It's the most wonderful time of the year.....

FYI......that was not the picture I meant to put up on Mrs. 4444's link, but I unfortunately hit buttons impulsively sometimes.  

Really?  Cause this old girl has a sinus infection and is not feeling so very wonderful.  In fact for the last two days, I've been up at 3 AM......you read it right!  When you can't breathe, you just can't sleep.  Headachy, face achy, just achy from the neck up!

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Oh, yea!  We interrupt this gripe session because......

It's Friday and I may be late and this may not even get published, but I'm trying to form fragments in my poor old, sick, tired brain.  Go over and visit Mrs. 4444 who is the Friday Fragments host and see what bits of thoughts others have had floating around in their brains this week.

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Backing up to our Austin trip, we visited my baby brother and his wife and two girls who recently moved there.....

AND our nephew.

We all went to lunch at a wonderful restaurant called Maudy's.  I can't say enough about the food except YUM!

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For the record, let it be known that we are officially almost completely decorated for Christmas on the last day of November!  No pictures for now, but this is pushing me into Christmas much more quickly than I like.  Every year, I say NO TREE.....and the Superhero puts the tree up and gives me the you are so Scrooge look.  Then I have to give in and put on the ornaments....they're on and things are looking Christmassy!

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Like many of you, I got the message that I had reached my limit for free pictures on the blog.  That just won't work for me because I love pictures AND I'm printing my blog each year into a book.  So I paid the fee and it is monthly now.  I know some said it was an annual fee. 

The Superhero said I could just go back and delete the early years of posts.....I said "you don't even know me!"  He sighed. 

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Our church is on the Christmas parade route and this year we are setting up a table with cookies and hot chocolate.  It should be fun and a nice outreach too.  That's tomorrow night.....the first day of December in case you missed that little fact.

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I'm done folks!  Have a good weekend!

Our Thanksgiving Baby.....

I'm back and I'm tired!  Five days on the road on the Austin trip then a week preparing for Thanksgiving would have been tiring, but then........we got the call that the baby was coming early!  

By the way, more on the Austin trip to come, but I just have to get this baby post done!  I want to show you all the pictures, but I'll try to keep it to a few.  You know....like a grandma?

Saturday, November 17......I decided to do my Thanksgiving baking and made chocolate caramel brownies, a pumpkin cheesecake and a pound cake.  For the brownies, I can thank Pinterest, the cheesecake, Paula Deen (and the fact that a friend had it at a dinner recently), the pound cake is an old recipe my sister in law gave me years ago.  

The strange thing is that I obviously had a feeling we could be leaving early because I am nothing if not a last minute kind of girl!  

That night the phone rang late and I knew something was up when I answered.  Our son gave us the news that our daughter in law's water had broken and as soon as a friend got there to take care of Charley, they were off to the hospital....which incidentally, is an hour away from their home.  We went to bed and the Superhero slept while I made imaginary lists in my head of all I had to do before we could leave.  

Sunday morning, we got up early and started going in high gear!  Loaded the motorhome, got all the Thanksgiving food in the freezer and refrigerator, threw clothes together, bathed the dogs....whew!  I'm tired just remembering.  About 11:30 a.m. we got on the road for a five hour drive, praying all the while for the safe birth of our newest grandson.

We got texts with the updates about how things were progressing.  Then we got the text that Claudia was going in for a c section.  We prayed even more than we had been praying....for mama and baby!

Thankfully mama and baby survived an awful delivery and Charley survived staying with his grandparents for a few days!  Wink, wink....actually we had a good time spoiling him and forming a special bond!

And without further going on and on.....here's what you're really waiting for......

Charley was consoled with our dogs...

You mean that's my brother??

I love him!

Ya think he looks like me?

Proud Pappy, Daddy and baby 

Two peas in a pod, waiting for Mommy, Daddy and baby to come home

Charley wanted to be wrapped up and held like the baby so Nana gladly obliged

Wonderful Thanksgiving with much to be thankful for!

Mommy with sweet baby John Daniel

Peaceful

Wow, this is neat!

Fun with Nana and Pappy at the park

Climbing trees 

Happy for Pappy to rescue him from the tree

We are indeed thankful for our many blessings both brand new and ones we've had for many years.  God has blessed!

We interrupt .....

I must interrupt this trip story to bring the exciting news that our newest grandson was born on November 18!  We rushed to get ready and get down to keep big brother and everything else had to go by the wayside.  

Pictures to come!  Right now two tired grandparents are going to nap while the two year old is napping!  

A trip and the providence of God.....

What started as a nice trip to visit friends and family ended in a lesson in the providence of God.  What an interesting few days AND a wonderful visit with friends and family.

I have been wanting to visit my friend who lives in Austin, TX and has a new baby, and my brother and family and nephew.

My sister and I decided to drive instead of fly.  There were really good reasons to drive, or so it seemed.  Oh, did I mention its a 12 hour drive and we drove it in one day?  Did I also mention that we had a slight lapse of good judgement and common sense?  No, I probably didn't mention those insignificant facts!  We knew it was a long drive, but didn't know what was ahead and that's a really good thing.

First my sister, Cathy, was taking her car and had taken it in for some work to the dealership.  Her son, my nephew works there and was orchestrating the work.  Cathy told him she needed the car at least by the day before the trip so we could load our stuff and be ready to leave.  I drove over on Thursday, the day before we were set to leave.  

The car wasn't ready and the sister was having a meltdown......it wasn't pretty folks.  Dickie, her son, brought home a demo for us to drive.  Unfamiliar car + women driving = well, potential disaster.  We got the car late in the evening before we were to leave the next day and got a quick tutorial.....and may I say my nephew was very patient.

I actually liked the car; it had lots of room to load our luggage......not that we take much.  Car in driveway, we started gathering our things together to load the next morning, then sat to have a drink and relax.

