Friday's Fave Five #4

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1. The Olympics - We've had a great time watching for the past two weeks. I can remember hating the Olympics when I was a kid. What's up with that?

2. House Hunters - The same couple actually looked at our house twice this week. They are very interested in buying it... as soon as they sell their house in NC. But it's the best prospect we've had so far.

3. Decisions - A decision that one of my sons made about CAP which I am not at liberty to disclose at this point.

4. Tulips - I adore tulips. My wonderful hubby bought some for me at Sam's - just because.

5. Apple Pie - I had been craving apple pie for more than a week now. Wednesday evening I broke down and made one. It's my ex-neighbor Sally's recipe, and it is fabulous.

Friday's Fave Five #3

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1. Tulips - Tulips are absolutely my favorite flower. They're not easy to find, especially in the plethora of roses at Valentine's Day. But my hubby found some at Publix, and they still look fabulous.

2. Shawn White - All I can say is Wow! The feats he performs on the snowboard are amazing.

3. Stuffed Crust Chicken Pizza - A new recipe from Simple & Delicious that I tried tonight. It has chicken and sun-dried tomatoes. Yum!

4. Cold Weather - Most Floridians are hating the long cold/cool spell we've had, but I'm enjoying it. I know we'll have plenty of 90° weather soon. I'm enjoying the break.

5. Online Sudoku - I'm having fun playing a few of these every day. I'm not very good, but I'm trying to keep my mind young. :)

Friday's Fave Five

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Even though I've posted my "Friday's Fave Five" on Saturday both weeks, I'm liking it because it's making me blog at least once a week. :) So, here we go.

1. I had a doctor's appointment in Gainesville Thursday. Even though the appointment wasn't much fun, I did a little shopping and went out to Chili's for dinner by myself. I used to hate going out to eat by myself, but now it seems like a luxury.

2. Landon and I finished reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. It was part of Sonlight's Core 400. What a book! I'm getting a better education homeschooling than I ever got when I was actually in school.

3. I was so thankful to have Greg home Friday after 14 straight days of working at the Hampton. The other maintenance guy had an emergency appendectomy, so Greg had to work every day until he was well enough to return. We were thankful for the extra money anyway.

4. We've been renting all the Monk DVD's from Netflix. The whole family really loves watching them!

5. Chase's homemade brownies - yum! Chase is quite the little baker. We make a big batch of brownie mix from scratch. Then, every once in a while, Chase whips up a batch. She treated us last night. :)

Friday's Fave Five

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Since I seem to be so bad at actually blogging frequently, I decided I try this to at least give a review of my week.

1) Landon earned 3 more college credits via the CLEP Humanities exam. I'm so proud of his efforts and accomplishments.

2) My Utmost for His Highest - This is the 3rd or 4th time I've read through this devotional, and it always blesses me. It's really speaking to me again this time.

3) The cool weather is back again. I'm so glad! I'm dreading the months and months in the 90's.

4) We got the jackets we ordered from Children's Place. They had adult fleece jackets for $3.99 each. Everyone got one except for Carys. We had a discount code as well. With shipping and tax and everything, I paid $25 for 5 adult jackets!

5) PIZZA! I make homemade pizza every Friday night. Last night, I tried a new recipe from Simple & Delicious called "Antipasto Pizza". Yum! It was a hit. :)

Boys State

Every year American Legion posts in all states except Hawaii choose a delegate to attend Boys State, a program to teach high school juniors about government. The program takes place for a week in the summer after the student's junior year in the state capital.

There are many veterans in Florida, so there are many American Legion posts. Typically, two different posts have chosen their candidates from Citrus High School in Inverness. The number of interested young men has been decreasing as there is more and more to do. So, one of the local posts decided to look for a homeschooled candidate this year. They contacted the local Civil Air Patrol squadron for suggestions, and the Commander recommended Landon.

He had to give a speech to the members of the post and answer their questions. They voted to send him to Tallahassee as their delegate for Boys State.




Isn't he handsome? He's so excited about going as he LOVES politics!

Happy Birthday Carys!

