New Year's Eve

It's New Year's Eve and Mike is working for a while longer today. Jackson and I are enjoying playing with Holly and letting her get used to us and our routines. Holly has been with us for 24 hours now and already, she is more relaxed that she was when she arrived. I'm so glad. Holly is a rescue Boxer that our son, Justin, told us about. His sergeant found her and another guy Justin works with realized that having a rescue dog on top of a German Shepherd with 6 puppies and 3 kids under 3 is quite a handful and let us take her.

She ate good yesterday, which is good because she is so malnourished. I'm taking her to the vet on Friday to see how she is doing and to make sure she doesn't have worms or anything else wrong with her. She is such a sweet girl and so lovable! I've yet to hear anything out of her more than a whine to go outside to go potty. She hasn't even offered to bark at the neighbors' yappy little dogs either! Good girl!  :)  

Our cat, Molly, isn't impressed with Holly at all at this point. She still arches her back and looks like the stereotypical Halloween cat! Today she is a little calmer about seeing Holly. As long as she doesn't crowd her, she is OK, but as soon as Holly gets within a few feet or so, Molly with hiss and spat at her. She'll get over it just like she did with Donte! 

Later**

Mike and I went out to dinner at Golden Corral. Good food, plenty of it, and great to spend time together. Got home and Molly and Holly were waiting for us. 

Happy New Year wherever you are in the world!

The More Things Change...

The More Things Change...

So much has happened since my last post. Justin and Jennifer bought a house in Manor in May.  Melissa and Jackson moved in with us on Walleye Way in July. We went to Tennessee for the 4th of July.  I became a member of the DAR in August- joining a group in Georgetown. We bought a house in Georgetown in September- Melissa and Jackson are living with us. Went to Tennessee for Thanksgiving and hosted my family for the first time at our house. We stayed in Texas for Christmas and celebrated the season in our new home. And at the end of the year, 30 December, Holly joined the family. 

Holly is a rescue Boxer that Justin's sergeant found out near his house in the country. Decided they couldn't keep it, so he sent out an email asking if anyone wanted her. Another officer at the jail wanted it and actually took it home, but figured out that a rescue dog wasn't what he needed on top of a German Shepherd with 6 puppies and the three kids he had at home! So we got her this morning. She is such a sweetheart! I haven't heard a peep out of her since we got her home, but she sure does love coming up and getting some loving from me!

The New Year looks bright and full of love. Can't wait to see what the year will bring us!

Happy New Year!

Sharon

Photo Type of Day

The weather has turned back into a day of wintry weather. Cold, damp and windy. Yuck! So I've been going thru some photos that I've taken recently getting ready to order some prints.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Familiar Refrain

The familiar "well, it's been a while" has been used often enough on this blog, so I will refrain from using it yet again!

 

But, it has been a while.  The previous blog post was something that I wrote up to describe the new workout routine that I've started. I've done the "resistance band" workout twice. Sunday, as described, and then again today. Today wasn't quite as bad as Sunday, but I still have to get up and move around every so often so that I can stretch out the muscles! I can feel the stiffness settling in, so I've been walking around the yard to help keep it from getting any worse. I will take a couple of advils before bedtime, too!

 

Things around here tend to stay the same. I babysit Jackson; Mike goes to work; Michael and Melissa come over on Sundays for dinner; and I do a lot of walking.

 

I'm looking at getting me a dog. That's new. I'm trying to convince Mike to let me get a puppy so that Georgia can boss it around and be the alpha pet. I'm wanting an Australian Terrier. I've been watching this breed for about six to nine months now and I fall more in love with it everytime I see one. I've been in contact with a breeder up north and she currently has a waiting list for her puppies. She does try to fix you up with others if you're not looking to specifically have one from her. Which is real nice. I'm not specifically looking to have one of hers, but hers are really nice, too! Australian Terriers pretty much look like a Yorkshire on steroids with wiry hair! They get about 13-15 lbs., and not much bigger than a large cat. They are good with kids, good on farms (for ridding of rodents- thinking of the moles here), and have a fairly long lifespan of 15-17 years. I really want to get one of these dogs!  I love the blue and tan colors, but the red and blue is growing on me. Needless to say, I don't think I'd really be picky over what color it was!

 

Michael and Melissa's lease is up the end of May and they are looking to move out of where they are now. Can't say as I blame them. The neighborhood is on the rough side. So I called my realtor that helped us find this house and he's going to help us find one for them. We'd like to get them in our neighborhood, if possible, but close by would be fine, too.

 

Justin is close to finishing up college. He has summer classes to go, but should be graduating in August if all goes well. He is studying hard to make that happen!

 

Well, all for now!



Resistance Training

For those that know me, you know I’ve been eating healthier and working out a bit more seriously for the past few years than I have previously. I have gotten into a routine of walking almost 3 miles a day, on average. As much as I enjoy the walking, I thought I was missing “something” and needed to add something else to my workout regime.

So, on the advice of one of my doctors, I decided to use the “resistance band” method. So this past weekend, I went down to the local sports store to see what they had to offer. Imagine my delight in finding a complete set of bands, CD, and “complete gym in a bag”!!! Hot dog!!! We’re off to the races now!

So Sunday afternoon while Mike was away at work, I decided was as good a time as any to start this new routine. I watched the CD that came with the set; took out all the straps and bands and figured out what they all were; set up the apparatus as explained on the CD; did a couple of exercises as it went thru the “How To” section; and prepared to do the work out with the CD.

Ready? Set? Go!

