Back to work today. I really enjoyed the extra day off! I didn't do much with it - mainly I finished the things I should have done on Sunday. I hate it when laundry takes two days.

We should be getting Internet back today. We are going cable so our speed should increase. I didn't realize how much I relied on the computer- I use it for so many things. I has to "wing it" last night for a recipe. I have it saved online but not printed. It is a lot easier to type on too than my phone. (Not that I'm complaining about the phone - it's wonderful! I'm just slower on it than on a full size keyboard.)

Finally some sun! Yesterday was beautiful - 70 degrees and sunny. We are forecast for more rain next week though. I'm not putting in a garden this year. I already wasn't planning on it, but this weather has really made me decide not to.

I played with me new phone some yesterday. Since we have no internet until tomorrow afternoon, I am using it to post. A computer would be faster!

It was nice to see Cindy again. It's been a while! Susan came over for dinner Saturday too - a fun weekend. Cindy left around 11:00 on Sunday. She had to wait until the snow melted on 44! That's just wrong! It's almost June!

Switching over - our contract was up for our phones and for Father's Day, Ralph wanted a new phone. As part of the packaged deal, we changed home phone plans too. The home phone was tied to our internet plan, so now we have new phones and no Internet (until Tuesday). Eventually everything will be good, but the transition is a little rough.

IMG00209-20110527-2110.jpg

The new grad!

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

Graduation

AJ made it through graduation and Sober Grad. He won a new laptop computer at Sober Grad and was pretty jazzed. He was so wired from being awake all night he didn't know what he was doing or feeling. Too much fun!

Yesterday was AJ's last day of school, and tonight is graduation! Wow, where did that time go?

Last night was Connor's Eagle Court of Honor - very nice! AJ needs to start planning his. We looked at some dates last night - either the end of June or the first part of July is going to be the best times. We'll see. It was so nice to see Connor recognized for all the hard work he put in - less than 2% of scouts make it through Eagle.

I talked to Mom last night - she and Ronna are in Searcy, and so far have avoided the tornadoes. This morning, I checked our local news, and....we had our very own tornado! Granted, this was a small tornado, and was down in Butte County, but...seriously? A tornado? I thought that if we got earthquakes, we didn't have to have tornadoes! Wasn't that the deal?? No major damage was reported from this (and the other!) tornadoes in the area. The weather people were thinking that this was a 0 to 1 on the tornado scale - it hasn't been officially measured.

Spring?

It is raining again.

I made a flying trip to Sacramento yesterday - I had a seminar for the computer program we use for loan documents. I left here at 5:00 a.m. and got back a little after 6:00 p.m. - but it was a good seminar. I heard about new regulations changing, and things the system could do that I didn't know it could do! Now, to remember what they were and to actually implement them!

AJ and I took the dogs for a walk Monday night after dinner, and the clouds were gorgeous!

It may not be summer yet, but Alli wanted in the pool yesterday! She didn't get more than her feet wet, but she sure had a good time playing.

We are on the final week for school for Alex - graduation is Friday! Cindy is coming in for the graduation. That will be a fun weekend! I think Alex will be sleeping most of the weekend - sober grad will keep him up all night on Friday. (And probably me too!)

Ralph and I went to a beautiful wedding yesterday - and both decided that AJ will need to elope when he gets married. The bride's father has been a friend of Ralph's since kindergarten, and as we walked in to the reception, I got roped in to helping in the kitchen - friend do what friends need to do! I'd rather be helping out anyway, and the kitchen crew were all old friends (which is why I got pulled in) and we had a nice visit while I was building a meat and cheese tray. I was released very shortly, and got to visit with everyone and thoroughly enjoyed it! AJ babysat his sister for us - and everyone was still okay when we got home!

Just as I was getting in from the wedding yesterday, Mom called - she and Ronna were almost to Searcy, Arkansas. They left my house Friday afternoon and drove to Woodland, where they got a hotel and then flew out of Sacramento at dark-thirty (Okay, 6:30 a.m., I think??) to St. Louis, and then were driving to Searcy. She said she had a flat butt - and I think she is probably right - traveling for 13 hours is a lot of sitting! They are off on a two week adventure. Mom's 60th (I think??) class reunion is next weekend. I just checked the weather, and it looks like they are in for rain for this next week, and then clearing up the weekend. I hope they have fun!

When I pulled up weather.com, the first thing I saw were warnings of tornadoes moving across the Midwest. One of the ladies in my department left for Kansas on Saturday! Hopefully she can stay out of them - we'd like her back in one piece!

What a week - and it isn't over yet! We had the Senior Breakfast and Awards on Tuesday, and then Tuesday night, AJ and I went to Sun Oaks to the Group Active workout, and then to scouts, so we didn't get home until after 9:00. Wednesday, I had a hair appointment and then my book club meeting, which ran just a bit long - I got in after 11:00!

