Ok… I think I’m safe.  Last weekend was extremely fun and wonderful.  I had been telling my friends that if they needed ay help with their anniversary celebration to let me know.  Friday, I was pleased to get the call to action.  I was asked to undertake the daunting task of printing the vows which would be read for the renewal.  Not really daunting, but I had to be careful to find the right place to tear the paper.  It would not sound  quite right to have them read part of the other’s vows.  I did not want to read the words on the paper so it would not spoil the moment.  After making contact with my lovely escort for the evening and deciding to meet each other at the theatre, I set out to help.

When I arrived, there was a note on the door indicating that the couple was at the local China Garden.  So, I drove over there instead of waiting for them to come to me.  When I got to the restaurant, I saw no sign of the burgundy vehicle I have become so accustomed to.  So, thinking that I must have missed them, I drove back to the house.  As I was making the short walk from the theatre’s parking lot to the house, what should appear but the vehicle I had been hunting.

After the groom and I checked out the reception area, I headed to Wal-Mart to pick up the cake and pick out some flowers for a bouquet as well as pick up some ointment for the little guy.  I did not hear any complaints about my choice so I will say I done good.

I have never been to a vow renewal ceremony.  But I will say that I don’t think that  any couple deserved to celebrate their ten years of marriage more.  The more I am around these two the more I see how much genuine love, respect, and admiration there is between them.  Their vows were very beautifully written.  The entire ceremony was magic.

The reception was a blast.  I once again was able to demonstrate my phenomenal dancing ability.  I do a mean Hokey Pokey.  And dancing beside a nine year old in the Macarena was priceless to say the least.

So… Thank you for allowing me to be a small part of your 10 Year Celebration.  May you both live to see your children’s children’s children and may your love continue to grow even more abundantly every minute, every hour, every day.

Well, more than a decade, actually – Friday is the 10th anniversary of our wedding day, although we were together for a few years before we got married.  We would actually have celebrated our 10th anniversary over a year ago if we had gone through with an elopement at the chapel in the Mall of America we contemplated back in the day, but we had a beautiful wedding a year and a half later instead.  At the time, I was sure I had the man of my dreams, so it wasn’t cold feet stopping me, but I guess I was just too immature to get out from the parental nest at the time to get married after only knowing my husband for a few weeks – I was only nineteen, after all, twenty by the time we actually tied the knot – not even old enough to legally toast my own marriage – hehe!  But anyway, back to the awesome weekend here in 2009…

We had a wonderful anniversary celebration.  Our family and friends are so awesome; we had a great time and got lots of lovely gifts, including a brand-new top notch microwave – now I just have to figure out how to work it!  But seriously, that was so nice; they didn’t have to do that – we were just glad they came to celebrate with us.  We had a little ceremony at the community theater that’s become such a huge part of our lives, and I was SO nervous for WEEKS beforehand about getting on stage and talking in front of people.  The Sunday before the ceremony, my husband and I actually had it worked out where HE would read the vows I wrote to him.  But as the week went on, I just couldn’t rest with that decision – I wanted to say how I felt and be the one to read my own words – and I’m really glad I found it in myself to do so.   Besides, my anxiety about the event actually calmed as the day went on – the miracle I was praying for, maybe?  A small miracle; no one’s life or health was at stake, but I was far from my normal “freak out”, and that was new for me.  So maybe I will find it within myself to audition  for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, ha.  I do love the show and could probably handle being in the chorus, but I don’t think I’d be able to sing in front of the director to try out.  And what if I actually did that and didn’t even get cast in the chorus – YIKES!  Just not worth it to me – I’ll have to settle for taking my usual role as “groupie” and seeing every performance if my husband makes it into the show.

So anyway, back to this weekend – after the ceremony, we went across the street and had dinner, which  was very good.  There was dancing, ahem, “dancing” – better put it in quotes because, well, you’d understand if you saw the video, hehe.  But the usual party dances were fun as always – The Chicken Dance, YMCA, The Macarena – though time has allowed me to forget how to do that one – I’ll have to practice for the next party!  It was awesome to spend the evening with family and friends and to watch my little ones dance in their gorgeous matching outfits my mom had made for them – here’s a pic of my two middle girls, Disney and Samantha with their cousin Austin:

And it was super-fun to be able to slow dance with hubby again – been awhile since we got to do  that too!  Thank you sweetheart, for the best 10 years of my life – I love you!

And for all the guests who attended and are reading this, thanks SO much for coming – it was a BLAST!!!  See you in 10!  Well, ok, see you before that, but we do plan on doing this again for our 20th anniversary!

