Of course I’m referring to Hanna and Ike.  Hanna, though scary to me earlier today, has now taken a backseat to Ike.  I am not a fan of tropical weather unless it’s the hot, sunny kind.

My first “tropical” experience came almost exactly 5 years ago when we were living in Hope Mills, just south of Fayetteville.  Isobel hit on a day that I was home alone with my oldest, who was still a baby at the time.  It was terrifying to hear the junk from our neighbor’s backyward pelt the side of the house all day long!  We had moved everything we had inside, parked our vehicle in the garage, and done everything we could to be sure we didn’t leave anything out for the wind to hurl at someone else’s house.  Our trashy neighbors weren’t as considerate.  Their back yard, filled with toys and trash, backed up to our side yard and literally everything out there ended up laying in our yard by the time it was over.  It was a terrifying experience and I have no wish to repeat it…so far, I’ve been lucky.  Even when we lived much closer to the coast in Florence, SC we escaped any of the bad ones.  We may have had some rain, some gusty wind, but never anything that was really scary like that.

So we’re prepared for Hanna’s worst which now appears to be not so bad.  And I’m praying Ike doesn’t turn this direction though I feel horribly guilty about it…if it doesn’t come here, it will go elsewhere.  It feels pretty selfish to hope it affects someone else.  For everyone out there in the area, stay safe tomorrow & Saturday!

I have had this window open for a couple of hours now, just trying to decide what to post about. The main thing in my head is the fact that my husband is currently in Asheboro, pitching to a company there in the hopes of picking up some work. I alternate between praying that things go well and feeling like I’m going to throw up from the nervousness.

As for the other stuff bouncing around in my brain, here’s just a sample…

• With the arrival of the new LUSH store in Raleigh at Crabtree Valley, I’ve finally been able to try a couple of bath bombs and LOVE them. Now I want to try their hair color. The idea of my grays becoming bright red is strangely appealing. Has anyone tried it? Does anyone want to have a LUSH hair color party with me?
• I have a hair appointment scheduled for tomorrow. I am anxious to see what she makes of my badly thinning hair. I’ve never had this problem while pregnant…it usually becomes very thick and pretty. Right now it’s dull, thin, and lifeless. Yuck.
• Nobody in town will pierce my nose while I’m pregnant. Which doesn’t surprise me, but there goes my fabulous 33rd birthday gift to myself. Oh well! I still plan to have it done, but it may be a little bit longer. I did find some really cool opal nose screws, though!
• As difficult as 2 year olds can be, this may also be my favorite age. Right now he’s running back and forth from the art table with various pieces of scribbled paper and saying “look, look!” He is SO proud of himself!
• Both boys have requested a baby sister. I hope they’re not disappointed if it’s a brother instead.
• Yes, we do know what causes pregnancy. Yes, we wanted another baby. No, we don’t care what your opinion is. Why do people think it’s OK to comment on this?
• I am excited about the location of the new YMCA, which will open right before the baby arrives. It will be about 5 minutes from our house and I plan to utilize it as soon as I’m cleared for exercise! I just hope our income permits it at that point.
• With just me and the youngest home today, I think wee’re going to go have lunch at McD’s and then head by Shoppes of Steele Street so I can get some *good* chocolate. Must go do something with my nasty hair and maybe put on some make-up…

I have a major parenting dilemma.  Way back in mid-May, we signed my oldest son up for teeball.  I was told that practices would start in June, with games to begin in July and finished by the first week or so of August.  I figured this would be fine with our school schedule beginning in mid-July.

