Meet our new babies..

WallE and Eva (Ross named them). Our baby gerbils. When Ross' gerbil died we took two young gerbils from the pre-school teacher over the summer. They were SUPPOSED to be two GIRLS, but ahem, they obviously are NOT! They had four babies a month and a half later and only two survived. The small one is a little boy, WallE and the larger one is the girl, Eva. They are SO stinkin' cute! We have decided to keep them. One with the momma and one with the daddy. They are so loving and social, that I felt bad thinking we had to break them up. So now they will both have a baby to live with. And hopefully the method we used to sex them early is foolproof.... sigh. But they are cute!!!

Week In Review

We had a great week this week. Ross' first week back to school was a good one. We all really like his teacher this year. He made a 102% on his first spelling test, WOOHOO! He is finding out quick that second grade is ALL about work and more work. Lots more studying and tests. Starting this coming week, he will be carpooling with his kindergarten teacher. It was a huge blessing that she offered us this chance. We will not only save some money in gas, but it will give Ross some more incentive to be more independent (he needs this badly) and will be fantastic when I go back to work. HUGE blessing.

Let's see, Tropical Storm Fay was a dud(thankfully) as it came ashore. We hardly got a drop of rain UNTIL the following FIVE days! Sheesh. Never seen a storm linger so long. We had no flooding (again, thankfully) and just a bit breezy.
I actually got to scrap a bit and am itching to get back out to my desk and create. I think I am going to start working on playing around with cardmaking a bit. Just to challenge myself some. Get outside of my comfort zone and push the mojo. I need to start playing with my Bad Girls August kit as well. I have a picture from vacation that I want to get scrapped with some of the yummy stuff in my kit. Perfect colors.

Hope you all have a great week. I plan to try and update more now that life is getting back in the groove. NEED that groove!!

It feels so good...

to actually "create". It's been to long since I have been able to sit at my desk and COMPLETE a layout. But I did today and it felt so good! I love this picture of Ross. The look is SO him. And the little one of his silly self. That's my boy.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from vacation. We had so much fun and I'm so very glad that we took the time away for ourselves. It was WELL worth it. I have plans for layouts for most of these!! I love the jellyfish and the tiger photos!
Thank you to my pal Renee for giving me a cute little award for my blog! She is so sweet. If you haven't went and checked her blog out, please do. She is very talented and you will get a good laugh for sure!

Catching my breath...

finally. Things are calming down. Seems that maybe we are getting around to a bit more stability and a little less chaos. So, where to begin. Well, back at the first week of July, my DH's nephew-the same one that I took care of as a baby when I first met my husband-who is now 16, had some serious reconstructive surgery to correct an injury from when he was younger. We were asked to work at the family marina while he was in the ICU for 7 days and while my SIL was home taking care of him. So we were very busy at the marina for two weeks and as soon as she could get back to work, I received a horrible phone call from my SIL. Her oldest son, 32, had hung himself and committed suicide. SO SO sad. It sent us all just in a spin that has taken a while to get straight from.
The same week, as they tried to get arrangements made and things sorted out with his death (we were working back at the marina just to help any way we could so that their family could be together), our nephew who had the surgery had some serious complications and set backs from his original surgery. He was rushed back to Tampa and is doing okay now, but is now going to have to have some more surgery. They feel that the stress and shock of his brother's death played a big role in the complications.
So, we have just been helping where we are needed. There has been some family bickering amongst a few of my in-laws which I'm sure has a lot to do with the stress. Just a shame that everyone can't come together at such a hard time.
We decided to cancel our vacation to the Keys. So many factors played into that decision, but I feel it was the right one. We did take Ross to Sea World and Busch Gardens this past week. We felt that it was unfair to him that we were unable to spend as much time as we would have liked with him over the summer. It has been hard on everyone. But we had a fantastic time and it was worth the five days away from home and stress. We are all refreshed and ready for school to start and Sylvester will be back to work next week.
I am so not good with chaos. I love my routine and stability. But I will soon have more time to myself and back where I need to be. I plan to start work after Ross gets settled into school. I am so looking forward to going back to work. Love working with the public. I'll fill ya in more on that later. This post is plenty long enough.
I'll post some photos of our vacation on my next post. I plan to be able to start posting regulary now that I can breathe some. Then again, life takes things where it wants and I'm hoping it's not back down the road of chaos!!

SO much...

going on with us right now. I haven't posted in a while. As a matter of fact, it was right at the same time my life went completely CRAZY. I don't have time to go into full details, but my next post will. I promise. I have been working at the family business just helping out in a time of need. There has been surgery, death, family fights,and so on and so on. I am ok and my immediate family is fine. We are all just trying to hold each other together helping where we can, trying to get through this .
I'll post with all the details soon. Just wanted all my bloggin' pals to know I'm still alive and kickin'!!!