had to come up with something for us to do that would get us out of our rut. It needed to be something that we hadn't done before. I gave him a bunch of suggestions on what we could do. He decided what it was going to be and then wouldn't tell me. Friday night I finally got me to tell me a couple of things. All he would tell me was that we weren't going out of the state of TN, we were heading west, we were going to be outside, and I would probably want good shoes instead of my standard flip flops.

That intrigued me, but I narrowed it down to 2 things. I thought we were either going to go to Shiloh or the Memphis Zoo. So, at 9 o'clock Saturday morning, he picked me up, and we started our adventure. We stopped to get some drinks, and then we stopped at Walgreen's to get some new sunglasses and sunscreen. I have 2 colors, red and white, so I have to make sure I'm slathered with the sunscreen. Charming, luckily for him, is one of those people who just gets nice and brown. It makes me sick!! LOL



So, we hit the road again. I had decided that we were heading to Memphis. I don't know why I had decided that, but I had. We're driving down the road, and all of a sudden, Charming takes a left and starts heading south. I hadn't seen any signs saying there was anything that direction. I told him I was thoroughly confused, and he looked at me like I had two heads. Then I saw something saying Shiloh and, obviously, knew where we were going. We get to the park about 11:30-ish...We go into the visitor's center to look around and get the info for the day.





When we got there, they told us there was a movie about the battle that was going to start in a few minutes. So, we start looking around the museum at all the stuff there. While we're doing that, they make an announcement that there's about to be a walk-thru of the cememtary. We decide that that's what we're going to start with. The movie plays every half hour, so we've got lots of time to see it. We walk over to the cemetary and wait for that to start. It was extremely interesting to do. I LOVE stuff like that!! I'm such a history buff!!



But, I’m also a huge cry baby with stuff like that. There are these small white, square headstones. Row after row after row after row of them. The ranger said that there are around 4,000 people buried there. Of those 4,000 people, the identities of only about 1,000 are known. It made me so sad to see all those men who no one knew. I got all teary eyed and sniffly, and I told Charming that all those squares made me sad. I can’t imagine sending my husband, or son, or brother, or father off and then never knowing what happened to them. You don’t know where they died or how they died. That not knowing is just so sad to me. So, we finish up the walk-thru, and I made Charming take me to get some lunch. I had been stupid and skipped breakfast, and I was hungry.



We got some lunch and came back to the park for another ranger guided walk-thru of a place called The Hornet's Nest. The Union lost that skirmish, but they held their line long enough for Grant to set up his line of defense near the river. That would lead to the Union winning the battle. So, this was an important skirmish. First we took the walking tour of the Union side. Then we got back in the car and drove to the other side of the field to see all the Confederate cannons and their side of the field. So, we get out and look around, take a few pictures, read the signs telling what happened. I start walking back to the car while Charming took a couple of more pictures. I was stepping off the road, onto the shoulder, to get back in the car. That's when it happened. My ankle went out from under me, and down I go!! Charming hurries over to make sure that I'm okay. I was. My ankle hurt some. I was mainly just embarrassed. So, we get back in the car to finish the rest of the driving tour.








Our next stop was Shiloh church, which is where all the fighting started. There is a new church there that is being used by a regular congregation, and at the edge of the parking lot is the old church. We get out to go see the old church. I was thinking how nice it was that we were on a flat paved parking and I wouldn’t trip on that when all of a sudden, my knee goes out which twists my ankle and down I go again. Again, Charming hurries over to see if I’m okay. This time I had to sit there for a few moments before I could get up and keep going. I limp up the stairs to look inside the church. Charming didn’t want to go in, but I did and took a few pics. As I was coming out, he made sure that he was there so I could hold onto his hand and not fall…again.


We get in the car and keep going looking at all the different places there was to look. We stopped at a couple of other places but didn’t do much walking down any paths thanks to the klutz striking that day. We did stop at a place called the Bloody Pond. It was where a lot of the injured men crawled to get some water to drink or clean their wounds. So many men did this or died there, the water was stained with their blood. Hence the name.

Back into the car we go to finish the tour. We go back to the visitor’s center to get the kids some souvenirs and to see the film we missed earlier. I also hadn’t seen everything in the museum and I wanted to make sure I saw it all. The movie wasn’t all the great. It was from the 1970’s, and didn’t really tell you anything that you didn’t get from the rest of the tour. But, I didn’t want to miss anything!!