Next morning, we picked up Mary Grace, sister of Emily, friend who lives in Austin.  Little Grady was less than happy that mama was leaving.

What a long, eventful day!  After driving through Alabama and Mississippi, we arrived at a rest area in Louisiana.  My sister took over driving at that point and almost had a wreck when we were stopping for lunch, drove for a while.  We stopped for a quick bite at the busiest Chic Fil A in America, then got back on the road and finally arrived in Texas.  God had his hand on us and we were safe and not a scratch on the car!

Here we are celebrating that we made it to Texas.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Houston at rush hour and the GPS kept directing us away from traffic delays into other traffic delays.......we drove around Houston in awful traffic for over two hours.  I wanted to roll my window down and scream Why would anyone want to live here and do this every day???  We finally got to a place we could get off the road and get a bite to eat and use the facilities and I was so relieved.  It was dark now and had been for a lot of the time we were getting to know the not so nice side of Houston.  Mary Grace took over and in about an hour and a half we finally arrived at our hotel.  We were too tired to take Mary Grace to Emily's so we all spent the night there and slept in a coma until morning.

We finally got to Emily's and were so excited to see her, Jeff and Georgia Grace!!

Sisters

Mama, Daddy and Georgia Grace

I know this post is heavy on pictures, but how can you not put up pictures of such a sweet baby?  

So we ended days one and two.......

This is too long to go on, I'll finish later.

Oh, one final note....because Cathy's car wasn't ready and we drove a demo that I fell in love with, we have finally decided on a new car for me!  I said it was all the providence of God!

Election 2012

Vote, please vote!  No matter what your political affiliation or your political preference......just vote.

This is a very important election year and I am praying that God has mercy on our nation.  

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.  Psalm 33:12

Here's to Happy!

Happy Anniversary to the Superhero!  Our seventeenth......how quickly the time has gone by.....I've blogged about our wedding a few times so I'm going to use some pictures I haven't used before.....enjoy.  While you enjoy the story, lift a glass to happy!


One important detail I don't think I've ever talked about on the blog is that the Superhero really planned the whole wedding.  He found and made the appointment with the caterer and all I had to do was say yes or no to the food choices.  They even made our beautiful cake.

We had talked about just going to our preacher's office and getting married without any ceremony and I really don't remember why we decided on a small wedding, but now I'm glad.  We were both nervous on the "big" day.

It was a beautiful day!  

The Superhero and I had dated for a long time before we were engaged and engaged a long time before we were married.  I was ever so slightly impatient  ready to get married long before we actually were, but looking back, that's one of the 
wise things about the Superhero.  We learned 
important things about each other and our children that could have been a problem if we hadn't 
gone slowly into the brave, new world of marriage.

So enjoy the pictures, I enjoyed choosing them!

This was immediately after the ceremony so we were giddy with relief!  


Cutting our cake.....I can't remember what was so funny.....can you see how the Superhero is just posed with his hand over mine?  Whatever was funny, the Superhero has a great smile and an even greater laugh.


We went to the mountains in North Carolina for our honeymoon and it was so cold!  Looking outside my window today, it's bright and sunny and hot!  I think that was one of the coldest Novembers in history.

Isn't this just a typical man???  Concentrating with the remote in hand.  Does everybody watch t.v. on their honeymoon?  So intently??


One of the things I love most about North Carolina are the waterfalls.  This is a beautiful fall and some nice person took our picture.  I'm not sure if you can tell, but my nose was nearly frozen.  The day after we were here, I had to go to the doctor with bronchitis.  On my honeymoon!  We were determined to have a good time anyway and we did.  I look at these pictures and think how young we looked and we were much older than most newlyweds.  

Even as cold as it was and as sick as I got, it was a great time.  We even had a tiny bit of snow which was a novelty for us Floridians.  

And as happy as that time was, we are so much happier seventeen years later if you don't count the times we want to kill each other.  God has blessed us beyond anything we could have ever asked or imagined.  

The Superhero is not just my husband, he's my best friend.

Happy Anniversary Superhero and may we have many more!

Lost.......found and other Friday adventures

So it's very late on Friday and I'm just doing Friday Fragments!  

Go on over to Mrs. 4444's place and join in the fun!  

Before I go into the week's antics and adventures, I want to say my prayers are with all who were in the path of Hurricane Sandy and are suffering devastating loss.  

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The week started off with a bang........I decided to try a new template and somehow disabled my blog.  I panicked.....I asked for advice on facebook and got some good answers and finally accidently got it back figured it out and got my blog back on track........I think.   Then, after all the smoke settled, I remembered that I have a test blog to do that very sort of thing....TEST out new stuff!  Maybe next time I'll remember it before I give myself an anxiety attack.

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The Superhero and I voted this week.......now if the political calls would just stop.  It's a relief to know we've voted, now we just pray for the results and ask God's mercy on our country.

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We also got two immunizations this week and considering I don't ever get them, it's a big deal!  I haven't had the flu shot in years, in fact, only once until now, but the Superhero convinced me I needed one.  That and the fact that our neighbor is a nurse and could make a home visit sealed the deal.  Next was the pertussis vaccination, which I vehemently said I would not get.  Once again, I was convinced by you know who to get one and we headed down to our local health department.........our doctor doesn't give them.  I was reading all the side effects out loud as we waited and by the time I got in to the nurse, I was quite sure I would start having seizures as soon as the poison vaccine entered my body.  

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I admit we ducked out on Halloween and took my MIL out to eat.  There was no candy at our house and the porch light was off, leaving a dark house.  Yes, I feel bad, but I'm almost over it.  I did wear my Halloween headband all day...

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It was a long week and there is lots more, but I'm tired and going to bed now!  Have a great weekend!