Francis

Yes, the colors are better... The hurricane appears to be heading north. Good for us and not so good for the Carolinas. Personally, I'm grateful!

Another Color Scheme Change

I have again altered the color scheme. I still have a little work to do but then I have a lot of better things to do as well. I hope to get rid of the red and greens in here but how is the rest of it?

This 'n That

Hurricane Francis is headed toward us - and we really need it to go somewhere else. Mom's trailer would be toast. Looks like it could come this way on Saturday. What a hassle that would be. It's at about 130 mph right now and expected to strengthen.

Please pray for Eileen Conklin. She got a new hip today. Should be in the hospital till Thursday or so, and then a lot of rehab etc.

I'm breaking in my hiking boots and reading up on Austria and Italy. Can't wait!

I heard from Joanne today by email - she's back from dropping Becki at college. George gets home tonight. Since school starts tomorrow, she was incredibly busy at the office.

And now you know the news of Monday, August 30, 2004.

New look

I messed with the color scheme so many times on this blog, and did such a poor job of it that I thought it would be time for a new template. I hope you like it, I did already make a couple of minor modifications to the one that Blogger provides.

• I altered the colors slightly. If you have any suggestions please let me know here. I am not artistic, but I am a computer geek, so I can do the work. If you can give me the color number in hexidecimal that makes it easier for me.
• I did not like the serif font they called for so I changed to Arial.
• I added the links to my blog and to my church's blog. I wish we had more links. So if you have any place you would like to send us on a regular basis send me an email and I can put them up there. Your own blog, webpage or one of your school is great.

wAY kEWL!!!

Jennell,

(1) Bappy Hirthday, or something like that!!!

For those of you who are calendar impared, Jennell has reached terminal age on August 28th (ask her what that means)

(2)I went looking for GW Bush's blog to see if he was bragging about getting to shake hands with YOU.

(3) I'll bet you felt great to have a chance to shake hands with the Prez.
I have had the chance to be around some famous and "great" people and it is funny how you can feel the "greatness".

(4) Nice pictures. esp you and the kids and you and your friend. GW is merely background for you two.

My Favorite Field Trip!!!

I am so excited!!! I got to shake hands with George W. Bush!!! A parent in my class arranged tickets for my class to go to a rally at the Miami Arena, and it was sooooooo awesome! The other fourth grade teacher and I managed to get on the floor of the auditorium and weave our way to the front (about 5 people back) before the speech began. Afterward, my friend and I got pushed to the very front and I ended up shaking hands with the president. It was great! Click on the title of the post to see some of my pictures....The first one is my favorite because President Bush is right above our heads. :)

PS...I know that there are many political views in our family and I don't want to start a political discussion. I just wanted to share an experience I thought was really cool!

Italy, Spain, Austria, Slovina

Thanks for giving us contact information here. It makes it easy to get to from wherever we are. Sounds like quite a full itenerary. Make sure you have a digital camera so you can keep us up to date. If you email them to me I will post them here if you want.

Carolyn and Joe's Italy Trip

For the sake of convenience, I'm putting our contact phone numbers here on the blog for when we are in Italy.

From 9/11 to 9/18 we will be at Residence Camporosso II in Tarvisio, Italy (the Dolemite mountain range - Italian Alps). This is right on the border of Austria, Slovenia and Italy. The telephone number is 011-39-0428-63053.

Then we will be travelling a day or so, staying at Mirella & Giovanni Antonacci's condo near Ancona (central Italy on the east coast) I don't know if they have a phone there, but in an emergency, call Daniela and find out if we can be reached there.

Then from 9/18 to 9/25 we will be at Blue Marine Residence in Rodi Garganico, Italy. The phone number there is 011-39-0884-999000. This resort is on the "spur of the boot", on the east coast.

We depart out of Rome on 9/25. We may leave the time share a day early in order to see Rome, but that's up in the air. We travel through Spain on the way there and again on the way back, so we hope to see a little of Barcelona and Madrid on our layovers.

