Our 25th Anniversary

We have the sweetest daughter - Becca and one of our best friends planned a party for our 25th wedding anniversary at "Agatha's Murder Mystery Dinner Theater".  I knew she was up to something, just wasn't sure what.

When we headed toward town and the directions put us into a parking deck that showed "Agatha's", then I knew that was where we were going.  What I didn't know was that 14 of our friends and family were also there waiting for us.  When I rounded the corner into the theater area, they were all standing up cheering for us.  It was awesome!  Becca was so excited because she had pulled off the surprise!

Bobby and I both had speaking parts in the performance and everyone else got to participate also.  It was so much fun and I have to admit that I almost got to the point of being tired of laughing!

Poor Steve was on the end of the table and kept being used as a resting place for "boobs"!  He'll hate me for posting this picture, but it was so funny I couldn't help myself!  The other picture is of my daughter-in-law, Jennifer and my sister-in-law, Anita singing with their group.

Can't wait to see what they'll do for our 50th (that is if we live that long!)!

I Laugh Every Time I Go To The Bathroom

And NO, it is not what you are thinking....  A while back, I decided to redo my bathroom and wanted to have a mountain cabin / outdoor theme.  It has always been a yellow or light blue and I just wanted something different. 

I found the perfect shower curtain at WalMart - it was a dark sky blue, green, brown and tan plaid.  While I was there I purchased some green towels to match it and a few other items.

I then took the shower curtain to Home Depot to have them match some paint to the green color in the curtain.  Everything was set to start the redecoration of the bathroom. 

Becca came over and helped me paint the walls, we put all the accessories out and then stepped back to see how it all looked.  I must admit that I was a little taken aback.  Standing there staring at the shower curtain with all the green accents around it, we both realized that there was absolutely no green in it whatsoever.  We were amazed.... to say the least.

After laughing hysterically for a few minutes, we could only assume that the halogen lighting in WalMart and Home Depot made some of the tan appear to be green.  Hence the reason that I laugh every time I go to the bathroom....

And don't ever tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor!

Selling Moonshine

My father’s father was a moonshiner from the hills of North Georgia. Mind you, I do not consider this a bad thing for the times that they lived in. Times were hard for the family, which was a large one consisting of Granddaddy, grandmother and 10 children.   One of the ways that they earned extra money was to make moonshine from the sugar cane and corn that they grew.

Daddy with 3 of his sisters and 2 of his cousins

Unfortunately, many of my aunts and uncles were alcoholics as adults, having grown up drinking shine all of their lives. I must admit though that I do not remember any of them ever missing a day of work or not taking care of their families because of their drinking.

As a child, I remember Daddy having mason jars with “water” in them that I was not allowed to touch, and it never occurred to me that it was anything but water. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized it was moonshine. I’m not even sure that I would have known what liquor was when I was a child.  My father was also an alcoholic but until I was in high school, he kept it hidden from me. 

Long after my grandfather was dead, I remember that sometimes on the weekends, daddy would drive to Cabbage Town in Atlanta and would get out of the car, open the trunk and then lots of people would come to the car to talk to him. He always made me stay in the car so I could never see exactly what they were doing. As an adult, when the memory came back, I realized that he was selling moonshine out of the trunk.

It’s funny to me now to think that I helped my Daddy run moonshine (I guess it gave more credibility to him – after all, what kind of man would take his little girl with him to sell moonshine?).

Lucky for me I had a mother who was a “teetotaler” and taught me to never become addicted to alcohol. Not that I was an angel growing up…. I had my “younger, more stupid” days just like most of us have had. I just figured out at an early age that I enjoyed watching drunks rather than being one.

That Helpless Feeling

I think that the worst time of my life was when I was told that Becca would need open heart surgery to repair a heart murmur. We knew she had a heart murmur when she was born, but it had been gradually closing up over the years. During the first part of 1994 I realized that I could hear her murmur without a stethoscope. When I asked her pediatrician about it, he said that sometimes when they are closing up they get really loud and this was normal. Several months went by and the next time we went in he decided to send her to a cardiologist for an echo cardiogram. The heart had been building up pockets of muscle around the hole trying to make another valve out of it. At the time it was not giving her any problems, but the doctor assured me that at some point in the future it would start to obstruct the flow of blood through the heart. She was five and had just started kindergarten when we got the news.

I grew up in a time when open heart surgery meant that you went to see the patient before the operation to say your goodbyes. Patients did not usually survive the trauma of open heart surgery and if they did, it was a long slow recovery process. My mind immediately thought of the worse case scenario when the doctor told me and for the first time in a long time, I cried like a baby. Luckily the nurse had taken Steve and Becca to the waiting room to play with the toys so they didn’t see how upset I got. And thank goodness, modern medicine had come a long way and the chances of her not surviving were less than 5%.

