Hey peeps! I am almost unpacked. Truth told I spent most of the day today finishing up a book I had started in the just before we left the gulf. So, I could have been done but instead I'm a day behind. Oh well, call it a relapse into vacation mode.

I am so glad the Michael Jackson--funeral/memorial/worship/tribute, is finally over. This has lasted since June TWENTY-FIFTH people. I mean absolutely no disrespect what.so.ever, but I hate to see a mere person literally worshipped. But I believe they finally laid him to rest today, somewhere unrevealed to the public at this time. Sounds like something I may have read before.....hummmmmmmm.

It has been a sad week for sure in the entire entertainment and sports industry. What last week with the latest episode of NFL:CSI. That was truly a sad case. I feel terrible sorry for Mr. McNair's wife and children who are left to deal with not only the loss of a father/husband but the cloud of mystery and confusion and frustration they are left to deal with and defend. Sad times, sad times.

The fact remains that God is on His throne and He is listening. These are people who need our prayers. Though we don't know them, and they are out of our physical reach, our prayers can touch their lives in ways we'll never know this side of Heaven. So join with me please.

Talk more soon!

I laid on the beach like a big fat pig, now I'm home again, home again, jiggity jig!!

We got home last night around 5:30. It's amazing how long it takes to unload 6 weeks worth of stuff. You might as well just say you moved. It will take all week to sort things out and put them back where they belong.

It was an absolute blast but now, back to life, back to reality.......


talk more later..

Happy Birthday Sydney

The girls and I are back in the gulf. We came down earlier this week. I'm gonna try to make short posts to keep in touch with everyone. I can't make long posts because the internet only stays up for a few seconds at a time, so I'll have to blog in bursts, which is better than my blogging of late, which is non-existent......so, anyway.
This morning we got up and went to the beach early before it got too hot. It has been really hot down here, 102 yesterday. The water was surprisingly cool, and still NO jellyfish. For those of you used to visiting the gulf this time of year, you know that's a blessing right there!
We spent the rest of the day milling around the outlet mall and playing at the pool. Tomorrow is Sydney's birthday! She'll be 8. I'm sad. Tonight we'll have our ritual of crying and lamenting over her last night as a 7 year old......I can't do a photo slide show because the connection is too slow, but I am gonna up load a photo or two of her younger years....Happy Birthday Sydney! I love you!

Please lift up my dear friend Stephanie who lost her sister Paula, also a friend of mine, today. Please pray for their entire family. She leaves behind three beautiful young children. Thank you to you all!!

Home Again, Home again, Jiggity Jig.....

We made it home this week for Vacation Bible School. Many of my peeps have emailed me to find out if I'm still breathing....I appreciate those emails. It's nice to be missed. The problem at the campground is that the internet connection is S.L.O.W...... Many times I have typed up a post only to be timed out when I tried to publish it so I just gave it up. We came back home this last Sunday to do VBS and for Tracy to return to work, but decided to leave our camper down on the coast and head back down that way in a week or so. It's just so hard to leave the beach! It's so much easier to relax there. It's no small wonder why. We got back here and I don't think I've sat down for more than 20 minutes since we got here. There is just so much work to do at home. In the camper I have what, 20 sq foot to vacuum, 15 to mop? One toilet to clean. Two beds to make. All done, that took 12 minutes let's go play. Here at home I have about 2200 sq foot of carpet to vacuum and another 1000 to mop. Forget that I haven't seen the carpet since 2004 'cause it's covered in toys. Let us not forget the entertainment factor.....my two children have been in entertainment withdwrawl since we got home. We get up and go to VBS every day so that means from about 2 p.m. every day when we get home until bed time they have no entertainment. (reference carpeting above) They got used to the large playground and endless entertainment of the gulf. As did their Mom. It's nice to be able to pull up a chair in the shade and peek at the kiddos over the top of a good book while they play. So....we are leaving next week to go back and this time I will try to make small posts each day or at least every other day.

On another exciting note I have an optimistic friend who thinks she is going to teach me to play tennis. She has been coaching another friend of ours who is doing quite well. Hubs played a good bit years ago before he met me, so he is eager to get back into it. I, think I'll limp along at best. Maybe I should take this next two weeks at the beach to do a boot camp of sorts to try to get myself into shape....or maybe not.

Well, I had better get some sleep tomorrow is the last day of Bible school. I am working on a slideshow of our Disney pics to put on here soon!

