Notes from ShellyCentral

All New Year

This place looks horrible.
I am aware of this and working on it.

Working on it on my new computer. I got a new computer and it's a very good thing.
I also got a new niece and just a few days after the new year, I went to meet her. I think we're going to be friends.

I was waiting to make my first post of the new year on my new computer until I had a picture of the new niece to share. I'm about positive I've overworked this to death, but it's all super dreamy and fresh and hopeful just like a new baby. So for now this is how she looks.

 

Here's to new starts for everyone.

 

 

I didn't forget.

 

Remember when I went to California last month? Of course not, because I haven’t told you anything about it yet. But I haven’t forgotten. I am just slow. It's my Better Late Than Never lifestyle.

I do want to tell you about it though. And show you pictures, of course.
First let me show you some of the lovely people I was able to visit while I was there.
(Nowhere near all of them, but some.)

This is me with my cousin Nikki. She and her husband were my incredible hosts. Her dad and my dad are first cousins.

This is Nikki’s grandma, my Great Aunt Jeanne. She’s a super fun woman and I’ve loved her a very long time. The time I got to spend with her was precious and I’m so grateful it happened! She’s officially my Nana now.

Nikki and her husband have amazing and adorable toddler twins. Their son really didn’t have time to take a picture with me, but their daughter did!

These are two cousins I love so much! I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time with either of them (which is pretty much always true). This just motivates me to go back, right?

Those are some of the people, so next time some of the fun!

 

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One last thing about my birthday.

49 gratitudes

BLTN: Birthday visit to Granny's.

 

 

Remember in July when it was my birthday?
About a week after I turned 48 I drove myself and Hannah to my mom's house to celebrate my birthday with my family!

I saw my sister Lindsay. She spent all day one day burning stuff in the burn barrel. She loves fire, so it was a fun day for her.

We went out to my mom's favorite taco place in her little town. I decided to show you the after photo instead of the before. I think it's more interesting.

 

 

That taco place is in the mall, which my niece Mady kept calling the loll. After we were done eating, Hannah and I decided we'd check it out. We were pleased to find a Maurince's and that they were having a 75% off sale. I got some stuff, Hannah got some stuff - it was good.

My mom's garden is always incredibly interesting. Especially because this view is usually so very full of birds eating and bathing. I love to watch it.

Megan made us dinner the next night. Summertime noms.

And!! Megan made my birthday cake! Mmm, jello cake. It's my favorite and always perfect when it's hot outside - like it always is on my birthday. Have you ever had jello cake? I don't think it's very popular, but I've never met anyone who didn't like it (no matter how sure they were they wouldn't).

Let me know if you need to know how to make it.

Later that night, the baby nieces put on a fashion show. They were fantastic!

 

 

 

Eventually we had to go home. I always miss my family after I leave them.

 

** All of these photos were taken with my Samsung s4 and unedited.

bltn: Granny's Garden

bltn = better late than never. it seems like so often that is my motto. the better late than never posts are things that have been half written and sitting around for too long, but instead of just deleting them i'm going to post them anyway.

this one is so very better late, it's from 2 years ago.

I love my mom's garden. It's different every year. Here's this summer's shots.

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bltn: Granny's Dogs

bltn: Cousins: 12 Pictures

TBT: My brother and my dog.

 

Me, my brother and our dog Ribsy.

I got to name him, so I picked to name him after the dog Ribsy, from all my favorite Beverly Cleary stories.

 

 

oh hi. of course there are pictures.

 

ok hi. hey. hello.

what's going on?

well, i have a cold.
so i slowed down.
which means more time on the computer.
which means hi, i'm here.

i thought i should check in.
here's what's on my mind today.

there's an informational meeting about service dogs at hannah's school next week. i can't even tell you how i'm excited i am. she really, really needs one and we've had a hard time finding our way online. i think it's extra tricky getting an alert dog for diabetes or for epilepsy. let alone both. i have a thousand and five questions and am ready for whatever information we can get!

not that i want another dog. especially a bigger dog which is what hannah wants. on the other hand, i want her to have a service dog. it would be such an awesomely big help and enable her to do so many other things. and it would be with her all the time, right? doing it's job. oh, i don't know. but i'm committed to at least checking it out. so we will. next week.

tomorrow sister #1 is coming to town to take baby niece #1 to the zoo. she's never been and she is so excited to see giraffes and elephants and rhinos. i am opposed to zoos. but i'm going to go. i want to watch baby girl be exicted. and i want to take pictures. so i'm going to meet them there and tomorrow night they're going to spend the night with auntie shelly!

this will be the third weekend in a row that'll i'll be seeing those two! that's quite a treat. last weekend i went to pittsurg to see them;

they were trying to clap together but couldn't quite get synchronized:

my mom has dogs in all sizes:

the week before that we had a little sibling day at my brother's.

brian and danny talked:

brian's dog lily supervised the baking of brownies:

the babies played:

and were adorable:

i wish everyone was coming, but one set of family is better than none.

