Fall Concerts

James had his "final" first concert of the year for band. He's in the Wind Symphony at MHS this year.

Tubas are on the far right.

James is on the far right - you can pick him out by his hair.

And the orchestra concert was the following week. Hannah was first chair cello for 2 of the 3 songs.

So proud of my musically talented babies!

Cotton Field

This past November, we went down to Statesboro, Georgia so James (and Hannah) could tour Georgia Southern University. We had to get up before the crack of dawn for the 3+ hour drive so we could get there by the 8:30 start time. On the drive home, we stopped by some cotton fields so Hannah, our budding photographer could take some photos. Here are MY photos of the cotton field.

My New Hobby

I started a new hobby about a year and a half ago. I have been reviewing products on Amazon. My sister got me hooked on this. I started with one FaceBook group. I've gotten to review all kinds of things. I order products for free or reduced prices and try them out. After a period of time, I leave my honest feedback in the form of a review on Amazon. After about a year of doing this, I started getting contacted by product sellers directly asking if I would review their items. Now I belong to at least 4 or 5 different review groups.

I receive at least one or two packages a day now. Here's a picture of our front hallway last week.

We reuse a lot of the boxes when possible. Last week was a little busy, but usually we crush the boxes down daily so they're not taking over the entry way!

It's been fun watching my Amazon ranking move up. When I started, I was ranked in the millions. My current ranking is under 10k.

I never promise to give a product a 4 or 5 star review. That's a big misconception with reviewing. In most cases, I do promise that if I can't give a 4 or 5 star review honestly, then I will contact the seller first to see if they can fix the situation. A lot of the sellers don't have first hand contact with their products once they arrive at the distribution facilities. One time I reviewed an item that didn't come with a power supply. I had extras at home and was able to test the product out anyway. But by contacting the seller, he found out that all of his items were shipped to the US without one.
He sent me one later and was able to fix all of his other products.

I've gotten to review all kinds of things. Lately, I have started getting to review jewelry and clothing. I love reviewing beauty products, Essential Oils, and technology items. Hannah got an iPhone for Christmas last month, so I have gotten to review phone cases and screen protectors for her.

I've had a few friends ask how they can get into reviewing. I tell them to start reviewing all of their purchases on Amazon first. Good reviews should have at least 4 or 5 sentences. I had reviewed some of my own stuff before I joined my first review group. They should be helpful and sincere. If you don't like something, explain what you don't like about it. I hate reading reviews that just say "terrible item" or "I love it". Be specific with your review.

Now that I work full time, I shop a lot of Amazon. If I don't find something I need during my weekly shopping trip, I go straight to Amazon to see if it's there. I don't have the time to go to several different stores just to find things anymore. And when I am shopping on Amazon, I read through some of the reviews and if there are ones that I find very helpful, I mark them as helpful.

I usually write at least a couple of reviews every evening. I try to post pictures with my reviews and I've just started adding video reviews to some items. This is a new creative outlet for me!!!

Here are some items that I have gotten to review lately:

Book of Mormon

Hannah & I went to the Fox Theater yesterday to see the Book of Mormon. If you're not familiar with it, it's a recent Broadway musical written by the guys who wrote South Park. Hannah & I have been fans of the music for a while & were very excited to finally see the show.

We enjoyed it a lot! Even from our back row, upper balcony seats.

A Visit From Dad

In October, my sweet father and his girlfriend came and stayed with us on their way down to Myrtle Beach and back.


We had some cold weather in October! Dad & Judy got to see the kids perform at the McEachern HS Marching Invitational. This was the first time any of our family has gotten to see any of our band shows.

Here's a picture of James & Hannah with Dad & Judy. It was homecoming week and the kids were participating in Pajama Day.

We don't get to see our Indiana family often, so we always treasure any visits!

A Little Late, but Here's Our Halloween Post

One of the main purposes of my blog is to keep my out of state family updated on our life. Since I haven't been blogging for the past 6 months, I still have quite a lot of making up to do. Therefore, I am posting about Halloween in January.

This year Halloween fell on a Saturday. It also fell during the Atlanta BOA Super Regional, so we were gone all day on the 31st. With the busy fall schedule, we were down to Wednesdays and Sundays as Family Days. And that isn't always a guaranteed thing since we have 2 high school aged kids! It did work out that we were all free the Wednesday before Halloween. We ordered pizza and carved pumpkins. Here is the one picture I took of the family.

