Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mother's out there in "blogville". I hope you all are having a wonderful day. The flowers above are from one of my daughter's in Atlanta - aren't they beautiful? I was so very surprised to receive them at about 10:30 last night, especially since they were delivered to the wrong address. They were delivered to the next street over from us and we were lucky enough that these people were still here (had not gone back up north yet) and that they brought them to me last night. Anyway, it doesn't matter how I got them, I think they are beautiful and I am very appreciative of them - thank you Kim!

I guess you are wondering about the remodeling project - well, things are moving along, just not at the pace that I would like. We did finally close on the home improvement loan Friday (not Tuesday), but it's okay that it was 3 days late - it saved us two percent on the loan. So, I'm not complaining. Dan is meeting with the contractor Monday morning at 9 am to go over the last minute details and Mark has told Dan that he will start the following week. He has also said that once they start they will not leave until the job is finished - so none of this working one or two days at our house and then going to another project for a couple of days. That is one of the reasons why he will not start on us until the following week - he has to finish up a project that he had started waiting on the bank to do their thing with us. Anyway, Dan and I have spent the week continuing to pack stuff - we are really down to the bare essentials to live on now. We still have furniture to move and I think we will be working on doing that in the afternoon's next week when I get home from work. Dan has pretty much moved all the boxes that we have packed this past week - so it is pretty much just furniture that is left.

Some things we are not going to move - like the big entertainment center - we are just going to take the top part off the base and then cover it with plastic. The only thing that will be happening in the room where it is sitting right not is the ceiling scrapped of the "popcorn" and a new "knock-down" texture put up and a new light fixture will be hung because that room will become the dining room. Of course, there will be new flooring put in, but the installation guys can worry about moving the entertainment center when they come (that's part of their job right) and that sucker is HEAVY! It was the one thing that I could not help Dan unload off the truck when we moved into the house (remember, it had been up in Atlanta at my mom's when we were on the road and we picked it up when Dan took Mom back up to Atlanta back in September of last year). Anyway, there are some pieces that the contractor has said we will not have to move out of the house - like the beds in the bedrooms - we are just going to cover them with really good quality plastic sheets to protect them. At least things are on the move and we should have more details of when things will be occurring on Monday when I get home from work.

Dan and I did go back into Sebring yesterday and I think we have decided definitely on some of the furniture pieces for the living room - like my recliner (and the material to have it upholstered in) and at least one of the other chairs in the living room and the two chairs for in front of the fireplace - we still have not made a definite decision about the one other chair over by the sliding glass doors, but I think we have a chair that we can use for a little while until we are sure about the chair that we want. We also found the end table to go between our chairs in front of the fireplace also yesterday. So we are making progress on that front. We will probably go ahead and order the pieces that we have definitely made a decision on next week as it takes 4 to 6 weeks for them to come in. That should be just about the right time frame IF all goes as it should. We shall see.

When we got home from Sebring yesterday - our youngest daughter was here at the house in the swimming pool. So we were able to spend some time with her and then Justin came over later and we grilled out and then took a ride on the boat. Justin had not been on the boat since Dan had gotten it back and it is running so much better.

So, this is a picture of one of my four legged daughters - Samantha sitting in my lap on the boat- hard and fast asleep.

This, of course, if my Dan. He is a happy man when he is able to be out on the water - even if all he is doing is riding around on the boat and not doing any fishing.

Here are both of my four legged daughters - Samantha and Jessie. At this point we are riding in the front of the boat and they are not real crazy about that position. They really don't like all the wind blowing on them, but once we moved to the seat behind this one - they just lie down and go to sleep. They do like being out on the boat also (really, I think they just like being with us - doesn't really matter where we are).

This is Melissa - my youngest daughter with Samantha just as we were starting out on the lake. Samantha was just getting ready to give her a little "kiss".

This is a picture of my son-in-law Justin. Actually, Melissa took this picture with my camera. She likes to fool around with the camera and she took this one - I think it's a pretty good picture of the boy.

Thought I'd include a picture of the lake - it was a really nice day out yesterday afternoon - not too hot by the time we were out there, but then again - it was after supper.

Probably next week I'll post pictures of the house "before" - it should be pretty empty. I certainly hope that the project goes as planned - I'm sure that we will run into some glitches, but hopefully they will not be too bad.

Melissa and I have 22 more school days (not that I'm counting). Then we have that workshop that we will do after school is out. You might be wondering why I am still going to do that workshop since I am not going to be doing any more teaching - well, I do want to renew my certificate one more time (just in case, heaven forbid, I HAVE to teach any more before I reach Social Security age) and since I can renew for 5 years and I will be 59 on Tuesday, and my certificate doesn't expire for another 2 years it will work out. I will probably have to take at least one more college class, but I have some certificates from Florida Southern College for free classes for having interns - I think I will use one of them and then I will have my certification complete for another 5 years. That should do me until I shouldn't have to worry about it again. Of course, I am still looking at other options and I think I know what I am going to do - it will use my real estate knowledge but I won't be a real estate agent. Anyway, it is the direction I am strongly looking at. We shall see.

Well, I think I will close for now - maybe I'll try and take a nap this afternoon. I'm really tired for some reason. I hope you all have a great week, and I'll talk to you next weekend!