Updates on life

It has been another busy weekend! First my son Keith had his very first football game on Friday! It was a spring scrimmage. The game was scheduled for 6pm but got moved up to 4:30pm as there was really bad thunderstorms coming in. It was also being played an hour away from where we live. I hated to miss it but I was at work. Then one of the ladies in our home office, which is 15 miles from my store, called and said that my boss was coming down to watch the store for me so I could go to Keith's game. I couldn't believe it. I don't even know how they found out the time had been changed! I was so happy! So as soon as he got to my store I jumped in my car and went and got Tara and her friend and headed out. Hubby had gone to Louisiana on Thursday to pick up our niece so she can spend a few weeks with us and was coming back through where the games was at just about the time it was starting so they stopped there. It worked out perfect! Keith got to play and we were so proud of him!

Keith is number 74!
Saturday morning Tara graduated! Yep she finally made it! We are so proud of her! Here she is!
Here is Me, Tara, and Hubby! I hate the way there is always a glare on my glasses! I really have got to get some glare resistant glasses.
Here is Keith, Tara, our niece Rheanna, and Amber!
And of course here is Tiffanie & Tara! Tiffanie is Tara's best friend!
Normally the graduation is held out on the football field but it had to be held inside due to rain. It was actually held in the auditorium. Then everyone went into the gym to take pictures.

Monday was Memorial Day, of course. But it was also Hubby's 52ND birthday! Keith helped me bake the cake and he iced it. We always have lots of these number candles at home but for some reason could not find a 2 so Keith came up with the idea of just using two 1's. So it looks like Hubby is 511 years old! We got a laugh out of that one!
I know it seems like I never post anything that I am making on here anymore. That's probably because I really have not been making a whole lot of anything. I seemed to have gotten into a funk and just had been reading a lot. Then I decided to make a few baby bonnets and booties. And now I am working on this crocheted afghan for my friend's grand baby that is coming in the fall. I really like the way you make the strips and then kinda lace them together with these chain loops on the sides of them.
It called for making it out of worsted weight yarn. But since all they had at Wal-Mart seemed so rough I am using Baby Sport weight yarn. This means it is turning out smaller then it should be so I am adding extra stripes to it.
That is about all that is going on right now in my life. Today is Keith's last day of school and I am glad of that! It means I will get to sleep a little later each morning! Hope you all have a great and Blessed Day,
Diane

We've been busy!

What a morning! I forgot to set my alarm clock last night and was late getting up this morning! I can't believe I did that. I have never forgotten to set it! I hate getting up late, it just seems to make my day screwy all day long!

Last week I did a post about Tara's 18Th birthday. Well, here are pictures of the car she got. I ran to Wal-Mart the morning of her birthday and got some helium balloons and tied them to the inside door handles on her car. She was so thrilled! You should have seen me out there with the wind blowing trying to hang onto these balloons and get them tied! But it was worth it! After all she will only ever have one 18Th birthday!


Here is a picture of her cake.
Here is a picture of my dad and Tara.
We just had cake with only us there. Then we went to church. The next night was Thursday and the Awards Ceremony at school. Tara got over 20 thousand dollars worth of scholarships. she won the Presidential Scholarship for $10,000 to the school she will be attending in the fall. She also won a $4,000 scholarship from the company where her father works. The other scholarship was for the local community college here in town so she will not be able to use that one. She also won the President's Education Award and was in the group of Seniors who has maintained a straight "A" average all through high school. She also received her gold Honor Society cords which she will wear to graduation. We are so proud of her!
Friday night we had to go to Memory Night at school. This is where they tell things the kids have done through out their years of school. The kids themselves submit things and this teacher reads them. Tara submitted a story from when she was in 4Th grade. Let me tell you about it. It is really cute.
They had just built a new school right down the hill from the elementary school. They finished it just a few weeks after school had already started for the year and so the 4Th graders had to move from the elementary school to the new school. As you can see from the pictures of Tara she is a small petite girl. In the 4Th grade she was very small and tiny. So all the kids had to put all their books and stuff into their backpacks and walk down the hill towards the school. Poor little Tara's backpack was so heavy for her little body that she just fell over backwards! These two boys came along and picked up Tara and then one of them picked up her backpack and carried on down the hill and to the school for her! She called me here at work to tell me all about it when she got home. She just couldn't get over how that boy had carried her back pack for her. It was so nice of him.
Then they have a last will and testament where they can leave things to other students who will still be going to high school there. Tara left her brother, Keith, her love and good luck through his remaining years at high school. Then they showed pictures of the seniors. It was really neat. They did this slide show and first a baby picture would come up and then a picture of the kid today would come up beside it and their name. Some babies you could tell right off who they were while others you didn't have a clue. They also had random snapshots that the kids had given them to use scattered throughout the slide show. It was really nice. I know the kids all enjoyed it.
Sunday at church they had Senior recognition and gave the Seniors in our church a really nice Bible. I told Tara she better take hers to college with her and read it often! I sure hope she takes that advise!
This Saturday Tara will be graduating from High School. I know I will cry. I just can't believe my kids are growing up so fast. I look at them and wonder where did the years go. They just pass too quickly. I will miss Tara so much when she goes away to college. At least she will be close enough that we can go visit her more often then we could Amber when she was in Louisiana. Of course, knowing Tara she will have lots of friends and always be doing stuff with them and not have much time for anything else.

