Hard A's

I have a praise to share! Brittanie started her spring semester earlier this month and she has the hardest teachers in Biology and Spanish. She is also taking Geometry and Driver's Ed. She is pulling hard A's in all of her classes. She came home with her first Biology test Friday and I was stunned. I took Biology at Louisiana College and my tests weren't that long! It was 4 pages front and back!!! She made at 97 on it! I am thrilled that she inherited her dad's aptitude for Geometry as I cried through my Geometry class in high school. We weren't fortunate to have block classes like Brittanie has so it was 9 months of torture in Geometry. I will be forever grateful to my Geometry teacher, who was the hardest teacher in the school. I took other classes with him so he knew I wasn't a slacker, I just couldn't get Geometry. So he would give bonus questions that were Algebra review questions. Those bonus questions kept me from failing Geometry. So far, Brittanie has an A in Geometry and if there is stuff she doesn't quite get, her dad explains it to her. Tom is a wonderful teacher. I have been dreading her taking Spanish. I was raised in a French speaking family and that is all I wanted my girls to learn. But unfortunately the only foreign language our school offers is Spanish and she has to have one foreign language credit to graduate. Westpoint recommends two so she will be taking Spanish II next year. Surprisingly, I have been able to help her study Spanish. I have never taken Spanish. I went to a private school in Louisiana and all my school offered was French. But there are so many similarities between Spanish and French that I have actually been able to help. It has been great watching her drive and determination this year. She is determined to meet the requirements for Westpoint and if there isn't room for her there, she will at least make it into Texas A&M, which is her second choice.

I would appreciate everyone praying for her as she continues to work towards achieving her goals for the future. I'm so proud of the young lady she is becoming! I really enjoy being her mom.

Brittanie got her braces off yesterday!!

After 13 months of wearing her braces, yesterday it all came to an end. Dr. Garrison in Lexington is wonderful. His office staff is so nice. The original estimate was 15 months but her teeth responded so quickly that she was able to get them off in 13. Here are some pictures taken today!

New Orleans....the chocolate city

My cousin sent this picture to me and it tickled me so I wanted to share it with everybody. Let me know if you found it as funny as I did.

My friend, Terri sent this too me and I thought it would be funny to put it under the picture:

Willy Wonka Announces Run for Mayor after New Orleans Rebuilt in Chocolate
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana --- Willy Wonka announced today that he will run for
mayor of New Orleans after Mayor Nagin rebuilds the city out of chocolate.
The announcement comes after Nagin announced he will make New Orleans a
"chocolate" city.
 
"This is a chance of a lifetime," said Wonka.  "I can put the Oompa Loompas
on my staff, change the water fountains to chocolate, make it rain jelly
beans, and hire Kojak and his lolly pop to protect the fine city.  It sounds
like a magical place.  I'm so happy Mr. Nagin is doing this."
 
There will be significant controversy over rebuilding the city in chocolate
though.  Infamous Louisiana Klansman, David Duke, insists that the city be
built out of white chocolate.  And gay advocates representing the city's
large gay and lesbian population insist the city have a large area built out
of Skittles, the candy with a rainbow of fruit flavors.  The first major
shipment of chocolate arrived yesterday, but it was looted before
construction crews could get started rebuilding.

Katie's class picture

We just got Katie's class picture and school picture back today and I just wanted to share it. This is obviously before she cut her own hair.

Pictures

On the way home from my mom's house, we detoured through New Orleans. I used to work in Metairie and Tom worked for Chevron in downtown New Orleans, so we had to see for ourselves what it looked like now. Downtown has had alot of work done, although there are still lots of cars under overpasses that were destroyed in the flood. But the most damage we saw were on the outskirts. It was heartbreaking to see the trailer cities. Here are a few pictures that we took on 01/16/06.

This was a hotel in Metairie.
This was an apartment complex in Metairie.

The Superdome. Looks pretty much back to normal.

This is pretty much how all of downtown New Orleans was. It looks like they are completely redoing the drainage system in the city and the clean up and fix up is in high gear to get ready for Mardi Gras.
One of the many car graveyards under overpasses.

Above and below are two vehicles that were picked up and slammed back down by Katrina.

