Happy Travels...

Just a quick update...and yes, this is even worse than Dunkin' Donuts...I just did lots of grocery shopping at WalMart, which is about 24 miles away from the lake house. No, there isn't anything closer except an albeit well-0stocked but extremely overpriced convenience store connected to a gas station about six miles from the house, so we save that for dire emergencies.

I did decide just for the heck of it to pull into the Bedford County Visitors Bureau parking lot to see if by chance they had wireless, and OBVIOUSLY they do! Yipee. Of course that means that this was somewhat pre-meditated blogging, as I brought the computer along.

The ride was long, and Tianna and her friend Blair decided to make the most of it by sleeping, a good idea, as the car was overfull. In addition to the two of them, we had Nicole and a friend, Howie driving, me scrunched in front and my mother sharing the back row with the older girls. Oh, we did bring the dog and our two unconfined cats as well. We had to take roll call every time we made a pit stop.

Howie's older sister and her two grandchildren (fine for her, but shocking for me when I realized that made me a great aunt), a funny, wonderful friend from college and her eleven year old daughter and Matt and Carolyn are also either already here or on the way.

We are eating, talking, laughing, reading, visiting and relaxing (Yes, I DO know how to do that). We went to the Cliffs yesterday, aptly named where there are low, medium and high levels to jump or flip from. Nicole is annoyed because she believed Tianna's friend when she said she would pay her ten bucks to go off the high ledge,and I am waiting for Matt to cause me maternal heart failure when he does an inverted flip of some kind...

It is a blessing and joy to spend time hanging out with friends and family. And my mother is SO pleased the dog came along.

Peace!

Best Laid Plans Run Amuck...

Well, here I am sitting at Dunkin' Donuts again. Our Internet connection at home must have been struck by lightening, but there was no time to deal with it before leaving on the next road trip. My best laid plans were to figure out how the write ahead function worked, so I could write a week worth of posts and have blogger automatically post them for me. Under the best of circumstances this would have challenged my techno abilities to the max, but given the lack of Internet at home it totally put me over the top.

We are leaving for the lake in VA today, where we do not have Internet. I am hoping that I can show up with my computer at a local business and hook in at least a couple of times during the week, as there are several things on my mind...

In the meantime, we made it home from Florida uneventfully and jumped right back into home life without skipping a beat. It looked like hurricane Dolly had made landfall in the middle of my family room, but what the heck, we're leaving again, so I don't have to look at it! But it was a bit of a problem only having one day to pull things together.

Some of the highlights of my day were:

• Spending a little bit of time with Matt and his girlfriend Carolyn. Included are a decent and crazed photo. They have their dog Finn with them, which added more chaos to a household that in Howie's opinion already has too many animals.
• See the photo of the back of my car? Well, all those bags contain clothes that I will somehow squeeze into the two apiece free luggage allowance I can take to Honduras with me (leaving on August 7th, no doubt another Category 5 storm will land in my family room sometime between now and then...). A very generous gift was made from an area thrift store to take clothes down for the children of Honduras, for which I am very grateful. Faith without works is dead, so I try to find ways to keep it alive and well, especially for those who need it most.
• My mother, bless her, took Nicole and her friend to a local swimming pool and sat with them all day and still doesn't like getting ice cream for hot kids. I remember too vividly when I was growing up and used to swim at a small lake that when the Good Humor truck would jingle in to the parking lot I would beg to get an ice cream bar and inevitably the answer was no. Well, the answer was no to ice cream at the concession stand yesterday too, until Nicole called me on the cell phone I gave my mom to carry and I promised to pay her back (OK, now you know where my penny pinching tendencies come from...)
• Had a conversation with a Little League mom about how a Danville LL team FINALLY beat a Pottsville team. More on that later, because apparently the coaches couldn't stop talking about the team that lost to Pottsville several years ago that I also remember pretty vividly as Matt played on that team.
• Am still in negotiation with my mother over whether or not our fifteen year old dog will come to the lake with us. She keeps threatening to stay home if we don't bring Tino, even though we have an overfull car. My mom, us, the girls and a friend for each girl. In addition to the seven of us, Matt and Carolyn are coming (with their dog), Howie's sister and two of her grandchildren, and a friend from college and her daughter.