As it turned out, practice didn’t start until mid-July, the week before school started for him.  I heard many reasons as to why this happened…equipment didn’t come in, coaches hadn’t picked up rosters, rosters weren’t finished yet, and a few others that I’ve forgotten.  I called several times trying to figure out what was going on because I was being asked daily by a little boy who just wanted to play teeball.  As it turns out, we’re practicing from 7PM to 8PM one night a week.  Which I could deal with, though the timing bothered me somewhat.  We’ve never been strict about bedtime, but with school starting we’ve spent most of the summer trying to get him used to going to bed around 8PM so he’d be able to get up and make it to school and not be tired all day.  So now, one night a week he’s got teeball practice that *ends* at 8:00, and then we have to get home, get him in the shower and then to bed.  It’s made for some late bedtimes and a couple of difficult mornings.  But I didn’t complain.

Last night we got news of our first game.  Make that games, plural.  Next week, he has 2 games.  Plus a practice.  All on school nights, all ending at 8PM, if not later.  This is NOT going to work.  I realize that we choose to make sacrifices when we enroll our children in a year round school.  But based on the info I was given when we signed up, it was not going to be but for the first few weeks of school.  And I had NO idea there would be 2 games a week, plus practice!  Even if he wasn’t in school, that’s a LOT of family time and evenings that are being interfered with.  Undoubtedly I should have asked more questions.  But since I was told it would be over in early August, I just didn’t think it would become such a big issue.  This whole teeball thing has been a mess and it seems very badly organized, so I’m sure that doesn’t help with the annoyance factor.  I had used Lee County Parks & Rec for activities before but I’m having second thoughts about using them for anything in the future…which is too bad, because you can’t beat the price!  We really wanted to do football this fall, but now I’m really doubting whether we should.

So now what do I do?  Do I pull him out of teeball completely?  He really enjoys it, so that doesn’t seem the right thing to do…I don’t want to punish him for something that’s not his fault.  But I just don’t see him being able to handle having so much to do in the evenings and still getting the sleep he needs to do well in school.  So what options do I have?  I talked to my mom and her suggestion was to limit him to one game and one practice per week.  I think this would be a good compromise, but again I am concerned that he will feel punished either by us or the fact that he’s in school.  I don’t want him to hate school for interfering with the fun of teeball, and I don’t want him to resent us or feel punished, either.  So wise blog readers, what are your suggestions?  I’m completely at a loss here and all of the parenting success I felt at my ingenious method of teaching him his b and d has completely evaporated.

A friend recently emailed me a link to this blog, which is a hilarious collection of real estate photos gone bad. What blows my mind is just how expensive some of these homes are…yes, half a million for places that look like they should be condemned! I know we’ve been lucky to live in places where we could get nice homes for less than $150k, but I am not sure I realized just HOW lucky we’ve been. Actually, this is the first place we’ve spent more than $110k on a house…we’ve even had 2 (very nice houses) that we bought for less than $100k. It just blows my mind sometimes.

Anyway, it prompted me to go looking for bad real estate photos for Sanford and I DID find them. I was actually going to post some, but I’m really trying not to be too snarky here or alienate anyone. I did find out that the house next door to us is listed for well over $200k. Really??? Maybe property values in this neighborhood are better than I thought!

And as an aside, if you’re a local Realtor and are having trouble getting good photos, (and by good, I mean *in focus* and attractive angles!) would you consider hiring me on a trial basis to see if we can get some good photos for you? I’m also willing to do websites for real estate agents. In fact, I may set up a sample site over the next few days…I was kind of shocked when I realized that most of the local Realtors didn’t even have their own sites, at least not that I could find. These can be a great source of info, especially if you have your website printed on your signs. I often drive by houses and wish there was an easy way to get info about them!

Yesterday was a great day! We had a ton of fun at the Family 4th of July festival here in town. Really the only thing that would have made it better is fireworks, though I understand why they couldn’t have them! But it would definitely be nice to see them added into the celebration next year.

