Goodness, Graciouse, Me-o-My!!

How the time does fly. We have been so busy here in our little town that I have not been able to blog until now. I have been keeping up with all of you but too busy to type a blog for myself.

School is almost over. Thank God!!! I am so looking forward to sleeping in just a little bit longer in the mornings. Tricia has done so well. Her teacher was commenting to me the other night about her hand writing and how nice she thought Tricia's writing is. HSCA uses the Abeka curriculum and it requires kindergartners to start out writing in cursive. I was so unsure about that. I was also very surprised and excited to see how easy it was for Tricia to grasp the cursive writing. She is doing so well with it. She has excelled in her numbers too. At first we were having some difficulty with numbers and math, but she is now doing really good with them. Reading has completely stunned me. She can read short stories with 4-5 letter words in it. She just sounds out what she doesn't know until she gets the word right. She is a little slow at reading but we have been working on speed the past few weeks and she is doing really well. Now when we drive places she wants to read the signs that she sees. I really don't want her to read all of them :):) but she loves to sound out the words so they make sense. I'm pretty proud of her in case you haven't guessed already.

Katie surprised me about 2 weeks ago by telling me she wanted to go potty. Every few minutes she was taking off her diaper and going to the potty. She wouldn't do anything, just sit there and play. I would get her diaper back on and she would take it back off. This kept going on for a few days so I dug out Tricia's baby panties and we started training. She did pretty good the first day and then the second day she had four accidents in the play room. I decided that maybe what she needed was pull-ups. She could take them on and off like panties and still not be in a diaper. From that moment on she didn't want anything to do with the potty. AARrrggghhh!!!! Now we just take it one day at a time. I take her to the potty and sometimes we have success and sometimes we don't. One day she'll surprise me and start going all of the time.

Buddy is doing great. Tom bought him a jute rope to play with. They are not supposed to be able to tare them up but Buddy did. We got him another nylon type rope with big knots in both ends. He shredded it. Tom went to the flea market the other day and talked to a trainer. He talked Tom into this red thing that has holes on both ends. One about the size of a pencil and the other a little bigger than a fifty cent piece. Tom takes a teaspoon of peanut butter and mixes it with dog food and puts it in the bigger hole. Buddy will lay for hours playing with that and licking his treat out of the hole. This one he can't tare up. (My fingers are crossed)

We still have a busy week ahead of us. Tricia graduates on Friday morning. She is so excited. They will be doing a little program with singing and recitations. It's about the ugly duckling. Guess who is the ugly duckling. She cried...:):) I told her not to cry because the ugly duckling grew up to be a beautiful swan. Her teacher told her the same thing. It didn't help...lol. She was so upset. I'm anxious to see the program. Tricia get's to sing by herself and then has another speaking part with a friend. Hopefully I can get some video of the program to share with you.

Well, I leave you with a couple recent pictures of the girls. Hope you are having a great Spring. God bless.

Meet Buddy

I have dreaded so much every time my husband would go to Craigs list or an animal shelter to start looking for a dog. I think he started way back in February when we were sure we wanted to move to the bigger house. The back yard is fenced in and is a perfect place for a pet and for our girls to play with a dog. I just really dreaded the work that is involved...feeding, exercising, bathing, etc. You get the picture. I did not want the added responsibility to all of the things I already am responsible for.

About 5 weeks ago my husband told me that he had found a dog and he wanted me to go and see it. He said that it was a Black Lab mixed and would be perfect for our girls. The owner was moving and had two dogs. The Lab was the bigger dog and he couldn't take both dogs with him so the Lab had to go.

We drove to PSL to see him. Tom got out and met the owner and dog at the door. When I got out of the truck Buddy was NOT happy to see me. He growled and bared his teeth. I was not really sure what to do because I love dogs and don't usually have any problems with them. He was not warming up to me in the least. I finally went around to the passenger side of the truck to get Katie out when he came bouncing back to me growling. That was the last time he growled. I guess he changed his mind about me and decided I wasn't too bad afterall.

We brought him home and he has adjusted well. The girls love him to death. They can lay on him and lead him all over. They love to go in the back yard and play with him. That is the only reason he is still here. Now I'm too soft to send him away. I sweep the floors every day to keep the dog hair up and believe it or not, there isn't any smell with him.

