Death

Today we buried sweet, precious, tiny Ava Gail. She only lived for 3 hours on March 18th but she was so precious. I have to say that a baby's funeral is the worst of any funeral I have every been to. I felt so sorry and horrible for Andi and Robert. I wanted to hold Andi during the service but she was surrounded by Robert and Grandmother.

Poor Grandmother. She should not have to bury a son when he was just 3 days old, then her husband in 1980, then her other son in 1984, and her daughter is 2005. Now she had to bury her great grand daughter. She was so heartbroken.

How do you console someone that has buried that many of their children/great grandchild/husband? Not to mention all of her brothers and sisters and parents. How do you console a grieving parent that has lost not 1 infant but two and it has not even been 3 years since her mama passed away?

I hope that I can eventually give Andi a little comfort with the pictures of Ava for her to keep. She had expressed to me how much she wished she had pictures of her first baby, David. I hope Andi will want the pictures but I will not present them to her until she asks for them. She does know that someone took pictures of her but I'm not sure if she knows who.

Keep Andi and her family in your prayers please

Andi went into labor this morning and delivered her baby girl. Unfortunately, the baby did not survive. This is the second baby that Andi and Robert have lost in the last year and half. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers during this very difficult time in their lives.

Also please keep her sister, Holly, and her dad, Noble, in your prayers because they also lost the baby. The whole family needs to be remembered during this time.

Sandra (Andi & Holly's mom) has another grandbaby by her side in Heaven to watch over Andi, Holly and Noble.

Keep Andi in your prayers

D's cousin, Andi, is 23 weeks (today) pregnant. She went in to preterm labor over the weekend. On Saturday, she was dilated to 2cm. This morning she was at 4 cm and tonight she is at 6 cm. They are trying to stop her labor but it doesn't sound promising. Please pray for her, Robert and the sweet baby girl. She needs all the prayers she can get to survive.

Andi & Robert needs prayers for strength. You see, they lost a baby at 16 weeks last year. Andi thought she was in the clear since she was over half way there.

New Job

I am loving my new job. Sure I filed all day long but it was nice to not be blinded by fluorescent lights. It was nice to sit in a chair (when I could) that supported my back. It was nice to only have to deal with 4 people.

It was nice to not have to clean up behind someone's incompentence.

Corporate BS!!

Let me just start with the fact that I am ecstatic that I no longer work for a huge corporation. A corporation that claims to be family friendly, but in reality they don't care about family. All they care about is making money and requiring the peons to work 5+ hours of overtime a week and every other Saturday. They are so involved with getting more business yet they have no desire to get more help. They expect the same 250-300 people to be able to handle 1+ million members and their claims.

Seriously, if they want to keep their employees, they need to focus on being more family oriented and trying to make the employees comfortable instead of them being miserable all day long from lights that are so blinding that the employees have to wear tinted glasses and/or prescription sunglasses just to make it through the day. Also, these same people are having to take thousands of dollars worth medicines and have thousands of dollars worth of tests run to figure out the headaches and to help prevent them.

Also, it is pretty crappy to require let 100+ people have their own chairs from home yet just because you get a new maintenance head honcho you want to suddenly not allow people to use their own chairs that are more comfortable and more ergonomic and support the back better. Seriously, doesn't it make more sense to let you employees be comfortable since they do spend 8+ hours a day there in front of computer.

If management would care more for the employees and try to make them a little more comfortable and happy, they might get more production done. It is really asinine of them to preach to us about production and then take us away from doing our jobs 3 days a week for 30 min to an hour for a meeting about nonsense that could have been discussed in an email. And if quality was more the focus then their would be less cleaning up to do after people that are pushed to put out more production sacrificing their quality. If there were some repercussions to those that sacrifice quality then maybe they would slow down and do things right the first time.

And the management really needs to think logically about their new policy for PTO and Flex time. Come on now people....what is the point of flex time if you have to schedule it. And how in the work are 500+ people going to be allowed to take their PTO days if you are only allowing 3 people off at one time. There are not enough days in the year to allow everyone time to take their 15-20 days of time off that they have accrued each year.

I'm just thrilled that I no longer have to deal with this since I quit last Friday.

New website coming soon.

Soon I will be posting my photos on my new blog located at my new website:
www.bluebonnet-photography.com
Look for this site to be up and running next week.