Please remember to pray for our safety, as Italy has been on heightened terror threat because of their involvement in Iraq. I'm blown away that they would talk about bombing Rome with all its religious sites and ancient buildings, yet we won't touch their radical insurgents because they're hiding out in a mosque. What fools we are sometimes, trying to be polite in war. Certainly wouldn't stop them from doing it, though! The threat of terror worked in Spain, and I guess they think it will work in Italy.

I'm really looking forward to this trip! And from the research I've been doing, I've come to realize I will be plenty broke when I get back.

George Fleas FL

No not bugs ...Flees. The boy is to board one of them new jet planes and be whisked off to Oragin where all the wagon trains were last seen heading. I'll be awaiting his call at 4 am and run him out of town in the middle of the night. He plans to meet his woman folk out west and plant one there to see ifin she will grow there. then back to ak.
Congrats on him for making it thru and graduating !!!

A Little Note

BTW answering your question reminded me that the other day Valerie asked it you had said anything about her respones to your TGIF posting. I said that you prefer NOT to read the comnments on the blog but to start new threads. You might want to scroll down to that posting and check out the comments.

b

Jay's Visit, continued

I dunno if we are going to get together again soon. He has plans of running with his cousin and spending time in Wrigleyville. There is also talk of going to the Bears game Saturday night and another Sox game. I cannot afford these and really am not that interested. I have invited him to church on Sunday but that does not look likely either (maybe for the same reason I do not want to go out with him on Friday night, we have different views towards drinking binges and churches).

Anyway, Valerie’s first grandchild is likely to be born Thursday and the mother of her friend Dee (matron of honor lady) is being buried on Friday. So things are interesting around here.

Love you all, please know it.

Bill

Cool pics

Bill: Thanx for putting up the pics of Jay's vacation. He probably hasn't even seen them himself! Are you going to get together any more while he's there?

Day with Jay

Jay and I spent the afternoon and evening together doing the Chicago sports scene. I picked him up in the early afternoon and we drove down to Kankakee; or actually, Bourbonnais; for the Bears practice. The thing is pretty friendly, no charge even for the parking, though the $2.00 bottles of pop are a bit much. We stood on the side of the path where the team would walk by on the way to the practice field. They would occationally stop and autograph things for people, mostly kids, people in wheelchairs and good looking girls. But we were able to get Brian Urlacher to autograph a Brian Urlacher jersey belonging to Jay's cousin Brian (enough "Brians" in that sentence?) I took a picture just before he signed it with Brian signing the kids stuff next to Jay and Jay's back.

We took a few pictures but the Palm is not very good for that in bright light, you cannot see the screen well enough to know what you are taking a picture of until you see it later.

We watched the team stretch and do some drills, then they broke up into squads. The quarterbacks tossed to a college kid in front of us while the offensive line pushed the sled to our right. The defense and special teams went to the other side. Every so often a horn would blow and the drills would change. The squads would combine some and do more team things. The quarterbacks and the recievers got together. Later the whole offense as a group and after a couple of hours the whole team did a scrimmage. Also the special teams did kick/kick return scrimmages. It lasted from 3:00 to 6:00.

Before the practice and after we watched the Score 670AM as they interviewed some players live on the radio, making the proper noise when needed. Jay also got to climb a climbing wall. They had lots of free stuff to do like that. He was the only adult that did it when we were there.

After we bought some souviners we decided to high-tail it up to Chicago for a Sox game. There was a front passing thru that would delay the start of the game but not be a problem after it rained for a while. Sorta Florida like rain, heavy and short. We stopped at the Wal-Mart in KKK for 40-cent pops because it was Pepsi-half-price night at Sox Park. The pop cans saved us $14 each on lower deck reserved tickets.