Tara is 18!!!

My beautiful daughter, Tara, turns 18 today! It is hard to believe. She started out just a tiny little baby and has turned into a beautiful, sweet young woman.

This is the first picture we had taken of her at the age of 6 weeks.
This is the day of her baby dedication at church. My Mama is holding her and her big sister Amber is sitting beside them. Amber was so proud of her little baby sister.
All of Tara's crib stuff had lambs on it. I made the bumper pads, diaper stacker and stuff myself. Here she is with one of the lambs she got as a gift. I just loved the little dress she had on. My Uncle and Aunt gave it to her.
Here she is at 2 years old holding her newborn cousin, Rheanna. This is one of her favorite pictures. She always loved babies!
Can you tell which is the dolls and which is the babies? Tara of course is in the middle and her baby brother, Keith, is on the far left.
Here she is at the beach. She loves the beach!
Doesn't she look darling in her camouflage hat? She is just like her Dad's mother in that she loves to have her picture taken!
And here is my beauty now! She was really hoping to get the braces off this month, but the dentist told her yesterday it would be a couple more months. But she did get a car for her birthday so that perked her right up! I haven't taken a picture of her with it yet. But I will and post it later.
Have a great day, Tara! We love you very much!

Mother's Day and Planting Flowers

I hope you all had a great Mother's Day. Mine was nice. My children all went together and bought me a book I wanted. It is by Debbie Macomber and is called "Summer On Blossom Street". I love her books and have all the ones in the Blossom Street series. I was pretty depressed most of the weekend. I suffer from depression and Mother's Day weekend is a bad one for me now that my Mama is gone. I really missed her a lot this weekend and seemed to be in tears a lot. Then at church this man read a poem in memory of every ones mothers who have gone on to Heaven and I just sat there and cried. I am still in a depressed frame of mind this morning and can't seem to get much done. Sorry for telling you how depressed I am. Sometimes you just have to get it out.

Amber and I did get something nice accomplished on Saturday afternoon after she got home from work. We planted some banana peppers and some flowers. Amber likes banana peppers and she really wanted to grow some. She remembers how my Mama used to grow them in flower pots and pickle them. Mama grew all kinds of peppers and pickled them cause my Daddy liked them. We still have several jars of them.

Here is Amber getting ready to put dirt in her pots!

Here she is holding up her banana pepper plants!
Here she is mixing up her soil. We were talking about my Mama and how she would love to be there and helping Amber and Amber told me not to start crying again! It sure was hard.
Here she is fooling around and acting like she is gonna eat the potting soil.
These are called Moon Flowers. A lady who works with Amber gave them to her. I can't wait to see what they look like when they get bigger. I have never heard of them.
See who was watching us to be sure we did everything right? Yep, it's Amber's cat Apollo!
Here are Amber's banana peppers after we finished and a little flower that I had bought Saturday and planted. It is called a Hypoestes. I just thought the colors of it were so pretty.
Here is a close up of it. Isn't it lovely!
Miss Molly didn't much care about our plants. She was too busy taking a nap!
After we finished with the plants Amber and I walked across the street and was looking around and she found a few blackberries. So she picked them. There weren't many. I can remember when I was young my Mama would make me and my brothers go up the street with her and help her pick blackberries. There were millions of them! She would make jelly. I can still picture her in my mind squeezing the juice out of those berries using an old t-shirt! Here hands would be purple for days! She would give us some of the berries in milk with sugar in them. They were so good! There were a lot of plum trees where the blackberries were and we would pick plums, too. Boy, those were the days!

Tara's School Play

We went and saw Tara in her school play last night. The play was "The Sound Of Music". She played the part of Brigitta, one of the 7 children. It was a pretty good play, but long. The costume and set changes make it long. The sound system at the high school is terrible. While you could hear some players really well, others you could barely hear at all. Tara had a microphone as she had several lines in the play so we were able to hear her really good. I did not realize all the lines she had. I think she did really good. Of course, being her mother, I am sure I am prejudice!
Here is a picture that Keith took of her in her uniform costume before the play began.

She is the second from the left in this picture. They were singing. Sorry it is so dark, but the auditorium was dark and my camera is not designed to take good pictures in the dark.
This is the ball scene. Tara is in the middle of the stage. See the two girls in the middle. She is the one on the left.
Here she sits supposedly reading a book. Her character was suppose to always be reading.
This is the last scene at the festival where the Von Trapp family is singing. Tara is front left. I had to make her the cape she is wearing at the spur of the moment. So I just bought some cheap fabric from Wal-Mart, cut it into a half circle, cut out a neck, hemmed it all around and put on a couple hooks in the front. The whole thing only cost me $3.00!
This was Tara's last play at the high school. I am so proud of her! She will be graduating in 22 days and she turns 18 in 12 days! My baby is grown up! It is so hard to believe! Time seems to have flown!