Boy Scouts Flag Placement

On Saturday, James' Boy Scout troop participated in the Flag Placement at the Marietta National Cemetery. It's an annual event held on the Saturday before Memorial Day where flags are placed at the soldiers' tombstones. This was James' 4th or 5th time participating in the event. I had never attended, so I decided to join them this year.


After placing a flag, the scout is supposed to salute. Some scouts even say a few words.





My husband - oh, how I love a man in uniform!!




It's pretty impressive seeing all the white tombstones with an American flag by each one. Unfortunately the camera battery died and I wasn't able to play around with other shots of the whole cemetery.

Happy Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance for those who died in our nation's service. The very first Memorial Day was observed on May 30, 1868 to honor the Union & Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. Living down in Georgia now, I thought this was interesting - the South didn't acknowledge Memorial Day until after World War 1, when the day was changed to honor Americans who died in any war.

My Grandfather didn't die in service, but I wanted to honor him today just the same. Here he is, Robert W. Robbins, known by his friends as Kelly.


He served in the US Navy during World War II. He told us about this one time when his ship came across a sinking German vessel. His ship was rescuing the German soldiers and pulling them up onto their boat. After a while, they noticed that some of the men that they were rescuing looked familiar. It turns out that some of the sailors on his ship were pushing these guys off , back into the ocean. Then the Germans swam around to the side my Grandfather was on and were helped back on again.



Here he is with my grandmother, Sylvia.




This picture was taken the last time we saw him in November, 2008. He passed away in February of 2009. During the last 5 or 6 years of his life, we took the kids down to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with him.

Thanks goes out to all the men and women who have served our country and helped to keep us safe.

Double Digits

Today my baby girl turns 10! Here's a look at Hannah's past birthdays.



May 29, 2001 - Hannah joins the family.




May 29, 2002 - Hannah's first birthday. She's not quite sure what to do with the cake. This was cake on her actual birthday. We had a joint birthday party at the neighborhood pavilion with some little friends who all had May birthdays earlier that month.



May, 2003. This picture was taken at her 2nd birthday party. We had another joint birthday party with her May friends.



May, 2004 - We rented a bouncy castle and had a cookout for Hannah's 3rd birthday party.



May, 2005 - We had Hannah's 4th birthday party at American Adventures theme park in Marietta.


May, 2006 -Hannah's 5th birthday party was at the Cobb Aquatic Center.


May, 2007 - Hannah's birthday party was at Paulding Gymnastics.


May, 2008 - We had a "Hannah in Concert" themed party at home.



May, 2009 - Hannah's 8th birthday party was at Blue Skies Riding Academy.


Hannah had a slumber party for her 9th birthday party. We did spa pedicures, facials, and watched a movie.

Happy 10th birthday, Hannah! We love you, baby girl!

Another One of my Favorite Things

Here is another one of my favorite things. If I was Oprah, I would be giving away my favorite things to those who read my blog. But I'm not. I'm unemployed. With no extra funds. If I win the lottery, I will have some give-aways of things I like. But I don't buy lottery tickets. Oh well..... maybe one of these days....

Anyway.....I LOVE the Eye-Fi wireless memory card. It allows you to instantly upload pictures from your camera. All you have to do is turn your camera on and the pictures automatically upload to your computer. I am not very tech savvy, so this has been wonderful! I would venture to say that if I didn't have one, I would not be blogging as much as I do. Before we got the Eye-Fi memory card, I would take pictures, but wait for my husband to upload them to the computer. That sometimes took a few weeks. Now, I upload pictures the same day, all by myself!



We have the Explore X2, 8 GB card. It really has simplified the whole camera/taking pictures thing for me. It organizes the pictures by date. It's worth checking out.

Souvenirs from Grandma & Grandpa

My parents stopped by this week on their way back home after their 3 week cruise. After a cool trip like the one they were on, they brought back souvenirs for us.



The brought Hannah this small umbrella and fan from Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. They are the perfect size for American Girl dolls!



Now for a Geography & History lesson. The Canary Islands are located off of Africa. Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands. Canary Islands translates to "Island of the Dogs" in Latin. The so-called dogs that they were named for were actually monk seals, and not dogs at all. The Canary Islands are part of Spain.




James got some volcanic rocks from Mt. Etna in Sicily. He has always liked rocks and such.



This map shows were Sicily is in relations to Italy.

Here you can see where Mt. Etna is located in Sicily.

And here is a photo of the mountain itself. Mt. Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Footage from one of it's more recent eruptions was used in the 2005 Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith. James was pretty impressed with this bit of information.



James also received an "Evil Eye" from Turkey. This was something he requested. It's often referred to as the evil eye, but it's actually a charm to ward off evil looks.

Here's a map of Turkey. The charm was purchased in Kusadasi. I went to Turkey in 1993. I think Kusadasi is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Turkey is located in both the continent of Europe and Asia.


Mom & Dad gave the kids t-shirts from Turkey, too.



I got some spices and honey from Crete.


Chris got a small bottle of Raki, also from Crete. Raki is a non-sweet, anise flavored spirit.

Crete is the largest of the Greek Islands. Here you can see where Crete is located in comparison to Greece & Turkey.



Mom & Dad are headed back to Indiana. It was nice getting to spend some time with them. We'll see them next month on their turf.

Sleepovers

A friend of mine still has to teach through the rest of the week. We're helping her out by keeping her son tomorrow during the day. Since it's our first day of summer vacation, I told her that we would watch her son, but he HAD to spend the night. I didn't want to wake up early to let him in the house. Her son is Hannah's age, but good friends with James. The three kids play well together, but more often than not, the boys will decide to do something that Hannah doesn't want to do and then she gets mad. As a preventative measure, I let Hannah have a friend spend the night, too.