I’m taking yet another diversion from writing about my great weekend to write about a bad day I had today – I need to vent.  And yes, it involves Walmart – when don’t my bad days involve Walmart?!?  First, my husband’s business clients blew him off, yet again.  We were on the verge of a big business deal, but now the clients are stalling and  becoming difficult to get ahold of – not a good sign.  So I took the kids to Walmart to get them out of the house so my husband could have some peace when he called the clients – not that it mattered; they “weren’t home”.  Sigh.  So anyway, at Walmart, I discovered that they finally did it – raised the prices on diapers.  I knew it was just a matter of time; the diapers have been the same price since my almost 5-year-old was a baby.  So after absorbing the reality of the price increase on diapers (I have two kids in diapers!  Time to rush the potty training, I guess.), I go to check out, and I’m next in line, ready to put my stuff on the counter, and an employee says “I can help you on lane 6”.  So I went over to lane 6, but it turns out, the employee was wrong.  They wanted her to take over on lane 5 instead of open lane 6.  So I went back to lane 5, right where I had started, and now someone has gotten in the line with a SUPER-full cart in front of me.  Of course.  And I had hungry kids who now had to wait in a line with all that candy at eye level.  Have I mentioned that I hate Walmart?

Then I  get home and starting making dinner, and I have a crying baby underfoot – I don’t know why he always cries at home.  He’s the happiest little guy everywhere else, but when we’re at home, he only wants to be held, and I can’t hold him while I’m cooking, doing laundry, cleaning or blogging, so…  he cries a lot.  I  guess I can get rid of most of the toys that are starting to take over my living room since no one plays with them!  And all day I’ve been looking forward to a nice hot relaxing shower, so after dinner, I went to do just that.  But apparently running the dishwasher, giving the kids a bath and hand-washing a dinner pot drained the (new!) hot water heater, and my shower was lukewarm with a cold rinse at the end.  Of course it was.  I can only hope that my day turns around when the Cubs begin their season-opening game tonight – I’ve been looking forward to this for months,  so hopefully my bad day wasn’t a precursor to the tone of tonight’s game.  To quote Tom Hanks from A League of Their Own: “May our feet be swift, may our bats be mighty, may our balls be plentiful…”  GO CUBS!

Earlier this morning, we ruined our chances of sleeping in (since our oldest daughter is on spring break) by signing up to bring a pet to my second-oldest daughter’s school – we forgot about spring break when we signed up for pet day for first thing in the morning, oops – so adding to everything is the fact that I’m tired today also.  We let our little ones play at my daughter’s preschool; they had a blast, and we had fun watching them.  My husband read a book to the kids, and we brought the rats for pet day – and it was SO fun to see certain teachers pale and shriek with fright – hehe!

So I guess the day wasn’t all bad; it was just Walmart getting under my skin, AGAIN.  Oh, and get this – I saw the store manager (I’ll call him Mr. Palindrome, since his last name reads the same backward and forward) park in one of the handicapped spots right in front of the store.  To be fair, he does have a handicapped tag, but I know from my sources that the handicapped tag is not for him but rather his elderly mother whom he cares for.  But I still think he should only be able to park in the handicapped spots when she is with him, and I definitely don’t think he should take those spots away from his customers when he is perfectly able-bodied.  Well, just my opinion, the guy irritates me because of all his dirty price games he plays at the Walmart and the small businesses the store pushes out of the way.  Not that it’s a small business, but Kmart is the latest victim of Walmart in our town – it’s closing for good in May.  What a shame – and to think the Kmart in our town was opened as the test store to see if Kmart would work in small town America.  The test was successful, but that was decades ago, and times have changed – just like Walmart’s prices!

***UPDATE*** – The Cubs are on, and they’re winning – YAY!  Soriano opened the game with a home run on the first pitch of the game! How cool is that?  But, for some reason, the game is not on ESPN 2 like tvguide.com said.  My husband bought me mlb.com, but that seems to be broken at the moment – they’re showing video during the commercials and nothing during game play.  Not only that, my husband’s clients have called (but I guess that’s a good thing), leaving me with the two little ones at their crabbiest time of day.  So I have 2 screamers and no Cubs game.  At least they are winning (I think).  When I put the little ones to bed here pretty soon, I’m tempted to join them just so I can start over tomorrow – every attempt I make at relaxing tonight has just made things worse!

After my extremely busy weekend (more about that in my next post!), I’m just not up to the task of doing a live blog about the Academy of Country Music Awards like I did last year.  I had a lot of fun doing it at that time, but this year we were lucky enough to share our awards experience with friends at our house, and I want to be a good host (well, as good as I can be with both eyes and ears on the awards show!).  It’s bad enough that I had to practically kick out people who were here for our voluntary monthly organizational meetings so I could watch the awards show when it started at 8 –  hehe.  I was accused of “chomping at the bit”, to get to the awards show –  but then again, I did sacrifice and miss the entire red carpet coverage…  so I guess a point was made – I WAS chomping at the bit, so to speak!