But New Orleans is slowly getting back to normal and here is the first sign....the bums are back. They were the scariest thing for me when we worked down there because they were VERY aggressive panhandlers and window washers. I was hoping that with the hurricane that FEMA would have moved all the bums out and into trailers but I guess that's too much to hope for. I suppose it wouldn't be a major city without bums.

We took LOTS of pictures on our trip. I only posted a few. So if you want to see the rest, you can go to Mom's party to see the pictures of the party or to New Orleans to see the pictures we took there. By the way, for those who didn't know, you can click on any picture on my blog and it will open the picture in your window and show it to you larger. You just click Back to go back to the blog after looking at the picture. By the way, if nothing is showing up in the New Orleans folder when you look, try again later. I'm loading them now.

Boy was she surprised!!!

We went to Louisiana Friday and gave my mom a surprise party to celebrate her 75th birthday. It was so funny! She walked in and everyone said "Surprise" and she thought it was a joke. She still thought it was my uncle and aunt's party but they are fooling around telling her surprise. So we told her that they said surprise for her birthday. She still didn't get it that it wasn't just the "surprise!" that was hers....the whole party was for her. She didn't get it until we showed her the cake. She was blown away. She couldn't believe that we had planned this party for months and nobody let it slip....especially me. I have a hard time keeping stuff from her. But she was certainly surprised. She and everyone else had a blast at her party. It was sooooooooo fun!!! Here are some pictures.

This is when she walked in the hall and we said surprise. She laughed because she thought we were all just cutting up. (By the way, the man in the picture is her boyfriend, Elvin)

What? The party is for me????


My nephew, Randy, and his wife made a HUGE pot of gumbo for the party. It had 4 hens, 5lb of sausage, 5lb of andoille, and 5lb of tasso. We let mom have the first bowl. It was DELICIOUS!!! My nephew is a GREAT cook!!

I took pictures of mom with everybody at the party. There were 50+ people there. I won't post all the pictures but I will post some. The picture above is mom and her brother, Vincent. Uncle Vincent is also the grandfather of my wonderful and handsome godson, Jonathan.The picture above is mom with Uncle Vincent and his wife and their son, Pokey, and his daughter. Also to the right is Jonathan's mom, Priss, and her husband, Fred.

This is my mom with her first cousin, Alice, and her husband, Lloyd. Aunt Alice and Uncle Lloyd are also the grandparents of my future son-in-law, Alex. ;^)

Here's mom with the anniversary couple, Uncle Curtis and Aunt Bobbie. Mom thought the party was for them. By the way, I love all of my family but Uncle Curtis is my favorite uncle. He had a place of honor at my wedding and I even stopped to kiss him on my way out of the church after we were pronounced husband and wife. He's such a sweetheart!

Above and below are pictures of mom with her boyfriend, Elvin. Elvin is my dad's first cousin. He is a good guy. I think they are in love!
Here is mom with her goddaughter, Deanie. She is my dad's sister's daughter (my first cousin) and everybody has always said we are alot alike!Here is our bunch! From left to right: Tom, me, Brittanie, Amber (Randy's daughter), Kathy (Randy's wife), Randy, Clayton (my mother's son), mom, Arthurine (my mother's son's wife), Taylor (Tammie's oldest daughter), Lyndsie (Tammie's youngest daughter), Katie, Tammie, and Eddie (Tammie's ex-husband)Mom and Elvin having the first dance of the night.
Aunt Alice and Uncle Lloyd were burning up the dancefloor all night. They are REALLY good dancers! It was so fun watching them dance.
Here is Brittanie dancing with her handsome Paran (Randy). That's Aunt Alice and Uncle Lloyd in the background.
Everybody else was dancing with mom, so Katie had to take her turn.

Katie was jealous and having fits when Uncle Elmer (my other favorite uncle and my daddy's youngest brother) started dancing with my mom.
This picture was taken right after the one above. They were laughing because Katie was so mad that mom was dancing with Uncle Elmer that she flopped down on the floor in protest.
Here is mom dancing with Uncle Lloyd.

Here is mom dancing with my handsome nephew, Randy. Can you tell she loves him or what? She was so proud to be dancing with him.

Cha-Cha now yall! Here is Taylor and Lyndsie (Tammie's daughters) and my cousin, Tracy, doing the Cha-Cha Slide. Taylor and Lyndsie were so adorable doing it that I had to get a picture. They are so pretty!

