Holly’s Happenings

Since before we took the kids out to their sisters house, my hubby and I have been planning to go out to dinner with my sister and her husband. At first we had decided on one restaurant, then we talked about another, and another and yet another…LOL! We finally narrowed our choice down to a restaurant that we all had heard about that was almost smack dab in the middle of both of our houses.

We met them at the restaurant at 6, they actually got there a few minutes before we did and were waiting for us. We sat down and my sister looked at me and said she wasn’t very sure I was going to be happy with the menu. We had heard that this restaurant had a great seafood menu, but amazingly they had just recently changed their menu and seafood was nowhere on it. It pretty much consisted of things like burgers and subs, which wasn’t what the 4 of us wanted to go out to dinner for. So, we drank a cup of coffee and talked it over and decided that we’d go eat elsewhere…LOL.

We ended up at another restaurant that hubby and I had been wanting to try and had such an amazing time! (More on the restaurant in another post!) We each had a drink, hubby and I were THRILLED to find out that they had Blue Moon on tap and my sister said that they make a fantastic strawberry daiquiri. Hubby ended up ordering steak and shrimp and I ordered Mahi-Mahi encrusted with macadamia nuts that was to die for!

I do wish that we could have taken the time to take a small trip or something while the kids are gone, I even seen some really great deals on laughlin hotels the other day that made me REALLY want to go away for a few days! But with the price of airfare being sky high, it just isn’t in the books right now ya know? But we’re enjoying our time while they’re gone even if we can’t do much more than go out to dinner a couple of times and enjoy a quiet cup of coffee together! We made the comment the other day that we’re feeling like honeymooners again…LOL! Now THAT is a good thing after being together almost 17 years!

You know, it’s almost kind of sad that it takes a family 2 weeks to adjust to being apart….LOL! I guess it’s proof that we’ve either done a good job of letting the kids know that we’re there for them or we’re simply a very boring family that spends way too much time together…LOL!

I’ll admit, I had a VERY difficult time being away from the kids that first week! I spent more than one night crying myself to sleep and was constantly worrying that they were OK and wondering what they were doing. It’s now the end of the 2nd week of them being gone and let me tell you, I am TOTALLY enjoying myself!!!! It’s not that I don’t miss them, it’s just that I’ve finally realized what a HUGE gift this is and I need to make the most of it! My husband even commented this morning about how much more at ease I have been lately and we’ve been able to enjoy our time together!

And speaking of our time together, we’ve made our final decision about what we’re going to do while the kids are gone. After checking into many different kinds of get aways and Las Vegas vacations, we’ve decided that we’re going to save the money that we would spend and just do a few small things close to home then maybe take the kids somewhere after they get home, before school starts back up.

It’s kind of a bummer, but we’re really enjoying our quiet evenings with a good cup of coffee! We even went out to the American Legion with one of his co-workers the other night, our first “date” in a VERY long time! But we just can’t justify spending the money we would for a 2 or 3 day trip when it could be put on the bills or something like that. Does this mean that we’re officially penny pinchers? LOL

Our car insurance is up for renewal in a few weeks and I wasn’t too happy with the price that came in on the bill. When I said something to my husband about it he wasn’t that happy either so we decided that I’d do some calling around and try to find a better price.

You’d think that my husband would inform me of something called a TICKET wouldn’t you? Oh no, apparently he thought that if he didn’t tell me, I’d never find out about not one, not two but THREE tickets that added points to his license. I tell you, I was NOT a happy camper when I found about about them today! And if it weren’t for a very nice lady at one of the agency’s that I called, I may have never found out about them.

So after I got off the phone with her I called the company that we currently have our car insurance through and asked them if his tickets were the reason for the drastic increase in our bill, and sure enough, they were. I paid the bill right then and there because after talking to the other places I called today, our current company ended up costing less than the others did. But I’m NOT thrilled about this at all! How is it I can go 23 years without a single ticket yet he can get three in a span of 8 months and not tell me about a single one of them? Did he honestly thing I’d not find out?

Yes, I know, I’ve only been home a few days, but honestly, I think vacations can easily be addicting…LOL! It’s amazes me how little stress I felt while I was gone! I’m not sure if it was because I was away from everything I’m familiar with, or if it was being away from the kids, husband and dogs, or if it was a combination of everything mixed together. I just know that it was the best 8 days I’ve had in a VERY VERY long time, and I’m ready to pack things up and go again!

This time, however, I want to go somewhere with my husband, just the two of us, so that we can experience stress free time together! He works hard at his job and deserves to be able to do something fun and enjoyable for a change! He has family he hasn’t seen in years in the South Carolina area and we could stop and spend a few days visiting them then head out to the coast and spend a few days in the Hilton Head area, possibly even in one of the Sea Pines rentals I’ve heard about. We are both people that love the water and something like this would be a very relaxing vacation for us!