Surgery was scheduled for the Tuesday after Thanksgiving at Egleston Children’s Hospital, with us going in on that Monday for all the pre-op work. To keep Becca from being scared and to keep my mind off of what was about to happen, I decided to keep a diary of all the events surrounding her surgery. I took pictures of everything that happened to her and kept notes about the times and what was going on. I knew that when she was older she wouldn’t remember anything about the surgery and would want to know what had happened.

I had decided that when they took her to surgery, I would finally be able to have a nice cry, but when the time came – Bobby and everybody else was crying, so, trying to be a good mom, I got a stiff upper lip and held it together.

The surgery went well and I continued to occupy myself by working on the diary. I stayed at the hospital the whole week because I couldn’t bear to leave my baby there. They had a nice shower area for the family and sofas in the waiting room that slept better than our bed at home.

When Becca came out of surgery, Bobby and I were the first to go into ICU to see her. We knew what to expect about all the tubes and bandages, so that wasn’t much of a surprise. She was still out of it so all we got to do was watch her. Bobby was so pitiful, all he could do was cry. I had been so strong through the whole ordeal because everyone around me was falling apart and I still had to be strong when all I wanted to do was cry for my poor baby.

The second time we got to go in, my mother-in-law went with me. Becca was awake but her hands were strapped down to keep her from pulling out any lines and she still had a breathing tube down her throat. My heart broke – she kept trying to say mama and to reach out to me, but she couldn’t do either one and I couldn’t even hold her. Well, that was my moment – I had to turn away so that she wouldn’t see me cry and I only cried for a few seconds, but it was enough to scare everybody in the room. When I left the ICU, the staff had a nurse and a counselor waiting to make sure that I was OK. I think I must have scared them half to death when I cried.

The next day when it was decided that Becca should be put in a regular room and they started removing all the drainage tubes, cath lines, etc, she would scream every time they pulled on the heart catheter. The cardiologist decided that rather than taking a chance on doing some damage, they would take her back to surgery to find out what was wrong. My poor baby had to go through a second surgery. Luckily it turned out that the catheter was hung on a loop of suture and there was no damage done so the surgery took just a few hours.

She went back to the step down unit of the ICU and on Friday night was put into a regular room. At this point she had not had any food since early Monday evening. The cafeteria was closed but the nurses were so great – one went down and managed to bring Becca back some mashed potatoes and popsicles so Becca was in hog heaven! On Saturday they actually let her go home and I figured that I would have some time to get all of the Christmas gifts wrapped and do some decorating while she was recovering. Well, Becca had other ideas. Once she figured out that she didn’t hurt she was up and running and hasn’t stopped yet!

Watching your child go through something like this is one of the hardest things you ever have to do, you want so bad to take away their pain and make them better but you can’t. You have to trust that God has given you the best doctors and nurses to make them well again and that he will hold your child in his arms until he can place them back in yours.

Tuesday morning came around and the whole family was there to wish her well. After they had given her the “happy juice” (a type of anesthesia) Steve knelt beside the bed to kiss her bye and she was so sweet, stroking his face and loving on him and then before we knew it, she drew back and hit him, knocking him to the floor then just laughed and laughed. I thought for a minute that Steve would probably take care of the surgery problem by just killing her on the spot, but being the sweet little boy that he was, he just got up and went back over and gave her a kiss. It was the greatest of Kodak moments and I was so in shock that I forgot to take a picture of it….. go figure!

Mom, April and Steve naming Becca

My mother and father lived for the day when I would have them some grandchildren. When Steve came along, they doted on him and spoiled him every chance that they got. My mother would say that his “poop” didn’t stink (I’m here to tell you it did, but that’s another story).

When we found out that we were going to have another baby and it was a girl, Mom and Steve decided that they were going to name her. I only had one stipulation and that was that I wanted her middle name to be Joenne after me. They both agreed and immediately said Stephanie (after Steve) Joenne, but my sister-in-law and I were both pregnant and she had already decided to name her’s Stephanie if it was a little girl.

They were disappointed but set out on a quest to find just the right name. Steve got out books so he could find girl names and he and Mom sat on the sofa and put names together for what seemed like hours. Bobby wanted her named something that would have a nickname that he could call her by. It was funny listening to all the combinations that Mom and Steve came up with. Bobby would check each name for what the initials would spell, what nicknames she could be called by and other name related problems. The whole family got in on the act. Mom and Steve finally came up with Rebecca Joenne and it was agreed that we would call her Becca.

