First Trip to the Park

Last weekend Warren's three year old cousin celebrated her birthday at the park. Warren had never bee to the park to play before.

Warren's Birthday Party

Happy First Birthday Warren! Oh it was a busy day. First with the haircut, then the birthday portraits, a short nap and then it was party time! The family and a few close friends were invited to Nini and Puppa's house Saturday afternoon. You'd have thought it was Christmas too look at the living room as he openned his gifts. Warren really enjoyed himself. He really enjoyed his cake!




Aunt Laura wanted to clean him up afterwards and let him down to play with his cousins and new toys. I handed her the washrag and she looked at me and asked, "What do I do first?" Oh my, the child was a mess!


After the party a smaller group met at O'Charley's for dinner. The waitress brought balloons and a little cake for Warren to share with his family.

Aunt Laura and Uncle Lando

Warren and his mommy and daddy

First haircut!

Last Saturday was Warren's first birthday and it was time for the traditional first haircut. I don't think he enjoyed it much but he sure was good.

What a trooper!

First steps!

Thursday, just two days before Warren's birthday, he took a couple of steps on his own. Of course when Nini pulls out the camera he has already grown tired of the new trick.

Go baby!

Well, the boat floats.

Last weekend Sarah and Ricky and Rick and I took Warren out on the boat for the first time. He wasn't too crazy about the idea. First there was this life jacket that prevented him from getting his cookie to his mouth. Then the wind and the sun and the roar of the motor were just a bit too much. He was so funny. Finally he decided it was best to just fall asleep and hope it would all go away. He did like getting into the water. He's used to more movememt when he plays but he was ok with his restraint by then. You can tell when he is enjoying himself in the water by the splashing he does. He opens his palm just above the water's surface and does the bye bye wave causing little splashes. It's so cute! Apparently I exchanged two dead batteries for two more dead batteries so I didn't get pics of all this. I almost always take spare batteries, dangit.

We wound up having motor trouble and had to be pulled to the launch by an elderly couple in a pontoon. My husband, the same one who once drove around Memphis for two hours, lost, because he would feel stupid stopping to ask for directions, tried for an hour and a half to work on the motor while we fried in the sun. Then he pulled out the paddle, yes, I said THE paddle, there was just one, and row row rowed the boat against the wind going nowhere. So (hard to even write this without busting out in giggle fits) he handed the paddle to Ricky and jumped in the water with the rope in his hand. Yes, he thought he was pulling the boat. Finally Sarah had had enough and started waving her shorts, very short shorts (I have underwear bigger than Sarah's shorts) in hopes of gaining attention from other boats. I was still toying with the idea of flopping out a tit but luckily for all I didn't have to. Oh what fun!

Big fish!

A couple of weekends ago I was out shopping with my friend and we happened accross a pond shop in Huntsville. This is the neatest place to buy fountains, pond stuff, and plants. They also have quite a selection of koi and goldfish. Across the Pond it's called. You've got to check it out. It's in Huntsville just past A&M next to Bennet Nursery. The next day I had to take the baby grand to see the fish. It was all we could do to keep him from jumping in with them!

More Mid Summer Updates

On Memorial Day Warren visited the pool at his apartments for the first time. Oh did he love that!

Warren with Aunt Laura and Uncle Lando

Warren and Nini

Mid Summer Update

Here I am again and we've had lots of fun so far this summer. Baby Warren (better known as Pookie or Bugger) has really grown. He's crawling fast and pulling up and walking along the furniture. Beware, he has four teeth now and chews on everything!

Sometimes the service at Logan's is so slow one is tempted to eat the table cloth!

Hey! Who did this?

First taste of ice cream, Blue Bunny No Sugar Added Bunny Tracks. It's good stuff!

He's Puppa's little guy.

He sure loves dogs. The louder they bark the better.

The beginnings of a pretty tough weekend?

Holy shitaki mushrooms*! One of those ten minute afternoon thunderstorms came along yesterday afternoon and with the first wind took two thirds of my 15 year old bradford pear tree and dropped it on my Escape!


Two of the daycare dads showed up as Rick arrived home from work and broke out the chain saw. They both pitched in to help him remove the bigger branches from my car. The Escape suffered only minor dents on the roof thank goodness. The real price it seems, other than a days work taking down the rest of the tree and clearing the yard, is that there was a robin's nest with three less than a week old babies in it. The nest landed still on the branch and upright with all three still in it. That's a tough Doozer construction there. We tried placing the nest in the other tree but it wasn't apparent that the mother would find them. Oh she looked and she cried for them. We finally put them back in the tree they fell out of but are not sure if she found them yet. That tree is coming down today so what to do with those babies? Oh my.

*Holy shitaki mushrooms! I must explain this one. Kevin, my friends seven year old foster son picks up a new phrase usually from a movie and uses it constantly for a month or so. The latest, and it comes out loud and in public often, is "Holy shit, talking mushrooms!" Dang that one is embarrassing. His mother couldn't figure out where that one came from except that Kevin said the movie "Spy Kids". One day Twyla called me from work, "It's SHITAKI mushrooms, Carol!" Oh that kid's a riot!

Happy Birthday Sarah!