I don’t know if I have cabin fever, if I’m stressed out because of the kids being home on Spring Break this week, the “female” health issues I’ve been having recently or what it is, but I have been one mean and grumpy woman lately! If I honestly think about it, I know it’s not from the kids being home this week because my week with them, other than a minor incident Monday morning, actually went fantastic! And my daughter was with my mother all weekend, so since it was just the hubby, myself and our son this weekend, things were VERY quiet around here!

I made a slight detour when I took my daughter up to my mom’s house Friday evening and stopped in to see my brother and sister in law. I hadn’t seen them since Christmas time, and when my mom said they had their grandson for the weekend I decided that I needed to pay them a visit! While I was there, my sister in law let me look through the photo albums from one of their most recent luxury vacations. This time they spent two weeks in the The Turks and Caicos Islands and from the pictures, it was obvious that they were having a wonderful time! My brother works very long hours at his job, he’s worked for the same company for almost 30 years now, and my sister in law said that when they’re on vacation like this, he’s so much happier and at ease than what he is when they’re at home! It makes me feel good to know that they take vacations like this! Their children are all out on their own now and some have children of their own and they both deserve to do wonderful things like this for themselves!

My husband and I are already talking about taking a long vacation to somewhere like Hawaii once our kids are out of school. Our youngest finishes 7th grade in May, so only 5 more years until we can go away on our own luxury vacation!

It didn’t hit me until this morning that there are less than two months until my wedding anniversary. My husband and I have never really had a chance to celebrate our anniversary in the years that we’ve been together. That probably has quite a bit to do with the fact that by our first anniversary we had custody of his daughter and I had given birth to our son. When you have children, getting away and doing things without the kids can sometimes be a challenge, which has always been the case for us! Now that the kids are finally older, rather than dealing with having to find someone to watch them, we now face the challenge of what to do with our three dogs…LOL!

I love the dogs dearly, I really do, but it would be wonderful if we could make a last minute decision to go away for our anniversary this year and do something like spend the weekend in one of the many exciting hotels Las Vegas has to offer! I’m not one to gamble and neither is my husband, but we love to people watch and I think it would be facinating to watch the reactions of peole as they look at the sights or play the slot machines! My brother and his wife have taken a few trips to Las Vegas and listening to him talk about Las Vegas has really made me want to see it for myself!

After being together for over 16 years, I don’t find it surprising that my husband and I have completely different taste on many things. But I’m really surprised about how different our tastes are since we’ve been doing some online car shopping for ME!

As much as I dread the thought, it really is past time to replace my old Honda! I mean, well, let me explain my Honda, then you can tell me if you agree or not. It’s a 1991 Honda Accord wagon that is on the verge of hitting the 250,000 mile mark. It does have some rust on it, but considering that it’s a 17 year old car, the rust is minimal! It also has a cracked windshield, the drivers side front window no longer rolls down and the front end is really starting to shake when I drive 65 MPH down the turnpike on my way to school.

So, as I said, we’ve been looking online doing some preliminary car shopping. I absolutely refuse to have a car payment, it’s simply a form of financial stress that I am unwilling to add to our household right now! That being said, we have set a price limit as to what we’re going to spend, which is more than fair in my eyes! I have only a few restrictions that I will not consider. The vehicle cannot be a stick shift. Although I do drive a stick shift well, I have a bad right shoulder that sometimes prevents me from using my right arm. If it were to be causing me problems on a day that I needed to drive, if I had a stick shift, I would not be able to drive. I also will not have an engine other than a 6 cylinder, a 4 cylinder would be to small and not offer enough power and anything larger than a 6 cylinder would simply use too much gas. I also would prefer not to purchase a Chrysler, Plymouth or Dodge vehicle, but that has exceptions in the fact that I would purchase a Chrysler Town & Country or a Dodge Grand Caravan.

My husband, on the other hand, would love it if he could find me some sort of sports car. I guess he thinks that it would be something that he could drive that would maybe make him feel younger? He showed me one that he liked that had one of those tall rear spoilers on it, fancy rims and all kinds of decals. Of course the price was WAAAAAAAY out of my range, but that didn’t seem to matter to him. His expression was like one you’d see on a kid in a candy store…LOL!

It’s the day after Christmas, and all through the house, the kids are still happy and so is my spouse…LOL! No, it wasn’t the Christmas to beat all Christmases, but it was a pretty nice one, even considering that the hubby and I both spent the day coughing and sniffling!

The biggest “hits” with the kids were an MP3 player and headphones for my son and this monkey speaker thing that my daughter can plug her MP3 player into that has lights that flash to the beat of the song that is playing. In my opinion, it’s the equivalent of a noisy toddler toy….LOL! But she’s been really good about using it in her room so that I don’t have to hear her music.