Yesterday, I went to the Anderson High School to meet with Allison's new teacher next year. I'm going to try keeping her in her 'home' district for next year. I met the teacher at Alli's IEP and really liked her. I liked her classroom set up and aides I met yesterday, too. They all met Alli at the annual Fishing Day, and all think she is "just so sweet"! I'll see if they still think so after having her in the class for a while! Hopefully, her being in Anderson won't be too big a deal - it is farther away from work than I like, but it is really only 15 minutes away from work. Anderson just seem farther! If it turns out that she needs to be closer to me at work, we can put in for a transfer to a Redding school.

Today, AJ has an appointment with his specialist in Chico at 11:00. I forgot all about it (if I even knew about it in the first place!) so had to shuffle some work priorities around quickly. I'll go to work this morning, and he'll go to school, and then we will drive to Chico and back. He will be done with school by that time, but I'll go back to work, and then he has his Spring Concert tonight at 5:00. Ralph will go to that, since I work until 5:15 on Fridays. Busy week!

AJ's senior breakfast went pretty well. I was supposed to be outside on the lawn, but....it was in one of the gyms instead, because, once again, it was raining! The Juniors put on the Senior breakfast, and they, as teams, decorated tables. The table we sat at was beautiful - a large vase of garden roses, dainty salt and pepper shakers, etc. One table was decorated by a team that put down all their Pokemon' cards on the table and covering it with clear plastic. Another was decorated like a little girls birthday party - balloon with "princess" on them, toy tiaras on the table, etc. Of course, some of the boys sat at the table, and were running around breakfast wearing tiaras. Too cute!

After breakfast, we moved to the Marr Auditorium (a beautifully restored auditorium - it was built in 1927!) for the Awards. There are 63 kids in AJ's class, and 21 of them have an average of 3.5 GPA - and that is unweighted! (If you take AP - or Advanced Placement - classes, you actually earn a higher grade. A 'C' in an AP class is worth an 'A' in a regular class.) U-Prep doesn't weight the grades, and a lot of these kids were taking AP classes, because colleges do weight them. Wow! I knew that a lot of AJ's friends were smart, but I didn't know most of his class was! One of the kids in his class scored in the top 1% in the nation for the SAT Test! I asked AJ why none of that rubbed off on him! (If he had a weighted average GPA, he said is would be a 3.2 - not too bad!)

AJ's class is the first class to start at U-Prep as 6th graders and continue through to graduate. Over half the senior class started there as 6th graders - it was really cool to see all these kids grow up over the last 7 years. Some I didn't recognize even - especially the girls! Maybe because I've seen the boys off and on through soccer games, etc.?

This is how my poor petunias looked Sunday afternoon! Poor things - I may end up replanting them, they look a little drowned! We got almost an inch of rain on Sunday.

It looks like winter snuck back in - rain for the next couple of days, and the snow level is down to 2,500 feet! How did that happen? We've already turned the heater off, and switched to the swamp cooler! Hopefully the fire I just built doesn't cause the swamp cooler to kick on.

The next couple of weeks are looking to be busy - a good busy. AJ graduates in two weeks (?!?!?!?) so we are in the push for graduation. Tuesday morning is the Senior Breakfast and Awards Ceremony - he isn't getting any awards, but I plan on going anyway. (You have to actually apply for things to get them - what a thought!) He went to Santa Cruz last Friday for his Senior Trip. He had fun, but the 'arrangements' weren't what they were reported to be (e.i. lots of free food, all night long, and they ran out at 6:45 p.m. One bus load of kids from Redding that had their last track meet didn't even get there until 7:00, so they were out of luck!) He came home with a tattoo (airbrushed, thank goodness) on his chest over his heart that was the Chinese symbol for 'expensive'. He said Conner got the symbol for 'special' on his wrist printed backwards. I think they had just a bit of fun!

Wednesday night is the next meeting of the book club, and I need to re-read the book between now and then. I read it (The Art of Racing in the Rain) a couple of months ago - good book! - and need to refresh my memory before the discussion. I doubt we have really in-depth discussions of the book, but it fun to get together. The next meeting will be at my place in July.

Next weekend is a wedding of one of Ralph's oldest friend's daughter. Weddings are always a good place to see all the people you don't see the rest of the time! I'm looking forward to it. That puts us into the week of graduation! AJ's friend Conner is having his Eagle Court of Honor Thursday, the day before graduation, and then Cindy and her daughter are coming down for AJ's graduation. Busy! But fun!

