"Gran, what's the big deal? It's just another day!"

Where did this little girl go?

Birthday's are always special. It's nice to get recognition for turning a year older (wonder who started that?) and then life goes on, thankfully.

My darling granddaughter, Taylor, turned 13 years old today. I was making a big deal about it last weekend when I was with her and she just looked at me and said, "Gran, what's the big deal? It's just another day!" So I thought, what is the big deal about turning 13? It's kind of the right of passage into womanhood, I suppose. It also says to me, she's not a little girl anymore. Life moves at such a fast pace these days. Selfishly I would have liked to have had more time with her as a child. Now I get to enjoy the deep conversations she likes to have. I get to enjoy the swim meets. I get to hear the excitement in her voice when she plans for her future. I also enjoy the pride she has in her grades and in school.

I'm excited that I have a teenager. Hope I can remember what it was like when Jonathan was that age. Oh, but what if I do? He was a boy. I'm sure their needs will be much different.

Love you Taylor and it is a big deal, you are officially not a tween today. You my dear are a full-fledged teenager!

Later...

Happy Birthday, Jonathan

Today is my "baby's" 34th Birthday. He started coming to this world on July 15, 1975 at 8:00 a.m. and on July 16, 1975 he blessed me with his presence at 2:13 a.m. Was I ever happy to see him. What a blessing he was for us! He was such a good baby, great child, and what a fine young man and terrific father he has turned into.

Happy Birthday Jonathan, I hope your day was a good one. Love you.

Later...

Retirement Date Selected

I know I have missed talking about my birthday and celebration on the 4th of July so I'll do that in a later post. I just wanted to make this announcement.

I have made a decision that I will retire on September 1, 2009. I am not going to delay it any longer. I am not happy at work, nothing much to do. I can be more productive living my life on the road and I feel GREAT about my decision.

I had my plans all laid out beginning in November forward, now I have to decided what I'll do in Sept and October but I'm sure that won't be too difficult to figure out. I'm thinking the Smokies in October sounds mighty fine. Who knows? I do know I'll be staying pretty close in the area.

I have a cruise planned in late September and my flight leaves out of Nashville so I'll hang around for that. Anyway, that's what I know and I so very excited.

Gotta get tires for Somewhere and probably Grey Goose. There is a recall on Somewhere's Chassis so I'll get that taken care of in September so I guess I'll have enough to fill my time and I won't know what I did before I retired, right? That's what I hear so we will see.

So get ready blog, get ready world, Here she comes!

Later...

Duchess Turns Four

Duchess is my BFF, Debbie's poodle. She turned four and Debbie, the ultimate party planner, had a birthday party for her. Of course, Sedona got to go along with two other friends of Duchess. There was Allie at 8 years, Duchess was 4, Sedona is almost 3 and Precious, a yorkie/poodle mix, is about 6 months old.

At first they were not sure of each other. Precious had way too much energy for the others. I believe she got on their nerves. Finally they finished with their sniffing and checking each other out that they began to ignore one another. Probably with the thought that if they ignore it, it would just go away.


Debbie served Frosty Paws (doggie ice cream) and then had gifts for the guests. For adults she also served ice cream but no gifts for us. Hey, Deb, what's up with that? I had pondered what Sedona would wear for the occasion but then decided it was way too hot for her to wear anything except her harness and collar. Just as well, she shouldn't show up the Guest of Honor, right?


We tried to think of a way we could take a picture with all the dogs but couldn't figure a good way, so here I am with three of them and they were not happy campers. They were too close to each other. Guess I'm not much of a dog whisperer after all.

Later...