Sara's Musings

Starting up this blog again – after an absence of nearly 2 years.

Coming up on the anniversary of Hurricane Ike.  Trying to be prepared for the hurricane season.

Well, here we are in September! and I haven’t posted in about a year. Time just slips away from me…

Connor had his eighth birthday back in March. Sionna will have her fourth birthday this coming December.

We are still homeschooling, although sometimes it is a power struggle with Connor. Homeschool P.E. starts tomorrow at the YMCA. We’ll try it for a few weeks and see if it is more structured than the past 2 semesters. I don’t see the point in paying for “supervised playtime” when the kids should have some kind of curriculum.

While Connor’s in P.E. and Sionna’s in the child-watch room (which she dislikes intensely), I’ll try to work out for the first time since early May.

John broke his arm back in March (the 24th to be exact) while riding his Harley. The bike had mostly cosmetic damage, easily fixed, with only $250 deductible, while John had to be in a special sling for 6 weeks. His shoulder could not be operated upon, nor could he have a cast. After the sling came off, he had physical therapy for about another 6 weeks. Amazingly, especially to his orthopedist, his x-rays showed he was fully healed after those 12 weeks. Apparently, most people with this type of injury are not fully healed for at least 6 months, sometimes taking up to 12 months to heal.

The week after his 12 week check-up, he started riding the Harley again.

I *FINALLY* went to the DMV office and took care of that pesky license problem. Despite the worry about the parallel parking test, I PASSED!!! I was out of the DMV by 9am. That afternoon, I had planned to drive to Lufkin with the kids, while John would ride his Harley, but it was raining, so he drove the car.

This has set the pattern for the past 2 months — Now that I can drive by myself, I rarely have a car, because it has rained nearly EVERY day, and John doesn’t like to ride his Harley in the rain!

Hopefully the weather will clear up soon, and the kids and I can go places during the week when there’s less of a crowd.

I started driving a lot recently, so now I have to go get my license “de-restricted” (a joke in my family for 20 years).

I got my license at age 16 with the LOFS restriction. John and I have only ever had one car at a time, so I have been “chauffeured” for most of my married life. Plus, I really hated driving!

Now, with 2 kids, trying to find a LOFS in the family who’s not too busy to go the grocery store, etc. with me is a pain in the rear! Plus, I really like the Ford Escape (SUV) we bought a year ago. So I kinda like driving now.

John started riding his Harley to work most days about three months ago, so the SUV is MINE! (Bwah-ha-ha!) So… off to the DPS I’ll go to clear that pesky license up. Don’t have to take the written test, just pass the driving and parking tests.

Only problem – that damnable PARALLEL PARKING – what a pain in the rear that is!! Only time I would use it is at the Galveston Seawall. On the weekends. At which time DH will be the driver anyway! But… if I don’t pass the parallel parking test – then I can’t take the driving test! So practice, practice, practice…

ohn and I went to the Big & Rich concert last night at the Woodlands Pavilion. I bought the tickets way back in August – we always have to plan far ahead. We treated my brother Steve and his wife Nikki to the concert. In return they treated us to dinner.

As usual, when we go to the pavilion, we sit on the grass up on the hill about the middle of the stage. There’s a concession stand nearby, but it’s quite a hike to the restrooms.

The Muzik Mafia and Cowboy Troy were the opening acts. James Otto was really good. I didn’t get into Jon Nicholson that much. We really are into Cowboy Troy :)

After a 30 minute intermission, Gretchen Wilson came on stage for 1 hour. She was fantastic. She did her own stuff, and toward the end of her set she did a little Heart and Led Zeppelin.

After a 45 minute intermission, Big & Rich came on for 1 hour. So awesome. We love their music.

We had a great time!

Wow, we did a lot of Halloween activities this past week! Some were more fun than others.

On Thursday the 27th, our YMCA had their annual Fall Festival. It was ok. A few activities in the gymnasium – cake walk, bean bag toss, face painting, indoor inflatable jumper. It was scheduled for 2 hours – I think we stayed about 45 minutes and Sionna was asleep on my shoulder most of that time.

On Saturday the 29th, our neighbor had a party and invited us over. John stayed home with Sionna (asleep again) and I took Connor across. This neighbor’s parties are always huge – lots of stuff going on. There was face painting, a costume contest for the kids, lots of food, a hay ride (Connor did that twice). We stayed for about 2 hours.

On Sunday the 30th, we went down to Galveston to Moody Gardens. The place became “Ghostly Gardens” from 2-4. Again, the kids didn’t want to wear costumes. We are members so we didn’t have to pay admission. We ate lunch then enjoyed our usual walking through the Rainforest pyramid, the Discovery pyramid (C & S love the musical
instrument exhibit), and the Aquarium pyramid. Didn’t see many decorations, and most of the areas handing out treats ran out before we got there, but that was ok – we LOVE walking through the pyramids anyway.

All this activity was great because on Halloween night, we had a major storm. Heavy rain, lots of wind — I was not about to walk around Nana’s neighborhood trick-or-treating in that weather. So Connor was disappointed, but he got over it.

We all went to the Houston Zoo this weekend for the Zoo Boo Halloween experience. We tried to go on Saturday, but were unable, after 45 minutes, to find a parking spot — what GENIUS decided to hold Zoo Boo and the Asian Festival in the same area on the same weekend?? Sunday we tried again, and were able to get a parking spot by hovering like vultures as another family came out of the zoo.

Neither Connor nor Sionna wanted to wear a costume, but we had a lot of fun watching all the kids who were dressed-up. We saw twin girls, about age 3, who were dice – really cute costumes.

There weren’t a lot of activities to do at the zoo. We did our usual rounds of the animals and rode the carousel *1 time* (oh woe!) before the kid’s zoo area closed. Sionna was especially upset because she loves that carousel. (Again, Again!)

We are zoo members, so didn’t have to pay for admission. I think that next year, though, we won’t attend the Zoo Boo – it was really not all that different from the usual zoo trip, and we didn’t like the traffic and parking problems.

Coming up in December is the Winter Wild experience. We”ll see how the activities and parking are this year – we did enjoy it last year.

Well, John bought a motorcycle yesterday – a 2000 Harley-Davidson FXD. It’s a kind of ruby-red color – very nice. Had to get all the gear also – helmet, jacket, boots, etc.

It makes the broken thumb of August’s riding class *so* worth it!