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!

Dust Bunny Update

Dusty is Thriving! He is still living in his little habitat in my daycare room. The children all adore him. And look how he's grown!

Get Spooked?

Halloween, my oldest daughter's favorite time of year! Laura has always been the pumkin carver in the family. This year she created three jack-o-lanterns and boyfriend Lando carved one too.

Spooky Laura

This year's Theme "Phantom of the Opera" complete with music.

Laura as Padme and Lando as Obi Wan

Oh yeah, my little grandspook. Seven week old Warren dressed as a lion.

Boo at the Zoo!

Sunday was free day at the Birmingham Zoo so my friend and I took her son and we had a grand ol' time!

These guys need to stir around a little. The landscape is growing over them.

Emerald boas (I think), so pretty.

Scarecrow with camel toe?

Meeces, Mices

Thursday afternoon one of my daycare children yelled, "Come look at this!" So I did. It was a little bitty mouse running across the playroom floor. It looked like a dust bunny sitting in the corner when I finally caught it.

Aren't they cute?

We knew we had mice. We'd been seeing them and it seems to be a regular fall event. They've been kind of bold and noisy in an "I dare you" sort of way. We put out humane traps at first, then glue boards, then finally resorted to the good old fashioned snap traps. Finally we caught two mature mice over the weekend and the cat caught one previously so we thought they were all gone. Wrong.

I saved the baby mouse. It was so cute and we always have extra little critter habitats in a closet for just this sort of thing.

Then another one ran along the baseboard and the kids chased it. I Had to keep that one too. By noon Friday we had six baby mice a tad over an inch long. Apparently we caught mommy and daddy and now the babies had no one feeding them. I fed them chinchilla food (because the bunny food was too big) and put a water bottle in the habitat. The children watched the mice all afternoon.

Saturday they started dying. It was so sad. One by one they rolled over and stiffened up. By Sunday only one remained. looks like they were just too young to make it without the mother.

Now we have to keep the one and take care of it, it's all alone in a big world. I call it Dust Bunny. Welcome to our critter family Dust Bunny.

Our Cancun Vacation Day 4

I so did not want to leave but all good things must come to and end.

We rose a little earlier and set our luggage out for the bell hop and did breakfast as usual, we were not skipping any meals or snacks when they were free. Monday I did skip the coffee and went right on to a Tequila Sunrise. It counts as a serving of fruit, right?

We had an hour and a half until we were to board the buses to the airport so we sat in the lobby bar while I tipped a few Pina Coladas.





Just before boarding time Georgia came over to meet us. She was showing off a gorgeous CZ sterling ring she had just purchase in the shop next door. It was 7 marquis shaped CZs set in a circle to for a star and it was huge! Just $50 she boasted. I sucked down the last half of my Pina Colada (waste not want not) and Tonya and I headed to the shop. Tonya found a ring she wanted and went to call her husband to look at it. While she was gone I asked the salesman if he had any rings in larger sizes. He replied that he could have any ring sized in a short while. I asked, "In ten minutes?" He said no and moved down a case. I moved with him and my eye caught a brillian sunset topaz and CZ ring. He picked up the very ring I was looking at and it fit perfectly. I pulled out my Visa and it was on my finger when Tonya returned alone and a little down in the mouth. She said, "It's too late, they are loading the bus." I told her this was the difference between being married seven years and nineteen. At nineteen one doesn't feel that they need permission from the other to spend money. Afterall, my husband is the one that came home with the $16,000 Harley-Davidson without even mentioning the idea to me.

See it sparkle?

We jumped in line at the buses, claimed our luggage and it was loaded for us. Customs was a breeze this time. I didn't make eye contact with anybody and we flew right through. Of course Mr. D. pulled his new lighter out of his pants and it was confiscated again, duh. It was still stormy this morning, the winds strong enough to sweep children away and the clouds looked ferocious but no flights were being delayed.





Our flight from Cancun to Altant took off ok but soon got pretty rough. The pilot only turned off the seatbelt signs long enough for the flight attendants to throw a mini bottle of water at us an hour into the less than two hour flight and scurry back to their seats. Sometimes it felt like we were free falling. Maybe we were.

Heaven.