I wasn’t too far into the work out when I started having conversations with some muscles I have spoken to in quite some time, despite the 3 mile daily walks! My inner thighs, although not often heard from on my walks, was the first to speak up and the last to shut up! “What are you doing”? They wanted to know. “Hip adductions, hip extensions and hip abductions” I repeated to myself.  I continued with my workout, ignoring as much as I could the discomfort the a fore mentioned muscles were giving me; then they spoke again. “Hip adductions, hip extensions and hip abductions?!  Seriously?!”  My inner thigh muscles promised revenge as I continued with the workout.

I finished the lower body workout on wobbly, but still standing legs! I was so proud!

Then came the upper body workout. I was so glad to see that I could keep up with the smiling instructor on the CD. Her two companions were smiling, too. 

The decline chest press, the incline chest press, the high row, the low row, the stiff armed lat pull down… I was able to do all of these with no problems. Then the instructor whipped out the second level of exercises. Since I was doing so well so far, I followed along.

What an idiot!

About 1/3 of the way thru of doing the overhead tricep extensions, I heard from another muscle I haven’t heard from in a while.  My triceps! The lateral shoulder raises and the frontal shoulder raises introduced me once again to another group of muscle I haven’t spoken to in some time either-  my shoulder muscles! Together, these muscles decided that they were mildly amused with my attempts at doing these second level activities; but not happy. They, too, promised revenge.

After sweating thru ½ hour of twisting, turning, pulling, pushing, shoving, bending, stretching, lunge-ing and grunting, I came to the end of the workout and reached the stretching session. AHHHH! I could handle this! Sitting down on the floor, I followed along as the instructor bent her body in half over her right leg. Like that was going to happen! NOT! I did my best, but still had a good nine inches between my nose and my knee. My inner thighs were laughing at me by this time just begging me to try to go lower! And it wasn’t long before my shoulders joined in the laughter.

Finishing the stretches, I turned off the CD while the smiling instructor was wishing me a good day.

This was Sunday.

Monday morning I woke up and felt fantastic.

Until I moved!

My inner thighs threatened to take me down until I promised to stand and move VERY slowly! My arms and shoulders didn’t want to cooperate with me to do anything if it included having to move them.  And my triceps yelled at me every single time I went to pick something up!

Deciding to take a day off from this new found activity, I picked it up again this morning (Tuesday). Although I heard from the same group of muscles, they didn’t seem quite as pissed off as they were a couple of days ago. This made me very happy!  J 

As I finished up the stretching activity today, I was slower to turn off of the CD and heard that smiling instructor tell me that in order to get the most benefit from this workout, it should be done TWICE in a row!

I heard my muscles say, “Try it bitch!”

New Printer

After being without a printer for over a year now, I'm so tickled to have my new printer.  Well, I should say "photo printer", because I have a huge workhorse of a printer that I use for my everyday printing. I just haven't had a printer for my photos. 

 

I've had 2 HP "all in one" printer/fax/copier/scanners and I was seriously considering getting a dedicated photo printer, but after reading reviews for two days on all these various "all in ones" and dedicated photo printers, I finally decided on getting an Epson XP800. What can I say? I LOVE IT! I read reviews from many sources, but tended to stay with PC Magazine and CNET for the professional reviews, but there were also a lot of customer reviews on both websites, too.  I also read the customer reviews on Amazon.com, too.  After crunching the numbers (so to speak), the Epson XP 800 came out in 1st place. And at $280, it was well within my budget.  As a stand alone photo printer, I would have had to get up into the $800 range before finding something that the "professional reviewers" and customer reviews could agree on. That is just a bit above what I wanted to spend on a printer just now.

 

I'm sending a couple of prints that I printed to my Dad to see what he has to say about them. I printed out a couple of photos that I had printed at Shutterfly.  The comparison was amazing! My butterfly photo was even better (I think) than the print I got from Shutterfly. The others were very, very close, so I'm well satisfied with the printer!

 

And after a year of not having a photo printer, I have a lot of photos to print out, but not as many as I figured that I would have. I have been ordering my photos from Shutterfly and Snapfish, but after several orders, I began to wonder which one printed my photos better. So... I did what Mike and I did when we first got our 1st digital camera. We sent the same prints to both Shutterfly and Snapfish. So that's what I did again. This time I sent in 10 photos and had 8x10's made from them. Ordered them and also received them on the same days!

 

The difference was very easy to tell on most of the prints. There was only two that they were even close. I tried to pick photos that would represent all the various colors (purples, reds, blues, greens, etc). Hands down, Shutterfly won. So if you're interested, my money will go to Shutterfly when I need to have prints larger than 8x10s made.

 

Things have been going well around here. Jackson is growing like a weed and is so much fun to have around.

 

Hope all is well with you!

Changes are Coming

The changes are already starting for the new year.

 

Justin leaves for Tennessee tomorrow morning. He is going back to MTSU and will finishing his degree. He will be staying at our house there in Manchester, so for that I'm glad. I will miss him. It's not like I see that much of him while he's here, but at least he's here! Between his job and his girlfriend, we didn't see much of him. Yesterday was his last day of work here, but he's already got a job lined up for Tennessee. Thank goodness!

 

Mike and I will have to get used to having an "empty nest" again. Although it really won't be empty at all. Jackson is still here during the week as I'm still babysitting him. We're looking at having another lady take care of him 1 week out of the month so that Jackson can play with her kids. He needs the socialization and he gets along with her three kids. It will only do him good.

 

Changes take time to get used to, but I think with the three years of "empty nest" out in California, we will be OK in getting used to having Justin gone again.

 

Other changes are coming but for now we'll wait for them to happen.