Hat Day!

This week is Spirit Week in school. Today was Hat Day. Now, we have already proven that I am not a hat person. And although you haven't seen it here, I can tell you in no uncertain terms that Scot is not a hat person. Luckily, our children seem to have inherited different genetics and yes, they are hat people! Here they are...

Leah must pull her hat so low that she can barely see. Which explains why she has to look up to smile at me. I've tried moving it up for her, I've tried talking to her, but she still wants it so low that she can't see and that she's actually bumping into things.

Now, Brady here has it going on. He's cool, he's sophisticated, he's definitely a hat person. Of course, this child looks good in everything he puts on. The only tragedy here is that his perfect hair is covered up.

OK, what can we say about this? I know... a more perfect hat has never been made for Christian. This hat was lovingly given to him by his Uncle Tim and it fits Christian so well (and Tim too!). Christian turned many heads today with this hat and came home very pleased.

Overall, it was a fun day! Tomorrow... Pajama Day!

Seriously?

On Thursday of this past week, I was scheduled to be a driver on the 2nd grade field trip to the Georgia Aquarium. Christian was VERY excited about this field trip! Since I was single parent for the week, I had gotten everything ready and planned to leave on time. I was also scheduled to take 3 other children with us in my car. The only thing I wanted to do was stop by Starbucks on the way to the school. I figured if I was going to drive 4 children to downtown Atlanta at 8am in the morning, that I at least deserved some coffee. We got in the car (on time!) and pulled out of the driveway. We were even a little early! As I was riding down our road, I thought to myself, "Hmmm... something does not feel right...". I got out of the car and sure enough, I had a flat tire! UGH! I called Scot (who was in training, but still in town) to get him to help me. He said no, to call my dad. (Since this is a family blog, I won't tell you my response or my thought to that). I called my dad and had to get him out of the shower. I think he cut himself shaving :( I felt bad. He had to race over to me and get the other two children and took them to school. Christian and I raced to Burt Brooks Tire and had to buy a new tire because that one was a goner.

My good friend Deidra met us at her office and we were on our way to Atlanta. We actually made it there on time!

We had lots of fun looking (and petting) the various aquatic creatures there and finally it was time to go. I had promised Christian that he could get 1 souvenir. He spent an inordinate time in the gift shop choosing. Finally, he walked over and showed me "Grow your own aquatic creature". I thought, sure, why not? It's probably one of those dried sponge things that you stick in water and it grows. So, we bought it. Imagine my surprise (and horror) to discover that no, it's living horseshoe crab creatures. UGH! So, now, I have a little aquarium full of potential horseshoe crabs. Yuck. I just hope they hatch or he's going to be devastated. This is not my strength. I kill fish because I do something wrong. We'll see how it goes. In the next few days, we could potentially have 9 horseshoe crab additions to our family...

Overall, it was a very interesting day.

Chapter 3: The Waverunners

The next morning, Vicki and I woke up and began to get ready for our "date". We wondered where we would eat. Instead of feeling anxious like the night before, we were a little excited. After all, we managed to walk on the beach with them at night and they were perfect gentlemen. Well, with the exception of offending that poor fisherman. Anyway, this was broad daylight! We talked about the fact that they seemed like genuinely nice guys.

We had decided to meet in the parking lot at a certain time. We walked up and sort of stood there, awkwardly. They asked if they could drive. We said okay. We hopped in the backseat and anticipated where we might go. After about 20 minutes, we began to get impatient. We were hungry! We gently suggested that they pull over and ask directions. Well, you can imagine how that went over. Men and directions = a big fat no! After about 10 more minutes, we insisted on stopping. They consented, but said that we had to be the ones to actually ask. Men. (Side note: They are still like this! Only now, Tim has a GPS and will follow that thing even if it leads us into the ocean!) We happily walked into a gas station and asked where to eat. Ironically, we were only about 1 mile away from the restaurant!

