Lean Mean Thirteen

Janet Evanovich's thirteenth installment in the adventures of Stephanie Plumb finally came out last week! Her books are pure candy. I love them. They are the misadventures of a female bounty hunter and two HOT love interests. They are totally addictive. If you haven't read them, get One For the Money and dive in. Of course you might as well get the next four or five books when you do it, you won't want to wait to see what happens next!

Woohoo!

Immigration Bill is Dead

Thank God! For the first time EVER I have emailed my Senators, three times in two weeks. This whole immigration debate has just got me riled up. I can't BELIEVE our government expects us to agree and accept allowing 12-20 million illegal immigrants to have amnesty. We can barely take care of the citizens we have here legally.

I am not anti-brown, anti-immigrant or a xenophobe. I would encourage LEGAL immigration with a limited number of citizens accepted yearly. Maybe that's 100,000 or 500,000 a year, I don't know but I think our borders need to be secured and all those that are here illegally should be deported immediately. I believe that children born in this country should immediately assume the legal citizenship of their parents, not automatically become "Americans".

This country was born of immigrants and will continue to flourish thanks to future immigration. This is OUR country. This is AMERICA. If you want to be an American and enjoy the benefits of the best country in the world, then assimilate; come here legally, learn our laws, our history, our language and become an American.

Our culture is at stake here. Take a stand and make your voice heard. If you are an American, excercise your right to democracy and speak up. Even if you don't agree with me, do the research and take a stand now or you may soon be a citizen of the United States of Mexico.

Lost in LOST

I am TOTALLY addicted to LOST right now. I rented and watched the first season while Bryon was fishing in Canada. What an AWESOME show. Let me tell you, watching the dvds sans commercials or weeks in between episodes is wonderful! I highly recommend it. The story is great and it's a combination of the XFiles meets Castaway. I can't wait to watch the next episode each night. I'm in the middle of Season 2 right now and Season 3 comes out on dvd Dec. 11, 2007. Season 4 starts back in February, 2008. That and Heros are my two favorite shows right now. Sad to say I'm a junkie. :)

Gary, Bryon's Dad

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Originally uploaded by trlrover

Two of a kind!

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Originally uploaded by trlrover

The Lodge

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Originally uploaded by trlrover

Welcome Home Daddy!

Yay! Bryon is home! They had a GREAT trip but we are REALLY glad he's home. Last night was the first night Grace slept through the night since he left! We are ready to get back in the groove baby! Lots of pictures on Flickr if you want to see them.

Still working on The Prayer for Owen Meany. I missed book club again last night (third month in a row) because I took a vacation day and took Grace to Silver Dollar City yesterday with Becky Shockley and Garrett. We had a good time but got rained out in the afternoon. More like POURED out. We were all soaked! Becky and I had extra clothes for the kids and we dried off in the McDonald's bathroom with the hand blowers!

Bryon is home today to unpack, weed the garden, smooth the driveway with his tractor (new gravel) and mow the grass! Lots of honey dooos already! Ha!

Waiting for Daddy

Grace and I are on week two without Daddy. Amazingly, things have been going pretty well really. I've been trying to keep Bryon's garden from burning up and thankfully we've had some rain too. It actually looks pretty good :) Haven't heard from Bryon and his Dad since Thursday night. I don't expect to hear from them now until they get back across the border.

I was really dreading this two weeks. Friday was our 17th wedding anniversary. No big deal really, but I realized this is the longest we'd been apart in that time. I think 5 days was the record before. We've mostly gone on vacations together or short ones apart. I was dreading the overwhelming efforts it takes to take care of Grace and the house alone, but she's been GREAT and we've been doing well together. She's been really sweet and funny and played and watched her movies and even made her first scrapbook page! We went upstairs so I could try to scrapbook and she watched a movie, then came over and wanted to "help" so I gave her some reject pictures and the adhesive tabs and she went to town! She loved peeling the tabs off and sticking them on the pictures. It was pretty cool. She's really getting more and more fun.

I bought some new decorations for her room (I decided not to move her to the green room) and it looks really cute. She's really into the Princess's right now and the color blue. She wants everything blue now. I bought her a blue swimming pool yesterday but we haven't christened it yet.

Tomorrow night we'll be back to gymnastics class. We missed last week because I had to drive the Amish to the blood drive. Then Wednesday night is book club. I hope I can get my book read. This month's book is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. It's really, really good and I would have had it read already except I rented the first season of LOST and have been watching it every night after I get Grace to bed. I usually go to bed at 9 and read for a while, but I've been staying up until 11 or 12 and watching that show. It's really good and really addictive! Watching it sans the commercials and all at once is definately the way to go! I'm getting tired staying up so late though!

Bryon will get back Friday and then Saturday we'll be helping Mike move into his new house. I'm really excited for him. He's lived in that apartment for almost 10 years. It's time for him to have some more space and freedom. It's right in town (not for me) but it will be great for him.

Driving the Amish

I'm off tonight to pickup the Amish in Humansville and Dunnegan to take them to my blood drive again. Every 56 days. Usually it's not THAT big a deal, but with Bryon gone, I have to drive all the way back to Marshfield to pickup Grace, then to Bolivar to drop Grace off with Nana and then to Humansville to pick up the Amish folks. It's a pretty interesting trip usually. They are very polite and answer questions when asked, but mostly they just talk amongst themselves in a combination of German and English. Usually I can catch a snippet or two to figure out the gist of the conversation. Sometimes not so much. I wish I could take a picture of them to share but they are strictly against photographs and graven images of any kind. I usually pickup 10-12 in the CBCO Maxi Van. Me driving that van is a sight to behold, let me tell you. I'm not so good at backing so one family let's me turn around in their feed lot. Occasionally I have to have a substitute drive for me but I always hear about it upon my return because they think everyone else drives too fast! :) After 11 days without electricity this past January during the ice storm, any delusions I might have held about the quaintness of their lives and the simplicity of living off the grid have been DASHED. I like electricity. I like the grid. I'm keeping it. :)

Bryon is off to the Great White North

Bryon is off fishing until next Friday. Yes that's TWO WEEKS! Holy cow! He called earlier today from the Chrysler dealership in Lincoln with the air conditioner frozen up. They can't fix it in time for him to make it to Canada so he's back on the road. They may have a hot and cold trip to Canada and back! Dang air conditioner! Poor Bryon had a bad start this morning. First thing he went to get into the car to leave (Grace and I were leaving at the same time) and the battery was dead. He'd left the key turned on all night after ejecting his cd's. THEN I drop off Grace and we met at McDonald's for going away breakfast and he wanted a cappachino for the road...machine was broken. I told him bad things seem to come in threes so with the car, he should have nothing but blue skies, big fish and good luck from here on out :)

I managed to kill my blog

Well let me just say they make it WAY to easy to totally DELETE your blog! I already killed mine messing around with the settings...so I guess I'll start over. How aggravating! Well Bryon is managing to get stuff together for his trip. He's been gone every night this week with work or other stuff so we've hardly seen him! This weekend is our last chance with him for two weeks! Wow that's gonna be a long time! I'll need a vacation when he gets back!