 

spike has been our dog for about a year and a month now. it's hard to remember life without him. his birthday is october 1. i know because i was there! he was a teey tiny helpless baby. i thought about making the dogs a birthday cake, but danny convinced me to just get them a really good treat like one of those disgusting bones since they'll last so much longer. he'll be 5. he is sweet and hilarious and loves hannah way more than he loves the rest of us.

which reminds me one of the issues about getting a service dog, especially for h, is how it'll effect spike. 

here's a picture of him trying to wrangle a stick about 4 times longer than he is:

here he is just looking spikey:

is there anything else interesting? it doesn't seem like it. ! it's not bad, it's just lots of to do lists. or maybe it's one eternal to do list that things move on and off of. summer's on the way out and i'm not real happy about it. summer is my favorite. well, acutally this weather is my favorite. where the high is 80 and the low is around 60. we won't get much of it here in kansas but man, it's beautiful.

ok and here's a sad thing. i don't want to tell you to bum you out, but it's been on my mind a lot and i think it's a serious remindeder to love who you love while you can. why is that so hard sometimes??!?. a set of my extended family lost their baby earlier this week. he passed away in his sleep without any warning. i just can't even pick words to say about that. my heart breaks for them, i can't imagine how many pieces theirs are in. he was their only child. of course it turns my thoughts to my own baby girl, grown as she is. and it makes me grateful that even with all she's been through, and all that we've been through with her, she's still here. and mostly regular. i love her.

and it's time to pick her up from the bus stop!

 

Bye bye Mermaid child.

I think I've mentioned before that my kid is made out of hair.
(Yes, I recognize the irony.)

She has been talking about cutting a lot of it off, and yesterday I took her downtown to do just that.
It was tough getting pictures to show you, because the girl hates 99% of all the photos ever taken of her. Yes, this does make me crazy. Eventually she agreed to a few.

Here she is, outside the salon.

And a close up to show just how long her hair was.

The floor around her chair after the cut.

And after - here's a picture of her with our friend and stylist, Jen.

It's not a great picture of her hair, but it's all I've got for now.

Her first text to me this morning?

I feel like Rapunzel at the very end of Tangled.

Disney Continued: Lunch and the Circus

Hey, remember when I was sharing the Disney trip report posts that I was making on a Disney website over here with you guys? I had stopped somewhere a while ago, I don't even know why. But I'm about to start up again. 

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Lunch and the circus.

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Can’t forget the castle!






Merida has become Hannah’s favorite princess, so we were heading to her meeting area, but when we saw how long her line was, we changed our minds. 



Wow. I guess I should have checked on that line. I guess it’s a get in line first thing kind of thing. I managed to snap a shot from the distance, but we all know it’s not nearly the same thing. Next time. 



Hannah decided she was hungry and since Cosmic Ray’s was one of her favorites from last visit, we headed there. I noticed we were going right at lunch time and know that’s never a good idea. H got in line for the avacado burger she remembered having there last time. I knew I’d be having dinner at the company party that night, so I was looking for more of a snack than a meal. For some reason I chose chili cheese fries and I knew as soon as I picked them up it was a bad choice.



I found Hannah down front, close to Sunny Eclipse.



She loves that guy. They didn’t have avacado burgers so she just got a regular one and was not loving it. Her fries were soggy and so were mine. The crowd made it crazy loud in there and then to help it out, a large group of CMs were visiting various tables, singing something and clapping along loudly. We ended up leaving without eating much. H was especially disappointed. 

We sat on a bench outside for a bit to complain a little and decide what to do next. Pooh and Tigger walked by. Where else does that happen? I waved to them and they waved back. Because we love each other and they know that.



The Alice topiary, because it's one of my favorites.


More cute 7 dwarves art.


We headed over to the Big Top Circus area since we had skipped it earlier. The wait times made me believe it wasn’t very crowded that day, but trying to get around made me have questions.



The circus area was adorable. I love the whole look and feel even though I really hate the real circus! I did have to dodge a couple creepy clowns but over all I found it super charming. 



H didn’t want to ride Dumbo or the Barn Stormer (even though she loved it when she was 4 and it was in ToonTown). We checked out Casey Jr’s Splash whatever. 





Very cute and probably just the ticket on those hot, humid Florida summer days. Not so inviting in December.

We did decide to check out the new restrooms by the train station. We loved the footprints and the peanuts in the pavement, and the bathrooms really were as big and nice as I had read. Hannah was impressed that she found something even cheaperthan the one dollar cheese dip - tampons. Good to know.

We walked through the big top tent and were overwhelmed. It’s giant, super colorful and filled with great smells. In the middle of the tent there were about a thousand delicious looking treats. We checked out headgear and pillow pets and swore we’d come back for a treat when we were more hungry. Never happened. Next time.