We walked in, sat down, and ordered our food. I don't remember what anyone else ordered except for Vicki. She ordered grits. Our food arrived and all three of us sat there and watched her put sugar in her grits. Yuck! Tim and Scot were fascinated by this and asked us what grits were made of.

*Crickets chirping*

You would think that being from the South and all that we would actually know the answer to that. However, we did not. We decided to ask the waitress. "Where do grits come from"? She said, "Out of a box?" Clearly, she was clueless. She asked the cook. He had no idea. Well, this really bothered me. I should know this. I decided to call my grandmother when I got back to the condo. She, of course, knew the answer... corn!

After breakfast, Tim and Scot asked us to go riding on waverunners. We went back, changed clothes and off we went. We arrived at the waverunner place and waited our turn. Vicki leaned over to me at one point and said, "Just so you know, I am not riding with Tim. Don't you leave me and get on one with Scot". It was our turn. Tim walked over and jumped on a waverunner and looked at the three of us. I stoically stood there. I would not move. Scot apparently had the same idea. He did not want to ride with Tim. So, we all just stood there and looked at Tim sitting on the waverunner. The man in charge said, "Well, somebody come over here and get on it with him". Still, we just stood there. Finally, Vicki walked over and climbed aboard. Little did she know she was taking her life in her hands! Scot and I climbed on ours and began to carefully accelerate (he was driving). Tim and Vicki went from about 0 to 30 miles an hour in no time flat. Tim was driving like a madman! I felt briefly apprehensive about Vicki as I watched her turn over and get dumped in the water several times, but then decided I should probably worry about myself. She's fiesty... she can take care of herself. Or at the very least she can scream for help. Scot and I carefully drove around and then decided to switch drivers. Scot slowly backed off the waverunner so as not to tip it over and then said, "Hey! Stand up! We're on a sandbar." We laughed. This just shows the difference in Tim and Scot's personalities. Scot was terrified of turning us over and Tim loved it!

"Whew, are we tired from almost drowning!"

I was slowly warming up to Scot and even enjoying myself. However, I would soon be disappointed and left to wonder if he actually liked me at all...

To be continued... Chapter 4: Confusion

Chapter 2: The Meeting

"Do you know any good places to eat?", Scot asked as they walked up to us. Vicki and I looked at each other. This was unexpected. We expected to get hit in the head by a frisbee, not be asked a direct question. (Much later, we learned that there was some discussion between the two of them on whether or not to throw the frisbee at us). We immediately became more interested. Straightforwardness- we liked that. Of course, we did not have an answer to this question. We only knew where the Kmart was at that point. Vicki smiled up at them and said, "No, we just arrived last night". I sat there sullenly thinking "I hate men". Because I'm mature that way. Anyway, they proceeded to ask us where we were from, where we were staying etc.. During this period of time, Vicki had moved from a reclined position in her lounge chair to sitting up. Tim proceeded to sit down on the bottom half of Vicki's chair. Scot looked at me and I just sat there, reclined, not moving. He had to sit down beside me in the sand. As it turned out, Scot and Tim were staying in the condominium building next to ours. This conversation rocked on for awhile. Finally, it was time to go in and get ready for dinner. Tim and Scot asked us if we wanted to go for a walk on the beach later that night. Vicki and I looked at each other. Now, at this point, we've been best friends for years and we usually can tell what the other is thinking simply by looking. We stared at each other for a minute. After all, we're talking about walking on the beach, at night, with strange guys, (who are yankees- ha ha!)... hmmm. But we decided to brave it and said yes.