All in all, we had a GREAT time. Randy and Kathy worked their behinds off. Tracy, Kellie, and Aunt Diane made the rice. Tammie picked up the cake. Randy and Kathy did the rest and paid half of everything. They were incredible. Mom was so touched. My mother's son and his wife told everyone at the party that they didn't find out about it until Thursday. They told mom they didn't contribute to the party because they didn't know about it. Well they didn't contribute towards daddy's funeral at all....not a dime towards the flowers or anything. So why would I think he would want to help with this? He is lucky he was invited at all. But it shows how selfish they really are. It was mom's night and they went around griping to everybody who would listen all night long. Truly sad. But in spite of their stupidity, everybody had a great time. I'm soooooo glad we did it!!

On the way home, we went through New Orleans. I took some pictures but that will have to wait for another post as I'm VERY far behind on my typing and need to get back to work. I just couldn't wait to get my party pictures on my blog!

Good weekend!

We have had a pretty good weekend. Brittanie had a rifle team competition Saturday morning so I had to get her to school by 6:15am. She did really well in standing position but didn't want to talk about the other two positions so I guess that says it all. But that afternoon, I took her and her best friend, William, to see a movie. They went to see Fun with Dick and Jane and I went to see The Ringer. Both of our movies stunk but at least we were out of the house and there were some funny parts to our movies that made them tolerable. But I will say for anyone who reads this....wait till these movies come out on video. I'm glad we saw them as a matinee and didn't pay $8 a piece to see them. After the movie, I dropped Brittanie and William off at the mall for an hour and then we came home. Sunday, I typed and Tom worked. Brittanie watched Katie and did laundry for us. Our beloved Panthers shut out the New York Giants. It was the first time since 1980 that a home team has been shut out in the playoffs. As for the Giants, it was their first time being shut out at home in the play offs since 1943. Way to go Panthers! Our defense is awesome. But we will be facing an even tougher defense next week.....the Chicago Bears. I am glad we will be at my mom's for that one so we can leave Tom alone to scream at the game.

We had a good day spending quality time with each other once Tom got home. Katie and Brittanie love to aggravate one another. You would swear they are the same age. Katie points her finger at Brittanie and tells her "Get a grip!" She's 3 going on 16.

My sweet husband even went out at 10pm and filled my van up with gas because he knows I have a big day tomorrow. He doesn't want anyone to know it but he is sooooooooo sweet.

I just love my family!

We have a big week ahead of us. Tuesday, I'm working the election for Lexington School District #4 school board seat that was vacated when Jim Kinard became a county councilman. Wednesday and Thursday I have to type. Friday we are picking Brittanie and Justin up from school at 11:30 and hitting the road for Louisiana. Because we are leaving that early, we will probably drive all the way to Baton Rouge and stay in a hotel there. That way we are only a half hour from where the party will be on Saturday so we can sleep late and not have to rush or drive alot and be tired during the party. This is one trip that I really am looking forward to. Mom has no clue this party is for her. She thinks it is a 45th wedding anniversary party for my favorite uncle and his wife. I can't wait to see her face when she realizes the party is for her. I will definitely post pictures when I get back.

My 80's heart throb

I was looking at the myspace page of one of Brittanie's friends from Grace and it said her 80's heart throb was John Stamos. Well I love all things 80's so I decided to take the test. I had to laugh when I saw my result. That's a pretty accurate test. I just can't resist those brainy computer geeks!!

Your 80s Heartthrob Is

Bill Gates

Who's Your 80's Heartthrob?

What a busy Tuesday!

Monday we took down all the Christmas decorations, boxed them up, and back to the attic they went. Tuesday is the first day completely back to normal and boy was it busy. Tom started out the morning with an optometrist appointment. He had been telling me his eyes were blurry when he tries to see distances. So I made an appointment for him to see Brittanie's eye doctor. Well we thought the appointment was at 10....it was actually 9:30. So he couldn't see Brittanie's doctor. But the doctor he got was nice anyway. Turns out, Tom needs glasses for driving and other instances where he needs to see long distances. He will get them in 2 to 3 weeks. It's funny, I used to joke and say I married the only guy at PCC that didn't wear glasses.....Christians seem to have bad eyes. Well now my sweet PCC man will have glasses. I hate the thought of anything covering his beautiful green eyes but lucky for me he will mainly wear them to drive.