Of course I was ready to go meet some more characters and Pete’s Silly Slideshow was right there. Hannah agreed to meet one set, so since the boys line was shorter we chose that one.

Goofy was great, but his PhotoPassPhotographer not so much. He took a weirdly timed shot of Hannah as she was just standing in line and then totally ignnored some charming interaction when they first said hi. He redeemed himself with some good shots later.









Donald’s PPP was better but the lighting in that area was kind of crazy. Every photo I’ve seen of that M&G has some weird color thing going on - ours included.





After that, Hannah was starting to feel exhausted and yucky from those antibiotics, plus it was getting close to time for me the head back to the room anyway, so we decided to just head back to our hotation. (Hotation is a world Hannah made up on our first Disney trip when she confused the words for hotel and vacation. “Are we going back to our hotation?” she’d ask. She also called the monorail the "mamarail". Of course I loved that.)



As we were standing at our bus stop, a giant crowd of cheerleaders filed in behind us. Not surprising since it was Pop Warner weekend. We all loaded and squished onto the bus - and the group started singing their way through the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid. We all love those songs, of course, but not really the North Rockland Cheer version on a long crowded bus ride.

We were relieved when we reached our stop. On the way back to our room we passed these bushes full of beautiful flowers again and I thought I’d show you a few of them.

I've had lots of birthdays.

Once upon a time, on a Sunday night, just after dinner, I was born.
My parents sent sent out an announcement and had my picture taken. 

They were babies themselves.

And since that time, every year right around this time, I have a birthday. There weren't usually announcements after that first time, but there were still pictures. I found a few of them this morning.

First I was 1, of course. First I was 1, of course. This party is at my grandma's house.

Next, two. We went to the zoo.

My mom took me on the pony. My auntie took me up into the shoe (where the old woman lived with her too many children).

I wanted to be a nurse on my third birthday. I had a book about a girl who wanted to be a nurse, and I liked it. This party is also at my grandma's house.

My forth birthday party was at our mansion house. 

I got a lot of dolls.

For my 10th birthday, two of my aunties took me to Starlight to see Paul Williams, and then backstage to meet him. I was in love with him. Don't judge.

See me in the background? I'm showing my aunts his autograph! The best part came after the crowd thinned. My aunt yelled out "It's her birthday, and she loves you." So he turned around and kissed me. On the mouth. I used to have a picture of that in a frame. I hope I still have it somewhere.

I was quite a little lady when I turned 11. I think that's the same hair cut I have now.

I am not sure, but I think this was the same birthday at a different party. I could be wrong and this could be 12, but no one wrote on it so the world will never know.

I had a slumber party on my 12th birthday. 

By my 13th birthday, I had an attitude. But I sat at the same desk for opening presents. It was my dad's desk forever. Now my baby brother Jared has it. That was my favorite outfit in the whole world.

Let's skip to 19. I loved this haircut. I LOVED that shirt and oh my goodness I loved wearing all those braceletts!

My friends were absolutely insane.

Before I knew it I was 46. That's me with my friend Jen last year, the night before my birthday. And check it out - it's the same shirt from the 19th birthday party!

And now it's now. I don't have a picture of today's birthday yet, but I took this Last Day of 46 picture yesterday.

46 was my best year so far. I'm not afraid to leave it behind though. I think 47 is going to be even better.

 

 

 

Happy Mother's Day to Me :)

What a great day!

I managed to spend the whole day doing almost nothing at all. I loved it! I read a bunch of stuff, I pasted some stuff in my journal, I listened to hours of Todd and bought tickets to his show in Tulsa. I got some presents. I had Arby's for dinner. I talked to Greg and my mom on the phone.

I don't want to be braggy, but I have a lot to be happy about.

I have a new, old car. I am in love with it. Who knew moving up from a 24 year old Honda to a 16 year old car of hte same make and model would make such a difference?

My house is freshly painted. The colors are beautiful and my house looks amazing. It's the closest thing to getting a new house without all the fuss of moving. My painters were awesome, the experience was fun and exciting and the house looks great. It also has given me a sense of ownership I hadn't felt in the 16 years we've lived here.

I am going to take a road trip to see my hero, Todd Rundgren, in concert. My my best friend of 34 years is going with me, even though she does not love Todd. I can't even start with how excited I am about this.

I have an awesome boyfriend who is ready and willing to help me with any problem I need help with. 

Technology. I have some, and not only is it fun and entertaining, it is often a tool to help me do many of the things I dream of doing.

I cut the cord and cancelled cable. I've been dreaming about it for a long time, and it feels really great having done it.

We are planning another trip to Disney World this winter. This time we're staying for 10 nights, and I am extending that by 4 more by staying with my generous brother.

I am truly in love with my family and friends, who are all interesting and awesome in their own special ways.

I have 2 incredible kids. Both compeltely different and yet surprisingly alike.

Wild birds come to eat outside my window every day.

 

I am a lucky Mother.