Never in the history of our family has it taken so much time and effort to name a new baby. But it was worth it, Becca seems to fit her just perfectly. And the whole family was happy with her name.

I have a P.S. to this story - April called me and reminded me that she was the one who originally said something to my mom about calling the baby "Becca" and I have no doubt that she did.  No matter what, it's fun that we all had a hand in naming her!

My Aunt Eula

Before I married Bobby, I was married to another man named Steve. The marriage only lasted for a little over 3 years and was a learning experience for me. I don’t regret it, I just wish that I had waited a while longer before getting married.

After Bobby and I married, when I found out that I was pregnant, Bobby told me that he wanted a little boy. We already had a daughter (April – by Bobby’s first wife). If it was a boy, Bobby wanted to know whether or not I would mind if we named him Robert Steven (Bobby, his Dad and Brother-in-law are all named Robert). I really didn’t mind so when the time came and it was a boy, we named him Robert Steven. Bobby was so proud, he said he’d always dreamed of having a little boy named Steve and he was tickled to death.

When we finally got Steve out of the house and started showing him off to other family members, we took him to see my Dad’s sister, Eula. I loved Aunt Eula dearly, she was as country as they come and somewhere along the road of life she had lost a card or two out of her deck. When we told her what Steve’s name was, she got so mad at us. She was appalled that we would name our son after my first husband. How dare we?!? We tried to explain to her that this was not the case, that Bobby had always wanted a son named Steve, but she didn’t believe us. Through the years, she would fuss at us over and over for what we did to Steve and I truly believe that she went to her grave thinking that we had named him after my first husband! God love her, this story still makes me laugh when I think of it!

We all have family members like Aunt Eula, but just think of how boring life would be without them! Remember them fondly and with love, because you know they’ve made you smile more than once. And just think, you come from the same gene pool!

Margarita's - Our Favorite Mexican Food Restaurant

We just got back from eating dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant - a little place in Austell, Georgia on Veteran's Memorial Highway (the old Bankhead Hwy.) called Margarita's.   It's located in downtown Austell across from the post office and has the absolute best Mexican food anywhere in the Atlanta area.  And believe me - we eat a lot of Mexican food.  It is owned and run by a wonderful man named Eric who treats each and every customer as if they were family.

You know how you go to some restaurants and all the food tastes the same, well not here.  Each dish has it's own unique flavor and the fahitas are to die for!   They have a cheese dip with fahita steak, shrimp and chicken in it that will make you want to slap your mama, it's soooooo good!

If this sounds like a billboard, consider it so, but this is still the best Mexican restaurant around.  Make sure you try it if you are in the area - and even if you're not - it's well worth the trip!

Meet the Family - Jennifer

I consider Jennifer to be my third daughter, my daughter by a different mother (and father).  Jennifer is married to my son, Steve and is very special to me.  She is beautiful, funny, kind and thoughtful, but most of all, she makes my son happy. 

Steve and Jennifer had known each other for a while before they started dating because her family and ours went to the same church.  Jennifer is a few years older than Steve and when he knew that he wanted to ask her out, he asked me if he should.  Of course, my reply was that age did not matter, only what was in your heart.  I'm so glad now that I encouraged him to ask her out, because I could not have gotten a better daughter-in-law. 

We are lucky that they do not live too far from us and so we get to see them often.  She and Steve do not have any children yet, but I do have a grandpuppy, Titan.  When they do have children, I know that they will both make wonderful parents and will raise my grandchild up to be a loving and kind child with the background that they will need to make their way in life.

Snorkeling - One of God's Wonders

One of God’s wonders has to be the oceans. Several years ago my husband Bobby and I discovered the world of snorkeling and have been hooked ever since. Now, I’m a bit claustrophobic so I haven’t gotten into diving yet and I’m not sure that I ever will, but I love to snorkel.

There is such a peace about floating on top of the water and just watching the world underneath (as long as the sharks stay away – which luckily I have not had to deal with yet!). The colors are so vivid and the fish so funny to watch. I could snorkel for the rest of my life and die a happy woman.

We have a group of friends that go cruising together and we’ve managed to get all of them involved in snorkeling. It’s so much fun when you’re there with your friends. We have only snorkeled in the Caribbean but the water there is crystal clear and most of the beaches are great. I try to find us beaches to go to where we can just walk right in off the beach and snorkel.