James chose a more traditional looking Jack O' Lantern. This is supposedly modeled after some Pokemon character. 

And Hannah went the more creative route & attempted a Jurassic Park pumpkin. She had difficulties with her lettering, so they don't show up well in the picture, but the T-Rex is identifiable.

And there you have it! The Vesper's Halloween 2015. 

Atlanta BOA Super Regional

This past October, the McEachern HS Marching Band participated in the Bands of America Super Regional in Atlanta. Since both of our kids were in the band, Chris & I took the day off to volunteer. Chris was on "truck crew" and I was a chaperone.

Our performance time was around 2pm. So we arrived early & were able to warm up and hang out in one of the parking lots across the street from the performance venue (The Georgia Dome).

Here's Hannah with one of her Color Guard best friends.

More friends.

Here's a picture of the parking lot where the band was hanging around waiting for instructions.

Color guard is ready to go!

Here come the Sousaphones! James is the last of the tuba players on the left.

Traffic was stopped so the whole 200+ group could cross the street. I'm glad I wasn't waiting at that intersection! Though it would be fun to watch the bands go by.

Getting ready to perform.

Performance time

There were close to 60 bands performing on Friday & Saturday. MHS did not make the finals, but we still went back the next day to watch the top bands compete. Since it was Halloween, Hannah wore kitty ears & she made me wear zebra ones. It is always a lot of fun watching the bands perform!

Orchestra 5K

Hannah's school orchestra held a 5K fundraiser this weekend.

Hannah & Chris have sort of been training over the past year. They've been doing the C25K program on and off. Schedules have made it difficult to keep up with their training.


Here is the father/daughter duo.

Hannah with some of her friends.

And the race begins.....

And here they are at the finish line.

It turned out that the race wasn't really 5k. It was more like a 3.3k. Last year the orchestra 5k was too long, but this year it was too short! Maybe next year they will get it right!! No harm though - they had fun and raised money for the orchestra. 

Gourmet Cupcakes at Publix

James wanted fancy cupcakes instead of a cake this week for his birthday. I had planned to go to Smallcakes to get half a dozen cupcakes, but when I got home from work that day, the last thing I wanted to do was deal with the traffic over there. So I asked James if he would be okay with cake instead and my easy going boy said that would be fine. I had to drop off Hannah at her Winter Guard practice, so I stopped by Publix to get the cake. I was happily surprised to see that they now have gourmet cupcakes! They had about 10 different flavors. I picked out 6 for the 4 of us. I have this thing about the letting the last person to choose theirs still having a choice. If I only had 4, then that last person gets stuck with whatever is left.

Here are our cupcakes. It's not a great picture, but it does the job.

Starting with the top, Red Velvet. Clockwise - chocolate raspberry, key lime, lemon, raspberry and sundae in the center. They were quite yummy! They cost $3.29 each or two for $6.

Vending Machine for Blue Books & Other Testing Material

Back in the old days, (this would be the late 80's)  we were given our testing "Blue Books" by our teachers and professors. Imagine my surprise when we took our son on a recent college tour and saw this vending machine in the commons area.

With the costs of college these days, I don't understand why the students have to provide their own testing material! I would think that would be more likely to lead to cheating and dishonest work. You could write some notes in it ahead of time. I guess the teachers could inspect each one upon arrival to class to make sure they are blank!

You can purchase a pack of 50 on Amazon for $24. I know that I didn't go through that many during my 4 years of college. Why can't that fall under the "student fees" portion of college fees?  As a former teacher, I know that I would probably just buy the booklets out of my own pocket rather than asking the students to purchase them.

Just another reason why the "Good Old Days" were so good!

Happy Birthday, James!

Today is the 18th birthday of my little boy! It's hard to believe he's all grown up now. What's really difficult to grasp is that if he's 18, then I'm getting really old!!!!

Here's a picture of James from 2001 when he was 4.

And here are a couple of pictures from James' Senior Photo Shoot. Pictures taken this fall by our photographer friend, Eric Washburn.

Happy Birthday, Baby Boy!

