Wednesday, May 30, 2012

(Mostly) Wordless Wednesday: Buh Bye, Beryl

Dear Sub-Tropical Storm Beryl,


Buh Bye.


Today.



Yesterday.

Today.




Yesterday.



Today.



Like I said, Buh Bye.





Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Memorial day Weekend - It Was a Beryl of Fun

The area we live in in northeast Florida doesn't usually get hit by hurricanes.. The coast line curves in here and storms usually pass us by or just brush us with the outer layers. Hurricane season is from June through November and is usually most active in August and September.


Sub-Tropical Storm Beryl broke all the rules. Thankfully, she was "only" a sub-tropical storm and she came ashore a bit north of us.

 The clouds from the outer bands began moving in on Sunday...


There were rain showers off and on and it began to get windy.
I ran a load of laundry and vacuumed the house. We charged all the laptops and cell phones and kindles and made sure we had batteries and flashlights easily accessible...


The local weather forecasters were gleefully watching as the Hurricane Hunters flew into the storm. They were practically giddy as they reported the increased wind speeds as Beryl hovered over the warm waters of the gulf stream. "She's almost at hurricane strength!"


We read and kept a careful eye on water levels and watched the whitecaps on the lake.


Beryl came ashore north of us around midnight. As a result of her northerly track, our weather wasn't bad at all. We lost power around 9 pm. Mr. Wonderful drove through the neighborhood and reported that a large tree had fallen and taken down several utility poles and that there was a live wire sparking in the street. The police had cordoned off that area (the entrance and exit to the neighborhood) and told him that it would likely be several hours before power was restored.

We turned on the generator.


Early yesterday morning our power was restored. There were some small branches and leaves in our driveway and some stepping stones by our bulkhead had been moved by the water banging up under the deck. 

I saw a few branches down in neighbor's yards and some damaged trees...



Then I saw the power lines and utility poles that had come down (and taken our electricity and internet out)...







Beryl is still hanging around, drenching us with rain.

The ground is sodden. We needed some rain, but this is kind of ridiculous! The (still rather gleeful) weather forecasters are reporting that we may get 5-10 inches before Beryl begins moving north and out of our area.



Mr. Wonderful's birthday was yesterday. Instead of a fun, family outing on the boat, we stayed inside and The Princess baked a birthday cake (with a little help from Betty Crocker) and we sang and watched as Mr. W blew out his candles.

Even though it wasn't quite what we had planned, it was a nice day. The Princess was extremely proud of her cake - and the fact that she managed not to burn it! The Boy had a valid excuse to be a lazy teenager and lie around doing nothing all day. 

And so did his parents!








Sunday, May 27, 2012

Weekend Update: The Miscellaneous, Bad Attitude, No Privacy, Tattooed, Tropical Storm Edition





The Boy has had a bit of an attitude the past several days. Just typical teenager stuff - you know, the condescending tone of voice dripping with scorn as he replies to the ridiculous questions his lame parents ask him...such as, "Do you have homework?" Jeesh. The nerve of us. How dare we, right? 


I've been scolding him every time he uses that tone of voice to me, "Don't you DARE speak to me in that tone of voice!" and telling him that he'd better work on his attitude or he's going to have a lousy summer.


Then, the other evening, he texted me to tell me that he had been pulled over while picking his sister up from dance. I, naturally, freaked out. And then he told me...well, here - you can see the texts for yourself:

I bleeped the cursing out. Because Mommie Dearest was NOT amused and Mommie Dearest was ready to rip his stinking head off. I'm sure you can imagine the welcome he received from me when he arrived home. 

Let's just say that I think he now knows that his little "gotcha" was decidedly unfunny and that I do not believe he will ever joke about something like that again.
**********************************

I had thought that now that the kids are older I might finally be able to have a bit of privacy in the bathroom. But I was wrong.

Jack does this every. single. time.

And he stares at me. It's a bit unnerving.
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The Princess and her BFF, The Court-i-nator, have been busy making "tattoos" again...

And then they went "night swimming" to wash the tattoos off.




*********************************

Mr. Wonderful travels a lot with his job. The kids have discovered this fun feature on their phones and have been having a lot of fun stalking him...

They are constantly texting him and letting him know that they know where he is....he's not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing!
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And finally, we've been scurrying around readying our hurricane supplies - filling the cars with gas, the propane tanks with propane,  and stocking up on batteries and water. Because even though it is only May and still not officially hurricane season for several more days, we have a named storm off our coast which is heading our way sometime today.

