Coming...

I have tons of pictures, and stories to tell from the Holiday's but have not gotten time to get it done!!! Stay tuned they will get posted!

Made it to TN

Well, we have made it to TN. It ended up being a little over 11 hours to get to Rozy's house, but we made it all in one piece!
We left my house about 9:30, and then it was really pretty uneventful.
I kept joining convoys, and talking to each of them to stay where they were, so we could be speeders. It was a good drive, and we enjoyed it. But near the end, we were both ready to get out of the car. Even Butch. He kept jumping from the back to the front to side to side he was a bit restless.

Recital

We had our December Recital this past Saturday, and where I really did not want to do it, it went fine. We played mostly Christmas Songs as violins, but all piano students played solos, so the Recital went forever, and it was packed.
Mr. C had to have the little kids who were performing come and sit in the front on the floor, and even then there was not enough room for all the parents to sit.
Plus now there were 10 children under 8 years old all together on the floor with no parental supervision.
It was kind of a cluster as usual, but the little kids did a great job.
I am glad that it is over. Bad attitude I know, but I can’t help it!! I felt like I was drowning this past week with all the stuff I needed to do, and that was something that I did not want to do, which took up quite a bit of my time.
BUT it is done, I enjoyed some time with my violin buddies, and now it is on to other things!
I will post pictures later, I could not get them to load.

Starbucks

Mr. Certain my violin teacher had most of his students play at the local Starbucks this past Saturday. It was not the funnest of times. It was very close quarters (which I don't do so well in) and it was long. Standing and playing for 3 hours is quite tiring.
I was a bit put out by the time the thing was over.
I should have better control of my emotions, but this time of year I am very busy, and I did not want to do this.
But I did, and I really tried hard to have a good time.
Here are some pictures

101 Dalmatians Update

The 101 Dalmatians was a really great show. They advertised that they had real dogs in the show, which they did for the last 3 minutes of the show, and 2 other times they raced across the stage.
It also had children acting as the pups as well, and children in shows like this have always bugged me. For one thing, the performances get over late, and you know that prior to the performances they have had to go to rehearsals and such.
I don’t know why, but this has always bothered me. Perhaps it is because with my limited knowledge of what it takes to put on a show, I know that there is a lot of time and dedication needed, and I feel that children’s dedication and time should be spent elsewhere.
Aside from my own personal feelings that children should not be involved, it was a good show. Not the best I have ever seen, and I am not sure children should go. Not because it was inappropriate, but because the first half moved very slowly, and the children that were in the audience were quite restless.
I did have a great time with my girlfriends, and that was the whole point of the outing.
Thanks Andrea for the Christmas gift! I love them!

NASCAR

Ben and I went to 2 Nascar Races this past November, and I have not posted anything yet. There was a night race which was the truck race, then the day race, which was the nationwide race.
Here are some pictures!
Once again, we had a great time!

Here are some pictures of Thanksgiving.

Dinner

Butch

Table

Dessert

Eisenhower State Park

Ben and I went camping with friends the first of November, and I have not yet had time to get pics of the event up.
We went to Lake Texoma, and had a really good time. It was a bit different camping in a tent since I have had that camper for so long. It was a good reminder of why I bought the camper in the first place!
We had really great weather the whole time, and I got my fix of camping for a while.
Here are some pics.

101 Dalmatians

Some girlfriends and I are going to see the Musical of 101 Dalmatians tonight! I am excited to get to hang out with my girls for a night!

We will go to dinner first and be able to catch up! We all work together, but with the way that work is…we hardly ever get to just talk.

Maybe I will be able to get some pictures posted, if we end up taking any.

It is too bad that it falls this week, because my poor wee dog had to be in his kennel most of the night Monday, because of the ESL classes we teach, Tuesday he had to be in his kennel most of the day because of a make up violin lesson I had, and then Ben had an impromptu business dinner that he asked me to attend.

Yesterday was my COSTCO day, and today I have the 101 Dalmatians. Tomorrow is my company Christmas party, and my department Christmas party, however, I am hoping that they get over before 6, so I can spend the rest of my evening with my best guy, and my favorite dog!

It starts all over on the weekend!

Saturday is the playing Christmas songs at the local Starbucks with the Certain Music Students (which I am not sure how pleased I am about...)

Sunday may be a slower day. Ben was given tickets to the Cowboys game, and he is excited about that!! Maybe after church I can get the house clean, and try to spend some quality time with Butch!

Chilly and Angry

It has gotten cold down here…Not as cold as up north, but for Texas it is cold. The other day, I got out Butch’s little Velour Sweat suit, and put it on him!! He is so funny! He obviously hates this type of stuff!

Thanksgiving

Wow, The Holidays always seem to sneak up on me, and then take up all my time. I have been thinking about updating my blog for quite a while now, but really have not had a spare minute!

Some updates, Ben and I traveled to Mason TX to have Thanksgiving with his Family.

It was a great time.

We had a lot of fun. We had the traditional Thanksgiving with Family and Friends, On Friday we walked the town of Mason and looked at all the little downtown shops I found a pendant that matched the ring I bought a few years ago! I had been looking for a matching necklace for a long time, and bought it! I was so excited to finally find a match. It is blue calsydney. Here is a picture!

After we got home from all of this, Ben and I made a dinner of Fish Tacos that turned out to be really good!!!

The next day Ben woke up early and went hunting. He saw some action, but let the deer go since he was just a little guy! Later that morning, His folks, and his sister him and I went to Fredericksburg TX and shopped almost all day! Fredericksburg is a nice little German town with lots of stuff to look at!

When we got back from shopping, Ben and I went down to the Llano river and watched the sun set.

