Civil War Reenactment

Well, I actually managed to finish my outfit in time!! Ain't it a beauty? :) I borrowed the hat and broach from Aunt Dawn. Actually, I borrowed a fan from her also but Alex was buying me a parasol and he saw some fans sitting there and decided to get me one of those also, so I now am the proud owner of a parasol and a beautiful fan!! :) Wasn't that sweet of him? Here's a "before" cannon picture...
After:
Aunt Dawn's outfit was absolutely BEAUTIFUL!!!!! This is what she wore for Sunday.
Here's what she wore for Saturday.
Here's Uncle Karl's snazzy outfit:
And here's Alex's snazzy outfit :P. I'll have one for him by next time!!!!This guy was "wounded" and his horse kept nudging him and trying to make him get up. Then eventually it relieved its bladder right next to him as well :D.Puddles are irresistable :D. Actually I did it to rinse my feet off- they were all dirty and grassy.There was a big downpour on Saturday and we took shelter under some very nice people's tent awning until it let up. Aunt Dawn got her red feathers on her hat wet and they bled onto her white shirt so that wasn't good. :( Here's the famous red-feathered hat:

And here's Aunt Dawn trying to rinse it out in the tent awning drips :).Here's a civil war doctor demonstrating how they amputated almost everything...He had a lot of business that day :P.And on a brighter note, here is a house that we toured on Sunday afternoon! It's called Rosedown Plantation. It was VERY beautiful!! Our whole tour group was entertained by watching Aunt Dawn and me walk up the stairs in our big hoop skirts :).On our way to Rosedown we stopped at McDonalds for lunch, of course still all dressed up. I was the first one through the door and just as I was walking in I thought "Oops, shoulda let Aunt Dawn come in first..." and I heard this guy's voice say "What the......" behind me. I turned around and looked at him and the guy got all embarrassed and apologized and said that we scared him. He had seen some people Saturday who were all dressed up also but had no idea there was a reenactment going on :). Uncle Karl told him that we always dress up special when we go to McDonalds. :) That place was PACKED too!!! So everyone was looking at us, but it was still kinda fun :).

That's about all the pics I have the patience to load on here right now. I'm about ready for a nap now!! I stayed up late Friday night finishing my dress and never caught up on that sleep.

My next big project is to clean up our horrendously messy apartment so that Alex's parents can come visit without giving them a heart attack over the conditions their poor son is living in :). And that will take all 4 weeks till they get here to complete & maintain :P. Fun fun!!! :)

Alex and I went up to visit Carl for the weekend and we had a simply splendiferous time!! Alex's boss surprised all the guys on Thursday by saying as they were walking out, "By the way, if anyone has a burning desire to come in tomorrow you can, but otherwise you don't have to bother." So Alex got a day off work!!! WOOHOO :).

We took our time Friday since Carl didn't have the day off and got there around 5:30ish... and hung out watching Carl work until about 8:30!! Here I'd been complaining about Alex working till 6:30 on Thurs (until I found out he had a day off). So we took a couple of pics of some cool planes that are at the hanger there :). This one has been fixed up to look like an old plane from... I don't know when, but anyways, its been in a movie!!! Ahhh, my first encounter with a real movie star :).This is just another kind of coolish plane :). It has 2 wings on each side and no roof in the cockpit!! :)Saturday poor Carl had to work AGAIN :) and in the afternoon we went to a professional exibition soccer game over in Jackson MS!! That was pretty fun. The only soccer games I had ever been to were Duncan's games from when he was... 7 or something. Duncan is Alex's nephew who is now 14 (approximately). So I was quite shocked to discover that at a professional game nobody scores. Seriously!!! Alex said if a soccer game gets up to 3 then that's a really high score. The final score Saturday was 1-0- Colorado beat Chicago!!! That's who we were rooting for anyways :D. Here's a pic of the guys, enjoying the game... Here's a pic of me enjoying my new toy :).

