Photo Shop

My friend Gretchen is a photo shop wizard................I can only get red eye out of my pictures with it, but if you know what you are doing, you can look like a pro.

VMI Official Visit

T. left yesterday for his official visit to VMI. They sent us his itinerary, very fancy........He texted us last night that he was in the barracks with his host cadet having pizza.......He will have had an appointment with admissions..........they have all his paperwork............gone to a lacrosse practice, watched the "rat line", attended a VMI football game, had many meals with the coaching staff and will have hung out a great deal with the lacrosse team. He comes home tomorrow and has to let the coaches know by Sept. 30 if he will sign with them...........hope he does. Hannah is hitting us hard right now and we are getting tons of rain..........I hope it doesn't affect his visit too much.....

C.C. Poe

This is the picture on Chris' business site. Doesn't he look like somebody you would trust to advise you about your finances?

Have To's

There are lots of "have to's" out there for me...........like cleaning and cooking and grocery shopping..........and going to work..........and laundry..........and driving kids all over kingdom come.......but there are guilt have to's also............like going to back to school night..........and I have gone for 15 years without fail (starting with preschool)..........until this year............I decided this week that for me, it's such a waste of time and skipped Tues. night for the High School and last night at the Elementary School........and I feel so free!!!!!!!!!!! I do think the 3 Elementary mom's at the bus stop think I am a horrible mom and believe it or not........I am ok with that.......
On the dinner front:
I have to say that last night I DID get Chris an appetizer (which he didn't want, he wanted supper at 5:00) and tried to wait till 6:15 for T. to get home for dinner...............E. had to go babysit at 6:30 and needed the time to gather her stuff, so ended up taking her dinner with her.........so Chris and J. and I ate alone.............as soon as we finished, T. came in from football and since Chris had been SNEAKING supper since 5:00............T. didn't get the second helping he wanted........eating dinner as a family was a disaster.............but T. was happy with the little watermelon I found for him at Whole Foods.....I would try again tonight, but J. has football at 6. Maybe we should all just have dessert together at 8:00 each night......

School Clothes

The clothes battle starts so early. My kids don't like to wear appropriate clothing. Even for Church, we battle about what to wear. E. likes these little bitty shirts that really are only appropriate for staying in her room.......T. has funky clothes period.....always a battle there.........so I decided I would do it differently with my youngest.... I want him to wear normal clothes. We cleaned out his dresser before school started and had a school drawer and a play drawer of shirts......this plan isn't working very well......it is going to be 85 degrees today and he has on an underarmour winter shirt and the same Texas shirt he wants to wear every other day...........You can see by his face he isn't happy about the conversation we are having about appropriate clothes for school..................he just said, "but, T. gets to wear weird stuff!"

Family Dinner

Don't let these smiles fool you, I am sure somebody said
something not so nice to somebody else about 30 seconds before this picture was made.

It is on rare occasion that we all sit down to dinner. This picture must be from some Holiday because we are in the dining room and I took a picture. Since Chris put a book shelf in the kitchen and we took out the kitchen table we sit at the bar.............which I really dislike....and with kids coming in from sports and activities at all hours nobody really eats at the same time. When Chris gets home from work, he wants to eat immediately and can't seem to wait on dinner to be made.............with me working, I can't have it done at 5:00..........plus, I am exhausted and HATE the very idea of dinner after work.......SO, in a perfect world........I would USE the dining room for dinner.......or the table in the sunroom in good weather.......get up earlier and make a dinner that would be ready when we get home..........have an appetizer for Chris to have when he gets home.............have us all sit down together and have a nice meal with NO sarcasm, just pleasant conversation..............but the reality is I don't live in La La land, so tonight we will have a simple meal that doesn't take too long and we will sit down somewhere......together........and we will fuss and moan together and try to do that at least 3 times a week.......sadly, I am already dreading it, but I think it is important in the great scheme of things, so we are going to do it.

Happy Labor Day!

These two spend lots of time in the evening sitting outside and talking...........they love "you tube" videos of comedienne's that I don't get, but I'm glad they enjoy each other's company and I hope they are getting some good talks in at the same time.