We arrived in Atlanta safely, grabbed a bite at Popeyes and were off and running again. Our flight to Huntsville was smooth and lovely. We left Atlanta at 7:30 facing the sunset and arived in Huntsville at 7:20 still facing the splendid setting sun. We waved farewell to our old and aome new friends vowing to see them here at the same time next year.

Our Cancun Vacation Day 3

Sunday we slept a little later, hit the breakfast bar, met up with friends, and spent a little time (and pesos) in the gift shops. This was the day we had planned to waste away with the best strawberry daiquiris I've ever had in my life. It was cloudy as it had been most of the time we were in Mexico (thanks to Tropical Storm Stan) but other than that the weather was mild.

Sexy Mr. D.

The swingin' bar is at the very top center of this picture.

I spotted a buddy of ours at the poolside bar and yelled for him to order a strawberry daiquiri for me. When I saw it on the counter I swam over to retrieve it. By then there was lightning and thunder so we got out of the pools and sat at the bar for a couple of hours. All drinks were free and you could stay as long as you want or as long as you could balance on a swing.

I can't think of a better place to spend a thunderstorm. "Another daiquiri here, por favor!"

When the rains let up we all collected our drenched belongings and headed back to our rooms for dry clothes and a nap. The room was cold so I crept out the patio doors to try out the hammock. It was surprisingly comfortable. I could reach the rail with my foot and give a little kick and I was swinging.

View from the hammock, I never set my camera down.

When I took this picture from my hammock I realized how much it had rained. Water was standing everywhere. I decided to take a walk but many of the sidewalks were covered with 3" to a foot of water.

Looked as if the fountain went loco.

Can't even see the sidewalks.

Angry clouds

I must share this picture with you. It's a lovely moth resting on an outside wall of the hotel. It's wings spanned 6" or better!

The grow 'em big around here.

There was to be a beach party Sunday night but although the rain stopped for a while the wind would have taken the tables away. We met in the Jupiter Ballroom with a live band and a wonderful buffet set up for us. My pictures didn't turn out too well here.



After dinner there was dancing on the dance floor. I don't dance. I can't get that drunk any more without passing out. Around 10:00 we decided to take a little trip to the other side of the resort. we piled in a tour bus sitting under the front canopy for the ten minute ride. Once there we found the karaoke bar where it was our hope to put a microphone in the hands of one of our men so he could sing a song or two that he had written. As we entered and shoved ourselves just in the doorway (it was wall to wall, shoulder to shoulder people) we found that they were on their last song for the evening. We returned on the same bus and Chad sang all the way back with a few back up singers as well.

Back at the party we found that all but a dance floor full had left. We hung around for a few more drinks and retired to our rooms. We had to get the packing done that night so the bell hops could have our luggage at the bus on time the next morning.

Our Cancun Vacation Day 2 (post 2)

We piddled the afternoon away. Starting with one of the poolside restaurants. A quickie storm came up on us so we stayed and visited until it blew over. The guys all went to the lobby bar to watch the Alabama game on the TV there and one of the other ladies and I hung out at the pools for a little while until it was time to dress for this evening's event.

Our ARAMARK men

We posed for pictures outside of the Galactical Ballroom during the cocktail hour. I hope our friends that took pics of us will share a few. I didn't think at the time to hand off my camera and let someone photograph my with hubby. Oh well. These are our lovely friends.

This beautiful woman would absolutely not let me photograph her face!

Sweet couple I met for the first time on this trip and hope to stay in contact with.

The banquet was lovely as usual. Delicious salads, soup, White wine and juicy steaks.







This blue drink, Blue Hawaiian, has become the table joke. If you get up and leave for some reason when you come back there is one sitting at your spot and the rule now is that you have to down it all at once and that's tough because they are kind of thick drinks.

Bottoms up!

There were prizes awarded as there were last year. Plasma TVs, DVD recorders, digital cameras and recorders, All kinds of electronic devices and cash in the amounts of $500, $1000, and $2000 given away. We didn't win anything but two of the guys at our table did. Whoo hoo for them!

After Dinner we all met at the disco. This time I stayed against my better judgement. We did sit way in the back of the room next to the air purifier. It was a lot of fun but the next day I awoke with the usual second hand smoke sore throat and had to throw away my contacts from the night before . . .