What Not to Wear?

OK, ladies. Here I am living in this house full of boys, and I find myself needing fashion advice. This is where you come in!

This Sat., we are attending a banquet celebrating the 20th anniversary of the school where I teach. Since this is the first dressy function I have attended since the weight loss, I had to buy something to wear. Oh, and it did make me so sad to have to do that (can you hear the sarcasm? You know I loved it!).

I went with a pretty basic black dress, and I've decided on the shoes (black patent, chosen mostly b/c they flatter the legs). Now I need to accessorize. We all know that accessories are very important to the black dress, so this really is a dilemma!

Since the dress doesn't really lend itself well to a necklace, I went to Steinmart today and picked up this lovely bracelet and these earrings. I was thinking it would add some interest -- a pop of color, if you will.

My hubby seems to prefer this simple black sparkly cuff bracelet. Now keep in mind that his preference may be completely motivated by the fact that I already own said bracelet, and it does not involve a new purchase. Not that I'm saying he's cheap or anything...

And besides, I still need earrings if I go with that one!

Sticking to black accessories would be a classic look. But would it be boring?

Any other ideas for accessories?

Help me out, girls!

Catching up

Aren't we beautiful?

Do you like our new fall look?

Very cutting edge and fashion forward, right?

We had tacky day at school, and Perry and I made a great showing, as you can see.

I am going to put together a slide show of some of the other exciting things we've been doing lately. Maybe once I feel caught up, I can do a better job of keeping the blog up to date.

I can hold onto that hope, anyway.

In honor of the 2 week anniversary of Labor Day 2008...

Finally! Pictures from Labor Day!

2 weeks ago we were supposed to go to New Orleans to visit my sister and her family. If you remember, however, a very unfriendly guy named Gustav cleared out The Big Easy that weekend. So my sister evacuated, and we took a last-minute trip to see my mom and stepdad in Kentucky.

Perry always LOVES being at Nana and Grandpa's house! There are so many fun things to explore there. This trip did not disappoint.

We roasted a few marshmellows.But Perry soon decided he'd rather just eat them out of the bag.
Grandpa showed Perry all of the cool stuff that's growing in his garden. P picked some carrots and baby pumpkins himself.

We also got to visit my Uncle Mark and his pool! When we asked Perry if he remembered going there last year, he shouted, "Oh yeah! That place is awesome!"

It earns such high praise because there is a diving board AND a slide! Wow!

My cousin and his kids actually came by while we were there. It was fun watching Perry play with his kids. It brought back lots of memories of us at that age. When I was Perry's age, we were living there in Ky, and we had some good time with the cousins back then!

The last day we were there, tour guide Grandpa took us exploring. We checked out the creek behind their house, and, of course Perry couldn't resist testing out the waters!

He only got waist-deep in water!

And he wondered over and over why Nana and I didn't go in.

An excellent time was had by all!

I have a lot more pics, but, hey, you can't expect too much! For some reason, uploading pictures to blogger is a much slower process on my laptop. No idea why. I'm working on it.

Maybe someday I'll get the pictures posted from Perry's nursery rhyme parade at school. Right now you'll just have to imagine. It was very cute.

Yep, those will be coming right along with pictures of him driving his first car...

Where I've been

So I know that I said I'd post pictures from Labor Day weekend, and I haven't gotten around to that yet. Allow me to explain...

A couple of weeks ago, my dad told me he was going to be having a heart cath. He had an EKG that "was not textbook," as he put it. They did a stress test, and based on those results wanted to do the cath. They thought there may be some blockage that could require a stint or simple angioplasty. They scheduled the cath for this past Wed.

Wed. afternoon my little sis called with the news that Dad would be having quadruple bypass on Fri. -- 2 days later. The heart cath revealed serious blockages, and they decided to schedule him for Fri. and keep him in the hospital until the surgery.

Not exactly the news we had expected! But we were all thanking God for that heart cath, which allowed them to identify the problems so they could be fixed.

Of course, I wanted to be there with him for the surgery, and the Lord graciously worked that out for me. Amazingly, I found a very reasonable price on a last-minute plane ticket, so I headed down to W.Palm only a little more than 24 hrs. after hearing the news, and I arrived around midnight last night.

Amanda and I made it to the hospital (VERY early this morning) to give him kisses before he went in.

The surgery went very well. The doctor was pleased with the results, and, according to the nurses, he is on the "fast track" recovery-wise. They were able to remove the breathing tube about 5 hrs. after surgery (MUCH to Dad's relief).

We pray that the rest of the recovery will go well, and that he will feel better than ever!

And I will get around to posting those pictures eventually, I promise. : )

My New Toy!

I am posting this using my brand new lime-green laptop! Oh, it is fabulous! So pretty!

I even took some pictures. Because I do want you to share in its beauty. : )

Eric just called it "the new blog machine." Hopefully its portability will allow me to post more frequently. And it's so fun to use, you know, 'cause it's so pretty! I really want to go out to Starbucks right now and do some public blogging, just because I can.

Too tired, though. Wouldn't you know it.

I have some other pics from the weekend to post as well. I just had to test this out!

I'll be back tomorrow with more.