I told Charming that I want to go back when the weather is cooler. Take the kids, pack a picnic lunch, and spend all day there. There were several other tours I would have liked to have done. I think the kids would like all the cannons and stuff. I’d also like to visit a couple of the surrounding towns to see the headquarters for both sides. We’ll see though.

One more thing with my injuries. It became a running joke with us that I couldn’t get out of the car unless he was there or I’d get hurt. When we were done, Charming brought me back to his house. We got there, and I (very smart alecky) asked if I could get out of the car on my own. He said yes, so I turn to do it. I banged my head on the door frame, so I guess I couldn’t even do that.

Even with all the injuries, I really enjoyed the day. I’m glad that we got out and did something different. That was the point of the whole day. I was exhausted when I fell into bed last night, but it was a good tired. Now, I’ve got to figure out what we can do Saturday that’s the same sort of thing being new and different. Wish me luck!!!

Concert Memories

Mother Goose told me I'm slacking in the blogging department. I wasn't slacking! I've just been waiting for my kids to get home from their grandma's house. Not a lot going on for me when they're not around. So, I was looking through some old pictures and found these of a concert I went to with Luke. It was the first thing that Luke and I ever did alone together. Although it was just as friends. It was a fun night. We went to see Billy Dean. I LOVE Billy Dean!



There's a gentleman in our little town who is a HUGE song writer in the country music scene. His name is Richard Lee (on the right). He has a whole "concert series" where he invites his country music buddies down to do a concert. This one was held in the theater in our local bank. It's where we used to have community theater or where you go if you want to have a nice banquet type thing. Anyway, I was up town near the square one day and saw that he was going to have this one featuring Billy. I was sooooooooo excited. I bought the tickets before I asked Luke to go. I was going to go no matter what he said. I remember thinking how lucky I was to get the tickets since it was the day before the concert. I knew it was going to be sold out cause that's the kind of luck that I have.


I was sooooooooo nervous when I called Luke to ask him to go with me. I REALLY liked him, and I wasn't sure what he thought about me. The only other thing we'd done together was go see a Harry Potter movie with my sister-in-law, her sister, and her sister's then fiancee'. We had a good time, but it was still a little awkward cause we didn't know each other. So, I called him, and obviously, he said yes. He even suggested dinner. I was so excited I was almost jumping up and down. Of course, I had to go shopping for a new outfit to wear!! So, off to Cato's I go! The sales lady could see me agonizing over what to wear and asked what the occasion was. I told her it was my first date in almost 10 years. I wasn't sure that it was a date, but I was going to think of it that way! She helped me find the perfect outfit to wear!! It was sooooo comfortable, and it wasn't too dressy. It was great!!


The big day came, and I met him at the only local sit-down restaurant in town. I can't remember the last time I had been so nervous. How was my make-up? How did I look? Oh, please don't let me drip at dinner!!!!!!! LOL I don't remember what he had to eat, other than he had french fries. I can only remember that because he mixed his own fry sauce and made me try some. I was kinda shocked when he started picking food off my plate. To me, that was a sure sign that he was at least a little comfortable with me. I mean, who snags food off the other person's plate if they're uncomfortable? I was very surprised (but happy) when he picked up the check. Again, a good sign to me. So, he jumps into the van with me, and we're off to the concert.


It was a great concert. He told great stories and sang most of my favorite songs. It was AWESOME!!! It was also good because of the relaxed body language that Luke had. Much more relaxed than when we went to the movie. I left my hand loose on the table the whole night, just in case. Well, he didn't hold my hand that night. I'd have to wait more than a year for that, but it was worth the wait. After the concert, we walked back to the van, and I drove him back to his truck. I think we hugged, but I can't remember for sure. No use asking him. I know he'll never remember!! LOL That's okay. I'll remember everything for both of us. I didn't know what was going to happen in the future, but it all worked out for the best. That night was the beginning of a beautiful friendship as they say. Everytime I hear a Billy Dean song, I think about that night and how much fun it was. Glad I bit the bullet and asked him to go. What would have happened if I didn't? :)

So, there ya go Mother Goose!! Is that what you had in mind? You just wait til the kids get home next week. I'll have stories to tell then. LOL

Today's WWW

Wearing
*Pink PJ Pants
*Black Tank Top
*Luke's CTR Ring

Wondering
* What Luke has up his sleeve for tomorrow
* If I go to bed now, would I sleep all night?
* About questions unasked

Wishing
* It was cooler
* My ankles would quit hurting
* I had something sweet to eat