I guess we will keep him for now. He has become part of the family. Now if I can just keep him out of the trash. ***sigh***

This and That

It has been said that life is running faster than time. I'm beginning to believe it. The older I get the less time I have in the day to do the things I need/want to do. It get's quite frustrating at times. But I digress.

We have been busy. I started praying for some work and now I'm swamped. Thank God, I can do the work while Tricia is in school and I don't have to miss my afternoons with her. I missed a lot of her baby days because of work. I don't want to miss anymore of her growing up.

We are trying our best to find a dog for our girls. You would not believe how much my husband has looked. He has spent all of his spare time hunting for the right dog. Every dog we have decided would be great for the girls has fell through the cracks. It just seems hopeless.

A couple of days ago, my husband found another dog. This one is a black lab mixed. He is one year old and has been neutered. The owner is moving and can't take him with the family. He said the dog is really well behaved and loves his two small children. We were so excited when he called us today and said that the dog was still available. We told him we would come to see it on Monday night. The girls do not know about this dog. We are really excited about this dog and hoping it will work out. One things for sure, you can't go wrong with a Lab. They are so good with kids.

Last night was my husbands company party. They have a couple a year. We debated going but finally decided too. They had a bounce house set up and a horse for the kids to ride. Then sometime later in the evening Kelly's Ice Cream truck came to the party and gave everyone some ice cream. There was a Mexican group there singing and playing their stringed instruments. I enjoyed the music but not the words as I don't speak Spanish. Then the DJ got started. That was interesting to say the least. We didn't stay too long after that because we needed to get to Wally World before heading home for baths. Saturday's are always busy days for us.

Today has been very restful. We had our dinner alone, just the four of us. Most of the time we have someone over on Sundays. Today we just wanted to be by ourselves. Then Tom, Kate and I took a nap. Tricia never naps but she occupies herself with her toys. She got a new Polly Pocket with a swimming pool. She got in the bath tub and played with those for a while then got out and just played. She's pretty good about keeping quiet and entertaining herself.

The pictures at the top are just random ones. I hadn't posted any for a while so thought I would select a few recent ones to share. Hope you are having a great day!! Blessings.
~Gale~

Getting settled in....I think :):)

The move is finally over...except for some things in the attic and shed. My parents moved into our old house so there is no rush to get those last few items out. You never know how much junk you own until you move. It's amazing what you collect. We had stuff we had never used. Things that were just bought because "we might need this" and we never needed it. The one thing I want to try to do is to NOT fill this house with extra things. I know it happens every time you go to a bigger place, but I am going to strive to keep things simple and clutter free. I'll let you know in a few months how things look.

Tricia loves having her own room. Katie does not care who's name is on the door she goes in and makes herself at home regardless. Keeping up with her is a full time job. Tricia wants her room done in horses. We found a really nice comforter set online and we are going to get it this week. Her room is pink and purple. She has a really pretty horse border and her grandma got her a string of horse lights. There are several different kinds of horses and they all light up. She has them strung all around her desk. Once we get the bedding done then we will move onto curtains. My sister makes curtains and she is going to make some for both of the girls.

Katie has a small room (big enough for her) that is kind of in the middle of the back of the house. You walk through her room to get to the back family/play/laundry room. With her being so little it doesn't bother her to have traffic going through her room. She is hardly in there except to sleep. She lives in Tricia's room creating messes. Her bed has Dora on it. We have not had the time or money to do much with her room. The walls are in camouflage because there was a boy in that room who liked the outdoorsy kind of look. It is wall papered and I haven't found the paper I want to replace it with. Tom loves it. He doesn't want me to change it. I keep reminding him that Katie is a little girl not a boy. Right now the color of her walls doesn't mean a hill of beans to her. That's the only reason I'm getting away with not doing anything with her room just yet.

We have been so long with out carpet that it is weird and nice to have carpet again. Our room and the back room are both carpeted. We had them cleaned so they look pretty good. It's nice to walk on soft carpet rather than hard tile. Although, we have plenty of tile too. I wanted my room to be painted because the color on two of the walls was a brown. It was kind of dark and not exactly my taste. We painted it a rose blossom. It's actually more of a dark Salmon color. I only painted two walls and the other walls are creme. It looks pretty good with my dark furniture.