Sarah turned 19 Friday the 14th. For the last couple of years Sarah has been wanting a tattoo of a fairy on her lower back but I would never give permission. When she turned 18 she was pregnant and didn't want to do it then. After having the baby she no longer had any money. For her 19th birthday her boyfriend paid for her tattoo. Sarah's sister Laura and Baby Warren and I all trucked down the to tattoo place on 7th street (was it called Ink Slingers maybe?) and two hours later she's so proud that she's showing off her crack to everybody that will look! Yes, that's right. Sarah the little girl that's so modest she got pregnant with half her clothes still on. Ha! Here's the pics.

Being brave. This is before she told us to stop talking to her.

The fairies eyes are purple but when the artist first did them, they kept bleeding.
Looked kind of neat. You can click on the pics to make them bigger.

Take cover!

Last Friday was a stormy night in north Alabama. Rain, hail up to baseball size (we only saw quarter size at our house), high winds, and spotted tornado sightings. It was Warren's first storm warning and he knew just what to do, crawl up in the bathroom with a bunch of blankets and pillows.

Little snuggle bug.

Our roof was beat up, we were close to needing a new one anyway. Now insurance will cover it. The cars are slightly dimpled but the paint is not broke so we haven't decided if we are going to fix them are leave them. With God's protection we all came through safe and sound. With three or more tornados reported on the ground in our area, there were no injuries reported. Aint that somethin'.

Warren's Baptism

On March 5th we had baby Warren baptised at the same church I was raised and raised my children. The same pastor that baptised me, my brother, sister, and two daughters baptised little Warren Stowe. I had to fight back tears. My mother, Nana the Great, prepared a wonderful dinner afterwards and a few friends and family attended.

Sarah, Ricky, and Baby Warren

Nana the Great and my sister Pat

Great Aunt Pat with Warren

He's really growing up fast!

Auntie Tylerann loaned Warren some cool new toys. You can see they were an immediate hit!

Boing! Boing!

Poker Night

They wont let him deal. Something about the cards getting sticky. Oh but he's a fast learner!

These really need some ranch dip.

Update (and it's about time)

Some sad news first. Alligator was eaten by crickets. Yes, they finally got to him again and there was nothing I could do this time. RIP. Dust Bunny chewed his way out of the top of his habitat and found the pantry. He's now pinned to a mousetrap outside in my garbage can. RIP.

Now the good news. Mid January my husband had back surgery for a herniated disk and is recovering well. We managed to stay out of each other's way for the five weeks he was home and now he's happily back at work again. Speaking of hubby's work, last weekend was the kick off dinner for the second half of the sales contest. Hubby met the quota for the fall contest and if he meets it this spring we'll qualify for the trip to Puerto Rico! Whoo hoo! I can't wait! WOnt know for sure until something like july or August. Trip will likely be in October in the heat of hurricane season as usual.

Laura finally moved out! Ha ha. I try not to show my elation so much in front of her. She and Lando rented an apartment together just about Sarah and Ricky and Baby Warren. Now they share Saturday morning breakfast and a vacuum. It's really nice having them in the same place and they aren't but a few blocks from me.

Ms. Carol's been working hard this year too. I started a diet, my own version of the low carb diets that are so popular, and have lost 20.5 pounds! WOW! (50 to go) I began January 3rd and it took me 15 days to lose the first ten pounds, six weeks to lose the next ten but I'm still losing. Oh yeah, I've added Hot-Rox to try to speed it up a bit. I'll let you kow if it works. I've spent oodles of money on all kinds of diet pills that didn't work. We'll see how this goes. Sure gives me energy though.

Meet Alligator

We have a new critter in the family. A couple weeks ago Sarah rescued this little lizard from the parking lot of a friend's apartment building. She brought it home to me in a Solo cup. I should have known then that it was injured or it would not have sat in the cup all the way to the house. I received it with excitement and added it to my collection of frogs, toads, and newts. It quickly made itself at home and the daycare children and I named it Alligator because Sarah had suggested it looked a little like a baby alligator when she spotted it.


A couple days later one of the daycare children cried out, "Carol! The crickets are eating Alligator! Sure enough they were. It looked as if Alligator had one broken leg and the other was missing skin and maybe a little meat. Crickets being crickets and eating decaying matter, were feasting on him and he couldn't get away from them. I quickly separated the lizard in hopes he would recover or at least grow new skin so the crickets would leave him alone.

Christmas With My Family

Christmas Day was quiet around the house. Sarah and Ricky were relaxing at home while baby Warren enjoyed his gifts from Santa. Laura and Lando were enjoying Christmas brunch at his grandmother's home. Rick and I were sleeping in! Later in the afternoon everybody gathered at my house along with my parents for diner. I fixed a really simple Christmas dinner, my first time to host, it was so fun. Later in the evening it was poker time as usual.


Thursday evening my brother and his family from North Carolina joined my sister, parents, and my kids for a celebration at my home. It was really good to see them for the first time in almost a year.

Our Baby's First Christmas!

Hope everybody had a Merry Christmas! We sure had a good time celebrating with the new baby grand. We started a little early this year. The kids wanted to play poker the evening of the 23rd as is their Friday night habit. Laura begged me to let the daddy have his CHristmas present a little early so I did. It was a poker tabletop. Oh what fun.


Christmas Eve we celbrated at Rick's paren'ts home with his brother and sister and their families. Just the gift unwrapping is an all day ordeal. Eighteen of us, one at a time. I was number 13 or 14 so I took a lot of pictures.

Too many stockings to hang on the fireplace.

Mawmaw sets up a really skinny tree to fit all the gifts and 18 children
and grandchildren, and this year a great grandchild into her den.

The cutest baby in the world!

Merry Christmas Great Mawmaw!