Alabama Birthday Weekend

Last month we had our annual birthday bash in Alabama. We celebrate my cousins Lisa and Mark's birthday as well as their spouses. As we do every year Mark takes us out on the boat for the afternoon. This year as we prepared to go w were all shocked when my 90 year old grandfather said he wanted to go. We never dreamed that he would want to go so we had never asked him before. He told us that he never went because we had never asked! So we helped him on to the boat and got him situated in the back with his life jacket.
So, we headed slowly out of the slew in to river. Mark was taking us all on a leisurely boat ride. All of a sudden my grandfather said, "Can't this thing go any faster?" Once again we were shocked! Mark sped up a little but that wasn't fast enough! He told Mark to floor it! So, he did. We were all afraid his hearing aids would fall out. Actually I think the sound of the air whipping by was a little loud, so he took them out. Then Paw Paw decided he wanted to take the captain's chair.

He looks like a natural. He really had a good time. We took a lot of pictures of him because he wanted to show all of his walking buddies what an adventurous man he was. Good memories. We headed back to let the older crowd off the boat and then the younger ones went out again. Please note that I am included in the younger crowd. We took out the SeaDoo as well.

We then headed back to the house for dinner and the opening of presents, or money as it ended up being.


Thanks Susan for a fun weekend ad for being a gracious hostess.

Jerry's Sno-Cones and More

Last night we went with our neighbors to Jerry's Sno-cones for some Memphis favorite sno-cones. All summer long you will hear people talk about going to Jerry's. This was only our second time to go, but I swear that place makes a killing. We got there about 7:30pm and the line was all the way to the street. This place is not in the best of neighborhoods and you have to watch your back while there. Just kidding...not really! This was our neighbors first time to go and they followed us out there. We followed our directions obediently from Sha-nay-nay, our GPS (What? Don't you name your GPS?). I know they wondered where we were taking them when we turned on to a residential street where the men hanging out in their front yards were wearing wife beaters and cars jacked up on bricks loitering the yards. Yep, deep in the heart of Memphis! This place sits right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. They have about 25 different flavors to choose from. One of which is called Wedding Cake. I haven't been brave enough to buy a whole cup of it to try but people swear it is wonderful. I opted for a safe blueberry. My neighbor quickly whipped out his camera to capture my unknowing blue lips and teeth! Other flavors chosen by our group were, cherry, grape (yep, we're adventuresome!), green apple and wedding cake. Mind you, wedding cake was ordered by our neighbor. He mixed it with green apple. Odd combination, but whatever. As we sit outside and eat our sno-cones, I observe the different walks of life around me. To our right was a family with 2 kids sitting on a hill with the kids taking turns rolling down that hill right at our feet. (No, thanks, not a problem Ma'am.) Then to our left, two teeny boppers who are obviously on a date. She was sitting so close to him, I swear she was sitting in his lap. Then, THEN to our far right there were three girls that were...interesting. One of the girls had tattoos adorning all the way up her arms (attractive) and another girl had a earring in her nose. Now to round out this little group, the other girl was wearing a little yellow damask dress and yellow shoes looking like she stepped right out of Leave it to Beaver! She was only missing the pearls! I think we were the only normal people there. I wonder what they were thinking of us?

Being that this is Memorial Day weekend, what would the weekend be if you didn't have a cook-out? Tonight we have plans to get together with two other couples and cook out ribs. My mouth is watering already. We are excited to get together with these other couples. I think we have a lot of things in common with them. One of them is the family of Drama Queen's boyfriend. I hope our friendship can withstand it if they ever break up. They are actually approaching their one year anniversary together.

That is the only plans we have for our weekend right now. I plan to relax and maybe do a little cleaning and a little wash. Maybe we will get out the paddle boat and paddle around our lake.

So, what are your plans for the weekend?