Well, I'm almost a week late writing this post. Carys' 4th birthday fell on a Sunday this year, and she and Landon and Greg and I were at a Hampton Inn in Cocoa Beach for the CAP Special Activities Selection Board. Gerren and Chase were back in Inverness for the Disciple Now weekend for the youth at Cornerstone Baptist Church. We didn't haul all her presents to the hotel, so she had to wait until we got home in the late afternoon to open them. We did enjoy lunch at Sweet Tomatoes in Orlando on the way home.

Here's Carys with her pile of gifts.


Chase went to the Dollar Store and loaded up with stuff she thought Carys would like: a coloring book, Reese's peanut butter cups, Tic Tacs, and gummy worms.


Gerren gave Carys a big bottle of bubbles, and Landon gave her an umbrella. (Of course, I picked out both these things.)


Gran gave Carys this Polly Pocket set, and Uncle Jeff and Aunt Kay gave her a $20 bill.


Grandma Epie and Papa JoJo gave her $500 for her college fund.

The ONLY good thing about a birthday so soon after Christmas is hitting the sales. I got this My Little Pony set for half price.


This baby doll was on sale as well.


I wanted to get Carys her own jewelry box, but they didn't have them at the Walmart in Inverness (about the only local place to shop). So, we got her this LeapFrog Fridge Words instead.


Well, on Saturday, we went to a Walmart in Cocoa Beach to get a couple of things, and lo and behold, they had these jewelry boxes on clearance for $5! We snatched one up.


Cary has played with these ponies every day since her birthday.


We were so surprised when Carys didn't fall asleep in the car on the way home from Cocoa Beach. Well, she made up for it. At around 6:30 that evening, she climbed up in Greg's lap and was asleep in 5 minutes. She slept until 8:00a.m. the next morning!

Where Has the Time Gone?

Here it is January 10, and I haven't blogged all year! Well, it's been a madhouse around here since December 30. Plus, I'm too busy reading other people's blog and Facebook statues to post my own. Bad, bad!

Anyway, on Monday, December 28, they called Greg's mom from the cardiologist's office. The 30-day heart monitor she was wearing did not look good. They sent her to the ER. On Wednesday, December 30, she had a pacemaker installed. She began having pain in the area under her left breast that evening. She had one or two bad episodes of pain every day. She would be moaning with tears running down her face. They had to give her a Darvocet every time. They did an x-ray to see if the wires to the pacemaker were all in place. They also did two cat scans. Everything looked fine.

On Saturday, a representative from Medtronics, the pacemaker company, came in to test her pacemaker. She was having a pain episode at that time. He seemed very concerned about the situation and said he'd never seen anything like it. Still, he said her pacemaker was fine. He called and talked to the cardiologist on call who later came and examined her. He told us the pain was not caused by the pacemaker and was coming from "the outside". We had no experience with pacemakers, so we assumed that they had just yanked her around while placing it and pulled muscles that were having spasms. She went home to Jeff and Kay's since she was not supposed to be by herself for 4 weeks.

On Sunday night, she came to our house since everyone is at work at Jeff & Kay's during the week. She continued to have these pain episodes as well as a very strong heartbeat that you could feel with your hand in the same place. By Wednesday, I decided that this should be better by now. It had been a week after the surgery. So, I called the cardiologist's office and explained to the nurse what was going on. She said to bring Colleen in.

When we got there, she used the same machine to test the pacemaker that the Medtronics rep had used on Saturday. However, she found that the ventricular lead was not working. The pacemaker then operates at a very high voltage trying to make the lead work and this was causing her diaphragm to spasm. Now, why didn't the guy find this on Saturday? He also mentioned that someone was supposed to have checked her pacemaker on 12/31. No one did. He was the first person we saw, and that was on 1/2. Greg is furious, to say the least. She has to go in tomorrow and have this lead repositioned. Another surgery, anesthesia, etc. We will NOT leave the hospital this time until it is right. Mark my words!

That's what's been going on here - in addition to starting school last Monday. This week, we'll hopefully get Gran's problem taken care of. Then on Friday, Gerren and Chase are attending the Disciple Now conference at Cornerstone. Greg, Carys, and I are taking Landon to Patrick AFB for the Special Activities Selection Board for CAP. You must go before this board in order to participate in many of the national activities that take place during the summer for CAP. Greg got a free weekend at a Hampton Inn in Cocoa Beach for Christmas from the Hampton where he works. So, we're taking advantage of it.