Updates

I hate it when people go weeks without posting, especially when it’s me. I wanted to do a post about some things that have happened since I last wrote.

First of all, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We decided to eat at my house this year since we have more room than mom and dad (and we have a dishwasher!!), and we thought we were going to have 19 people eating this year. We actually ended up with 23 because 3 of my cousins from Atlanta and a friend of theirs decided Wednesday night that they were coming too! It went off without a hitch, the food was great as usual (thanks to mom).

Robyn, Renee, Aunt Carol (mom’s sister) and I left at 4:30am to go shopping on Black Friday. Mom and Granny usually go, but mom stayed back with Granny this year and they caught up with us at O’Charley’s for lunch and some of us stayed in WR and shopped until 4 that afternoon. Robyn and I were wrapping presents later in the evening and while we were wrapping, my granny suddenly started feeling really tired and weak. To make a long story short, she passed out at the dining room table and we called 911 (at first we thought she’d either had a stroke or died!) The ambulance took her to the hospital where they determined that she has an irregular heart beat and that’s probably what caused it. They got home around 1am and my aunt took her home to S.C. the next day. She’s seen her Dr about it and they are trying to decide what to do for her. We are SO thankful that it was not something serious!

Josh and I are in Miracle on 34th St (along with Steve and Jill) at Perry Players, which opens tonight. Until a couple days before Thanksgiving, we had a Santa that looked totally authentic, fat with a real white beard and twinkling eyes and everything… and then they discovered he has an ulcer and his doctors said the play would be too much stress on him. So we ended up with a 35 year old Santa with a fake white beard and belly padding. He really is doing an amazing job, though, especially since he only got the script right before Thanksgiving!! It’s just too bad about our original Santa, he could’ve fooled any age child! We all get to be in the Perry Christmas Parade this Saturday, I’m sure that’ll be fun.

I have been applying for several months for another part time job and Zaxby’s called me on Wednesday for an interview and hired me on the spot. I am pleased with the pay, they are allowing for the fact that I have experience (albeit that was 10 years ago!). They are going to work me day shift, 15-20 hrs a week, off Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays (for Dr Sumrall’s).

The last chapter in the Elwin saga ended today, thank goodness! I took him to get his jaw wire removed and he’s home and happy and his old self again!

That’s pretty much all that’s happened of late!

Tree Skirt

I decided I needed something besides a plain red Walmart tree skirt this year for our live tree in the living room. I cut up an old tablecloth that I never use and stitched it onto the back of the old tree skirt, used binding around the edges  and it was an instant new (and free) tree skirt! Only took about an hour. (I ran out of red binding toward the back of the skirt but I don’t think it will show-if it does, I’ll get more to finish it off.) Now I need to make one for the artificial tree…

(backside- old skirt)

Trixie likes it!

Mysterious footprint!

I made date balls for our couple’s Christmas party Sunday, and after I rolled them in powdered sugar I left the remnants of the sugar in a bowl out on the counter while we were gone to the party. When we came back, we found this mysterious footprint! Where could this strange shape have come from?? Who dared to step in my powdered sugar and trample it all over my hideously carpeted kitchen? Since we left 3 of our 4 cats in the house while we were gone, I guess we’ll never know (unless I take pawprints and compare…). I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that whoever it was surely enjoyed cleaning his/her paw that night!

Crafty Christmas Decorations

Heather and I love doing crafty things, and she came over last week and brought all kinds of great ideas and supplies for us to do some hand made Christmas decorations. She is going to highlight some of them on her blog, so for now I am just posting pictures of two of the projects we finished.

On this first one, we started with plain cardboard letters ($2 ea at Michaels). We painted the outer edges green and traced the shape of each letter onto the back of decorative paper. We used a glue stick to attach the paper to the letter, and voila! I also added gold rick-rack to the outer edges, but I took the picture before I did that.