Baby Donkey

My daughter & I love to take the back roads to get to Target. There are several farms that are fun to drive by on our way. One farm has a couple of donkeys. And a few months ago, there was a baby donkey! Now Baby Donkey is getting bigger, but we still call him (or her?) "Baby Donkey" when we pass.

One time we passed, Hannah asked if we could stop so she could get a picture of Baby Donkey. There were no cars behind us, so I pulled off to the side of the road. As soon as she got out of the car, Baby Donkey and Mama Donkey came over to the fence near us. Here are a few pictures of that encounter.

Band Camp

Both of my babies were in the school marching band this fall. Do you know how nice it was to have both of them in the same activity??? It was a crazy season, but it was fun.

Here's a picture of James & Hannah on the first day of band camp.

And at the end of the 2 weeks. 

I love these guys!

Birthday Card

Just wanted to brag on my dear husband. My birthday was a couple of days ago and my husband actually made me a homemade card! He used to do things like that when we were in college, but that was a long time ago! Not only did he make me a card, but he used a couple of my Cricut Machines & my Sizzix. All By Himself!

Here's the front of the card.

We had just seen part of Nick Offerman's  American Ham show & he talked about one of the best things you can do to romance your woman is to make a homemade card. Well, I got one!

Oh, and if you're curious as to why it says "Poodle", my husband gave me that nickname in the early 90's after I had gotten a spiral perm. Do I need to say more????

No More Dryer Sheets

A year and a half ago, I decided to stop using dryer sheets. I read an article about them and it forever changed my opinion on them. I used to LOVE the smell of my clothes and linens scented with the dryer sheets, but after reading about them, I decided to try getting by without them.

There are several related articles such as:

http://healthylivinghowto.com/1/post/2013/04/healthy-body-7-toxic-reasons-to-ditch-dryer-sheets.html

https://www.amoils.com/health-blog/top-ten-tips-why-you-should-ditch-those-dryer-sheets/

http://household-tips.thefuntimesguide.com/2011/07/fabric-softener.php

http://ecowatch.com/2013/04/05/why-you-need-to-ditch-dryer-sheets/

I can't say that I agree with everything I've read, but a lot of it makes sense . And since it's an additional expense, I thought I would try not using them.

I purchased (yes, this an expense) some wool laundry balls. I started with 4 and now have 7.

They can be a pain sometimes! They often get stuck in sleeves and pant legs. They fall out on to the laundry room floor when I am taking clothes out of the dryer. And they make some noise when drying.

My son's nylon sports shorts still get a lot of static. Sometimes I wet the wool balls and that helps. I don't notice much static with most of our laundry though. Even when we used dryer sheets, we still had some static.

I thought I would miss the smell of the dryer sheets, but surprisingly I don't. I have learned to love the smell of "clean"! At first when I made the switch, I noticed that my son's marching band practice clothes were super smelly, even after washing/drying. I guess prior to this, the dryer sheets help to mask the smell. Now, when I am washing his band practice stuff, I just use a laundry detergent geared toward smelly clothes and that helps. I've read that you can add drops of Essential Oils to the wool balls to lightly scent your clothes, but I've decided that I like the plain, clean smell just fine.

I can't say that I am saving money by not using the dryer sheets, but I really like that I am not coating our clothing in chemicals any more. And honestly, I don't miss the dryer sheets. I guess I was only using them out of habit. And that's one habit I have kicked!

Happy New Year!

OMG! My last blog post was 5 months ago!!! What could have caused me to go so long without posting??? Well....for those that don't know, I went back to work in August. I am a Special Ed paraprofessional at the middle school where my kids went. I LOVE the job & the people I work with. However, I am definitely feeling the effects of working full time. The last time I worked full time, was in 1997. I was 29 years old and I "retired" to give birth to my baby boy & become a Stay at Home Mom. Since then I have had assorted part-time jobs, but I have not worked full time since then. My baby boy turns 18 in less than a week (we don't need to calculate my current age!) and as you can imagine, it has definitely been an adjustment.  I'm more tired than usual and my house is less clean. My husband has been great about helping with dinners and laundry. The cats feel neglected and make me feel a little guilty. But other than that, things are great!

At the request of my daughter, I am going to try to start blogging again. And what better time to start, then at the start of 2016! I got a laptop for Christmas, so maybe that will be helpful on this project. So here goes.......