Later that evening as we were getting ready for our walk, Vicki turned to me and handed me a black cylinder. I said, "What's this?". She said, "It's mace- I think you should carry it". Um, what? Why me? Can you see that- us, on the beach, with me using mace and incapacitating both Tim and Scot? Who are we, Charlies Angels? Granted, I was the more sullen of the two of us and maybe she figured that I had an itchy trigger finger. Of course the problem was that I was wearing jean shorts. Those shorts fit rather well and when I put the mace in my pocket, it showed. Badly. So, what to do? After some debate, I finally decided to carry it in my hand. We walked down to the beach and they were waiting for us. I moved the mace to the opposite side and tried to hide it. We decided to walk to the boardwalk. Mostly during this time, Tim and Vicki were talking. They hit it off instantly. I was worrying they were going to see the mace and think we were psychos. Scot and I, being much more reserved, followed along and didn't say much. We walked down to the pier and decided to walk to the end of it. Even in the evening, people were still fishing. As we walked back, Tim looked over at this man who had caught what appeared to be some type of minnow. I mean, this fish was tiny. And this man was proud! He held it up as we walked by and Tim said loudly, "It's a keeper!". The man glared. Vicki and I were horrified. Little did we know this was foreshadowing for the rest of our lives! Tim and Scot continue to embarrass us regularly! :)

We walked back to the beach in front of our building. Tim and Scot asked us to meet for breakfast in the morning. Hmmm. Well, how bad could that be? We said yes. That would end up being our first (double) date.

To be continued... Chapter 3: The Waverunners

Chapter 1: Atlantic Beach

It was May in 1992. Vicki and I had just finished our sophomore year at Shorter and we were looking to get out of town. Vicki and I always did some sort of summer vacation together. The previous year we had gone to Panama City Beach (which is an entirely separate post). But this year, we were bored with Panama City and we were also poor- ha ha! So, when Vicki's great aunt and uncle offered to let us come stay in their condominium in North Carolina, we jumped at the chance. We knew it would be a long drive, but we were excited about going somewhere new.

I had just gotten out of a fairly serious relationship. Literally, the week before we left, my boyfriend and I had broken up. This was only the second serious relationship that I had ever been in so you can imagine that I was not too thrilled with men in general. In fact, I thought that maybe I'd give up dating for a while (such cynicism for a 20 year old). We left on our trip and I was super glad to be getting out of town.

Our trip up was long, but uneventful. Which for us, is amazing. We are always having trouble on our trips. We arrived in Atlantic Beach, NC late that evening and went to bed. I had just started a new job at a local daycare and was feeling a little under the weather. We got up the next morning and realized, "hey, it's not that warm in North Carolina in May" so we had to go to a local Kmart for some sweatshirts. Here we are modeling our sweatshirts... although, I don't know why I got the purple one and Vicki got the pink one. It should be reversed...

We got back around lunch and decided to go out on the beach for a while. North Carolina beaches are beautiful, but they were very different from what we were used to.We got our chairs, and laid down in the warm sun. I promptly fell asleep. I've never fallen asleep like that before, but the stress of the previous week coupled with my new job had really taken it out of me. I woke up about an hour later and looked around. We sat there for awhile admiring the scenery and talking and then decided to brave the water. Now, you can imagine that if it was cold enough for a sweatshirt, what the water temperature was that time of year. But, undeterred, we pressed on. We slowly went into the water and got about waist deep. As we were standing there, Vicki looked over and said, "Hey, don't look now, but I think those guys followed us in here". I looked over and there were two guys in the water a fair distance away. I looked at her and said, "nah, that's just coincidence". We stayed in for a few more minutes and then made our way out of the ocean. They got out at the same time. We laid back in our chairs and attempted to warm up. I was completely oblivious, but Vicki (who always has been much more observant) said, "hey, those two guys are over there playing Frisbee".

I looked over. She said, "what do you want to bet that they throw that Frisbee over here?" I said, "no way, that would be too obvious". About 15 minutes later, they put the Frisbee down and started walking over...

To be continued... Chapter 2: The Meeting.

The Journey Begins..

It's September 21st! Bet you all didn't know that. Why is this date significant? It's almost one month until our 14 year wedding anniversary! 14 years! I mean, I know it's not 50 years or anything, but in this day and age I think it's something to be proud of. As our anniversary approaches, I've decided to blog about how we met. People are always asking us, "How did you meet?" For most people, that's a fairly easy question to answer. It's usually something like, "we met at school, or so-and-so introduced us, etc...", but for us, we say, "on vacation" and then the person just stares at us waiting for us to elaborate. This time of year always makes me think of when Scot and I met. We actually met in the month of May. However, we got married in October.