Watch the show we did, and it was great – although I didn’t win the tally for the most awards guessed ahead of time.  My picks for winners of the most popular categories are following in blue with the winners in bold (the ones I got right are in bold blue and my commentary is in italics. I’ll let you know how our guests and I did at the end:

Entertainer of the Year
• Kenny Chesney
• Brad Paisley
• George Strait
• Carrie Underwood
• Keith Urban

Big shocker here, for real.  Kenny has won this one for the past 4 years straight, so you can’t blame me for voting the way I did – SHOCKER he didn’t win tonight!

Top Male Vocalist
• Kenny Chesney
• Toby Keith
• Brad Paisley
• George Strait
• Keith Urban

Top Female Vocalist
• Miranda Lambert
• Heidi Newfield
• Taylor Swift
• Carrie Underwood
• Lee Ann Womack

Top Vocal Group
• Lady Antebellum
• Little Big Town
• Rascal Flatts
• Randy Rogers Band
• The Lost Trailers
A given – Rascal Flatts has a ton of talent and are one of my favorite bands!

Top Vocal Duo
• Big & Rich
• Brooks & Dunn
• Joey + Rory
• Montgomery Gentry
• Sugarland

Album of the Year
• Carnival Ride – Carrie Underwood
• Back When I Knew It All – Montgomery Gentry
• Fearless – Taylor Swift
• That Lonesome Song – Jamey Johnson
• Troubadour – George Straight

So there you have it.  I didn’t do so well, compared to past my past performances guessing on country music awards shows – I got 4/10 correct.  But we had a great time watching…  some highlights include Trace Adkins’ performance with the West Point Glee Club, very moving, especially because the performance was introduced by a young veteran in a wheelchair.  Another highlight, Carrie Underwood’s humongous dress during her resurrection of Randy Travis’ “I Told You So”.  (notice they didn’t show her getting on or off stage in that dress – think she was “snapped” into it?  That thing was HUGE!!!)…  But I guess I’m a country fan-child of the 80’s and 90’s, sigh.  The awards shows during that time period were so much more exciting to me because of the awesome music that was performed, unlike tonight.  Just another sign that I’m getting old, I guess, since I much preferred our friends’ conversation tonight to the live performances…  just nothing special on the modern country artists’ part, I guess…

But congrats to those who won, and it was a great show to watch  and predict, even  if I didn’t do so well.  Until the CMA’s in the fall – maybe I will do a LIVE blogcast for that one – we’ll see!

Oh my goodness! I’m so excited, I’m not sure how to express myself right now! Goodwill should be open by Monday the 13th! That means I’ll have a job again and will be able to start saving my money again. Ugh, I hated the staying at home all day. I was so bored and kept reading stories online. Fanfiction.net became a very good friend to me during these months of boredom. I searched over and over again for some job, but could never find anything. Goodwill reopening has brought hope into my future. This means, Tony and I will be able to get an apartment soon (I seriously hope so anyway). It would be so nice to actually have a place of our own, though we wouldn’t be living together in it until after we’re married. I don’t expect us to actually have the money to get a place until after the wedding anyway.
Goodwill will be located near Wal-Mart temporarily, and then by the end of the summer, it will be somewhere else. I’m not sure where that is, but at the moment, I don’t really care. I’m going to be working again!

Tonight was an evening of celebration. I had a wonderful time with a bunch of friends celebrating a very special occasion. I’m sure someone else’s blog will give a complete rundown of the events, so I won’t here. But I did enjoy myself. This post is not about that joy and celebration, but more a feeling of loss, when later events happened.

For the past few years, I’ve always had a few bittersweet feelings at wedding and anniversary celebrations. These were events that would remind me of what I lost. This was the very first such event in the past five years that I did not have the deep feeling of loss. Two of my daughters were married and those events nearly knocked me flat emotionally.

It has been over 5 years since I last held my wife in my arms. 5 years when the wedding vows were fulfilled. You never really think about that clause “until death do us part”. At least not until it happens. Today at the celebration, I did not think about the loss I had, only the joy being shared. A good evening.

But then it happened. I was waiting for my youngest daughter to finish up a game, so I did some shopping at the 24 hour place. I ran into a man who I knew and, I haven’t seen him in over 5 years. He did not know of my wife’s death. The question “How is your wife?” blew me out of the water. I wasn’t expecting to have to tell that to anyone in this area. I live in a small community, I really thought everyone knew.