And here's a pic of some of the soccer players doing some rather strange-looking warm up moves :).Ok, and I suppose I'll confess all. The one point that was scored? Well I missed it :(. After sitting on the hard bleachers for 80 minutes (the game is only about 90 minutes) I was looking down at the trash the people next to me had thrown around (they looked at it, got up, and left just so they could beat the traffic getting out of there! Can you believe that!??! And get this- they had VIP tickets. And there were PLENTY of trash cans around!! sorry, litterers drive me crazy!) when I heard a big roar from the crowds. I looked up and there was a ball in the net!!!! So I did a delayed cheer while Alex and Carl pretended not to know me (just kidding). And I think we were sitting in a section of Chicago fans :D.

We had a lovely Easter Sunday. Got up in time for church and I had fun playing the piano :). Bro. Jim sang a solo and kept slowing down and speeding up at random times so it was exciting trying to follow along!! Then we went to someone's house for dinner- they had several families we know from church over along with a bunch of family, so there was quite a crowd over there. I saw my very first easter egg hunt- shocking, isn't it? But I must say I'm not crazy about it because it really has absolutely nothing to do with the real easter. I've heard the theory about easter is all about new beginnings, so hence, the eggs. But I'm not buying that. Bunnies and eggs have nothing to do with easter.

The people who's house we were at have quite a bit of property though and we got to kind of explore around some of their ponds and stuff. They recently dug one close to the house, and there's another one if you follow this path through the woods. Bro. Marvin loaned us his truck and told us to drive out there, so we did and it was BEAUTIFUL!!! A big pond with lots of trees and flowers all around it. And later we walked down to the river beach and that was really nice too.

We tried leaving 2 times before we really got to go :). First we told Marilyn that we were heading out and she encouraged us to go to the beach and look at the river. So we did that, and when we came back we went to thank her and tell her goodbye again, and she was scooping out ice cream cones! So we had some ice cream and sat around talking and playing with Hunter's toy from his goody bag, and then finally it was almost 5pm and we really left that time :). We went home and I sewed a little more on my civil war jacket (I don't know if I can be done in time) and then watched a movie and went to bed.

The End.

My New Job

I have such a wonderful and exciting new job that I don't know if I ever want to quit!! I am helping GH Enterprises (Alex's boss) purge out all their old records and paperwork from the past.... about 10 years :P. So Monday was my first day and I was given a big box of paperwork and a paper shredder. It was very fun at first, but after the first half hour or so, the shredder overheated and for the rest of the day (except for a short time after lunch when it had cooled down longer) I was able to shred papers for about 4 minutes (yes, I timed it!) and then wait for the machine to cool back down for 12 minutes. It shuts off automatically when its overheated. So I went home that night with a sore back from hunching over the machine, and 1 box of papers shredded. And I was looking forward to doing 8 or so more!! YIKES!!

So Tuesday I went in and around the second time the machine was running a temperature, Gerald decided to just have a shredding service come do it all for us. Whew!!! I thought I was out of a job but I sure didn't care!!! :) But now I am sorting through all the boxes making sure we don't shred any important papers. Namely, the 8130's.

So for 2 days now I have been going through box after box of old papers, accounts payable, accounts receivable, bank records, receipts, employee records, airplane records, tax records, you name it!! Its pretty fun but my back sure hurts by the end of the day from sitting so long!! In some ways its very similar to sorting through old medical records, which I did at my old job. Except here I am just looking for 8130's and anything else that looks important. And I can smell an 8130 from a mile away... except for in this latest box which smells rather musty and is a big jumble of everything. I like the label written on this box I went through this morning: "If you can't find it anywhere else look in here. 1998-2000."

Oh yes, and one other item of news that may be of interest to some of you: We're pregnant!!

Haha, yesterday I was working away and found some papers that should not be thrown away, even though I hadn't been told to look for them. I double-checked with Chantel (the secretary) and she was impressed that I had picked those out of all those other papers as ones that should be saved, and she said, "You're doin' so good, maybe we can keep you on permanently to help me out!"

I told her that, "Actually I'm all lined up for a permanent job and I'm in training for it right now. It's not going to really start up for a little less than 8 months, but when I do start, I'll be on call 24/7!"