So far, our favorite has been Brewer’s Bay on Tortola. The reviews I had seen were pretty good, although some people complained that it was a little too secluded and only had one little restaurant with not so nice bathrooms. When we went, the restaurant was nice (mostly sodas, beer and sandwich type items – nothing fancy) and the bathrooms were clean. It looks like a little shack, but had a nice deck under the shade trees for those who did not want to snorkel.

Look really close there are 3 fish in this picture!

A School of Blue Tangs

You swim out about 50-100 yards and you are over the reef. There are lots of beautiful fish and many schools of blue tangs, and lots of other small fish. The further out you go the better the reef gets, but make sure you have a life jacket and don’t go alone. Brewer’s Bay is at the bottom of a ridge of mountains and has only a small opening out to the ocean, but the currents can get a little strong (but not bad, even for those who don’t swim well).


I would venture a guess and say that most of the cab drivers around the port know where Brewer’s Bay is and will take you there and then come back and pick you up whenever you tell them to. Our driver would not take any money until he came back for us, which made us feel a lot better about being dumped off on the opposite side of the island from where our ship was! It’s a beautiful drive and cost us only $5 each way, but each couple paid the driver $20 which was well worth it. Most of the taxis are little open air buses and so you can see really well and don’t get too hot on the drive over.


For my money, this was far and away the best place we’ve been to so far.



Forever friends

I have been so blessed in my life to find friendships that are true and loyal and will last for the rest of my life.  Not many people can say that.   It is something that I have tried to instill in my children as they grew up and it seems to have made an impact because my 2 youngest are still friends with people they have grown up with since elementary school.

Anita



Ili Si

My oldest and dearest friend, Anita, ended up becoming my sister-in-law when I married Bobby.  My friend, Ili Si, I met on the first day of the 8th grade when we were both waiting for the bus.  She calls me every year on my birthday and has never missed a single year.  Others I have known since high school and we still get together after all these years.  I can't count on both hands the number of friends that I have known for over 4 decades.  It's an awesome feeling.

Tena, Deb and IDeb, Cheryl and I

My closest girlfriends now (the ones who live close and I get to see all the time) have been friends for almost 20 years and our kids grew up together.  We go on vacations together (sometimes as a group, sometimes with all the kids and sometimes as two couples).  We have lots of deck parties and pot luck suppers, get togethers for birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions.

They are my friends, confidants, sisters, shoulders to cry on and will forever hold a piece of my heart.  I have been truly blessed by these, my friends.

Love your friends and be loyal to them through thick and thin!

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

Now for a serious blog (you probably won't see too many of these from me)....

The last year has been a really strange year.  It's had lots of ups and downs, some worse than others, some better, but despite it all, I've managed to make some lemonade.  I've always been a relatively happy person (except when I was going through menopause, but that's a whole other blog!).  This year has challenged my happiness on many levels.  I found myself falling into a depression that I could not seem to recover from.  

I am a Christian and I know that whatever I turn over to God will turn out well.  My problem was that I am also human and I had a hard time really turning it ALL over to God.  Therein lay my biggest problem.  When I finally did let go, things began to look up and a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders, literally.

I can feel myself getting back to normal as each day passes and it makes my soul sing with a joyful noise.  There is power in prayer and faith, even when it is being tested to what you think is your limit.

Just remember that and then try to make lemonade out of those lemons that life drops on your head along the way.  It really tastes pretty good.

A family to be proud of!

Back in May, my son and some of his friends hosted a "white trash bash". It was like a costume party (well, for most of us anyway) in the middle of the year.

There were rules of attendance - no mixed drinks - beer only (and only certain types were allowed); you had to dress up; no tables to eat at, you had to eat out of your lap; corn toss, horseshoes, beer pong and flip cup were the only games allowed and if you brought wine, it had to come out of a box. If you didn't have a tattoo, one would be provided.

It was an absolute blast! I of course, was in hog heaven since there were hundred's of "Kodak" moments. And believe me, I took full advantage of that fact!

Most of the people in attendance were friends of Steve's from school, so it was fun to see them all. Hope you like our family portraits.

And of course, the evening would not have been complete without trying to fill up the fence with beer cans..... after all, it was a "White Trash Bash"!!

I live with a bunch of comedians!

For mother's day this year, the kids came over and we had a cookout.  April, Steve, his wife Jennifer, Becca and her boyfriend Shane and Bobby and I were all there.  The only one missing was my Granddaughter, Ashley.  We had a wonderful time and I really enjoyed getting to be with all of them.

Whenever we get together for family events, I try to take a group photograph before everyone heads home.  Well, this night was no different.....  after taking several shots, and finally getting all the puppies in the picture, I decided to take one more just for good measure.