Creative Movement

Creative Movement
Originally uploaded by TNsouthernbelle

Yesterday the evening service at church was led by the students Worship Arts. The drama, creative movement and choir all performed. It was really good. Drama Queen performed with the Creative Movement team and they did really well. Unlike her name, she does not do drama! The church always loves it when they perform. The last song they performed, Amazing Love, always brings people to their feet. Good job girls!

Shopaholics

Shopaholics
Originally uploaded by TNsouthernbelle

Today we battled the mall to go shopping. The intent of this trip was to get Easter dresses. We went to Justice for Hurricane A and needless to say she found a lot of clothes but no Easter dress. We ran into her friend there that tried out for cheerleading with her. She made the team. We were excited for her. Hurricane A seems to be feeling better about not making it today.

After going to several stores in the mall one girl found a dress and the other one didn't. One found shoes and the other one didn't. That always seems to be the way it goes. We, howevver, came home with way too many clothes!

Not the picture I wanted to post

Not the picture I wanted to post
Originally uploaded by TNsouthernbelle

This is not the picture idea I had planned for tonight. My daughter tried out for cheerleader today after having clinic all week. Tonight we went to the school to see the posting of the ones who made it. Well, she didn't make it. :( So, I decided to take a picture of me and my girls. You can probably guess which one didn't make cheerleader.

7 Days Day 6

7 Days Day 6
Originally uploaded by TNsouthernbelle

This picture was taken at our volleyball game. Our Sunday School class has a team and we play on Thursday nights for a couple more weeks. It was a very horrible night, and not just for me, but the whole team. It literally was like watching the Bad News Bears! We missed everything or we stood there and stared at the ball thinking someone else was getting it! It was rather comical. I could not hit ANYTHING! It was quite embarrasing. I'm sure the other players were wishing I would just sit out.

Next week can only get better because it certainly can't get worse!

7 days day 5

7 days day 5
Originally uploaded by TNsouthernbelle

Day 5 our theme was dinner. You could interpret it anyway you wanted. I tried to get a picture of just my food but I kept getting a blurry picture and not the nice pretty bokeh. I finally put the camera on the kitchen counter and went for this angle. I cropped it down a bit but you can still see Steve leaning over to get out of the picture. I wish I could have cropped out my flabby arm but then I would have cropped out the food!

By the way, we had sausage casserole and green beans. YUM YUM!

7 days: day 4

7 days: day 4
Originally uploaded by TNsouthernbelle

I titled this picture "Gettin my hair did". This picture is also rather unflattering. Wet head is never my best look. Leslie has been doing my hair since we graduated from high school. We have known each other since we were in 9th grade. That is over 30 years! Wow! That is hard to believe.

7 Days: Day 3

7 Days: Day 3
Originally uploaded by TNsouthernbelle

Day three of the 7 day run. At lunch I went to Burger King to get a drink to go with the lunch that I brought from home. Our ice machine at work is broken, so unless you want to drink a hot drink or drink from the can, which I do not like to do, you go buy one. I took this with my IPhone while the workers had turned around to get my drink.

If you look closely at this picture, you will see that my hand looks like crocodile skin. I was in desperate need of lotion!

7 days: 2 Style

7 days: 2 Style
Originally uploaded by TNsouthernbelle

This is the picture for Day 2 of 7 Days. It rained all day long on Sunday March 21 and it was quite chilly for the first full day of Spring. The day before was warm and beautiful and then the rain brought in a cold front. It was unwelcome!

So, today my original thought was to get a picture of me in the rain and so that you could see me standing in puddles. Well, since it was raining, I couldn't take my camera into the rain so I set my tripod up in the garage and then I couldn't get a picture close enough for the detail. So, this is what we get. I really need a longer focus lens! Hint hint.

The theme was style for today. I was styling the rain gear. I am actually wearing Drama Queen's rainboots and they were like two sizes too small. My toes were literally curled into them. I need to get me a pair of rainboots!