This next craft was also a paper craft. First, we cut circles out the size of some lids that I had in the kitchen (around 4 inches). Then we cut 1 1/2 inch by 10 inch long strips and folded them accordian-style to make the next layer. The next layer we just cut a shape and topped it off with a precut chipboard letter. We used hot glue (our best friend!!!) to assemble. Next, we punched tiny holes in the top and bottom of each large circle to thread our ribbon and bells to. We used a washer (from a nut and bolt) attatched to the ribbon at the top to hang it on a nail.

Veteran’s Day Outing

Josh and I decided to go to the Museum of Aviation for Veteran’s Day yesterday. Neither of us had been there since we were in middle school and boy, has it changed! We had a really great time exploring and reading about Air Force veterans and seeing donated memorabilia dated from the early 20th century. I am so fortunate to have grown up with an Air Force dad, and will always hold veterans and current enlistees in high regard.This is my favorite picture, for some reason our camera kept giving Josh a black eye, there is one further down that looks the same way! 4-8-15-16-23-42 execute (little Lost joke there)The other black eye picture, maybe it was from when the plane hit Josh in the face!

Fall Colors

Fall is my favorite season. I opened my cabinet the other day and noticed how pretty and fall-ish the colors of my kitchen decor and dishes are, and also the tiles on my island and backsplash. I love looking at pretty colors so I thought I’d post some pictures for you to enjoy too.

Update on ELWIN!

I think you all know that Elwin got hit by a car last Sunday night. Josh and I were at our couple’s group in Warner Robins when my dad called Josh and told him that a lady had come to his door and told him that she had hit Elwin and that he had run and hid under my car. She lives down the street and knew that we were somehow related to mom and dad and that’s how she knew to tell them. Dad went to check on him and saw that he could not breath well and that his face was bleeding, but Elwin ran when he tried to get to him. So when Josh got the call we told our friends what had happened and came home. They told us they would be praying, and Josh and I prayed for him all the way home. I knew that the fact that he could run was a miracle in and of itself, since cats are so small that their injuries are usually pretty severe when they get hit. It took us a little while to find him but our cat Callie led Josh to him behind our carport. He ran under the shed attatched to the car port and we were able to see that his face was bleeding badly, mostly from his nose and mouth and I freaked out. We already had our vet on call for when we found him and we asked him to meet us at the hospital so that he could put him to sleep. It did not even occur to me that he might recover because he looked so bad, and we thought he had other injuries besides his head.
When we got there Dr. Westmoreland said “I’m not putting this cat to sleep tonight. Looks like he just has a broken jaw.” I was so shocked! I finally brought myself to look at him (I didn’t want to look at him if he was going to be put down because with his face like that he looked nothing like my Elwie and I didn’t want that altered version of him to keep running through my head later). Dr W gave him a pain shot and sedation and put him in a cage and told us that he would have to do xrays and a more thorough exam on Monday to see if Elwin would be able to pull through.
He wired his jaw back together on Tuesday and on Tuesday and Wednesday I really thought we were still going to have to put him to sleep, he did not look like he was recovering from the injuries to his nose and the inside of his mouth. His face was swollen and there was constant mucus and blood around his nose mouth and eyes, and he still sounded like he could hardly breath. Josh and I had a miserable several days (and so did Elwin!!) but by Thursday he was looking so much better that Dr W called to tell my I could pick him up on Friday and that we would have to give him IV fluids everyday and force feed him with a syringe. That part has not been fun, but today he has started licking food and occasionally getting a taste of water on his tongue! It will still probably be a while before he is able to eat and drink all he needs on his own (he still can’t close his mouth completely), but I still can’t believe that it has been 9 days since the accident and he is looking more and more like his old self and he has been acting like himself ever since he got home on Friday.

I got calls and messages all week last week from friends who were praying for him and I know that that is why he has recovered so well and so quickly (and maybe even at all)! So thank you to the people that were praying for him, even though he is just a cat! I used to get made fun of for bringing up my cats as prayer requests at youth group but God is big enough to care about animals too. I know that even if God is not healing Elwin for his own sake, He is healing him for me because He loves me and knows how much I love my kitties! Keep praying that he’ll eat and drink on his own soon, the IV thing kinda weirds Josh and I out.