Photo Shoot

Here is a link to the photo shoot I had today.

http://www.bluebonnetgreetings.com/webalbum/JPSeniorShoot/

JP is a senior at Carthage High School

Pets

The boys found this incredibly adorable bunny today. It is obviously someone's pet that has managed to get away. We decided to bring it indoors and put it in a large box and put up fliers asking if anyone is missing a bunny and if so to call us. Hopefully they will come forward quickly.

Naturally, the boys all had to have their pictures made with the bunny. Adam loved it. As you can tell by the pictures, he loved it. He posed holding the bunny then he hugged it and then the bunny tried to get away so he is laughing because it was kicking its feet everywhere.

In the last picture, Damon was holding the bunny and apparently the bunny was tired because he was yawning. It was the cutest thing.

New York

I'm so excited. Damon and I have decided that since we never got a true honeymoon, we are going to take a weekend excursion and go to NYC. Neither of us have ever been there and we think we will have a blast seeing the sites. We will fly out on a Friday night and and come back on Sunday afternoon. This way we will not have to take any vacation days at work. We will have a day and a half to see the sites in NYC. We may wait until this summer or early fall and make it a long weekend and take Friday and Monday off work so we have more time to spend there. We have to discuss it more and secure our sitter for the boys. If we can get a sitter for the weekend of March 7-9 we will go then. Otherwise, we will wait until probably September.

I know we want to see the Statue of Liberty, Sears Tower, Central Park, American Museum of Natural History, Madison Square Garden, and Ellis Island. I can't think of them now. Of course, it may be better if we put it off so we have more time to spend being a tourist.

Not only will this be like our honeymoon, but this will also be for our 15th anniversary that is coming up in December. I'll post more once we finalize our plans.

Did the Groundhog see his shadow?

I sure hope not!! I am so sick of the cold. So according to the Reuters, "if the groundhog emerges from his burrow on February 2 and sees his shadow, he will be frightened back into his hole, presaging another six weeks of winter. A cloudy day -- and no shadow -- means winter will end early."

Well according to Punxsutawney Phil we will see six more weeks of winter. According to bloomberg.com, Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow this morning and saw his shadow. :(

For those that didn't know, this was the 122nd annual weather predication and out of those 122 times, the groundhog has seen his shadow 97 times since 1887. I think those people need to leave "Phil" in his burrow and let him come out when he wants too. LOL.

So here is another Boo for Punxsutawney Phil!!

Relay for Life

Panola County is finally going to have a Relay for Life. This will be the first year that we have had a Relay for Life. I went to the first meeting and it was very informative. I look forward to attending more meetings as a Team Captain. I hope we have a very successful walk. I will post more updates on this as I have them.

Comedy Central

Yesterday we found ourselves sitting and watching Comedy Central all day as they did their top 20 comedian countdown in hopes of seeing Jeff Dunham. He is one of the best comedians out there. If you have never seen him just do a search on youtube for him.

We were in stitches all afternoon as we watched the various comedians. Some were better than others. If we didn't care for one comedian we would just flip the channel to something else and then at the half hour flip it back. Finally at 8pm they announced their #1 comedian Jeff Dunham. Once his show was over there was a one hour show with Dane Cook. He is pretty good too. Not something you want the kids to watch but pretty funny to say the least.

Do you ever wonder....

Do you ever wonder if one day when you are gone if you will be forgotten? You hope you aren't but in reality overtime, your distant great-great-great grandchildren or other relatives will most likely not know much about you or where you are even buried.



As Damon and I drove around today looking for interesting things to "shoot", I remembered about this old abandoned cemetery with about 10 graves just right off the main highway. So we went to check it out even though it was 40 degrees outside. The oldest grave there was 111 years old. The newest was a Sergeant in the military that had passed in 40's. Most of the graves were between 1910-1920. This particular stone for Emma Young shows that she passed in Feb. 1899, that makes this stone 109 years old in Feb.




You can tell someone does somewhat maintain the area because it is no longer overgrown as it once was. But still it could use some major work.
As you can see by these two pictures, one is overgrown and the other is about to be taken over. In the spring, when the trees are in full grown and bloom, you will not be able to see these stones most likely. This is a shame. I am going to contact a local historian and see if she knows who maintains the old cemetery. If there is no one in particular, then I may go out there myself this spring and trim back the trees just so these stones can be seen and will not be forgotten. You can really learn a lot from a cemetery if you go and look at the dates and do a little research on the family.



