Sunday, August 27, 2006

Football & Baptisms

That title pretty much sums up my weekend! Friday night, we went to the Station Camp High School Football Game. It was a blast. Lincoln had more fun than just about anyone! Everytime something good would happen, he went WILD. This picture doesn't do it justice.

Jeremy, Daniel, and Pomai taught Lincoln how to bellow like a Bison... as if they know!

Sunday morning we had our annual baptisms at church. It was awesome, besides JJ accidently renouncing his faith... but that's another story! Here is a cute shot of Aaron dismissing us in prayer. And lastly, here is a picture of OUR LAND! This is only a snippet of it, but it sure is beautiful!
Truthfully, the weekend held much more than just football and baptisms. Friday made one year since my daddy passed away. Maybe as a result of that fact, I had the worst migraine in the history of my life on Saturday and spent the entire day in bed. Argh. I should probably blog about my dad. I'll work on that.

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Friday, August 11, 2006

American Idol, baby... part 1

Tonight - well, technically LAST night - a bunch of us went to the American Idol concert. We have been looking forward to this for months. The original plan was for Jenni to take Abbey as a little girl's night. Sonya, Jackie, and I were not having it. We had to go, too. So, we shelled out the money and started counting the days.

This morning at 5am, Lincoln woke up with a raging fever. The poor child was miserable. Then, Abbey woke up with one eye swollen shut. Once we got her eyes open, we found that it was incredibly infected. Yikes. Unfortunately, I had to drag all three kids around Hendersonville to meet their teachers. It was meet the teachers day. I wasn't just being intentionally cruel.

As the day progressed, so did Abbey's eye infection as well as Lincoln's fever. So, at 4pm I took them to the doctor's office. The doctor shocked us with the news that Aaron and the 2 kids have a funky virus that effects people with either an eye infection or a high fever with sore throat... or both. Anyway, it's highly contageous, and since Abbey is at that age where if her eye itches, she scratches it and then forgets to immediately wash her hands, I thought it would be best for her to stay home. It was a difficult decision to make, but I didn't want to risk getting everyone else sick. Kim Rollins eagerly gobbled up Abbey's ticket - yay! Once we got to the concert, I teared up everytime I saw a little girl with her mommy. Wah! I felt so bad, but I know in my heart that it was the right decision. Aaron rented The Shaggy Dog for the kids to watch.

After getting home at 5:30 from the doctor's office, I didn't have time to even change clothes before the concert. Kim picked me up in a torrential downpour to head downtown. We had a neat lightening show on the way there!

We ended up with great seats! Thanks, Jenni!!!!! Enough talking... here are the pictures. Three blogs follow this one!

I have found it increasingly hard to take a good shot of oneself while holding the camera. Case in point below...

Kim is glad to be out of the house, and Jenni is glad to be in the same building with Taylor Hicks. Jackie is semi-excited to be there, but very excited to be there with her girls! Doesn't Sonya look like a two-headed monster, kinda?
The concert begins with hometown girl, Mandisa!!!!! She was AMAZING, and looked beautiful!!!!

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American Idol, baby... part 2


The best part of the night was rocker Chris Daughtry. Oh. My. Word. He will go far in life.

Chris pointed out his biggest fans - us! (Just kidding - we were not in that section, duh! Look where I was taking the picture from.)

Our reaction to Chris...

His reaction to us reacting to him...

There wasn't a whole lot cheesy about Chris. He was 100% cool.

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American Idol, baby... part 3


Finally, Taylor comes out... what 3.5/5 of us have been waiting for! The crowd went wild. The place erupted in applause. He put on a great show, that wacky guy. His passion was not lost - people got their money's worth. Most people, anyway...

These people, for sure. Look at those happy faces! They love Taylor! (Look at the pride on Jenni's face. Ah, young love.) This girl, on the other hand, was less than thrilled.
Undeterred, these girls partied on! Soul Patrol, for sure!

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American Idol, baby... part 4


Nearing the end of the show, the whole group performs. The cheese factor was high, but 4/5 of us barely noticed.

Taking a bow...

The REAL American Idols...

And the FAKE American Idol...How shocked (and more than a little disturbed) were we to walk out of the GEC to find none other than Corey Clark standing on the curb trying to sell himself. No, really. Kim was going to get her picture taken with him, but you HAD to BUY something in order to do that. So, I yelled out his name and got him to look. Later, as we stood to the side and made fun of him, he tried to talk us into buying his CD. NO WAY! I wanted so badly to ask him if he actually follows the Idols around from city to city, trying to capitolize on their momentum, but I was too tired to get into it with him. The sad thing is that a few people actually purchased a few things from him and had their picture taken. Sick and wrong.

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Thursday, August 10, 2006

American Idol, baby... addendum


This is how far back we were from the stage!