Her eyes bugged out over that one and she exclaimed, "I hope you can work from home!!"

I told her that fortunately, I would be working from my home, and I couldn't resist any longer when I saw the curious look in her eyes, so I confessed, "We're going to have a baby."

She got so excited!! She had to tell Gerald (the only one there that didn't know yet) and yell at Alex for not telling her sooner ("I thought we were FRIENDS, Alex!!!!") and is now making sure that I don't lift any heavy boxes :).

We're still in the house-hunting business! There are 2 houses that we are very interested in and the main problem is deciding between them. They each have some drawbacks and some benefits and I'm not sure which one we like better. We also found out that someone from our church is going to be selling soon and Alex called them on our lunchbreak today and we can go over and look at that house whenever we want too!! :) Hopefully Alex will get home from work early enough to go look at it tonight before church.

Anyways, I am off this afternoon, so I'd better close this and get off to the grocery store! Adioodles!!

Visiting With Becky & James

We had a marvelous week with B&J and kids!! Here's Alex reading us a story.

We spent an afternoon at the zoo and boy did we ever have a blast!! We got to see an elephant demonstration which was pretty nifty. They had this elephant lay down on her side and get back up again and she sort of released some air accidentally when she was making the effort to get back up. Becky and I smiled at each other, but Josh announced loudly, "YUCK! SHE TOOTED!" A lovely family photo with the flamingos!
This baby monkey was soooooo fun to watch!! There was a mom, a dad, 2 older siblings, and then this little baby, clinging to its mama. Well, the two older siblings were feeling rambunctious and kept wrestling with each other, and then they would go attack their mother. And they would try to harass the baby but the mom would smack them both upside the head and they'd go back to playing with each other again. Then the dad came over and the baby wanted to go to him. So he took the baby and then started picking through the mom's tail fur (for fleas?) and the baby decided that since both parents were right there, he could be brave and try to climb the cage. Well the two older kids came back and tried picking him up (this would be like Micah or Kenton trying to pick up Amanda!), so they were holding him by its back legs while it was trying to crawl to its mama on its front legs :D. It was really funny!!
Another fun part at the zoo was the kangaroo. Kenton was sooooooo excited to see one and we got over there and it was just standing there being boring. Y'know how zoo animals can be sometimes. Well anyways, all of a sudden it started hopping around and the boys were trying to mimic it, and they all ended up having hopping races up and down the length of its cage with it joining in!!! It would stop and wait for the last one, and then go bouncing away!! That was pretty funny to watch too! I got a little video clip right at the end of their game, and you can see it waiting up for the last kid :).

We also visited the USS KIDD and it turned out that the man who was working on the boat had actually sailed on that ship when he was in the Navy! That was pretty neat.
Haha, this is me sitting on a potty trough thingy. Nobody else would sit on one for a picture except Amanda, who almost fell in!!

We had a picnic at a park on Thursday afternoon and then went to see the new Bass Pro shop. Alex took the afternoon off so he could spend some time with them since they were only here Mon-Fri morning.The boys put a pringle on a ant hill and then watched all the ants running around on it :).Us adults swang while they played in the sand. Is swang a word? And where are the other adults?!? Oh well. I swang, anyways!!And here's my handsome hubby making faces for the camera, as usual!! :)

Friday we met B&J at Jack in the Box and had breakfast with them before Alex went to work and then they left from there. Poor Gerald (Alex's boss). It was raining and he decided to order pizza for all the guys, so I went over to have lunch with Alex and Gerald asked me if my family had left. I said that they had, and he asked if I missed them yet... and I started bawling!!!! I felt so bad for the poor guy :P. Alex said that Jonathan is going to pick on Gerald for making me cry.

While I was at Alex's work, after lunch I got to talk to Gerald and Chantel (the office lady) and I'm going to start working there on Monday!!! So I have a job finally :). Its going to be part-time and temporary, which works just dandy for me!!! It'll be flexible enough that I can probably get time off whenever I need some.

I do believe that's about all I have to say for now!!! Y'all have a good weekend now, y'hear?