Where's my camera when I need it?

Yesterday Rominal, Bailey and my brother Eddie went to Lake Texoma and played around on a friend's boat.

That is huge!

I should back up and tell you why.

Rominal can't swim. Rominal is scared to death of water. Rominal won't even stick his feet into our friend's pool. He is that scared of water.

But on Sunday, he got on a boat. He wore a life vest the entire time, but we were out on the lake for hours, scooting all over the lake.

Cue the Saturday night live song, "I'm on a boat!" We were singing this song throughout the day. (Caution - this video contains bad language)



We drove, motored, boated (what's the proper terminology for boating?) over to an island where everyone anchors their boats and we got out and played in the water by the sandy beach. At first Rominal said that he was going to stay on the boat, but eventually he got his feet into the water.

Again - that is HUGE!

Then, slowly, ever so slowly, he went into the water. Eventually he was in the water all the way up to his shoulders (all the time still wearing his life vest). We all played in the water and Rominal was there with us.

I would even venture to say that he enjoyed the day. Several times when we were scooting across the lake, Rominal was standing up feeling the wind on his face. He looked very "Miami Vice" like. Well, except for the whole life vest thing.

He has now promised that the next time we go to our friend's house who have a pool, he will get in.

Provided that he has some floaties on.

21 Years!

21 years.

That's half my life. It's hard to believe that it's been that long that I've been married.

To this wonderful man.






Happy Anniversary Sweetie! I'm looking forward to the next 21 years!

Sad, sad day

My beta fish that I have at work passed away today. He had been struggling for a couple of days, but he struggles no more now.

I received him as a gift from my secret Santa about two and half years ago. He was a fun distraction to have at my desk from my daily work.

I never named the fish - he was always just Fishy to me.

Surprisingly, my office does not believe that I should be entitled for bereavement leave.

Bummer.

Get a Job!

Saturday night Bailey had her first "official" babysitting job. By official, I mean that she was picked up and taken to the person's house and stayed there by herself with the child she was babysitting. The little girl she babysat is around 7 or 8 years old and is a fellow Girl Scout. We know her parents through Girl Scouts, so we were comfortable with Bailey babysitting for them.

We went through a bunch of scenarios with Bailey during the day on Saturday to get her ready for the night. She is also CPR certified, so we were just reviewing things. One of the things we discussed was that she should not text her friends during her babysitting time since this could be quite a distraction.

During "peak" times, Bailey has been known to receive several texts per minute. Very distracting.

So, around 6:30pm, Bailey was picked up and taken to the "job site." I texted Bailey at 7:30pm just to see how she was doing. I didn't get an answer. This is very unusual. So, I texted her again - still no answer. I try calling Bailey's cell phone and I didn't get an answer. Now I'm starting to get worried. Although we "know" this family through Girl Scouts, I don't really "know" them all that well. I've never been to their house, for example - although the mother has been to mine several times to pick up Girl Scout stuff.

I then go to look up the phone number of the house she is at and the number that is listed on the internet has been disconnected. I didn't think to get a phone number for the house because I know Bailey's cell number. So, I call back the number that the mother had called me from that morning. It was obviously a cell phone and I got her voice mail and I left a message.

Luckily, around 8:15, Bailey called me. She had put her phone on silent so that she wouldn't be distracted by any of her friends texting her and therefore had not heard my texts or phone calls. She was fine and doing well. All was good. Whew!

She got home around 9:45 and earned $25.00 for the night. She was quite pleased with herself and hopefully she can do some more babysitting for this family again.

On a related note, Bailey changed her first diaper last Wednesday. I'm on the board for the local Girl Scout council and once a month we have a meeting. Bailey goes with me to watch any kids that have to come with their mother's for the meeting. Bailey earns "service" hours towards Girl Scout awards for doing this service, and she loves to be with the kids. Last Wednesday there was a 9 month old girl who attended with her mom. Bailey watched her for most of the meeting and the mom was sweet enough to let Bailey try to change her diaper. The mom came and talked to me after the diaper changing and she said that Bailey did very well. Bailey held the little girl for most of the meeting and afterwards she told me that the girl was not at all like the "flour baby" that she had to carry around for a week for a school project. The school project was to carry a 5 pound sack of flour dressed up as a baby around for a week. If at the end of the week the sack of flour was not damaged, you got a good grade. I'm pleased to say that Bailey's flour baby was not only not damaged, but that it also became tasty cookies.

Bailey wanted me to tell a certain sister of mine who's expecting that she has now had one practice round on changing diapers and that she is looking forward to her next opportunity to change some more.

Garage Sale, and other things

Ok - so first of all, sorry I've been gone so long.

I think I mentioned in my last post that we were going to do a garage sale to earn money for our Girl Scout trip to England this summer.

Well, we had that sale on April 24, and here's how it went.

First, we started with a ton of food, to fuel us for the day. We had fruits and muffins.


And a sausage, egg and cheese casserole thingy.


Friday night we packed everything into my garage and priced and sorted things. We worked until about 11:30pm getting everything ready.

Then early Saturday morning (and I mean real early - 6:00am) we pulled everything out. Here's what our driveway looked like.

When we would get a break, the girls would go play 4 square with Rominal. It helped keep them going.

Here's the girls before they beat Rominal in a game.

And here's Melissa, showing off her old sofa for sale.

It was a super tiring day, but in the end we had made about $480.00 towards our trip. We had about 2 trucks worth of stuff left over, so we have another garage sale in our future, unfortunately.

And now for the reason I haven't posted in a while - first thing Saturday morning, I bent over to put on my shoes and I pulled my back out. Not sure if that's the technical term or not, but I hurt my back. I'm still in a ton of pain and I can barely bend over.

I've been doing physical therapy for the last couple of days and it does seem to be helping a bit. Although last Friday they put me on a machine they call the rack which basically pulls you in two different directions and makes you taller. Can you believe that they do that kind of thing still? They said it was to stretch out the disks between my vertebrae so that they could mend and heal. I say it hurts like a @#$%%^ and I would not do it again. I am not friends with that machine.

Anyway - sitting at a computer is uncomfortable for me so that's why I haven't been around lately.

That's about all for now. I hope everyone is doing well.