Baby Jackson

Michael called me last Wednesday to let me know that Melissa was going to have a 3D ultrasound over the weekend.  What?  3D?!  How cool is that?!  OK, so I waited.  Impatiently for the weekend to arrive so I could hear about the 3D ultrasound.  Melissa's sister-in-law, who is also pregnant, was having one done, so they got a discounted price by getting two of them done on the same day. 

Melissa sent me the first photo via my cell phone. I almost cried! From what I could see in my cell phone photo was the cutest baby face!  When she got home, she sent me (via email this time) more photos of Jackson.  How precious is this?!

September 21st can't get here soon enough, but I'm sure Melissa already knows that!  LOL!

Some Days are Diamonds; Some Days are Gold

I'm not quite sure what I've done to my left knee, but I've managed to hurt it pretty good.  I've been wearing my knee brace for the past three days and haven't been able to go on my daily walks either!  The best I've been able to do is to walk some mail to the neighbors house that the mailman left in our mailbox.

Despite my need (or feeling of need) to get around better than I am now and to get things done around the house, I've definately had to slow it down.  Amazingly, it's been Mike that has made me slow things down much more than I probably would do on my own.

Going to the grocery store?  My job.  Did I get to go?  No.  Who did? Mike!  He HATES to go to the grocery store... mainly because he has absolutely no patience with the LONG lines.  Let me define LONG lines in Mike-ez... more than one person in front of you with 10 items or more! 

Going to Tom's Farm?  Not just my job because Mike does like to go there because he loves to pick out the fresh veggies and fruit he now eats.  (He's now a vegan, even though he doesn't want to be.  Prostrate cancer scare can pretty much make you do things you don't want to do! )  So, did I get to go?  No.

Going to Lowe's for ant traps.  Did I get to go?  No.

Mike has been making me stay on the couch and relax.  I know he's taking care of me, but it's driving me a bit nuts anyway!

Gotta love him. 

There and Back again... to see how far it is

Well, we're back from Tennessee again. It was a great 10 days, but seems like it was so short, but then again, so long! 

The first thing we did was surprise the hell out of everyone since we were supposed to be driving a rental truck up there with out stuff we want to store at our house in Manchester.  Well... time ran out on us and we flew up there instead!  The drive will be in August now... only 10 degrees hotter than it was in July!  Not to mention the humidity! 

We celebrated our family reunion with water balloon fights, water balloon toss, sunflower seed spitting contests and street grafitti at Larry's house down in Normandy, where he's been the mayor for several years now.  The last time he ran for mayor, he was unopposed.  It was great to have all seven of us siblings together again. It doesn't happen that often and when it does, it's loads of fun!  We celebrated Mom & Dad's 59th wedding anniversary and Mom's 77th birthday.  It was also Roberta's birthday on July 3rd (the day we had our family reunion) and Roberta and Randy's 1st anniversary.  They got married at the last family reunion.  You should see some of the looks I get when I tell them my brother married my sister.  (As the mayor of Normandy, he can marry couples within the city limits!)

My aunt and cousin from Smyrna showed up with my cousins family and it was great to see them again, too.  Kevin Gray and his family didn't make it Amy was due any day with their 4th child.  Eli James put in his appearance on July 11th, weighing in at 8 lbs. and 20 3/4" long!  Big  Boy!  Josh had just finished a band tour of western U.S. the day before the reunion and I suppose getting into a vehicle and driving from Baton Rouge, LA to TN just didn't appeal to him!  Jessica and Daniel had just signed on a house in LA, so they were spending their time off unpacking and setting up house!  We missed them all and hope to see them all next year!

We spent most of the following week working on our house over in Manchester doing lots of odd jobs that "needed to be done, but never seemed to have the time to do".  Despite the heat and humidity (it was horrible after living out here in CA for over a year and the humidity hovers around 40%), we managed to catch (and release elsewhere) a groundhog, built shelves for the garden shed, got the 3 acres out front mowed, got rails for the "fence" down the length of the driveway, burned most of the stuff in the burn pile, burned the log that has been in the field for six years (thanks to Eugene for pulling it to the burn pile!), and sat on the front porch swing and watched as a summer thunderstorm rolled across the field behind Jack's house and across the road to our house, and then watch the sun come back out again!

We'll be going back again soon.  I can't wait until we go home for good.

Tennessee Time

It's been a month since my last entry. Not that there was that much going on since I was mostly doing some packing so we can downsize our stuff and take it to Tennessee. That didn't work out quite as planned since Mike decided yesterday that we were going to take the stuff up to TN in August rather than this week. Great. But the good news it that we're flying to TN rather than driving.  7 hours vs. 2 days driving.  I vote for the 7 hour flight myself!

Another reason I didn't post anything was that my camera and lens were in the shop for the better part of two months!  Long story, repeated trips back to the Nikon shop for repairs, a semi "nasty" letter to Nikon and then waiting for repairs.  They finally got it right on the third time! 

Just in time for me to take it with me to TN for 8 days.  Looking forward to this trip.  Dad and I are going to find somewhere we can go and take photos together. I think we'll end up in Shelbyville and going to the Mule and Donkey show at the Celebration Grounds.  That should be different!  We'll see how Dad goes on this one... or rather "not go".  Who knows?

Anyway, not much is going on. Cleaned the house top to bottom so I don't have to worry about it on the trip and have to do it when we get home.  Mike hasn't packed yet, but that's something he leaves till the end anyway, so no big deal. I usually wait, but this time I wanted to make sure that I got everything packed that I wanted to take and find out what it would fit in.  YEA me... no luggage to check on the plane! 

Well.  All for now.  Will write again when we return home.

Sharon

Planes of Fame Air Museum on Memorial Day

Mike & I went to Planes of Fame Air Museum on Memorial Day. It's an easy drive from Corona and Mike hadn't been there before. When we first walked in, the first thing he said was that "Justin would love this... we'll come back and do his Christmas shopping here"!  My thoughts the first time I saw it too!  I had to drag Mike out of the gift shop and out into the first hanger so we could go look at the planes! 

The planes there go from a replica of the Wright Brother's plane to planes used thru the Gulf War.  Very neat place to spend the day looking at old planes.  They also have WWII tanks, ambulances, and transport vehicles for personel. 

Not only do they have planes made in the US, they also have a Russian MIG 17 and some Japanese aircraft, too. There are a couple of replicas from Germany, the Red Barron being one of the replicas.

There are two Planes of Fame Air Museums: one in Chino, CA and the other in Valle, AZ- about 15 miles from the main gate into the Grand Canyon.  On the way back from TN last summer, Bettie, Katherine and I spent the night in a hotel across the street from the Planes of Fame Museum in Valle, AZ! 

Here are some of the photos that I took.

One of my photos placed in a contest!

I belong to a couple of Facebook photography pages where you can enter their photography contest.  The first photo that I entered for the first time place (tied) for second!  I was surprised and tickled that it did so well.  This is the photograph that I entered.  The theme for the 2 hour contest was "Beautiful".

Night Shots

I've joined a group on FaceBook that does photography contests that take two hours. They send out a theme, then you have two hours to go take the photos, edit, and submit a photo to the contest. I've been a member of this group for a couple of weeks and just participated in my first two contests.  These were held during the week rather than the weekend, so it was just a way to get into the swing of things with this group. I really had a great time doing this.

The second one I participated in had the theme "When Darkness Falls".  Since I haven't take much night photography, I was looking forward to this one.  I took my camera and headed down to the shopping center at the bottom of the mountain. These are some of the shots I took.