Luckily, Beryl is only a subtropical system and so not expected to much damage but still - it's awfully early in the season!



It looks like our Memorial Day is going to be a wet and windy one!


*******************************

Update 3:00 PM: It's starting to get quite windy and cloudy.












Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Working Hard in School?

Our kids both have Facebook accounts. I'll be honest - I'm not thrilled with Facebook these days. Every time they change things, it seems like the privacy settings become more and more elusive. Nevertheless, all the kids are on Facebook and it seems that this is how kids communicate these days. I've accepted it, but the rule is that I have to have the passwords at all times and that I will do random checks to make sure they are following our rules. The Boy and The Princess have been very good about this and I try not to take advantage. But I do go on and check things out occasionally  to make sure that they follow our internet rules - no scantily clad photographs, nothing inappropriate, no security breaches like posting your contact information, etc. (I'm always amazed at how many kids post revealing photos of themselves or photos of themselves drinking or smoking pot, or how many post their contact information!!)


Anyway, I recently logged in to do a "spot check" of The Princess and discovered a lot of photos which appear to have been taken at school. The Princess assures me that she IS learning at her school - all photographic evidence to the contrary...













Hmmm...I don't know. I'm beginning to see why she doesn't want to leave her school - it looks like a LOT of fun, doesn't it? I love that photo of her kissing the frog (hoping to find her prince?) especially because of this (badly photoshopped) photo of her with Harry Styles from One Direction.


If you have a teen or tween girl, then I'm sure you already know about One Direction. If not, One Direction is the newest boy band from England. All the girls are crazy about them and they're especially crazy about Harry.  Which, quite frankly, I don't get at all. In my opinion, Shaun and David Cassidy were way cuter and way more talented. Just saying.


I also got a chuckle out of this pic taken in the ladies room. Which will probably mean nothing to you unless you've read Harry Potter.

And now you know why I really do random spot checks on Facebook - I love the things I find out about my kids! (**The Princess's school is a nationally ranked school - I'm sure that they really are doing some school work. They have block scheduling and the classes are all an hour and a half long, so I'm assuming these were taken during some sort of free time at the end of the class.)

One Direction

vs. classic teen idols




Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Ten Totally Random Things On Tuesday: What's New

1. I can't believe this school year is almost over. This year has really flown by! 


2. There are only 12 school days left for The Boy and then he will be a senior. (Yikes!!) The Princess has 13 school days left. I am definitely ready for summer vacation!


3. The Boy spent the weekend working on a group project for one of his AP classes with a couple of friends...


4. And my BFF (as opposed to The Boy's BFF or The Princess's BFF - both of whom happen to be MY BFF's children) came hobbling in with what she thought was a broken foot. It was all swollen and icky looking and she could barely walk. She dropped her laptop onto her foot...and, because she needed a little TLC, she came over to our house...



5. That's a joke, y'all. Because...I'm not really very nurturing and caring like that. Let's just say that a nursing career was never really an option for me. I was constantly snapping at the BFF (who is, frankly, as poor of a patient as I am as a nurse) and telling her to "Sit down! Stop walking on your foot!" And then, in exasperation, "Put the ice bag back on it!!"

6. It turns out that she DID break something...but don't worry, the laptop is OK. (That's what everyone keeps asking her. It makes me giggle.)


7. The Princess was also busy working on projects and writing papers. She had either a project or a paper assigned for every single class. 

8. While the kids were working on their projects and after the BFF got tired of me bossing her around, ("Put the ice bag back on!! Stop walking on it!!" I started going through the photos on my cell phone and clearing things out. I found some weird stuff on there...

9. Clearly, I was a bit bored while waiting on the kids for afternoon carpool...


That's the only explanation I have for these pictures - I really have no idea why I took them!

10. I also edited a lot of text messages, but I saved them to share with you first. I thought they were sort of funny and since the texting will, hopefully, taper off with summer vacation - when I hope my children will actually talk to me, I thought I'd share them as well. Plus, I really didn't have ten things to say and this helps me to stretch things out a bit.


The Boy's texts are usually very...you know, concise. Succinct. 

And really, really short.


And then there are the ones where I amuse myself.


And where The Princess proves that she is the antithesis of her brother...


But my absolute favorite texts are the ones I knew nothing about and which I discovered accidentally.

Happy-it's-almost-summer-vacation-Tuesday!







 
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