We finally got some of the wall stuff up. I have two wood shelf sets that hang on the wall. I'll get some pictures for you to see them. Tom put the shelf up on the wall with the rest of the set and I put some stuff on it just to get it out of the way until I knew what to do with it. The brackets on the back of the shelf broke and the whole thing fell to the tile floor. Thank God, nothing broke. As soon as I get the brackets put back on I can get it hung back up. I'm anxious to get done so I can snap some pictures to show you.

The laundry was on the back porch. We have seen too many rusted out washers/dryers because they are out in the weather all of the time. We did not want that to happen to ours because they are really expensive to replace. Tom said they could set inside with a little work and some adjustments to the electrical wire. He finally got the job done and I can now do laundry here instead of the laundry mat. So much easier.

Well, I will hopefully have some pictures soon to upload. If you live in the local area and you run across some area rugs, I would like to have a large one for the living room. They are so expensive to buy. I need probably a 5x8. Sometimes you can find them at yard sale's and such. Just email me with a location if you see one. I have been looking.

Now on to more important thing like sleep...zzzzzzzz....See ya. Thanks for stopping by.

My word, my word!!

Things are crazy around here and that's no lie. We are moving to a new place and this week has been busy to say the least. We had been watching the housing around here waiting for a bigger place to move to. If you are at all familiar with Hobe Sound you know that there are not a lot of homes with three bedrooms. Finally one opened up but it was with the college and not Seabreeze Community. We prayed and figured our budget then prayed some more...then figured our budget again. We finally determined that we could indeed make the move.

The house needed some painting done and the carpet in the MB cleaned. We are finishing up the painting tonight and hoping to do cleanup in the morning. Then we move. I hate moving. It's so tedious trying to get everything packed and then you have to unpack as soon as you get to the new place. It's never ending. However, we are really excited about moving this time. We are gaining a third bedroom and a family room. We won't be using it as a family room right now because we need some storage space until we get a building. We will also be putting our washer and dryer in there temporarily until we can get the back porch closed in. For those of you who live in the great North, it's not uncommon to see the laundry room on the back porch here. The weather doesn't get cold enough to freeze the washer up so in small communities people use the back porch for laundry. The bad side to that is they will rust really fast. That's the reason we are going to put them in the house instead of the back porch.

The girls are so excited. Katie doesn't really know what is going on. Her Aunt Becky lived in this house before us and Katie still connects Becky with the house. She thinks Aunt Becky should still be there. It's too funny. Tricia is looking forward to her own room. We pained it pink and purple. She wanted those colors. They look really good together. She has Dora bedding and I think they will match perfectly. Katie wants Blues Clues in her room but I can't find it. Not even on eBay. That's weird.

Well, just a little update from me to you. If you don't hear from me for a while you'll know why. I don't know when I will have my Internet back up at the new place. When I get back up and running I'll try to post some pictures of the new place. In the meantime, if you feel like moving some furniture out yonder way, come on over.

What Gale needs.

Gale Needs...

Ok, this is really funny. You have to try it. Google your own name followed by the word 'needs', all in quotes, for example I typed in "Gale needs". Then write down what you find. You HAVE to use the quotes or it won't work.

1. Gale needs prayers and connection
2. Gale needs additional therapy and monitoring
3. Gale needs the money!!!!
4. Gale needs anger management to calm her vicious ways...lol
5. Gale needs to go away and take Murt with her. Wouldn't Tom like that...lol!!
6. Gale needs an ace of hearts
7. Gale needs to become more lady like...heeheehee. Like that will ever happen!!
8. Gale needs to find a housewife...OK!!!!!
9. Gale needs to improve but still has a lot of class
10. Gale needs your support.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!

It only comes but once a year
That day that fills our hearts with cheer
We tend to shop and buy sweet things
We think will make our loved ones hearts sing
Roses and candy, cards and bears
Truly bring most hearts to tears
So on this wonderful Valentine's Day
I hope that your loved ones really can say
They truly are blessed to have you as their kin
To cheer them and help them enjoy their day with a grin.

Hope all of you my online friends have a wonderful Valentines Day!!