If I were ever to get my wish and be able to take a hop across the pond to England, I would hope that Wimbledon tennis tickets were also included in that dream vacation package (along with some fish & chips!) That would be the ultimate, wouldn’t it? To be in such an amazing country while experiencing one of the most prestigious sporting events of all time! I can imagine it would be a fantastic time if I could talk my husband into it, and keep him awake throughout the event. I know to some tennis may seem sort of .. boring. Believe me, it did to me too at first. But over the years I have grown to rather enjoy watching it. Playing? Not so much. I couldn’t imagine myself bouncing all over the court, but I’m definitely a voyeur. It’s one of those sports that doesn’t involve anyone beating the other up, no tackling, no mindless strength needed. Totally civilized, just the way it should be.

Hmmm .. I imagine scoring tickets to Wimbledon could be quite a sport in itself though. But while I’m dreaming I might as well dream BIG.

Lately it seems as if it has been never ending storms around here. Sure, there’s a nice day here and there but the rain is ridiculous. Today was no different, of course. I was woke from our afternoon nap (yes, I’m like 75 yrs old..lol) by the sound of wind and HAIL hitting the side of the bay window in our bedroom. Normally I’d be cheesed about seeing a really good storm but with my brand new van sitting out there - no way! I don’t think the hail was large enough to do any damage but I won’t know until tomorrow when I have day light and a good chance to check it over. ugh. I know I’ll never get away with keeping it pristine and scratch/dent free forever but I would at least like a good month without any dings, you know?

For years I have been using Photo Cards in place of regular old greeting cards. Since we are not within a decent distance of our families it is nice to be able to say a lot of things all at once.

Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, Birthday Invitations, Birth Announcements, Thinking of You … and here’s a photo of the kids - see how much they have changed?!

It makes keeping in touch and sharing photos of the kids so much easier and it is so much cheaper than buying a bunch of photo prints for family members who really do not have the room to display them in frames anyway. Our grandparents are getting older and to the point (at least on my side of the family) where they have over a dozen great grandchildren by now. There’s no room on their walls for any more pictures. A quick photo card is sufficient if you ask me.

Cards Direct has a nice selection of fully customizable cards - don’t let the holiday theme fool you! They can be used for so much more. I actually used a theme much like the photo card below for a birth announcement after my son was born. It wasn’t from this site but it was very close to this look!

Take out the “Happy Holidays” and you have a very nice basic card that can be used for whatever you wish. Let your imagination be your guide!

But dinner won’t cook itself! I’ll have to finish the theme change later.

Ahhh! Dinner - check! Theme Tweak? Check! I think I’m done and it’s about time, too! I have had the old look up for far too long but I just never seem to have the time to change anything up. My only time has severely suffered over the last couple of months. I can’t say that my schedule is full or anything .. it’s more like my brain is fogged. I have too many other things on my most days to blog about anything in a coherent manner. I’m trying though. I’d like to start visiting blogs again and getting back into the swing of things.

I have a secret love of museums. I was always the geeky kid in school who got totally over the moon excited when field trips were scheduled. I loved brown bagging my lunch and learning for the day instead of being stuck in a classroom. Art museums were always my favorite with natural history coming in as a close second.

Now that I’m way past that stage I am just happy to be in a fairly quiet place where I can zone out and then focus on something other than the day to day. Luckily we have quite a few museums in this area so I’m definitely set. You could spend weeks in this are going to various museums and learning about history. I am thankful for that but I do wish we could travel a bit and check out museums all across the country. There is SO much more out there in towns that I’ve never even thought of. Hopefully we will get to that traveling someday. We semi joke about getting an RV after retirement and living on the road and if we do, I do believe Orange, Texas will be on our list of cities to visit. The Stark Museum of Art is located there and it sounds like an amazing place to check out. They have a vast collection of American Indian art, Western art, decorative arts and even rare manuscripts as well as rare books. I would really love to see the collection of American Indian art and decorative arts. I am totally fascinated by everything native to our country. If you are in this area or close enough to make the drive, check it out! I can’t imagine missing out on that opportunity.

11pm is definitely too late to have kids awake. AHHH! We took a late nap and now we’re paying for it. I suppose all of my plans to finish season 1 of the Tudors will go out the window. I never have time to myself anymore. I can’t even SLEEP alone most of the time and can’t even use the bathroom without someone bugging me.

And I thought my new van was expensive! I have been having small anxiety attacks for the last two weeks thinking about the money spent. One all was said and done it was way more than I had planned on spending but at least it was $58000.00 cheaper than buying street sweeper equipment! Check those out. Asher, alasher.com, specializes in late model, pre-owned construction equipment from bucket trucks to cranes. I am assuming that means you can get a pretty decent deal by buying used, as with anything. It makes sense to do it that way if you can.