Brittanie had rifle team practice at 1pm. The problem was I had a doctor's appointment in northeast Columbia at 1pm. So I told her we HAVE to leave at 12:15 and I would just have to drop her and Justin off early. Well I should know by now telling a Sightler 12:15 means 12:30 in Sightler language. So we didn't leave the house until 12:30. There was an accident on the way and I didn't get to my appointment until 1:20. I had Katie with me because it was an appointment with her ENT. I figured since she was with me, I would ask him to check her ears because one has been draining. Well lucky for us, he was running late too so we didn't wait that long. We were in the waiting room and Katie, being the social butterfly she is, was talking to a lady telling her all about how she took eggs, brownies, candy, and cube steak into her room and got a spanking for it. Then that woman got called to the back and she came back to my side of the room and started talking to the woman next to me, who was there with her husband. The woman asked her what she got for Christmas. Katie told her a doggie. (With all the toys she got for Christmas, the one she liked the best was the little doggie Melanie bought her.) Well they kept talking about other stuff. She told this woman about her taking that stuff in her room and getting a spanking. Then the woman asked her again what she got for Christmas....meaning what else did you get besides the dog, but all she said was "So what did you get for Christmas?" Well Katie is Tom's child. Her answer was an attitude filled "I JUST told you THAT!" Everybody in the waiting room started laughing. They couldn't get over how smart she was. Smart or smart alek? LOL We went to the back and saw Dr. Thompson and he looked in her ears first, gave me a script for drops, and then moved on to me. It was my first time seeing him so he was looking me over....ears first. Well when he looked in my mouth, Katie said "Hey! You didn't look in my mouth!" So he looked in her mouth. Then he took that little thingy that opens up your nostrils and looked in my nose and Katie said "Hey! You didn't look in my nose!" So he shined the light in her nose. Then she looked on the wall and he had a stethescope hanging there. She told Dr. Thompson "You need to listen to me breathe." He said "No, I leave that to family doctors and internists." She said "Dr. Bogan listens to me breathe." She loves Dr. Bogan. She pretends to be his nurse all the time. It is so cute. But it was getting late and she was getting cranky because she was hungry and sleepy. Dr. Thompson is going to fix my septum where my jerk of an ex-boyfriend broke the tip of my nose. He is also going to do a laser turbinate reduction and hopefully that will help everything work properly so I can get off Afrin, get off CPAP, and not need tubes in my ears. Because of the CPAP, I have to be in the hospital for 23 hour observation. So I'm having my surgery February 7th. Anyway, I left the office, went to the bank, went got Katie and I something to eat, headed to Swansea and picked up Brittanie and Justin a half hour late from rifle team practice, dropped them off at home and then headed to my class in Lexington as I'm now chairman of the Gaston District #2 voting precinct. So I had to learn the do's and don'ts and how to work the electronic machines. I got home at 8pm. I was exhausted! What a long day.

Brittanie and Tom are going to Newberry Pistol Club tonight with her assistant rifle team coach and his son, who is also one of Brittanie's best friends. The coach and his son are members there and want Brittanie to join. From what I understand, they have a Jr. Olympic marksman coach there. So if she joins and goes diligently and keeps her grades up, she could get a scholarship for this! I guess we will see how it went when they get back.

Happy 2006!!!

We had quite a New Year's Eve. Brittanie had a few friends from JROTC over and they watched a couple of movies, played X-Box, jumped on the trampoline, and shot fireworks.....catching the grass on fire a couple of times, as well as a tree once. Here are a few pictures from her celebration:

This is Erin, William and Matthew jumping on the trampoline.

This is Kegan. It took ALOT of doing to get a picture of him. He is camera shy.

Our friend, Frank, called and invited us to their house to do fireworks. Tom wanted to escape the teenage mayhem at our house so Frank's call was just what the doctor ordered. He and Katie went there and had a blast. Their fireworks were obviously bigger and better than what we had. Tom was able to take some pictures with my new camera and I am so impressed with how wonderful these pictures came out. I LOVE my new camera. Here are some pictures he took:

This one is my favorite!!

This is Katie with Frank's dad, Mr. Frank Sr.
Here's Katie with Frank and Lynn's daughter, Rhiannon.