Happy Birthday, Amy

Today is Amy’s 29th birthday.

The title already says it, but I’ll say it again anyway…

Happy Birthday, Amy!

I’m not sure how old she was in the picture on the right. I’m guessing about 6.

Hubby’s not around to ask, so we’ll just have to go with that guesstimate.

Her actual age there doesn’t matter anyway. What does matter is how far she has come since she was the little girl you see here.

She’s all grown up now with a family of her own. A wife and a mother. Imagine that. Time really does fly by terribly fast.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t around when she was that young. But it still doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that she was just a little thing herself and now she has three kids of her own.

Here’s a more-recent picture of Amy with her daughter, Brianna, a day or so before Amy’s wedding. Brianna was close to 6 at the time.

amy_and_brianna — Brianna and Amy in 2006

And here she is with Gaige in 2008 after a T-ball game. He was 4 at the time.

Since I’m doing pics of Amy and her kids, I have to add this one. It’s one of my favorite Amy pics. She doesn’t like it, but I’m posting it anyway because it just says so much.

amy_and_joey — Amy and Joey, Mere Hours After Joey's Birth

Look at her looking down at Joey, all proud. Doesn’t she look happy?

One thing for sure about Amy, she LOVES being a Mom. And it shows, too, because she’s very good at it. She’s the best little Mom I know.

Hubby and I are very proud of her.

At the risk of being all repetitive, I have to say it one more time… Happy Birthday, Amy!

Dad and I love you very much. We hope you have a great birthday.

February 12, 2010February 12, 2010

A Change of Pace (Sorta)

For the last 10 days, I’ve focused on snow, dogs, more snow, dogs, more snow, the food we eat in the snow, dogs, snow, critters the dogs chase in the snow, etc. It’s gotten a bit, um, repetitive.

But not today. Today I actually get to focus on people. People that came to visit Hubby and I today. Wanna know who?

Amy and her kids. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend with them, since I don’t get snow days, but I did manage to get a few good pictures.

Um, most of the pics are of the kids playing in the SNOW. Sorry. That’s why this is only sort of a change of pace.

There’s quite a network of dog trails in our backyard. The bigger kids didn’t have too much trouble navigating.

Remember, we’ve had 45 inches of snow. I don’t know how tall Joey is, but he’s nowhere near that tall. The little guy was struggling.

I was leading the kids through the network of doggie trails. We were at the other end of the yard when Joey said, “G. My go inside.” He was tired of struggling through the white stuff. So tired, that he decided to go off trail for a short-cut. Big mistake. The trails are compacted and relatively easy to walk on. Joey isn’t very heavy, so he didn’t sink too much. Until he laid on his belly and slid off the wall into virgin snow.

As you will see in the following image, he got stuck.

I had to doctor the image a bit. Joey was not too happy about being stuck in the snow and he was panicking, so I didn’t have time for adjustments and my image was severely overexposed. After a couple of tugs on his arm, I did manage to pull him out. Unfortunately, one of his boots was left behind so Amy had to come to the rescue.

Joey was perfectly happy to go back into the house with Pop.

To see the rest of the shots, you’ll have to visit my Flickr page. Sorry, but it would take an eternity to post all of them here.

November 13, 2009

Tomorrow, Baby Girl. Tomorrow.

If dogs could talk, here’s the conversation Belle, my furry toddler, and I would have been having yesterday when I snapped this picture of she and Meg in my office.

Belle: Mama?
Me: Yes, Belle?
B: When is K coming?
M: Tomorrow.
B: Tomorrow?
M: Yes.
B: So later today, when you’re done working?
M: No, tomorrow.
B: What’s tomorrow?
M: You know how later tonight, it’ll get dark? Well, tomorrow is when it gets light again.
B: Are you sure?
M: Yes.
B: Tomorrow?
M: Yes, Baby Girl, tomorrow. Your new girlfriend will be here tomorrow.
B: Good. Because…

(Here’s where her voice dropped to a whisper. She stole a quick glance at Meg then back at me.)

B: … because this grumpy old bitch is boooorrrriiiinnnngggg.

– – – – –

I have had similar conversations with Gaige, my 6-year-old grandson (minus the “bitch” part), who still has no real concept of time or distance. Just last night, in fact, while I was at Amy’s house visiting for a pseudo Thirsty Third Thursday with Shannon (currently in Egypt) via Skype.

Gaige asked Shannon how long it would take her to get here.

“Well,” Shannon said as she thought about it, “I think it would be about a 15-hour flight.”

“Fifteen hours?” Gaige said.

“Yep,” she replied.

“Is that like three hours?” he continued.

“No. Fifteen hours is a long time,” she explained.

Gaige thought about it for a minute, then said…

“Oh. But what’s a flight?”

– – – – –

Note to Shannon: In case you were wondering why the kids were so wound up when you called, in addition to all the excitement about seeing and talking to Aunt Shannon, they were wrestling and generally having a wild time right before you called.

Here are some other images from the evening. The older kids wouldn’t be still long enough for me to get decent shots of them!

Have a good weekend, everyone!

November 9, 2009

Surprise Visit

Hubby had off work last week, so he left for the WV place the day after Halloween. I had hoped to join him midweek, but was pretty busy at work. Now, we do have Internet access and I can work from there. But I knew with Hubby and the girls there, I’d be a bit distracted. And with a big proposal due today, I couldn’t afford that. So I went up Friday night.

I arrived a bit after 9:00 PM to a happy surprise…

Amy and the grandkids had conspired with Hubby to surprise me with a visit. Which in itself was cool, because I don’t get surprised very often.

We’ve tried for a long time to get Amy to bring the kids for a visit, but they are very busy with sports and stuff pretty much year-round. So I was delighted to have them there. They brought Klondike, our granddog, too, which made things extra interesting, in a good way. (TJ, Amy’s Hubby, is away on a brief Army-duty trip.)

I’ll tell you more about the visit later. Of course, I have lots more pictures to share.

Sunday morning, I was supposed to leave to go get K, our new dog. But Saturday night, her foster Mom noticed something not-quite-right with her poo. Sunday morning, she confirmed what she’d feared… K has worms.

To keep Meg and Belle from also getting worms, we decided it would be best to wait until after they clear up before moving K in. We are really, really anxious for her to join the family, but want to be smart. Foster Mom Jenn hopes to get her to the vet today for a treatment. Hopefully they’ll be able to tell her when K can safely move in.

It was a very happy (and busy!) but disappointing weekend. We really did have a fun visit. I promise to fill you in as soon as I can. But that dang proposal is still due today. So I need to get to work.

August 9, 2008

Cool in a Weird Way

My middle child — Amy — found a cool Web site yesterday. It’s WORDLE. It takes chunks of text, extracts the words, and arranges them into an image.

The words you use most are bigger than the words you use the least. It will work on any Web page with text (like a Blog page). Or you can cut and past any block of text into it.

My wordle for Friday is posted above. It sort of looks like a foot, doesn’t it? Apparently, I need to write about people more.

It is kind of fun. If you decide to try it and want to share your wordle, leave a comment with a link so all my loyal readers can see it, too.