If you have only been shopping for new shoes online, you are losing out. I love that you can find anything you could imagine with the click of a mouse. So if you are in the market for something new, check them out. You may find something to suit your needs.

Of course I’ll never need such a thing but it is always a good thing to know random bits of information about totally obscure subjects. I have always been a master at Trivial Pursuit. What can I say? It’s a gift.

We went strawberry picking this afternoon, on a whim. I thought it would be a lot more fun today rather than waiting until next weekend when the Pungo Strawberry Festival is in full swing. It gets a little crazy over that way with everything going on and you can barely get down the road, let alone pick anything in peace.

The kids have never been out to pick anything (do noses count?) so I think they enjoyed the new experience. I know they will totally love the results as I have a delicious pie and muffins waiting to be consumed now.

I’ll still be heading to the festival next weekend though - to EAT! lol They have all of the yummy carnival foods you could love, BBQ and just about anything you can imagine that can be made with strawberries. YUM!

… with my daughter!!

Aubree and I had a nice night out by ourselves at the mall this evening as a birthday treat. I have to say that I think I may prefer having her as a date, too. She’s talkative, she doesn’t eat much (cheap date!), and we both like the same girly things. :o) She rocks!

Anyway, she wanted to build a “bear” (she chose a Dinosaur) at Build-A-Bear and then we had a little dinner as well. I wasn’t counting on eating out, we haven’t done so since she was maybe 9 months old (in a sit down fashion), but she was hungry so I gave it shot - and it turned out to be a lot of fun. Not fantastic for weight loss, but yeah. She was SO good. I may try taking her out for ‘one on one’ time more often, though not TOO often. It just costs way too much money in the end and I feel guilty spending it. Guilt and responsibility really ruin fun, you know?

And of course, before all of that grand excitement we had some birthday fun at home. Cake, gifts and lots of messes to be made with the new loot. I’ll be picking dried playdoh out of the carpet for the next week.

I just can’t believe my baby girl is 4! It just doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. *sighs* It seems like it was just last year that I was blogging about her birth and posting those first photos. Someone please slow time down for me, ok?

Why was I excited to get out of here this afternoon?!

ARRRGH!

I seriously don’t know how the people here can even see through their windshields with their heads so far up their asses. That is some talent, I swear. I’m a stickler for rules. I adore traffic laws. I follow them. I cuddle them and pat them on the head lovingly. But the people here just do not .. at all. Speed limits? What the hell is that?! At one point I tried to keep up with traffic just to see how fast everyone else was going, on a 45 mph street. The end result was 60 mph!! Seriously .. no, thanks. I’ll be the old lady in the slow lane. The rest of them can just go around me because I would be the loser who gets the ticket and I’d rather spend my money on other things. It’s a good thing I was out without the kids - they would have a whole new vocabulary to use if they had overheard my trucker’s mouth. I hate people who speed ahead, cut me off and then just end up in front of me at a red light forcing me to slam on my breaks. I’ll never understand that. It’s like .. hello! The reason I was SLOWING down was because of the red light .. jackass.

Anyway …

After my nervous breakdown I ended up in Party City where the registers just happened to be down. Lovely. I had to wait for them to be able to ring me up, and then wait for balloons to blown up AND I had the pleasure of having “loud cell phone talker woman” right behind in me in line. I do believe she called just about everyone she knew while we were waiting. I don’t get that. But then again I don’t call anyone. Ever, and if I do I do it in the car on the side of the road.

Then the cake .. I need to read up on sheet cake sizes because it’s really small. I wish I would have ordered the next size up. It was listed as being able to serve 16-18 people and I thought that would be fine since the hubby is a P-I-G when it comes to cake. Yeah .. if you give them each a fork full it may feed that many, but there’s no way it would in our family. Maybe we’re all a bunch of piggies? But it is adorable even if the tiny little thing cost me almost $30!! ugh.

Thankfully there was a Starbucks in the grocery store so I grabbed myself a dose of sugar/caffeine before heading home and almost getting hit in the parking lot by some idiot who was cutting through the lanes instead of following traffic. Now I’m home, the kids are outside with Daddy and I’m waiting for my blood pressure to return to normal. We wanted to take the kids to Kangaroo Jac’s in Chesapeake tomorrow night for some playtime but I’m seriously rethinking that. I don’t know if my poor heart could take the anxiety attack that Friday night traffic would cause me! No, it’s nothing like New York City travel, I’m sure .. but it’s bad enough!