Spring 7 days 2010

Spring 7 days 2010
Originally uploaded by TNsouthernbelle

Today is the first day of my Flickr 7 Days group. In the Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter we have a 7 day run where you take a self portrait a day and post it to the group. It is a lot of fun and I love seeing what creative ways people find to take a self portrait. Here is my picture for the first day, Saturday March 20, 2010.

I am not crazy about the way I look here, but what can you do? Chloe kept trying to jump up in my lap so I just picked her up and let her be a part of my self portrait. You can see in the reflection behind me that Steve and the girls are practicing ball in the backyard.

February Birthdays

This past weekend we celebrated my nieces 12th birthday. Time should not be able to pass this quickly. It is always fun when we get the family together to celebrate such occasions. Her birthday usually starts them off for the year and then Anna's is the next one in May and then it is a monthly occasion after that.

In addition, we had cute babies to play with and watch explore. They are both 9 months old and crawling everywhere. Following are pictures of the cuties.

Lisa and Ella Marie stayed at our house so I was able to snap a couple of shots of Ella Marie. These are straight out of the camera with no editing.

More pictures to come later.

Photo Shoot

I mentioned that I am trying to improve on my photography skills. I really want to be able to take great pictures like people I see on Flickr. They inspire me to get better. My oldest daughter likes to pose for me and she is really photogenic. I like to use her for practice. We recently did a photo shoot of her and our neighbor Megan. I am posting some of those pictures below.

In my quest to get better, you may be able to tell that I need help in certain areas. Mainly, lighting. I have bought some heavy duty lights and also used a powerful light from the garage, but I can's seem to get the lighting right so that there are no shadows. I still need to work on that. Also, as you will see in some photos I have edited them. I got Photoshop software for Christmas and I have been practicing my editing skills. I can only do the basics so far. Look for improvement there also.

Now, here are a few photos from a photo shoot a couple of weeks ago with my girls, one of the neighbors and my neice.

Ice Storm 2010

Hello, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kelly Metaxas and I am the owner of this here blog. I find it kind of ironic that the last post was of a significant snow because we get so few and that is what I am posting about today. This year however it was primarily ice with a little snow thrown in. I didn't get any pictures of the snow/ice or the girls in it because we didn't really get out in it because ice is just no fun. Instead, I am including a picture of what happened to our house as a result of this ice.

We discovered this lovely huge spot in our garage that was leaking about 1:00 Sunday afternoon. My daughter saw it when she was going outside to shovel the driveway! That would have lasted all of five minutes if she had gotten there. As you can see in this picture, this hole is about the size of a sofa in length. It was just dripping when we noticed it and we were clueless of where it could be coming from. There are no bathrooms or anything to leak in that wall. The playroom is directly above that. So, we called our neighbor over because he used to do some plumbing work when he was in the service. We cut the sheetrock out so we could track the source of the leak. Apparently it is from the weight of the ice just sitting on the roof. Our gutters are clogged up with ice and so nothing was really draining so I guess the melted ice had to find somewhere to go. We really don't think we have a leak per se because we have never had any problems with that in the past. We have decided to just patch the hole and wait for another rain storm to see if it leaks anymore before we file a claim and search our roof for the leak. If we were to file a claim our insurance will likely go up because it will be our third claim. We filed for damage on our other house from Hurricane Elvis and then electricity hit our house about a year ago. We think our deductible is about $500 and it should be less than that to repair the hole.

So, that is my storm story of the Ice Storm of 2010. The schools were out on Friday because that is when the ice storm came. They are out again today even though the sun melted a good deal of it yesterday. The rural roads in the northern part of the county still have ice on them so we get a day off. The girls are excited. It is going to be hard to get them back in the groove because I don't think they have gone a full week since Christmas and they have a day off next week for President's day.

I am trying to take more and more pictures to improve my photography skills. I am going to try and post some of those pictures so I can track my progress. I hope to be able to see an improvement over time. So, for the future that will be my sole purpose of posting on this blog. Let's see if I can keep that up!