a brand new me

I guess I am not alone.  Haven't all of us at one point in time or another said to themselves, I am going to make some major changes.  Well, that is me.  I am going to make some major changes.  Diet, exercise, activities (social and domestic), bedtime, etc.  I am hoping that I will feel more productive and healthier (and therefore overall have more peace of mind).  So here I go!  Wish me luck!

MOVING!

Finally!  We are going to move.  The new tenants next door cinched it for me and I decided that was it.  With the home prices so low, interest rates low, and prolific foreclosures we decided to do it now rather than later.  So now we will have 2 houses!  No point trying to sell this one right now in this economy.  So we will rent it out.  I will post pics of the house as soon as I can.  It is beautiful!  I am going to be an OTP'er though.  AAAAAAcccck!  Haven't done that in about 2 decades!  It will be great though because we aren't far from the pool and Madeline will have many more children to play with!  Stay tuned!

here is my Easter themed cake

It's the Jesus cave.  I did a tortilla for the shroud.  The stone door is a oatmeal cookie.  The stones are toasted coconut marshmallows.  Grass is coconut dyed green.  And the cake is chocolate to simulate earth.  :)

Easter weekend

Okay, now for something a little different.  I will post more on the crazy-fence house as there is definitely more to tell.  But for now, I would like to move on to Easter weekend.  My SIL from Texas flew in Wed.  Jesse's other sister from Florida (who has been living with their mother for the last two months) picked her up at the Atlanta airport.  They went straight down to Valdosta (I think it's like a 4-5 hour drive).  They spend the night with their dad there, and then all 3 of them rode back to Atlanta less than 24 hours later.  The plan is that my FIL will be taking a bus back to Valdosta on Saturday.  While FIL is on the bus; my husband, Madeline, myself, and Jesse's 2 sisters will be doing "Easter" at his mom's house (just north of Atlanta).  My husband and I cannot really figure out why all the traveling back and forth from Valdosta (????)  But we are content to just look to each other with our head's half-cocked rather than ask anyone about it.  So anyway, I have come up with a really terrific theme cake idea.  I hope it will be successful.  I will post pics when it's complete!!

It's stuck in WHAT?

Aaaaaah, kids.  Never a dull moment.  I walk into the living room and what do I see?  My darling little girl caught red-handed shoving a plastic toy ice cream cone into the bass speaker of our surround sound system.  I say, "No, don't put stuff in there" as I have said many times before.  Promptly darling little girl shoves it in even further and I hear ever-so-faint click-type sound.  My heart sinks.  No, no, no please tell me she hasn't shoved it in there so now that it is stuck.  I investigate.  I pull on the cone and it comes out...leaving the vanilla scoop wedged in there.  Now what?  After many different tries and experiments with various makeshift tools (fork, utility knife, wire, hair frosting hook, drill) the toy is still stuck.  Not only is it still stuck, it's getting pushed back further into the speaker.  This only amounts to is an exercise in frustration (compounded with Madeline demanding to watch various movies).  Finally, I thought to use a melted glue stick to retract the toy out.  This works only to bring it back some, but not past the ridge that is keeping it stuck.  The glue stick just pulls off again.  So back to the other tools at my disposal.  I use everything in my arsenal along WITH my glue stick to keep it from getting shoved back further and VIOLA!  One extracted toy scoop of ice cream.  Whew!  Jesse is now calling me MaGyver.  I like that, but maybe I should be Ma'Gyver?

My covert husband

So I talked Jesse into taking a photo of the house on his way to work to show the weird fencing going on in the owner's driveway.  I had originally estimated the alcove to be 1x12 foot.  But now that I see it in daylight, I think it is 1 foot by much more than that...maybe over 20 feet possibly.  It's a real head-scratcher.  Why does the new owner find this to be remotely a good thing to do?  I am not the only one.  I see various people across the street just standing in their yards looking     as perplexed, staring at the house that is slowly becoming encased in a wooden capsule.  People walking down the street and cannot help themselves from looking at it with a furrowed brow.  I know what they are thinking because I am thinking it too.  They are saying to themselves, "What are these people doing??"

Covert action...FOILED!!

So this morning I tried to go out first thing in the morning to take pictures of the other side of the house.  They have attached fencing DIRECTLY to the house itself in some areas and have completely fenced in the small 1 foot by twelve foot area between their driveway and house (thus making unusuable space for the new owners...??).  It's really hard to explain so I was really hoping to get a photo.  But I was foiled!!!  I got up early and walked down the street.  As soon as I turned the corner I found myself in the neighbor's driveway staring at the back of the worker's freshly parked SUV.  So I scurried off.  I did manage to get a photo of the front of their house from our driveway.  I returned to a confused and somewhat still asleep Madeline asking, "Mommy, what you doing?"