Region Champs

After being too shy for the celebration picture for winning the district, Annie jumped in front and center after winning the region. It was such an exciting night for everyone there. I'm going to try some more specific pictures next. It took a while to get this one to go through.

Alohaaaaaaa!

hey guys! remember that guy from the pearl shop? can't you just hear his voice saying that over and over and ringing that darn bell?!? :) hope it made you laugh! happy valentine's day! it sure is a pretty one here, very cold, but really pretty. thanks for posting such a sweet message about our kitchen and front door, debbie! we are really excited to see it all come together even if it's taken a little longer than we thought. i have to give doug the credit b/c he convinced me to go ahead and splurge for the tile when i was being a cheapo. :) i still don't know my exact plans for this weekend b/c there is a chance we will all be going back to louisville on saturday to go out for sarah's (mel's roommate) birthday, but it's not set yet. i think i may just miss debbie and dee dee in louisville on friday b/c i'm supposed to be leaving between 3:30 and 4:30---bummer! :( i had my first night of training last night and it was hilarious! to summarize, the girl that is the host trainer and is apparently very prompt, but did not show yesterday for our training. so after just hanging out and observing everything for a while we (myself and two other girls training) were told to go with another guy and he was going to at least start training us. about five minutes later major drama broke out! one server and a customer got in each other's face, the manager got in the server's face, the server got FIRED! after that we were basically given a 15 minutes crash course up at the front and then it was sink or swim the rest of the night. evidently we did a good job b/c the manager kept apologizing and said this is not the way they prefer to train, but that she didn't know what we would have done if we hadn't been there b/c they were slammed!!! a 45 minute wait on monday night? it guess it was b/c it was the night before valentine's day. anywho, i'm off to the gym and then to class and lab. today is my long day so i try to go workout before class instead of after so it's not so late. i've been working on my personal statements for my applications and almost have one of them finished so i can mail it this week and will try to get the other finished and out early next week. i will be really glad to get them finished, but then the suspenseful time begins while i wait to hear from the schools. augh, i hate waiting!!! :) love to all and hope you have wonderful day!!

mandy

Looks Great

Mandy, thanks for posting the photos of the new tile floor and the new door going into the porch. They both look great! Looks like your tile guy did a great job and I like the pattern he used to lay the tile. I know you are so happy to have that finished with just a few more small things to get the kitchen completely done. The front door also looks really good. What a difference something like that can make. You all are doing a great job and seems like with everything you do, your home just continues to look better and better. Hope to see you in Louisville sometime over the weekend. Dee Dee and I won't get to L'ville until Friday evening. We will leave when I can get away from work and she is out of school. Will probably get into L'ville between 6:30 and 7 on Friday evening. We plan to have a fun outting on Saturday for awhile and go look at prom dresses. We enjoyed that last year but it was the big warehouse kinda place in Glasgow and thought it would be fun to take her to a smaller shop like Mary Beth and I did years ago. Gosh, I remember Mary Beth trying on dresses and Dee Dee being preschool age in the dressing room with her! So if you are in L'ville we would love to have you go but I know you'll have a great time seeing Wendy and all your friends! School is on a two hour delay this morning. Lots of surrounding counties closed. Had the initial snow on Friday/Sat. but temps stayed around 31-33 so it didn't stick on the roads. We had about 2-3 inches but nothing on the roads; since then we've had flurries off and on all weekend. Sometimes big flurries that lasted for a couple of hours. Last night it did that again but was in the upper 20's so it stuck a little bit on the roads. Dee Dee will sleep a little later but they won't have to make up the day. I'm sure all the kids could get used to that schedule! She has a full day with play practice after school and then a voice lesson in BG after play practice. So I'd better go get some things done before work. She is doing a great job with her driving but understands with the snow she can't drive and she is not allowed to drive to BG yet....that will come in time....but meanwhile she is doing a good job and it goes w/out saying she enjoys that new freedom/responsibility. Everyone take care and have a great week. Mandy, Doug mentioned you've had your training and will start your job soon. Congrats on that and hope that goes well. I know that will help out alot! Love, Debbie/Mom

trying another...

none of them would post the first several times i tried, so after getting one to work i decided to try the others...and it worked. woohoo!

i got one to post!

the tile is here!