I've been walking the dogs after dinner for the last couple of weeks, and have really been enjoying the sunsets. I'm probably not getting the full benefits of the walks because I keep stopping to take pictures.

This is one of the fields that has actually been planted along our walk.

Here is a picture of the big mud puddle the dogs have been swimming in - before the last rains. It was drying up pretty well, but....it is back to a mud puddle now.

The best laid plans got me again! I was all ready to come in and sit down at the computer Monday morning, and.....my seat was occupied. AJ had an assignment due Monday morning, so he was (of course!) working on it before he went to school. No need to rush! Then on Tuesday, I had everything all typed up, but my pictures wouldn't load! I had to leave early for work, so...no posting on Tuesday either. I tried!

Mother's Day was good - I actually took some time to craft - and even finished a couple of projects. On Saturday, I got more yard work done, and got some flowers planted, so the yard was looking pretty good (for me!). Then on Sunday night, we got a downpour. It had been intermittently sunny/cloudy, and then a big clap of thunder, and the sky opened up. We got 0.74 inches of rain in an hour. It just beat up my poor flowers! I'm hoping they come out of it, but they look a bit bedraggled right now.

Some beading that I did.

A new doily

A jar cover - done in cotton yarn - a quick and easy jar cover!

Happy Mother's Day! Ralph left my present and cards on the table last night (not wrapped - just covered with a towel) so I got to see my Mother's Day present early this morning - a new KitchenAide mixer! Wow! I think I have the same hand mixer I had before Ralph and I got married, and it really was on its last legs. It was slowing down (aren't we all!) and loosing a lot of its power. Cool! Waffles anyone?

I've been trying to walk after dinner, now that it is light enough, and Friday night was so pretty - sunny and warm.

And then last night:

It definitely wasn't sunny! It was still not cold, but a good 20 degree difference - it was 90 on Friday, and just 65-70 yesterday.

Friday was the bank's fund raiser for Relay for Life. We had a car wash - Suits to Suds - the majority of the car washers are Officers - hence the term 'suits'.

Some worked harder than others!

We also had a bake sale at two offices, and if the employees wanted, we could donate $5.00 and dress down in jeans for the day. In total, we raised over $1,100.00 in one day. Pretty good for a bunch of bankers!

Yesterday was Alli's 14th birthday! I can't believe she is that old already - my baby is growing up! I made a birthday cake for her Wednesday night, and she was so cute. When she heard the mixed going, she came in and sat down in her chair and scooted up to the table - she knew she gets to lick the spoon when I bake! I think she enjoys the batter almost as much as the final cake (but the ice cream is better than both!)

Licking the spoon.

All smiles!

Waiting for cake and ice cream.

The first bite is the best!

Yum!

Now to catch up on what I did besides Nashville! Alli and I went to Mom's for Easter - a nice quiet weekend. Her puppy is so cute! Lily was a 'found' puppy, and has the best personality! She's a bit bigger than Koori, but not a lot - a good size! I tried to get a picture of her interacting with Allison. Alli was rocking in Dad's chair, and Lily was getting a petting out of it. Too cute. Alli usually ignores just our dogs.

Mom has her bird feeders out in front of the garage - and she has tons of finches. She also has blue birds building nests in the back area. Cool!

I also finished a doily - a bright spring-y color! My doily stock is building back up.

After I got back from Nashville, I got the guys working with me on Sunday, and got the fountain area finished (almost!)! Ralph and AJ put in some old railroad ties we had (we had railroad ties lying around??? I had no idea!) instead of the border I had gotten, and AJ and I hauled rock from the front driveway to the fountain area. Ralph raked in the rock, and.....it's done (almost!) I picked up some stepping stones for the area, and then picked up a few more, and then....Ralph still doesn't like them and is trading them in for different ones. At least the hard part is done - now it is just the decorating! I think I need to visit my brother's rock pile in Susanville to see if he has any big, pretty rocks I can steal.

AJ trimmed up my camellias, so I can actually walk down the sidewalk now!

Alli's birthday is Thursday - she will be 14! How did that happen?

I survived the first day back to work. I forgot to see how many e-mails I had to delete, but there were a ton of them. Most of them are because the e-mails come to everyone in my 'group' so they are things that have already been taken care of, and I could just delete them without opening them. Others, I had to go and open each one to see if I needed to deal with it still or not. It's amazing how many things that people think only you can do can get handled when your not there! (Of course, if too many things get handled without me, my boss may decide I don't need to be there at all!!)

My last set of pictures from my trip - the flight from Seattle to Sacramento - the only part of the trip I had a window seat.

This is the same photo of Mt. St. Helens - the second one is just 'enhanced' with my photo program. You can see the crater much better!

I think this is Ranier - it was just after take-off in Seattle.