I think the hubby was a bit disappointed at not finding some new Ingersoll Rand air tools under the tree, but he’ll get those when/if we get the garage built so that he has a better place to store them! I’m thrilled with my new mixer! It’s TONS better than the one I’ve been using for a couple of years, and one step closer to the one I really want and WILL eventually have!

Now all we have to do is get the next 6 days over and we can say that we successfully survived another holiday season!

OK, seriously, is it so wrong of me to think ahead about major events? I guess before I ask that I should also say that it’s a major event that’s a little more than eight years from now…LOL! OK, so a girl can dream, can’t she? In May, my husband and I will celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary. WOW, has it really been THAT long? I have very little doubt about the fact that we will make it to our 25th anniversary, so I told him this morning that I know what I want for a 25th anniversary gift! He turned around and looked at me and said “And just what would that be”? To which I told him that I had been checking out cruises to The Bahamas and Hawaii…LOL! But in all seriousness, I was totally blown away by the fact that I seen 7 day Bahamas cruises starting at less than $500 per person! Come on, a couple doesn’t celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary every day, I think when we make it to that point that we have every right to splurge on ourselves and celebrate, don’t you?

My husband got called to work to do a last minute job yesterday, he had to be on the job by 7:00 PM for a job that was expected to last about 8 hours.  It is currently 2:06 PM and he’s still not home.  So he’s been working for 19 hours straight, and he still has no idea when he’s going to be done.  It’s all good though, everything after 8 hours is over time

But I had a weird night last night.  I went to bed shortly after 10, but woke up about 11:30 because the power had gone out, then came back on.  So I got up and reset the alarm clock and the coffee pot and went back to bed.  I woke back up again about 1:00 AM because I had a dream that the Christmas tree was on fire.  I got out of bed and checked the water and sure enough, it was completely dry, so I filled it up with water and went back to bed.  I woke up again about 2:30 AM because, once again, the power had gone out and came back on.  So once again I’m running around resetting clocks and the coffee pot.  I woke up the last time a few minutes after 5:00 AM to my daughter waking me up telling me that I had missed 2 calls from my husband.  I got up and called him, but got his voice mail, so I left him a message.  I went about the morning with the kids, getting them ready for school.  Amazingly, everything with the two of them went pretty well!  Can you say WOOT?  LOL

After I got them out of the house, my plan was to try and call the hubby again, then take a nap.  That wasn’t to be though…LOL!  Shortly after my daughter got on the bus she decided that she wanted to call her dad and tell him to have a good day.  She was immediately sent to voicemail, which put her in a panic, so she called me.  I got her calmed down by telling her that he had to turn his phone off while he was working, which she thankfully bought, told her I loved her and to have a good day.  But when I finished talking with her I decided that I was going to call the hubby, it was actually not normal for his phone to go straight to voicemail.  I got the same thing my daughter did, so I decided to try the back up phone that she doesn’t know he has…LOL!  I got the message that he was not available and didn’t get voicemail because he has the voicemail feature on that phone turned off.  Now I’m starting to freak…LOL!  Yes, I know he’s a grown man, but because of things that have happened in the past, when I can’t get ahold of him for a long period of time, I tend to freak out.  By 8:30 AM, it had been 3 1/2 hours since he had called me to make sure I was awake, and I still had not been able to do anything other than leave him messages, so I was in a total panic.  I thought about calling the phone company to have his phone tracked, but knew that it was off, so that would do no good.  I thought about calling his company’s office, but didn’t want to sound like a total fruitcake.  So instead, I sat here in a panic chain smoking…LOL!

He was finally able to get through to me at 9:45 AM.  Apparently they are so far out in the middle of nowhere that his phones both spent the night searching for a signal and draining the batteries, so that’s why he was not available on either phone.  It’s not 2:37 PM and he’s still not home.  Poor guy, I’m sure he’s totally exhausted because he’s had no sleep since 5:00 AM yesterday morning.

My husband just called to let me know that he and the guy he was going to ride with just made it out where they needed to work tonight. It’s not a big deal that he just made it there, except for the fact that they left at 6:00 and it’s a little past 8:00 now. He then told me that they had a VERY close call driving down the road. It seems that there was a work van a few vehicles ahead of them that had a ladder hooked to a van rack, and the ladder flew off the top of the van and fell in the road causing the cars behind it to swerve to miss the ladder. Fortunately, everyone was able to keep from hitting the ladder and there were no accidents, but considering that the roads are wet, it could have turned into a bad scene! I don’t like driving trucks and vans that have racks with equipment hooked on the outside of them for this exact reason! But I also know that for many businesses, these types of racks are necessary.