hey! we got our tile in today and doug is super excited about me posting it! the grout is still pretty wet and it needs to be washed down one more time tomorrow to get the final layer of grout dust off, but you can get a pretty good idea of how it looks. the only thing i want to point out is that on some of the tiles it looks like there is a white line running through it, but it's grout and not part of the tile design. we're really pleased with how it turned out and think it was the right decision to go ahead and tile the floor for resale. rich, the tile guy, said he is going to come back and take a picture of our kitchen once the appliances are moved back in b/c he's done a lot of work to be proud of in there. oh, take notice of the wall color. i repainted b/c we decided the yellow was just too much in the kitchen. i hope you all are doing really well and hope you got some fun snow this weekend! we actually got a few flakes ourselves and, while it was short, it was really pretty. oh, we changed out the ugly screen door on our porch yesterday. we did it together and it worked on the first try! we were pumped!! i'm going to try to post a picture of that too! love you all!! mandy

happy thursday

hello everyone! i just wanted to check in and say hi. doug and i are sitting on the couch with neuman and lucy staring at us and begging to get up here. he got to go stay with grandmother and grandad last night and it sounds like he had a great time. he always enjoys getting to see them when he's down that way and i think it's a special time for all of them. we're trying to find a weekend for us both to get down there, but it seems like the weekend are flying by. hard to believe it's already almost the weekend, isn't it? i think our tile guy is going to get started on our kitchen floor on saturday so we are very excited! doug is heading out on sunday to go to jonesboro and then from there to louisville for the rest of the week. i'm flying in on friday, but then i'm heading to lexington for a weekend get together with white, mel, kristin and wendy. guess what? i talked to becky today and she said that at her last checkup the baby's heart rate was great and so was her blood pressure. she said she's definitely starting to feel like she is very pregnant and that he is starting to jump on her bladder. she's due may 31st. that's about all i have to report right now. i'll talk to you all later and will try to post the pictures again soon. love you all!
mandy

Doesn't seem to be in the cards right now.....

I was going to post photos from Hawaii as I can use something different than the blog tools to upload the photos but now the CD-Rom drive in my computer won't run! Doesn't seem to be in the cards right now.....sorry.....I've tried it about 10 times and it just won't read any CD so it appears to be broken. News on the slim side here, just doing all the regular stuff between home and work. I think I'm so glad to just have ordinary days that I'm not accomplishing a lot of anything....but the regular stuff, work, doing basic stuff around the house and all that. Everyone is doing well and healthy so that's great! Gonna run, get some laundry going, clean up the kitchen, all those good evening things calling to be done. Sorry about the photos, will figure something out. I'm about at the point where I just want to wipe the computer clean, reinstall windows and start over as the hard drive is full, etc.....but with the CD Rom drive not working I can't do that. Maybe it'll work sometime soon. Everyone take care! Love, Mom/Debbie

Photos not working for anyone

Hi everyone. Don't know why but everyone is having difficulty in getting the photos to upload. Mary Beth has tried as well and it doesn't work for her either. Was not a problem at all before but something is not working correctly......so.......we will try later and hopefully get some Hawaii photos on. There are some really good photos of both the scenery which is breathtaking and also some very good family photos. Even got some good photos of Douglas, Mr. I hate to have my picture taken. Hope all is well with everyone. Very busy Monday but things are going fine. Dee Dee got her driver's license on Friday. She came into the office all grins. Who ever wants anyone to look at their driver's license photo? Dee Dee because she was so happy and yes, it is very cute. Mandy, glad things are going well with the house. Know you will be glad to get finished but the hard work will pay off. Kinda cold here but not bad. Around 38-40 but pretty sunny and not windy so it feels fine. Maybe a little snow later in the week. Mild winter so far. We have missed one snow day and one "rain day"....it was supposed to snow so everyone in the area called off school all in the area and then it didn't snow, it rained. Don't know much newsworthy so I'm gonna run. Love to all. Debbie/Mom

i tried...

hey everyone! dee dee and melanie, i just tried to load several pictures twice and it gave me the "page cannot be displayed" message both times. i think the storm outside is messing up the internet connection or something. i'm going to try to load them again later. i'm sorry it's taken so long...i forget to check the comments on the individual postings and had not read your comments requesting pics. dee dee donaldson really needs to post some of her pics b/c she took a lot! once she got there doug and i basically didn't take anymore b/c her's are so great. melanie, what is your neighborhood called? we'll look it up online and see if there are any pictures of the house. guess what everyone? doug and i got invited over to our neighbors' house for the superbowl last night. it was actually pretty fun to do something social in bham! :) doug's home today for an office day so we're going to try to get some more work done around the house. we're getting sooooo close to be finished we're beginning to dream about it! :) hope everyone else is having a good monday...does it feel like winter is back everywhere else too? it was supposed to snow here last night and this morning, but it's just REALLY cold and rainy. love you all!!

mandy