Another interesting thing about this cemetery was the fact that there was a memorial for a member of the Woodsmen of the World. The stone is almost 95 years old but it still looks magnificent and the detail is extraordinary.


Look at the intricate details put into making the hammer and axe put on the stone that looks like an old tree. It is truly astounding that this stone was make 95 years ago in 1913. There is also amazing detail put into the sign that looks like it is hanging on the tree with Mr. Dukes details and the Woodsmen of the World logo. Here is a full shot of the memorial. You may notice that there is a grave located directly behind Mr. Duke. That was his wife's grave. I found that very interesting that his wife was buried behind him instead of beside him considering he died 17 years before she did.

Driving...

I often wonder if some people get their license out of cracker jack box. Take this morning, for example, I am sitting at the exit of Sonic waiting to turn left. Of course, it was 7:50 am and at that particular time of the morning there is school traffic everywhere. Well on Adams Street, no one has an ounce of courtesy to let someone turn left in the line towards the red light while they are also waiting for the same light. Anyway, back to my original rant, I am sitting there waiting to turn left for about 5 minutes with no one letting me go and this woman pulls from behind me and just goes around me and turns right. I mean had I had the opportunity to go she would have completely messed it up. And the part that upset me was that she glared at me like I was the idiot.

Moving my Photo A Day Challenge

Since my photo a day challenge will end up being rather large and will interfere with any other blogging I may decide to do I have decided to move it to the following:

http://my3texasboys.blogspot.com/

Dylan

I have been following the care and progress of Dylan through his CaringBridge Journal that his mom updates daily. It just breaks my heart that a child so young had to endure such a horrible disease such as leukemia. Please pray for Dylan that his spinal tap will be clear tomorrow so that they can proceed with his treatment. You can follow Dylan's treatment here:

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/dylanmayo

Dylan's mom has been using the following acronyms and I think they fit well:

Pray Until Something Happens
the
Fully Relying On God

College classes & more

I ended up passing the two previous college classes that I posted about with a 4.0 GPA. However, the next two classes I had I had to drop because I because too overwhelmed with everyday life. The stress of worrying about my family got to me and I was unable to focus and that was effecting my classes. I chose to drop them. I will take them back up when I am better able to focus and manage my time.

The worry I was speaking of was my sister had a lump appear in her thyroid. When she was 16 she had thyroid cancer and they removed one side of her thyroid. So we were terrified that it had returned. We finally got results after the first of the year that it was benign. My uncle had to have a kidney removed due to a mass in his kidney. Turns out it was renal cell carcinoma. My grandfather passed away on Dec. 18th. My friend, Marie, that I have known since the first grade, her father passed away the very next morning. My husband's grandmother had congestive heart failure due to her aortic valve not working and had to have open heart surgery the Thursday before Christmas. Thankfully she came through with flying colors. I did find out last night that she was released from the hospital last Thursday. So as you can see, I have been under tremendous stress.

I read on a friends blog about a challenge to post a photo a day. I think I will try to do that. Of course I am already 12 days behind. So I will have to find 12 photos and post them. But as least you should get a post a day out of me.

Ack....I forgot what school was like

Last Monday, I started college. Granted it only two online classes but geez it is kicking my butt. I have to be so dedicated and make sure to manage my time. I also really have to make sure to check my syllabus because man oh man one busy day can cause you to lose 10% of an assignment for being late. I found that out really quick last Wednesday when I had four appointments in one day.

I'm now a little more organized. I have printed off a butt load of stuff and have it organized but now my printer is out of one ink cartridge. This sucks because I can't print anything that requires black ink which is pretty much anything.

Anyway gonna run...I'll update more as I continue my studies.

I think I need some Calgon

Being couped up in this house with Adam & Wade for 4 days straight is driving me insane. I am on day 5 of not getting to go to work due one of the boys having fever. If they still have fever tomorrow we go back for our 3rd trip to the dr for Wade and 2nd trip for Adam.

Adam is being a total and complete hellion. We should have known not to buy new furniture until he matured a bit. Wade came to tell on him and I see black marker on Wade and that scares me since the only black marker we have is a sharpie. I go check things out and I see black marks on the couch. Damon is going to flip. OMG I wanted to hurt that child.

I'll updated later.

New pictures

Here is a slide show of sorts of the new pictures we took a couple of weeks ago.