Then on Sunday we headed back home to Dallas.

Thank you David and Ann for being so kind, and making sure that we had an enjoyable time.

We are now looking forward to going to TN for Christmas!

HOCKEY!!!

A group of us went to a minor league hockey game this past Saturday. The Texas Tornadoes. We started out the evening at Paulios, which is an awesome little place where they have freaking great pizza and pasta. So a group of us started out there having a great time amongst friends, then we headed over to the game. Ben and I with another friend were following Amy, who had two more in her car, and it was an experience! There was one point where we needed to do a U-Turn, we were stopped at a red light when Amy just went ahead and did a U-Turn at the red light and headed the other way…well, Ben and I did not know where we were going (hence the following Amy in the first place…) so Ben just followed suite. (What the heck was she thinking?) :)Then we get to the park, and Bens truck was too big to fit in the upper section of the parking terrace, so we got good parking right on the ground level.What an awesome time! I so love Hockey and it was a great game. It ended up going into double overtime which ended in a shootout. They even had a put up your dukes’ fight between two guys who needed to let off some steam. (There was an obvious height advantage to one of the guys, so it was not really fair, but it was still awesome!) So cool. I had a great time hanging out with friends, and watching people getting checked right and left! Hope we can do it again. It is a very affordable sport to go to live! And one that I really like too.

Chores

Yesterday was such a productive day, Ben came over, and said he would help me with my yard work that I had to get done. (yea!!! Thanks Ben!)
But before we started all that we stopped and got a squash, because I was in the mood for some nice tasty squash. We made it home, and I got out the edger, and weed eater, and started doing all the edges, and places that needed to be cleaned up while he got out the mower, and started mowing. We had it all done in about an hour, and it looked nice. However, I am not used to handling the edger, and weed eater, and now I am really sore.
Then I got that good squash, and peeled it, and put it in to cook while we did a few more things.
After this we put together a work bench that I had purchased a few weeks ago. When Landon moved out, he took everything in the garage, all the workbenches, and tools. He left me with a hammer, a screwdriver and an old rusted out small socket kit with a small rusted out tool box.
So a few weeks ago as I was trying to replace the fuel tank on the weed eater, and I needed pliers, and I was so frustrated that I had no tools, so I went and bought the basic tools, as well as a few that I used quite often that Landon also took, like a drill.
Then realized that I had no where to put them. So I went back to Lowe’s and bought a workbench that I could have to do things that I needed to on.
It was 100% not put together, so Ben and I had a great time figuring out how it all went together.
During all this the squash was cooking. When we were done assembling we ate, well Ben ate a grilled pork chop with the squash, which if he said so himself he did a bang up job on because it was delicious! And I had melted cheese and crab on toast with squash and broccoli all of which was mmm.mmm. good!
So glad all that got done this weekend!

Art Festival

Ben and I volunteered this weekend at the Frisco Arts Festival. It was an experience.
First they had just done up all the areas around the trees, and the areas where there were little bushes and such with treated mulch that smelled like fresh manure (eww…)
The Art Festival was where a bunch of local and or regional artists were selling their own art. There was a lot of really nice art. One couple designed their own jewelry, and they had some really neat original pieces. I really like quite a few of their designs. http://www.newmansdesign.com/
The shift we did on Friday night was a bit chilly, and we ended up having to use Valet parking, because that was just kind of how it ended up. The end of our shift came and went, and they were still using us, so about 10:45pm we finally got let go, and we walked to the car to find that the Valet guys had gone home. So we had no keys…
So we walked all the way across the festival grounds to where we thought there might still be people to see if they had left the keys with someone.
We did finally locate our keys, and got to get out of there.
Then Saturday afternoon after each of us had our separate Violin lessons, we went for our Saturday afternoon shift. Once again smelling like lovely manure, we sat at our post.
Saturday was a gorgeous day. And our shift went pretty quickly without any major issues cropping up.
After our volunteer shift, we decided that we had done our good deeds for the weekend, and we wanted to have a nice relaxing night, so we went to an Irish restaurant and had potato pancakes and fish and chips while we watched the Alabama North Carolina game.
All in all, a great weekend!

Quick, Run!

Oh man, I have been sick with some sort of stomach bug since Last Thursday…So tired of this! I was trying to stop with sticking with an all liquid diet, but that did not last, because it did not seem to help anyway. So I have gone back to eating normal food, and being sick! I went to the Doctor today and got blood taken, and have to go back in the morning for a few more tests, since the doctor agreed that a solid week of stomach issues with no fever is indicative of a problem that may not go away on its own very quickly…
But I hope that what ever they find it is something that will go away soon…She was saying the Giardia was going around…ewww. I so hope I don’t have that!!!

New Blog, for my new life. Here is to the start of it!

For some background...
Got Divorced in July.
Have started dating again, and have met the greatest guy.
It has been a struggle to transition from being married, to being a girlfriend. I have not been a girlfriend for 12 years, and then I was young and carefree and it really did not matter. I was not in the middle of my middle years; I was at the beginning, and fancy free.
Now I have baggage. Bad experiences from my past have hindered me, and it has been really hard to see past what I expect to hear, or see from my new beau.
His name is Ben, and he has been so awesome.
He has opened my eyes to what it really could be like.

The man I divorced was a good man. He had issues with which I had issues, and eventually ended our marriage.

But it is odd to be treated differently then you ever have been, and have someone who does things the way that you knew people did, but you had not thought it would ever be you having those great experiences.

Example, He ironed his own shirt. I know. Something simple, and non-important in the scheme of things but to me… I was not sure men could iron. (lol)

So I dont know what life will bring, or where I will go from here, but I am happy.