Grandson

This is our first grandchild.  After raising five girls, a boy is a delight to have in the family.  Although we have a son-in-law, who is the best, girls are out number the guys in this family.  Even our dogs are female!  LOL

Brooks Michael Blackman, born December 17, 2012, is a joy in our family.  As you can see, he is already a sports fan and I'm sure will be an athlete in school, if his father has anything to do with it.  The girls oooh and ahhhh over him every chance they get.  

With Brooks' mom and dad living in Charleston, SC, it is difficult to see him as often as we would like, but we sure can spoil him from a distance.  We are excited about next week being Spring break....can you guess what we are going to do?  I'm so excited and so are the girls, and the grandfather.  I can't forget about him!  

Hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Easter week.

Pictures Underwater

Cassie and Ashley 

This past summer, Ashley turned 16.  She wanted money for her birthday because other than a car, she didn't know what she wanted.  She decided to get a waterproof otterbox for her iPhone.  

We were at the beach when she made this purchase.  I was visiting my cousin and returned to see her using her phone in the pool as I looked down from the balcony of our condo.  Not knowing that she had made this purchase while I was out, I was very alarmed to see and quickly sent her a text to tell her to get her phone away from the pool.  Her reply was to simply drop her phone in the water, dive to get it, and come up laughing.  She yelled up to me and said she had gotten her case!  I was certainly glad to hear that.

The pictures were very good.  These are pictures of the girls underwater.  They had fun taking pictures underwater.  

Ashley, Samantha, and a friend.

Cassie and Ashley

Ferocious Bitsy

Meet another (female) member of our family.  This is Bitsy, our ferocious pom.  Notice that she doesn't have that pretty little wagging pom tail.  That's because her bark is worse than her bite. 

When I first moved to Laurinburg, I lived in a cabin that sat quite a distance from the road and behind a pasture of horses.  Each time I let Bitsy out of the house, she would take off running and barking like she was after something.  What she was after was a horse!  She would run up to the horses that were grazing in the pasture and stand in front of them barking like she was telling them to move on.

Barking at the horses is how she lost her tail.  One day she was standing in front of one of the horses yelping away and apparently the horse had take all it was going to take and bowed her head down to Bitsy, grabbed her by the tail with its mouth and slung her like a rag doll!  You should have heard the whimpering from Bitsy as she crouched to the ground.

I picked her up and took her to the vet.  I first thought that her back was broken, but luckily, it was her tail.  It had to be amputated very close to her rear.  The nub is about a half inch.  The horse snapped it when he tossed her.

Bitsy must be a pretty sharp in some ways because from that time on, she never ran out of the door barking at the horses.  (My poor baby!)  

The Green Anole

Sitting at my dining room table, I happened to look out the window and notice this little lizard copping some sun!  LOL  I had a little chat with him to let him know that inside the house was not his place and politely picked him up to release him outside.

I remember when I was in high school, many years ago, that the boys would  pinch the jaws open on these little lizards and let them clamp on their ear lobes and hang as they walked around scaring people. Of course, you know guys....they thought this was fun!  No offense to the guys!  That was a long time ago.  I don't know if people still do this.

They do have teeth.  Just not sharp teeth because they have no need for sharp teeth.  I have handled many and have never had one bite me, so I'm not sure they bite or if they do, maybe it doesn't hurt.  I think I've read somewhere that they can hurt if they bite you.  I think they are cute little creatures!

Drive Through Zoo

What a day!  We decide that we would spend a Saturday with our youngest daughter at a drive through zoo that is about 3 hours from our house.  The place is called Lazy 5 Ranch: http://www.lazy5ranch.com/  

Anyway....this picture is from that day.  It's a longhorn cow.  He was walking up to the car as I was clicking pictures on my phone. I wanted to get a up close picture, but just as I snapped, he spoke!  Hahahahhahaa...I thought it was a great shot and a lucky shot.

We had a good time driving through and feeding all of the animals.   Although, it was a dusty job.  I had a bucket of feed sitting in my lap and the animals would automatically stick their heads in the window and go straight to the bucket.  At first, I was holding the bucket up to the window, but between the little breeze that day and the snorts the animals would make, feed dust would blow back in my face.  So I found that if I just kept the bucket in my lap, they would stick their head in the window, if they could.  I would hold it out for the ones that were either to short, or long horns.  LOL

Wedding Dress

It was an exciting day for all of us.  It was this past January, when my daughter, Krystal, her two maids of honor, her future mother-in-law, and myself, left from Murrells Inlet, South Carolina on our excursion to Columbia, South Carolina to a Bridal Shop.  We had a 3 hour drive, which really didn't seem like that, because of all the talking and laughing we did on our way.  

We stopped and had a light lunch, talked and laughed even more. Of course, my daughter then decides that she was going to try on wedding dresses and she wished that she had waited until afterwards to eat anything. (Like she is really big! ha!)

The excitement really begins when we walk into the door of the bridal shop.  Understand that this is my natural born baby girl, although I have four step-daughters, and one is already married, and married before I became part of the family.  

Once we are inside, we had to complete a register.  Then we were assigned someone that would take care of the finding dresses and help with trying on the dresses. After choosing a dozen or so dresses to try on, we head over to the dressing area.  We all have chairs around the stage and await for her to come out with her first dress.  We are all chatting about this and that when she walks out in the dress pictured here.  Well, let me tell you, when I looked up and saw my baby girl, tears came from out of nowhere and they rolled like a water fall.  I couldn't stop and didn't even know why I went from laughing to crying.  The feeling really came so sudden. It was just that instant of realizing that this was MY baby girl and she somehow grew up!  It was like I blinked when she was a baby and missed 24 years, and she was grown. She is my sunshine!