And the reason why it would have been nice to have fireworks here? We had planned to go up to Cary and see the fireworks there. We managed to get up there, walked what felt like a million miles to find a place to sit among the many, many people there, and 20 minutes before the fireworks were supposed to start, the wind started blowing and the sky got dark. Soon there was lightning, then came thunder, then we started feeling sprinkles. We didn’t wait…packed up our chairs, blanket, stroller, kids and took off, along with the thousands of other people there. We speed-walked the million miles *back* to our car where we found out we would be going nowhere for quite some time as the traffic was miserable. We popped Nemo in the DVD player and let the kids hang out while we cooled off and dried out. Luckily we had made it back to the car before the rain started coming down too hard, but it poured down in sheets! We were disappointed in missing the fireworks but we certainly need the rain. Imagine our surprise when we realized it didn’t rain a DROP here. *sigh*

I see that the fireworks in Cary have been rescheduled for tonight but we have plans and I’m just not sure if I’m up for all of that again.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

(From the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776)

Enjoy Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness today! We’ll be at the Family 4th Festival at Depot Park and then we’ll probably head to Cary for fireworks. It promises to be a fun day!

Edit to add that we found matching flag tees for the whole family at Wal-Mart this morning, so we will be the lame family in matching shirts. Ha!

Hey, fellow Sanfordians! In case you’ve been living in a cave, I thought I’d toss some stuff to do out there for you.

Tonight (Thursday 7/3) at 7PM is the Function at the Junction. I think a beach music group tonight? We’ll be there, regardless. (And if you think you recognize me, please feel free to say hi! I won’t bite!)

Tomorrow, from 2PM on, there is a family centered 4th of July festival at Depot Park. Lots of traditional stuff, including pie eating, and watermelon seed spitting, as well as lots of fun things for kids.

On July 19, Stepping Stones is having a carnival to raise money for their new playground that will be accessible to kids of all abilities. They’re accepting donations for silent auction items and selling raffle tickets as well, so if you can help out, please get in touch with Emily Page. You can get that contact info and read more here.

I don’t know why it’s bothering me so much, but I’d love to know what the alleged “immoral conduct” is that the Lee County School Superintendent apparently just resigned over. (Check www.sanfordherald.com for updates.) Certainly there are crazy things running through my head, but I feel like it’s unfair to assume anything that I’m thinking is likely considering he is not in jail. But it does give me pause, knowing my child is about to start attending a Lee County school.

I know that there are many definitions of “immoral conduct” and though I would disagree that most of them are worth firing someone for or resigning over when caught, it seems like it must have been pretty serious stuff.

I got to experience Central Carolina’s ER for the first time tonight. We were in and out in about 2 hours, so not too terrible, considering I’ve been lucky enough to wait for 9+ in an ER with a kidney stone before every even seeing a doctor or being offered pain relief. (Seriously…Cape Fear Valley in Fayetteville is the *worst* hospital I’ve been to for pretty much anything.) My youngest fell and cut his head on the window sill on the way out of Fairview Dairy Bar tonight. We came straight home and called our pediatrician’s nurse triage line to find out if it was ER worthy. We were told the pediatrician on call would get in touch with us within about 20 minutes and let us know. As usual, nothing worked like they said it would and I finally called them back after an hour. The official word was that we should head to the ER. It was 9PM by this time, so we loaded everyone into the minivan and went over there. Waited for a while, but the treatment was uncomplicated and we were out by 11PM. So not too terribly bad over all.

And tomorrow morning, at 8:49AM, he will officially be 2 years old. I just can’t believe how fast my baby is growing up.

Last night was the concert I’ve been looking forward to most. Kenny Huffman plays music I love and interspersed with the great stuff that everyone knows are a few of his originals which are really good as well. (They are available free for download on his website, by the way!) The weather was gorgeous, it was warm but not hot, the bugs didn’t bother us, and it was a beautiful night to be outside and listening to some music. I seriously wish they had this guy *every* week. Not that I don’t like the other musical styles, but this is by far my favorite. And apparently I’m not the only one…Depot Park was packed last night! There were lots of other kids for the boys to play with, which is always nice. It was just a great night and we all had a lot of fun.