I've been tagged!!

It's my first time ever being 'tagged.' SO.. my online Canuck friend Deanna got me.. SO, here we go for the Thursday Thirteen, with the help of my friend Kerry.. I need help coming up with 13 things about me.. :)

Thirteen Things about ME... Cat! 1. I take too many pictures! Well, maybe not too many.. A LOT 2. I have always lived in NC. 3. I am LEGALLY BLIND without glasses or contacts. 4. I have recurring dreams about tornadoes. 5. My cats' names are Punkin and Patch. 6. I drive a REALLY BIG truck, and I really don't mind it! 7. I am trying to start a little photog biz.. 8. I spend way too much time at SK. I luv my Mamas over there! :-) 9. In preschool, I used to kiss the boy who ate the paste! 10. I have self-confidence issues. Me? Really?? No way!! ;-) 11. I LOVE bluegrass! 12. I used to tap dance. 13. I am adopted (at around 4mos of age).

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!


The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

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Guilty again...

of blog neglect!! I just don't seem to have time to sit down and type a daily entry right now, or if I do, I feel as though I have nothing to say.

I've been working on my photography website the past couple weeks. I'm hoping to get it up and running within the next few days, and start advertising on my local mommies group.. hoping to drum up some business to support and feed my photography passion.

After what seemed like weeks without rain, we have finally been getting some much needed rain showers. Our grass was almost brown, not growing much at all, but with the recent rain it's green and growing again. Too bad for Matt, he has to mow now.. :)

Aiden is going through another temperamental phase. These phases seem to come and go. He gets frustrated SO easily. And, I'm learning that he is a lot like his mom. He won't try something unless he KNOWS he can do it. That will be something we have to work on as he grows up and probably the rest of his life.. I know that is a weakness of mine.. fear of failure.

The news of the world these past few days is grim. What kind of world will our children and grandchildren have in the future? I guess we all know it will get worse before it gets better. I guess we just all need to make the most of the days we do have here on this earth, for this is the day that THE LORD has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it... NO MATTER WHAT!

Time for me to get Aiden up from his rest time. He's starting to give up on naps... oh well. Even if he doesn't have a nap, he will always have REST TIME!!! My kid is growing up fast. I think it's time for another one.. too bad Matt doesn't feel the same way yet!

Lazy Summer Days

Thought I would type a few lines in the blog before getting up to do a few things. Aiden is napping now. We had a fun time this morning out in the backyard with the sprinkler. He got SOAKED. But he loved it! That was a good $3 investment! I dug up some hostas that were looking kind of puny and moved them where they were in a little bit more shade. I'm hoping they take off and do better. I planted them in the bed right in front of the porch instead of my hodge-podge bed on the other side of the sidewalk. I also planted some sunflowers (thanks Kimie!) and did a bunch of weeding. Oh, we found a tomato vine growing like crazy at the end of the house Aiden's room is on. It has a few tomatoes on it just waiting to get ripe. How strange it was to find a tomato plant at the front of the house! We had some last year around back, and there are a couple there coming up, but they are TINY compared to this one in the front. It's growing like CRAZY! Oh well.. enough of my gardneing adventures. I have some bananas that are super ripe, so I figured I would make some banana bread and put them to good use.

I find I don't have too much to say right now, which is actually a good thing. Life is calm and peaceful right now without a lot going on. After a very hectic June, July is shaping up to be relaxing, aside from being hot! I guess you can call these the lazy days of summer... I tend to do a lot better when life is at a slow pace.

Off to empty/load the dishwasher, then start on some 'nana' bread. :)

A little help from our friends

As it ends up, we turned the A/C back on Friday and it miraculously worked, and worked well, and kept working... apparently Trane's are known to be able to work quite well with a bad start capacitor or something to that effect. Our good friend JP and his wife Amanda drove 2 hours Friday night to come help us out with the unit (JP works in the a/c biz). He got the unit fixed and we are back in business, hopefully for a long time to come! Thank you JP and Amanda for driving all that way! We really appreciate it.

I sit here, trying to think of what we did this weekend, and I can't even remember! We had a trip to Walmart and to the grocery store. Speaking of Walmart, it is Aiden's favorite place. Anytime we get ready to go somewhere, he asks if we are going to Walmart. While we were out on our trip, he saw a Walmart store in New Hampshire and that was all he could talk about the rest of the drive.. lucky for us, there was only about 10 more minutes left in the truck. He kept saying "Walmart, Walmart, Walmart, Walmart..." over and over and over and over again... funny kid.

Let's see... I made TWO blackberry cobblers Friday. They are both super yummy. I used two different recipes. I had never made a cobbler before and I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. It's been so long since I've had blackberry cobbler, it was such a treat to have some again. Thanks Ardie for the ton of blackberries you picked. Now you need to come eat cobbler before it is gone!

I'm going to try to get back on my cleaning schedule this week.. and STICK TO IT!! With vacation and so much other stuff going on, the house, while relatively clean, isn't shining like it could be, SO.. that is my goal for the week.

Now, I need to finish my mocha and finish my morning internet rounds.. maybe work on a few more pictures from our trip. I have some more cute ones of Aiden in the river in New Hampshire.

Have you ever seen the rain?

We finally saw some again here.. we had a nice soggy morning today. A cold front is pushing through, bringing us much needed rainfall and some cooler temps. Good thing for us since our A/C unit is having issues now. Matt believes it is a start capacitor for the compressor, he's going to do some more testing and double check some other things in case anything else needs repairing. Right now it's 73 degrees and cloudy outside. Thank goodness this didn't happen earlier in the week!!! We'd be miserable.. scratch that.. we would be staying somewhere else!!

I think I've got MOST of the vacation pictures posted on the photoblog. There might be some stragglers a little bit later, but those that are posted now are my favorites. I was in a funk before we left as far as photography goes, so it was nice to get out and get some fun pictures of different places.. and deviate from taking pictures of Aiden all the time!

Today, I'm meeting up with Sonya to take the boys to the library in Hickory to see some exotic animals. Aiden is in his room right now 'resting.' I would never be so lucky to get him to nap before 12:30.. no matter what I tried. Hopefully he'll be in good spirits today. He's working on some molars right now, and I think they are making him irritable at times.

OK.. must get up from here and put away some toys and sweep my floors. If you haven't done so yet, check out my photoblog!

The high today... 96, tomorrow...97.. whew!

So, I didn't post anymore on our vacation. We drove SO MUCH. Our roadtrip's total mileage was around 3000 miles! We stopped in every state from here (NC) to Maine, except for Delaware. No real reason for skipping Delaware, except none of our routes took us through the state.

The weather for the most part was nice, aside from a few soggy days in New England. How refreshing it is to be back in the South with a temperature of 83 degrees at 9:30 in the morning!!! Yes, I am kidding!!

Hopefully I will get a chance to do more updating, but right now Aiden wants to read a Thomas book, again...