Seems like the kids had another idea in mind..... they decided to jump out of the picture, leaving just Jennifer and Shane with Bobby and I.   Well.....  I got the last laugh!  They had forgotten that I have a wide-angle lense on my camera.  You can see the results! 

What a bunch of comedians!  At least life is never dull with them!

Becca's finally 21! Woo Hoo!

Wow, so much has happened since I last wrote a blog. I was determined that I was going to try to keep up with this blog no matter what and you see where that got me!

My daughter-in-law, Jennifer and Becca

Well, Becca has finally turned 21! It's so hard for me to believe that my baby girl is 21. It sounds cliche, but it really does seem like she was born just yesterday. I feel so old (haha). We had a huge party on the deck and there were people in and out all night! All the kids were here, lots of friends and a bunch of Becca's co-workers showed up. We had enough food to feed an army and everyone went away with at least a full stomch!

Most of what happend in Vegas will stay in Vegas!

Wow, I can't believe that it has been so long since I posted a blog, but it has been a busy couple of weeks. Becca and I went to Las Vegas with my sister-in-law, Anita and my niece, Stephanie so that we could celebrate Stephanie's 21st birthday. We had an absolute blast.

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I wish my whole family could have gone with us, but for a first time visit to Vegas, going with Becca was a lot of fun. She and I for the most part, like the same things and enjoy a good laugh!

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It was a little nerve-wracking at times because Becca will not be 21 for another month and she wanted to be able to play the slots some and be able to have a drink with Stephanie. I just knew we'd get busted, but since Becca looks older than she is, she was able to play a few slot machines (she even won $50) and got to have a few drinks, so she was extremely happy! She only got asked for ID one time and that was as we were walking through a casino.

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We did the whole tourist thing, checking out a lot of the hotels and sights. Someone told Becca that after she had been there for 4 days she would have seen it all..... they lied! We were there for eight days and didn't see half of what we wanted to see. I am exhausted!

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Some of the hotels go all out to decorate and some of the artwork was just awesome. I loved all the hotels with themes like Excalibur, MGM, New York - New York, Paris, the Bellagio, etc. Las Vegas at night is a whole different world from the daytime Las Vegas, so it is like visiting 2 different cities.

Of course I was in hog heaven and took over a thousand pictures (some will be deleted because they are so bad and some will never be seen - if you know what I mean!!)

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Becca made me ride the roller coaster at New York - New York for which I will forever hate her and she will never be able to repay me for the pain and suffering she put me through. I bought the souvineer photo of us on the ride only so that I would have something to blackmail Becca with for the rest of her life. I love roller coasters, but this one was 5 or 6 stories in the air and had so many loops and twists and turns that I could hardly walk when we finally got off the ride. My whole body felt like it was bruised and battered and I hurt for days! Getting older is not what it is cracked up to be.

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My niece did not get to Vegas until about 9:00 on the night before her birthday (had she been at home she would have already been 21, but since Vegas is 3 hours behind us, she had to wait a while to turn 21). This was a good thing since it gave her a chance to be at a casino ready to put her dollar into the machine at the stroke of midnight. She ordered a drink and they carded her which made her very happy - she got to show them that she was 21 even though her license said she was "under 21". It was funny to see how excited she got!

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I'll write more about our trip later, but for now I'm just glad to be home and back to a normal routine. I missed Bobby and all the puppies more than I thought I would. Enjoy what you have, because no matter how wonderful it looks, the grass is not really that much greener on the other side. There really is no place like "Home"!

Summer Deck Parties

A few years ago, Bobby and I built a laundry room/pantry and a very large deck onto the back of our house. Our house was built in the 1970's and it is really small. We had a nice backyard, but it slopes and was really not a good place to entertain.

I've always loved having friends over for potluck and to just sit around and fellowship but we'd never really been able to have more than just a few friends until we built our deck. Now we can have lots of friends come over at the same time. It's wonderful.

Lots of times after church, we'll just tell everyone to grab something and come on over. Then we set it all out and have a potluck dinner. God has been good to us - we never seem to run out of food and the company is always great to be around.

We have had as many as 20 plus friends (and a few dogs) on the deck for cookouts and birthday parties and we always have a ball. Sometimes we sit out there and just listen to the frogs, catie dids, owls and other critters.

I can't wait until I get through getting everything cleaned and ready for the fun to begin! It's a big job and takes a long time, but it is worth it!

Our dogs really love the deck too because they have a place to lay in the sun and sleep, the birds love it because I have more places to hang my bird feeders and the squirrels love it because I hang more bird feeders (I don't have the heart to hurt them so I just feed them right along with my birds). All in all , everyone loves our deck!