Here are some before and after pics (I took the after pics today). I wish I had taken pictures of him while he was in the hospital so that you could see what a miracle it is that he looks so good now. But you can just take my word for it, he looked horrible.

Before:

Today:

Movies I Have Watched This Year That You Should Die Without Ever Having To See

It seems like I’ve seen a lot of unsatisfactory movies this year. I used to be ALOT more discerning about whether or not I really wanted to see a movie before I rented it, because it costs so much to rent (plus, every time Josh and I rent something we forget to take it back and end up paying 2 or 3 times as much as we were supposed to). But now that we have NetFlix and all the free services online that let you stream movies and tv shows, I’m a little more inclined to watch some things I would never have paid money for. So I made a list of a few movies that I think would be a waste of your time to see, to save you some time, money and aggravation. Alot of these are movies you have probably seen already (poor you). Here goes:(in no particular order)

Vantage Point- I typically don’t like the action movie genre because they rarely have thoroughly developed plot lines or developed characters. You could watch this whole movie and never feel a single emotion or intrigue. The story did not allow you to attach yourself to any particular character. The plot had a lot of potential but ended up being just a very short and underdeveloped story that could have been awesome (had someone else made the movie!) I was disappointed because it had Matthew Fox in it who plays a character from the TV show Lost that I really love. Oh well, maybe someone will do a really good remake in 10 or 20 years.

The Happening- my second biggest (movie) disappointment of the year. My second favorite movie maker of all time is M. Night Shyamalan. I do not love all of his movies, but the ones that I am not crazy about, I dislike for very different reasons than I dislike The Happening. The acting was bad, there was not enough dialog, no character depth, unneccesarily gory, thin plot, unsatisfactory ending. Seemed like a B-movie to me. I still cannot believe the same man made Signs.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith- I would never have chosen to rent this one but friend of ours likes it and wanted us to watch it, so against my better judgement, we did. Oh my word, talk about a ditzy popcorn movie. It was WAY too long, if it had been about an hour and a half, I don’t think I would have as much hatred for it as I do (it’s 2 hours). They just didn’t know where to stop! I am not a romantic comedy fan anyway (and since it had a lot of action movie earmarks) this one took the cake. I hate movies where the most attractive cast is picked all the way down to the garbage men and maids (I don’t think there was a garbage man or maid in this movie but you catch my drift). The story and the “look” of the entire cast was nauseatingly unrealistic.

Rambo First Blood- I did not know who to cheer for. I need a hero, I guess.

The Terminator- How in the world was this movie a hit? The dialog was very poorly written, I hate movies with purposeful bad lighting, the whole thing was just plain weird.

Raising Arizona- Had some funny moments, but overall a real wast of time. Really dumb is the best way to describe it.

Prince Caspian- My biggest disappointment of the year. I love the book as much as if I had written it myself and I felt like Andrew Adamson spit and stomped on it until in only vaguely resembled the original masterpiece. The spirit of the book as written by Lewis was just not in the movie. At all.

Sleepover!

Josh had Tres Dias last weekend, and usually that means hours of TV watching until I get sleepy enough to drag myself to bed three nights in a row. I get lonely when he’s gone, so I was glad this weekend turned out differently. I had promised Jill several weeks back that she could spend the night with me while Josh was at TD or VN so I asked Renee if she could do it this past Friday night, and of course she said yes. We painted and decorated a wooden box (her favorite thing to do at my house is crafts), baked chocolate chip cookies, watched Pollyanna and played with Trixie. We finally made it to bed around 10:45 and then got up at 7:50 to go yardsaling with Heather. Jill loves yardsaling as much as her aunt ZZ.

Post for Post’s sake

I guess a new theme and header doesn’t do too much good unless I actually write a blog post every now and then, huh? I hope to soon…