So we're off for a week and then I have three days till I leave for Roatan to write!

Oh, and other good news: I have another book proposal in circulation that is being seriously considered by two publishers. Oh my!

So check back, I intend to find a connection somehow, somewhere...

Woo Hoo Water Fun

Check out the fish. Allow me to introduce you to the huge carp fish of Smith Mountain Lake. One of our favorite past times is going to the marina and feeding the carp; they are particularly fond of popcorn and a veritable feeding frenzy breaks out if you dump a cup or two into the water. Some of the fish even become airborne! These guys are tame; as you can see they will eat right out of your hand! No worries, they don't have any teeth and just come up begging!

We were down in Virginia this weekend where the younger set enjoyed tubing. Look Ma, No hands! Usually Nicole is using her hands to indicate her preferred rate of speed: Fast and outside the wake.

The weather was glorious; sunny, warm and water warm enough to dip into without a wet suit. This was the same water we swam in three weeks ago with wetsuits for the triathlon. In fact, the weather was so glorious that Nicole ended up with a sunburn. Now there is something drastically wrong with this picture, as Howie, my husband is a pediatric dermatologist. In fact, her friend also ended up with a sunburn.

And yes, I allowed it to happen. I flunked my nomination for mom of the year. I guess I figured I would get the inevitable argument over sunscreen application out of the way while it was still May; after all, there is plenty of summer ahead. So I presented my case as to why sunscreen was necessary, spritzed two moving targets (the sunscreen hadn't expired after all, as it was clearly visible where the streaks made contact...) and finally simply said, "Suit yourself; I bet tomorrow you will be begging me for sunscreen" and let it go at that. Of course their rebuttal was loud and clear: "Nuh-huh... no way..." To which I responded "yes, way." I was right. Yes, way, they both got red. Yes, they both applied sunscreen the next day in addition to wearing sun shirts, in addition to several reapplications of "glue stick" sunscreen to nose and cheeks. Now we should be good for the summer, even through anticipated reapplications at the beach in SC in three weeks.

The only problem with going to the lake is that it is six and a half hours away, so it makes for late nights coming home. Tonight in the car the movie of choice was "What About Bob" and here is a piece of trivia: it was filmed on Smith Mountain Lake even though the movie is set on Lake Winnepesaukee.

A Special Weekend

This past weekend we had one of those too rare times that is the best stuff memories are made of. Laughter, family, and friends came together with my husband's 50th birthday as the catalyst.

He doesn't care for surprises, so I really needed to be careful. Not too much, but enough to bring joy and a twinkle. Our two adult sons and their girlfriends joined us, along with their dogs, a feature Howie (my husband) definitely could have done without...He isn't too much of an animal guy. But we all had a great time. His younger sister also flew down from MA, and that was a surprise he enjoyed. They grew up summering together on Lake Winnepesaukee in NH and now we are continuing the lake tradition, only now the lake we go to is Smith Mountain Lake inVA. In addition there were two other adult couples to share the fun with.

The highlight of the weekend was participating in the Smith Mountain Lake Triathlon, which I am happy to report, we both survived. As soon as I figure out how to post photos, I will! We both participated (notice I didn't say competed) in the Tri and I enjoyed it, so now we will be training for the next one.

But what really made this weekend special was hanging out with the guys; we rarely get to see our two sons together these days and the time we shared swimming, boating, playing games, howling at the movie, "What About Bob" filmed on Smith Mt. Lake, but set ironically enough on Lake Winnepesaukee all made for the creation of cherished memories.

The weekend was a keeper!