Spring Break - Day Two

Weather: Sunny, high of 69 degrees

Activities: Board games galore

& Creativity Restaurateur

Teddy & Madison's breakfast restaurant

Highlights included the "Fruit Fantasy Combo"
a platter of fruit, two sides and a bowl of Fruity Pebbles

Darcy & Mark's restaurant was a lunch place.

Highlights included "Turkey Sandwich"
Luscious, fresh cut turkey on succulent bread
and
"Side of Almonds"
Healthy nuts that have been proven to give you a longer lifespan

& a trip to the movies

where we watched How to Train a Dragon in 3D.

Dog Care: 1 walk without prompting / 1 walk with prompting /several puppy play times / no accidents

Disappointment: We were too full from all the popcorn that we opted out of eating dinner at a restaurant and I had to cook!

Spring Break - Day One

Technically this is more like Day four since our official break started last Friday, but since we did nothing extraordinary and spent most of the days leading up to today visiting hospitals I'm labeling this day one.

Tom's sister and family arrived from Chicago on Sunday to assist in the moving of my mother-in-law from one house to another. My job is kid duty. Mark and Ted are staying with us and we are in search of the ultimate spring break.

Weather: Windy, only in the 60's
Activities: Firehouse subs / football and tag at the park /
Dog Care: 2 walks through the neighborhood both times forced by mother / 3 accidents
Disappointment: My computer has crashed and I'm illegally using my husband's (shhhh)

Friday night at E&E

Chocolate Raspberry lava cake with almond toffee ice cream, real whipped cream and mint chips

She thinks she is a model

A hand me down from a friend

paired with her rubberband bracelets

and people....

she IS all that!

Wish I had thought of it first

This is the new obsession with my youngest daughter. This is her collection of rubberband bracelets. They come in all shapes and sizes of animals and objects.

Wear them and they pop right back into shape when you remove them. I can't tell you how many stores I had to drive to in search of these things. 12 bands for $2.99. Ridiculous!

A walk around the neighborhood

This little beauty was right outside my door in my own tree. We have quite a few of them flying around right now....a sure sign that spring has begun.

This guy was down the street and around the corner

keeping one eye on us while we passed

This is a neighbor's yard planted with fake grass that interests Elliot each time we pass.

One of the many squirrels that love to taunt my dog

Another sign of Florida spring

I haven't a clue what type of flower or weed this is, but I love it. A neighbor has it wrapped around the mailbox. I'm planning on goggling it so that I too can have this purple loveliness!

Florida danger! Fire ant condos. These nasty things pop up as soon as the weather warms.

Spring has sprung

A beautiful day to just lounge in the sun with food, drink, and a hungry dog!

Marc takes Florida

My cousin Marc journey down south to visit and hang out on the beach this week for his college spring break. He spent his time with me wisely.

He spent time picking oranges in my backyard...

And after some practice and some tips...

He gathered a bag full to take home to Indiana

He (and Robbie) lunched with me at our local beach hang out...

and tried grouper, fish spread, and gator tail...

and then he introduced me to pineapple upside down cake shots...

and we toasted family!

Cara & Kelly will someday take broadway by storm

To impress a girl

Despite his education, Elliot is smitten with a streetwise, sexy female who has grabbed him by his tail and shown him the ways of the street. Where Elliot once never noticed squirrels, Coco has shown him the ways of chasing these furry tailed, tree-climbing animals, and now, Elliot stalks them stealthy and silently, hoping for....what I'm not sure.

The problem is one, the best squirrels live in my neighbor's tree, across the street, so the two dogs run hither and yon without looking both ways before crossing our street, and two, Coco has taught my non-barking dog how to do so--loudly.

 

After Coco was satisfied Elliot understood the ways of squirrel chasing, she gave up on the process, and now stands back to watch Elliot make a fool of himself. Because, believe me, those squirrels taunt the dog.

They hang close to the tree until they see Elliot coming, and then they run quickly up to sit high on a branch. Then, while Elliot stands at the base barking up at them, they slowly move down, tails swishing, teeth chattering, just close enough where Elliot thinks he has a shot. When he jumps, they giggle and race back up the tree to sit and eat acorns, discarding the shells on Elliot's head.

And still, he continues this ritual daily, over and over again. I don't know if he's doing so to impress Coco or if he has something in mind for the day he catches a squirrel, but it's driving us crazy. Oh, the things a female can do to make a male look silly...

