A New Family Member!

You are looking at an ultrasound picture of my grandchild. Yep that's right, Melissa and Gavin are having a baby! Danny and I could not be more excited. Melissa is due at the end of September. I went with her for this ultrasound and found it to be truly amazing!!! Boy have things changed over the past 26 years. I could not believe how clearly we could see the baby. He (just a hunch I have) was kicking his feet and arching his back and moving almost constantly. I did not take my eyes off the screen and neither did Melissa. I think we were both too fascinated to even talk.
Danny and I could not be any happier to be home and be able to share this experience. We truly believe that everything happens for a reason and sometimes you just have to take the long way around but the rewards are priceless! I'll continue to keep everyone updated of course but not too much because I know how grandparents can be......it's all they want to talk about.
On another note......I am also going to be an aunt! Lisa is pregnant also and is due in the beginning of September. The strange thing is that she and Melissa are two weeks apart in age and will both turn 26 this May. I guess this is going to be a busy year for everyone! I'll post again soon!

The chick cousins dinner...

As I said in my last blog, I was meeting up with some female cousins to get together for dinner. We met up on Sunday and had a really nice time just talking and telling funny stories. From left (front), Cheryl (Hall) Day, Cindy (Hall) Keith, me (Cheryl) - on the right (front), Cyndi (Holmes) Douglass, Jamie (Holmes) DeAngelis and Patty Ann (Stover) DePeter. It's always interesting to hear about other people's perspectives on their lives growing up. For me, I've alway thought about the fact that my life wasn't always the greatest growing up but I guess I never stopped to think about other people in my extended family might have been going through some of the same things that I did. For some of them, the things that they went through were worse than what I went through. We spent 2 hours together and it wasn't all gloom and doom believe me. We all had funny stories to tell. I think everyone had a really good time. We all agreed that we should do it more often. Nobody is getting any younger and as whacky as we all have been and still are, we were once a pretty close family growing up. We'll try to get together every couple of months. I've agreed to be in charge of organizing this so I'll be thinking about our next get together and where we'll do it. We would really like to get more cousins involved next time so I'll be looking for addresses, emails or phone numbers. I'll also be blogging more regularly now that I'm starting to manage my time a little better. Stay tuned!

I'm baaaaaccckkk!
Well since it's been forever since I've put anything in my blog, I thought I'd better put something in here before I lose my readers......lol. We have been busy doing small projects around the house. We've put a new door on the front of the house and on the side entrance, much fancier than the plain jane doors that were on previously. We also changed the color of the shutters so they would match the color of the new front door. It's made a big difference in the way the house looks. We're going to put granite steps and eventually buy a granite lamp post to replace the current one and a new granite mailbox post. This will definately change the way things look right now, especially the new stairs in the front. We can only do a little bit at a time so I'm happy that we've gotten that much done. We also had the ceilings re-worked. They had cracks in them because the house had settled. Most people wouldn't have even bothered but you have to remember that I'm married to Danny. Stuff like that bothers him when it normally wouldn't bother the average person. There's lots that we want to do so I'm sure we'll stay busy this year!
The warm weather has spoiled me over the past few days. On Sunday, I took the dogs down to Pine Point and walked them. I spent the whole day by myself which for me, is a real treat. It seems like there is always something to do lately and I was feeling quite stressed so getting out and enjoying some warm air helped. I'm glad that daylight savings time happened 3 weeks early this year! It's nice to come home from work and have it still be light for almost 2 hours. Speaking of work, everything is going really well for me there. There are days when I wonder if I'm wasting my experience from other jobs with this one but at this point in my life, it's a non-stressful job and it's really what I need right now. I'm not sure why I always feel so stressed. I know that a lot of it is brought on myself but I'm not in the place that I used to be in when I could say no to people and put myself first and not feel so badly about it. I know what I need to do to fix my stress but I just haven't managed to get there yet.........so.........I like my non-stressful job and I guess money certainly isn't everything. Of course Danny and I have certainly learned that the hard way. We're doing just fine! Danny is staying pretty busy at work. There have been some changes recently and it's keeping him pretty tied up lately. They are all good changes. He seems to have adapted pretty well to this career change.
I'm finally taking some time to get together with people that I haven't had a chance to. I'll be meeting up with some of my female cousins for lunch this weekend. That should be fun. I'll also be getting together with one of the funniest people I know next week. She sometimes goes by the name of Muffin. We'll be making a trip to the Christmas Tree Shop and then to dinner. I'm looking forward to that too.
Our neighbors have put their house up for sale recently. This is great because they have about 25 chickens that frequently jump over the fence into our yard. One day I came home and walked into the garage and out ran a chicken! I was not happy. Besides, they keep the dogs barking so good-bye neighbors! I hope the house sells quickly.
So.....all in all things are going pretty well for us. This year will be a great one for my family. Watch my blog in the coming weeks!