Now let me back up a little bit. Do you remember my Mother's Day post about my parents going on the 3 week cruise? Well they are done and are staying here, too. They arrived yesterday and will be heading back to Indiana in the morning.

I LOVE my house, but it only has 3 bedrooms. Since my parents are here, Hannah has given up her bedroom and moved in to her brother's room. So for our sleepovers tonight, we had to do some creative rearranging. The boys wanted to sleep in the basement so they could play lots of video games. (Yeah, like that was going to happen!) The girls wanted to set up one of our tents and sleep in the basement.


In the end, I decided to let the boys sleep in the basement. Look, they have plenty of room to spread out their Pokemon cards! (That's what their doing if you can't tell)



And the girls are sleeping in the tent, out on the deck. We did check to make sure the weather was clear for tonight. They asked me what they should do if it starts to rain. We told them "Come inside".


It's time for lights out! Good night!

Last Day of School

The last day of school. It's barely a half day of school today for my 13 year old. His school day starts at 9:15 and today he will be dismissed at 12:30! He usually gets out at 4:15. Hannah's school day starts at 7:50 and will get out at 1:30 today. She almost has a full day - she normally gets out at 2:20.

I always have lots of good intentions for summer. Usually they fall wayside. Will this year be different? I think I am going to continue setting my alarm each day. During the school year, I wake up at 6:15. I'm thinking of setting it to 7:00 or so for the summer. In past summers, I haven't set an alarm at all unless I needed to be somewhere and then before you know it, a good part of the day has been wasted.


Since I have been trying to lose weight, (I'm down 12 pounds so far!) I am going to make an effort to exercise in the morning. I am hoping that by setting a good example, the rest of the family will follow my lead.


We've signed the kids up for some summer camps. James has a week of Boy Scout camp in June and a week of band camp in July. Hannah is going to a short dance camp (only 2 hours a day) while James is at Boy Scout camp and will be going to Girl Scout resident camp for a week in July which overlaps with James' band camp. If she makes dance company again next year, she will have an intensive dance camp in July, too.



The neighborhood pool opens this weekend. I foresee some afternoons at the pool with friends. This year James is old enough to go on his own. I'm not sure I'm ready for that.



The kids will be spending a week with their grandparents in Indiana while my husband and I go away on our anniversary trip next month. We are also trying to find some good weekend getaways to do.


For part of the summer, James will be taking care of his science teacher's class ferrets. We had them over winter break in February. They were lots of fun - though smelly. Not sure where we'll be putting them when they're here.



And no summer vacation would be complete without some fighting (between James & Hannah) and yelling (me directed at fighting children).

Date Night - Dinner and a Movie

My husband and I went on a date this weekend with another couple. We saw a matinee showing of Bridesmaids. I can't remember the last time we went to a movie without the kids! We used to go on dates every month or two, but with our children getting older (9 & 13) they were past needing a babysitter, and we didn't quite feel comfortable leaving them at home for long periods of time.

The movie was hilarious! We were laughing out loud for almost the entire movie. It was a bit raunchy in parts, but nothing we haven't seen before. It's definitely a female version of The Hangover or movies like that, except I liked this one. I didn't like The Hangover at all. Must be a guy thing with that one.

So after the movie, we went home and picked up the kids for the dinner part of the evening. They had been home alone for a couple of hours and they needed to eat, too. We went to La Parilla, a local Mexican eatery where a friend of ours was singing at that night. We had to wait a while for a table since we had a large group, but we enjoyed our evening in spite of that. Good food, good music, and good friends. It was a great date night!

Another Blueberry Pie

I tried a new recipe for blueberry pie this afternoon. This recipe was from Betty Crocker. I used frozen blueberries since that's what I had on hand. The recipe used flour as the thickening agent instead of tapioca or cornstarch. I used a refrigerated pie crust that I had, too, rather than making the crust from scratch. Maybe one of these days I'll give homemade crust a try.



The filling leaked out a bit on one side. As I mentioned before, I am not a big fan of blueberry pie, but this one was pretty good. I even ate my small piece without vanilla ice cream or whipped cream! It was still nice & warm. Yummy!

Anniversary Flowers

My husband doesn't bring me flowers very often, but I did get some on our anniversary. He said that he had to so I could blog about it!



We don't usually do a lot for our anniversary, but we are marking this milestone one with a kid-free trip this summer. I'm sure I'll be blogging about that later. Thanks for all the nice anniversary wishes here and on FB!

What am I reading?

It's been a slow week for reading. I guess you could say life got in the way. Between dance recitals and a visiting mother-in-law, I just didn't get much time to sit and read.

Since I posted last week, I read book 4 in the Flower Shop series. Another cute, light read.



I finished Katie Fforde's "A Perfect Proposal". Loved it! Definitely up there as one of my favorite books by her. British chick lit is one of my favorite genres.



I did not finish "A Wrinkle in Time". I read the first 8 pages (actually it was less than that because it started with page 3) before book club. I had waited closer to the date of the book club to read it so it would be fresh in mind. When I first joined the book club, I would read the books months in advance. But with all the reading that I do, the plots and details would get all mixed up with other books. So my philosophy of late has been to read the book the week of or before we discuss it. I started it just 2 days before we met and that was right in the middle of the dance weekend and visiting mother-in-law. Right before I went to book club, I went to SparkNotes.com to read a summary about it. After reading that, I had very little interest in reading the book at all. Maybe that's why I never read it when I was a kid??? It was amusing to hear from the other ladies at book club, that several of them enjoyed it more when they read it as a child than when they reread it for book club! I sort of feel badly for not liking it because it's the 1963 Newberry Award winning book!





I am now reading book 5 in the Flower Shop series. This is definitely more my speed.


Happy Reading!