Elliott rocked. He was so cute! He has really blossomed as a performer over the summer. Also of note: Ace was REALLY good. His voice was spot-on. I always thought he was good and just made weird song choices.
Lisa was ok. The girl can no-doubt sing... but she was just a little boring.
Paris cracked us up. She was a dancing queen... and I'm glad Abbey wasn't there to see some of her moves!!!
Elliot and Chris did a duet that was oh so great.
Kellie Pickler drove me crazy. The girl talked so much and didn't make a lick of sense. I wondered if she was on drugs at one point... then realized it was just "her".
Katherine looked stunning, but you could really tell she had been sick with brochitis. Also, she had a broken foot, so she only did 2 songs.
Bucky was a lowlight, to be kind. He was just painful to watch.
Chicken Little and Melissa weren't there. Weird, but a relief. I was NOT looking forward to enduring Melissa. I was, however, looking forward to getting up to get some $3.25 water while she sang... which never happened and so I died of thirst the rest of the concert!

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Thursday, August 03, 2006

An explanation of this picture...


It started like this: After a drive to KY that should've been 5 hours turned into 7 (read previous "What is God Trying to Tell Me" blog for explanation) and resulted in us not getting in bed until around 2:30am, I woke up on my 35th birthday quite disheveled. Mom was in the middle of renovating much of my childhood home, thus making a good portion of the house a little dangerous for the little ones.

My 10 yr old niece was staying with us and helping out with the kids so I decided we would go to my aunt and uncle's pool to hang out for the day. I discovered, however, that I had left Lincoln's swim diapers at home in Nashville. Hmmm... Morgan needed me to drive her to my sister's to get her swimsuit anyway, so I asked her if she would mind running into Walmart and picking me up a package.

Now, I will be honest with you. You can go to Walmart in Prestonsburg, KY on any given day and find a diverse clientele. You either have the people who have taken time to groom themselves and are there pick up a few quick items because Walmart is pretty much "it" in the town... OR, you have the people that, God bless their sweet hearts, seem to have rolled out of bed, and are there for the sport of beating their children while they wander up and down the aisles. Had I gone in that day, I would've unfortunately fallen into the second category... minus the beating part, though that may have occurred as a by-product of my kids' sauciness. But, I digress.

I had on my nifty swimsuit with a t-shirt over it... hair slicked back in a hapless ponytail... van full of kids. I pulled up in front of Walmart and let Morgan out. After sitting there just a few minutes, I looked over and saw my ex-boyfriend and his daughter walking across the parking lot. At the same time, Morgan came walking out of the store. To my horror, she said something to my ex and his daughter... then he started walking back to his car as if getting something for Morgan. Huh? Morgan halfway got in the car and I briefly thought about speeding off before she got her second leg in the van... but then she shut the door and there were lots of people in the pedestrian crossing. Next thing I know, Morgan rolled down her window and my ex has stuck his entire HEAD in the passenger side of my van. Suddenly, I was very self-conscious of my leg pretty much showing, my slicked-back hair, and the make-up smeared all over my eyes. Why? I have NO idea. I guess I would feel the same way if it had been ANYONE I had gone to high school with and not seen for awhile. Ya know? Anyway, he looked up and realized it was me she was in the car with and gave a little shock and then said "Well, hey, how are you doing?" I tried not to sound too sarcastic as I said "Oh, just GREAT."

It turns out that he was Morgan's softball coach and had her all-star uniform to give to her. Fine. As I drove away, I silently prayed to God that He would somehow let me run into this person (who didn't look like time had been any better to him, I might add) again WITH makeup ON before my time I KY was through. I didn't think that was too much to ask.

So, that still does not explain the picture with the sombrero, does it?

After a day of swimming and receiving phone calls from all my loved ones wishing me a happy birthday, I went home to get ready for my mom, aunt, sister, niece, and kids to take me out to eat at the only Mexican place in Prestonsburg. It's a fun place and the food is actually really good!

After finishing our meal, we sat around and just talked for awhile. I could kind of tell my family was stalling a little bit, and it occurred to me that maybe they were waiting for the servers to come and sing Happy Birthday to me. Awww, how sweet! While waiting, I looked up and saw my ex's wife and daughter walk in. Hmmm... Next thing I see is my ex walking in and going to their table. Ha! Thanks, God! I had my makeup on and was dressed pretty ok!

Just as I was sitting there thinking how good God is to care about SILLY little things like that, that don't matter at all really, I catch a flurry of activity out of the corner of my eye. Oh, no! I expected a fun little birthday song in Spanish... but a big ole sobrero???? Mmmm, and fried ice cream. That could make up for the big hat.

Imagine my horror, though, when the seemingly drunk waiters (only half-kidding) proceeded to use my spoon to DAB WHIPPED CREAM on my face while singing a version of Happy Birthday I had never heard before and hope to never hear again. I sat in embarassment as they would not let me wipe the whip cream off until the song was over and everyone in the restaurant had taken a good little gander. Yipee.

So, that's the story of the picture of the sombrero hat, thrilling as it may be.

I want to go on record as saying that the fact that the person in this embarassing story is my ex is really of no value. I would be equally as embarassed running into anyone from high school... at both Walmart and the Mexican place. Now, I'm not an easily embarassed person... and I guess that's not even a good word for it. It was simply unfortunate. But it makes for a cute story. Ha!