The new sheltie dishwasher

I highly recommend this new dishwasher! We have saved tons on our electricity and water bill!

Email tidbits & memories

I received this email in my box today and it brought back tons of memories so I thought I would share:

Here's to those of us who were born between 1930 - 1970. No matter what our kids and the new generation think about us, we are awesome. Our life is living proof. We survived....

1. ...being born to mothers who smoked and drank while pregnant with us. They took aspirin and ate blue cheese dressing and tuna from a can.
   
2. ...sleeping on our stomachs in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints.
3. ...riding in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts and no air bags. - We also rode in the front seat before we were twelve years old. I remember having to call for the front seat with my brother before we went somewhere. Scoring the front seat was the ultimate. I don't remember really worrying about seat belts until we started high school.
4. ...drinking water from a garden hose instead of from a bottle. - We did everything possible to keep from having to go inside our house. Downside to drinking out of the hose was that in the summer the hose was hot so the water was warm. Upside was we could squirt ourselves and others to cool off.
5. ...playing outdoors all summer long, leaving in the morning and not returning until dinner time. - And then we gobbled down our dinner so that we could go back outside and play ghost in the graveyard until bedtime.
6. ...not having playstations, nintendo's, X-boxes, DVD's, cell phones, and computers. - Instead we had to clean our rooms and maybe more, polish the silver, mow the lawn, and wash the car. We had to look things up in books. Upside was that we could do some great crank phone calling without caller ID!
7. ...spending hours on building things out of scraps and then using them. - We use to put on plays and singing shows in our backyard using an industrial wire and cable wheel for our stage.
   
8. ...falling out of trees, getting cut, breaking bones, loosing teeth and not getting sued from any of these accidents. - I could spend an entire post just listing all the mishaps that happened to our gang of friends playing throughout our neighborhood. My brother alone made or caused several trips to the hospital for stitches. Most of the time we tried to perform our own first aid so that we wouldn't get into any trouble or have to go inside.
   
9. ...spankings with wooden spoons, ping pong paddles, switches, and a bare hand. - I can remember my brother running around the house from my mother who was chasing him with a yardstick. I can remember my neighbors across the street having belts hanging on their bedroom doors. I can remember being spanked by my dad with his bare hand, telling me, "this is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you."
10. ...not having organized playdates, instead going outside knocking on friend's doors, ringing their bells, or just walking in- This one brought back tons of memories as we had a special knock with our neighbors before we just let ourselves into their house or they into ours. If we got bored or shoved outside by our parents, we always had someone in the neighborhood to play with and we just knocked on their door to get them.
11. ...playing with BB guns, and making up games with sticks and tennis balls. - Again, tons of BB stories and my brother. He once shot out the window of our neighbor's house and he had to work his butt off to pay for the new window too. One of the best games we played was one we all made up using a tennis racket and ball with bases that was played like baseball....AND WE PLAYED IT IN THE STREET.
12. ...riding our bikes without helmets. - We always walked or rode our bikes everywhere. We had a bike trail down the street from our house that we lived in during the summer and spring. Riding our bikes with the wind blowing our sweaty hair back from our hot, sweaty faces...priceless.
13. ...our parents not bailing us out if we broke the law. - This weekend I told the story of my brother getting hauled down to the sheriff's office when he was about nine for shooting a neighbor's pet squirrel with a BB gun. When the deputy asked him for his parents name and phone number he sadly shook his head and told the man, "Don't bother calling them. They won't come and get me." My dad always told us that if we broke the law, "don't call us to bail you out." The deputy thought that was the funniest thing. Thing was our parents made us take responsibility for our actions. Break a window? Pay for it with your own money. Get caught soaping windows or toilet papering trees? Clean it up.
14. ...not having elaborate and expensive birthday parties. - Okay, this one wasn't in the email, but I was whining about this to a friend of mine the other day when she told me she was planning to take a group of kids for the weekend to the Nickelodeon hotel to celebrate her daughter's 11th birthday. Then recently I ran across this picture while doing my brother's birthday video and so I added this one because it is true. We had cake and ice cream with the neighbors for our birthday, and as we got older slumber parties at the house. And they were the best damn birthday parties EVER!
    

Guess that's why it's called "the good old days".