The comfortable day took a drastic turn with one short question. Emotions filled my every thought. I hesitated on the answer. It was like a punch in the gut. We then shared a few memories and parted. Slowly, the flood of feelings calmed. This is the way of life and death. The memories of our past can warm us as well as send chills down our spines. Those we loved live on through us, and in the stories we tell. In that I found some peace

I have officially decided which show I will be auditioning for this summer.  While I loved my experience in the melodrama a few summers ago, I have to go with the big musical extravaganza of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  Nothing beats a big, fun, and energetic musical.  Plays are fun to do but for the past well… forever, if a musical is being done, I am all for it.  Now… which role to try out for….

• the Elvis channeling Pharoah?  I am an Elvis fan, but not the best Elvis channeler.
• Potiphar… never cared for the role.  I can’t recall but I think that he was double cast in another role in productions I have been involved with.
• The baker or butler could be fun, but limited roles… possibility.
• There are a few of the 11 brothers (good men and true) I could see myself as and if anyone knows the show and myself well enough they should be able to take a stab at at least one of my choices.
• Jacob… well, I did just finish playing Grandpa Prophater.
• Joseph, himself?  I dunno… how old was Donnie Osmond when he stepped into the part in the 90s?

Well, I have a few weeks to narrow my choices unless I decide to say give my anything and sing everything from the show.

With the return of warmer weather comes the return of our locally famous wagon o’ cuties:

Except what’s that in the wagon, a little red elf?  Now I might be biased here, but that is the cutest elf I’ve ever seen!  This is the first time I put that little sweatshirt on my son.  I wish I had found it in time for Christmas last year – I don’t think it’ll still fit him by December for next Christmas.  And it seems the kids are starting to overflow the wagon…  Might be time to make our oldest walk or ride her bike…

I haven’t written much about baseball this year, but the 2009 season starts very soon. Teams are wrapping up spring training, and the final rosters for the start of the year are being set.

At this time of year, every team has a chance to make it to the world series, everyone starts out in the same place. I am rooting for the Tigers for the 46 year. I will say 46, since I don’t remember really thinking much about pro ball until the year of my 4th birthday. I went to a game before that, but it could have been any game, any time. I was told it was in Detroit and against Cleveland. I don’t even remember who won. I do remember being upset that Detroit traded away Rocky Colavito, I think I was 5 then. I knew Colavito hit home runs, I liked home runs. Funny thing to remember. But I have been a Tiger fan for all the life I can remember. I’m hoping they do well this year. Last year was a bit of a disappointment, but after sticking through some of the years they’ve had, it wasn’t really too bad.

I’m also going to root for the Cubs, unless they happen to play Detroit in inter-league ball, or maybe the Series. I never really had a National League team I liked. I have good friends who like the Cubs, so I will be a transplanted Cubs fan. I hope they do well this year too.

I have another friend who roots for the Yankees. Well, I can’t say much there. I was taught “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.” Well, I guess I hope the Yankees do well when ever they play a Central Division Team that isn’t Detroit. That is really hard for me to say, since I was always had two favorite teams (The Tigers, and whoever is playing the Yankees). 😉

Another friend of mine roots for the Cleveland Indians. I would like them to do well (they are in my home state after all), just not as good as the Tigers. Something has to be said for state pride. Ohio should produce at least 1 .500 team. There are two pro teams in the State, at least one of them should do well. I don’t know any Cincinnati fans off the top of my head.

So check your local listing, schedules and root for the team of your choice. It is a long season, I hope there is some excitement in October.

… but she thinks she is!  We used to have a cat, but she passed away last year.  We got our dog as a puppy just 4 months after we got the cat as a kitten, and they lived together for 10 years, so it’s no wonder my dog thinks she’s a cat.  Despite her old age, she will jump on the furniture, and even walk on the top of the couch – very cat-like behavior.  She is also more independent like a cat, and she’ll only come when called to snuggle if she wants to, like a cat.

The other day, she decided she was done waiting for the kids to eat their lunch.  We had left it out because the kids hadn’t eaten well, and we thought they could come back later and have a bite – WRONG!  Our dog Charity (the cat in disguise) took it upon herself to climb UP ON the dining room table and get their lunches.  She is our spoiled rotten baby; what were we going to do, yell at the old lady?  So we took a picture instead, note how she uses her feet to tip up the plates and hold them in place so they don’t slide away while she’s licking:

And Charity has such a personality; she hates being laughed at, so I think she learned her lesson.  Besides, once the motivation to get the food was gone (eaten), she was stuck up on the table.  We wrestled with the decision to help her down; she is 11 years old and I didn’t want her breaking bones or worse, but in the end she got herself down successfully.  First she kind of growled and grunted around up there while we giggled at her from the living room, then she used her new vantage point as a barking stool, but just as I got sick of it and went to help her down, she got down herself.  She is such a jerk but what a personality that dog has…  We love you Charity!

And now you need to see how cute she really is, one blue eye and all.  So here is one of my favorite pictures of her in a Chicago Cubs shirt – opening day is on Monday, so GO CUBBIES!!!