Both kids ended up not having school today because of the ice storm that our area received yesterday. Even now the trees and things in my yard still have a good coating of ice on them, but we were very fortunate and we never lost power, phone or TV. That’s a good thing because if those were out while the kids were home today, they would drive me NUTS!

Even though the kids and I have the day “off” today, my husband still had to go to work. On a normal day, it takes him about 40 minutes to get to work. This morning, it took him almost an hour and a half. He said the roads out this way were definitely the worst and are what caused the longer commute, because once he got on the expressway the roads were pretty good. But he just called a little while ago to tell me he was on his way home. The plasma cutter that he was using broke down and they aren’t going to be able to repair it within a couple of hours, and they don’t have any other work for him to do today. The good news is that he’ll still get paid for a full shift since it wasn’t his fault that he had to cut out early.

That’s exactly how long I have been awake, and it’s only 4:29 AM right now….LOL!  I woke up at 3:08 AM and jumped out of bed thinking that I had missed my hubby leaving for the week, so I ran out to the kitchen, and there he still was!  I helped him finish getting the last of his stuff ready to go and filled his thermos with the coffee that was left in the coffee pot, then he set the coffee pot back up for me.

When everything was ready and he had all of his stuff packed into the truck, just before he left, he went in to give the kids kisses and tell them he’d see them Saturday.  He didn’t plan on waking them up, but our daughter did wake up.  She was really crying for the longest time, but has finally calmed down and is laying on the couch, that is next to my computer, watching cartoons.  It’s going to be a rough day for her, but I plan on talking to her principal and filling him in on what’s going on.

So here I sit, drinking coffee, because there really is no reason to go back to bed when the alarm is going to go off at 5:00 AM, is there?  It’s going to be a heck of along day, but I’m sure we’ll do fine!

Well, we just got some news, and although it’s awesome news it also bums me out!  We knew when my husband took this job a few months ago that there was the chance that he would get a contract that would make it necessary for him to go out of town for a week or more at a time.  One of his bosses just showed up and they need him on one of their contracts starting tomorrow.  It means that he’ll have to meet at the shop at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow morning and that he won’t be home until Friday night or Saturday.

The pay is awesome, and they do pay for his hotel and food while he’s there.  But I’m still going to miss him TERRIBLY!  I have a hard time sleeping when he’s not home, we proved that a few years ago.  And Halloween is this week, that’s his favorite holiday and I won’t get to spend it with him.  Very trivial things, I know, but I can’t help it.  He’s been a part of my life for over 17 years now and I honestly am completely lost without him!

So be prepared, I’m going to be doing TONS of whining and crying this week!

My husband is currently working as a welder/metal fabricator. He loves his new job, and even on the days that he works 12+ hours in 90+ degree weather, he still comes home in a good mood. But I have a feeling today is going to be one of the best days he’s had since being on this job. His boss called him yesterday and said he picked up a new toy for the guys over the weekend that should help them at work. When my husband asked what it was, he about jumped out of the chair when his boss said he had picked up a plasma cutting machine. That will really help him and the guys when they’re doing metal fabricating!

You know, I know that there are many things that I take my husband for granted for.  We’ve been together for 16 years and over the years I’ve just gotten used to many of the things he does.  But one thing that I’ll never get used to is the amount of money he saves us on vehicle repairs!

In the 16 years that we have been together there have been only 2 times where I have actually had to take my vehicle to a shop to have work done on it.  The first time was shortly before our oldest child was born.  I was driving a Ford Escort at the time and the clutch went out.  Now, he could have easily replaced the clutch, but the reason he didn’t is because he simply didn’t have the right tools or somewhere to do it, because it required being able to lift the motor out of the chassis.  The other time was a time that we were separated and my van broke down, so I had to pay someone to fix that.

As you may (or may not) know, I drive a VERY old Honda station wagon that has almost 250,000 miles on it.  It’s been an awesome car that has had very few problems.  A few weeks ago I noticed some problems with the transmission.  It’s an automatic and it would do things like jerk into gear while I was cruising down the expressway at 65.  It finally got to the point that it just couldn’t be driven a few weeks ago, so we made arrangements to purchase a vehicle that my sister and her husband had for sale, which they were going to allow us to drive before we paid them.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the problems with the transmission on my Honda turned out to be computer related and not actual transmission problems.  My husband was able to locate a “new” computer and installed it this morning and I am THRILLED to say that Rhonda the Honda is back to her old self again!  I know how silly it seems to put money into a vehicle with almost 250,000 miles on it, but I LOVE this car!  Besides, if it was possible to fix my Honda that made it not necessary for us to sign a contract on a “new” car and have car payments, which, to me, is a HUGE plus!