Our actual wedding day was fraught with problems and was an extremely stressful experience for me so I prefer to think of easier times. I thought I would start blogging about it early so that I would have plenty of time before the actual anniversary to finish. I hope I don't bore you. I hope to print it out and then the children will have it to read someday. They might not want to, but you never know. I, personally, think it would be really neat to read the story of how my grandparents met and know what they were thinking at the time.

For tonight though, I'm not going to start the story just yet. That will begin next week sometime. I am, however, going to show you what we looked like when we met. Holy cow! It's a blast from the past...

Ok, this is Scot in 1992 right after we met. Where do I start? Let's start with the acid wash jeans... do you remember owning a pair of those?? Ah, the 80's... Look how young he looks! And isn't it nice that he's standing by that little table full of food? He's so cool; he's not even looking at the camera. And the lavender shirt... nice... he even bought that on our trip! Lavender... it's a color you would NEVER see him in now!

Moving on...

This is me in 1992. Wow. What can I say? I was a slave to fashion? I don't think so... First of all, those earrings are so huge that I'm surprised I can still hold my head up. The turquoise eyeliner is a must too... Because I'm not wearing a lick of turquoise in this picture. Did I just blank out on how to match? And you can't see it in this picture, but I have a ginormous bow in my hair. During that period of my life, I always had some huge bow in my hair. I think the term you're looking for is "bow-head".

Well, there we are. Get ready- I will be scanning in pictures to go with my story. What's a story without pictures?

To be continued... Chapter 1: Atlantic Beach

Cross Country Update - part 3!

Well, I'd like to come on here and tell you that it's been smooth sailing since my last Cross Country update. Sadly, I cannot. Brady has continued to have bad luck in Cross Country... to the point where last week we were very discouraged. Let me elaborate...

The week after he was stung repeatedly by yellow jackets, he went to practice. It was an average day and rather than sit in the hot car waiting for him to finish, I thought to myself, "Hey, I'll run some errands and come back and get him". This is the first time I've decided to do this. So, I pull up about 15 minutes from when practice is supposed to be over and I get out of the car. As I start to walk over to him, I'm stopped by another mother who says, "Brady had a pretty bad fall when he was running and hurt his leg. I had to dig a rock out of his knee". Are you kidding me? The only time I leave and he's injured? Now, don't get me wrong, he wasn't crippled or anything. I think it was more embarrassing than painful. But his self confidence here is really taking a beating! He pretty much limped around the rest of the night and complained. We gave him a pep talk about staying strong and continuing on. I feel partially responsible for his clumsiness. After all, I am his mother and if you can trip or fall or plummet, I've pretty much done it. I have a flair on my facebook page that says ....

So moving on, a couple of weeks ago, he had his first official meet at Ridgeferry Park. It was hot and muggy and he really struggled through this meet. These meets are held at 4:30 which to me is the hottest time of the day. I think he just got overheated because he said he felt dizzy. Scot called me during this meet (why am I always working when these are scheduled???) and was very concerned about him. Here he is at that meet...

He's hot, he's tired, he's in pain. Although, we were encouraged because he has the greatest team. They are supportive and encouraging and he actually finished and even beat his previous time. We will focus on small victories.

Yesterday, he had another meet. He had an easier time running. It was cooler and he hasn't had any injuries lately (woo hoo!). He beat his time, once again. He came home today very excited about the "Sub Club". I said, "what's that?". He replied, "The coaches bring us subs on the Friday after a meet if we beat our previous time". Wow! I guess it's the little things! He has great coaches. Here he is yesterday (yes, I know the picture is blurry....)

So, we will persevere. Brady is learning a valuable life lesson about how something worth having is worth working for. Please continue to keep him in your thoughts and prayers!