WOW!! The last time I talked to you all we were on our way to Disney World and had just made it to Orlando. We arrived at the same time as the first tropical depression of the season and it started raining approximately 5 hours and 22 minutes after we entered the park and didn't stop until some time after we left town. Yes people, we experienced Disney in a monsoon. It can be done. All the locals there seemed to think it would console all of us who had spent our blood, sweat and tears to make a trip to the SUNSHINE STATE if they informed us all that leading up to this torrential down pour they had been in a 5 week drought. However by the end of the week even the locals were cursing the rain. One of my good friends told me that they had started the week tracking our weather as a means of keeping up with us, but by mid-week the national news was reporting on Orlando weather and she no longer had to track it......There is an upside...... God always orders things perfectly now doesn't he? We did not have to wait in line for much of anything. People kept trying to avoid the rain so we would brave it and yank on our Mickey ponchos and grab our Mickey umbrellas and head out. There were only two rides we missed out on, one was inoperable in the rain and even though we returned to Epcot on three different occasions it was always too wet to ride it and that was Test Track. The other was The Flight of Peter Pan. We missed this because.....I forgot about it.....we made a couple of trips to Magic Kingdom and we stumbled upon it the last time, but it did have a wait and we had reservations for dinner so we had to miss that one. Another positive about the rain is that it kept the temps down and the kiddos didn't get hot. It's so hard for them to be hot and walk all that way. At 5 and 7 our girls walked each park from 9:30 each morning until closing time each day WITHOUT the aid of a stroller. We brought one but they didn't use it the first couple of days and it was a pain in the rain so we quit bringing it. Had it been 85 and sunny I don't think they could've done that.

So, I have no complaints about the weather. I think that it was just the way it was supposed to be. I'll admit I was bummed about it until the last day for two reasons, one, we had spent additional money for water park tickets that we obviously had not been able to use, and two, we had not been able to take pictures the way I had hoped. The picture possibilities at Disney are limitless....did I mention I scrapbook??? So, of course, you know I wanted to have a ton of photos, but with the rain, getting the camera out was not a lot of fun, not to mention the kids were wearing the same outfit in every picture....a wet poncho and wet hair plastered to their little melons. After Tuesday Tracy said no more ponchos, so every time we saw a character or had a photo op with no BIG raindrops we took off the ponchos and tried to fluff the hair. That helped a little. Then on the last evening we heard from Angie, the lady who got our tickets for us, that Disney was going to give us a credit for our water park tickets since we had not used them and the weather had been so bad. That was an answer to prayer. Then the last morning we woke up and it was not raining we headed straight to Epcot to get some pics and maybe a chance at Test Track before it started to pour again but it was still down from the storm earlier in the morning. We did however get some wonderful pic's in the hour we were there before the bottom fell out and we decided to head for higher ground, literally. So we got in our car and headed north to Alabama. The Lord answered all of our prayers.

I'm gonna post a few pictures that we took on here. One of my faves was one of the whole family at Chef Mickey's but I don't have it. I was surprised it turned out to be worth anything. It was one of those days where we had been in the rain all day, our reservation was at 8:40 and we had come straight from the park. I hadn't seen a mirror since 8 a.m. so you can only imagine. When they told the whole family to gather for a photo I asked Tracy "how to I look?" he gave his usual pat reply, "fine"....why do I ask...I asked the girls, "maybe just the two of you should go, does Mommy look okay for a picture?"...Elly said I looked fine, but my hair looked tired, to which Sydney added that I smelled like wet trash. ????? The woman taking the photo found it all quite funny, but not as funny as I found it twenty minutes later when they brought the picture to my table and wanted $39 for it. Yeah, I don't think so!

I cried many happy tears when they saw their first parade there, when they saw their first princess there, when they cried because they had to leave and said that Disney World really is magical.......here are a few of our pics to share with you.....this is just a few, I'll do a slideshow later.....

Quick update

We have made it to Orlando. Thank you Jesus!! I thought I was gonna have to be dropped off on the FL Turnpike many times. When I finally got one child to sleep and the other one to quit asking how many more minutes away we were from Disney World I thought I was gonna get a break. Then it started to storm. Ya'll know I don't like to drive, and when it's stormin' I don't even like to RIDE. It terrifies me. I looked at Tracy and said, "I need a nerve pill," I didn't think I was gonna make it. He was laughing at me so hard that I don't know how he could see to drive and that made it even worse.

I know I asked you all to pray for my kidneys and knees. My knees have been tight the last couple of days partly due to the fact that I'be baked them, and partly due to the fact they've been stuck in a car seat for 8 hours...hmmmm. The kidney/bladder issue was a surprise to me this week. I went to the doctor for a headache and stomach problem last week and they did a urine test to check on an existing kidney stone....they just said things looked fine other than the fact that I had some blood in my urine.....not so fine to me, but okay, they gave me something for the headache and the stomach so two out of three.....until we had been here for about 23 and half hours and I started having bladder spasms....only me, I know. Anyway the doctor called in some meds yesterday and they have started to help a bit. One of the side effects of one is that is seems to make my joints a little more stiff, and a side effect of the other is that it makes my urine green. No really, it does, neon green. I thought after the car ride today my khaki Dockers were gonna have a neon green stain all the way down the leg.

We stopped at a Wal-Mart in a town called Defuniak Springs today. If you ever think you've lived in a red neck town, I encourage you to visit this place. I thought I had grown up in such an area until today, but this place made the Wal-Mart where I'm from look like a debutaunt ball. More on that later, but for now, I gotta get some sleep.....we're on Mickey's time zone now!!

Love ya!