Part of the reason we went Tuesday night is because Freddy Garcia was the starter. He has been great since coming to the Sox. Well, he had an "off" night. No...he stunk. He gave up a home run on the second pitch and another a few batters later. The Sox got one run back in the first inning but he gave up more home runs later. The Sox brought it back to 3-4 but when they replaced Garcia the reliever was worse. Twice in one inning he threw a wild pitch which scored runs. Eventually the score was 8-9 as the Sox bats were on. But in the ninth two more runs were scored and the game ended at 8-11. We saw plenty of fireworks and close calls but when the pitching is that bad it is hard to win. Anyway we had a good time and got to yell a lot.

With the rain delayed start the game did not end till after 11:00. On the way back to Mokena we ran into some road work so we did not get back there till after midnight. I ran into more road work on I-80 so I did not get home till 1:30AM. Now I am trying to wake up and get my head together.

Sorry Charley, You're Just Chicken of the Sea...

I borrowed that title from one of the restaurants in Daytona Beach this past weekend. Joe and I, and Bertie and Mike went to celebrate our collective anniversaries (29 yrs for us and 20 yrs for them). Turns out there was a stinkin' hurricane there! Thankfully, it had already travelled over the state and has lost some of its punch by the time we were in it. Mike and I watched it from the doorway of the timeshare. Quite entertaining! But what a mess it made. What we were watching was about 80 mph winds. I cannot imagine what Sanibel Island must have been like in 145 mph winds. Cars were crushed, and stores were trashed. Many buildings lost their roofs, and all the signs were downed. Then it was interesting when there was no power in the county for the rest of our trip. Thankfully, our place did have power. Jay was also in Daytona for the Reptile Show, with friends. They were closer to the eye by a mile or so, but he spent the whole time in the lounge having a hurricane party. Then on the way home, we stopped at Dani & Sean's for a gathering - swam in his hot tub and ate some food. Nice ending to a weird weekend. Tomorrow it's back to work. Jay is taking off for Chicago in the morning, and will be gone for the week. His last hurrah before boot camp. Since he has been out of town for the weekend, he'll have to catch up with everyone in Chicago when he gets there. At this moment, he's running around trying to return a rental vehicle and wash clothes before he takes off in the morning.

Jay's Visit

I had a chat with Bill and Terry Dwyer last night. They said that they were going to pick up Jay and have a pizza party Monday night. I thanked them for the invitation, but that I would be busy working that night. They also said that they had planned on possibly going to the Sox game on Tuesday and I said that I would plan on going to that. Jay & I had chatted about that before.

They asked if I was aware that he was going to be in town, I told them that we had spoken about it several times. It sounded like they had expected Jay to stay there the entire week. I am really hoping that he can spend a couple of days with us during his stay. Valerie is taking Tuesday off as he will be in town and the fact that her patient is going to court that day. Tuesday would be a good day to go to Bears training camp if he would like. She will be working Thursday and I work Friday from 8:00AM to 11:00PM.

Bill Dwyer also told me he is attempting to get a couple of Bears tickets for Saturday. He still does not know if he can get them.

Jay, let me know your plans so I can adjust mine accordingly.

b

TGIF

Not only am I excited that it's Friday, but I'm doubly excited that I've finally finished my correspondence course on Philosophy (Moody). What misery. It took me almost two years to get this one under my belt. I HATED it, although I must admit I became educated on the subject. Only thing is, I can't figure out why I should care! Anyhow, I just got finished writing my final paper and I'M DONE! Hallelujah

Sunday at 5 pm, the whole fam is coming over for dinner. Jason wanted promised to come if he could know the reason for the gathering. I told him it was to EAT. He said he'd be there.

Next weekend (Aug 13-15) Joe and I are going to be in Daytona Beach. You can reach us on his cell (561) 385-1096. We'll have it with us most of the time. We're going with Bertie and Mike. Their anniversary is Aug 16 and ours is Aug 17 - so we'll celebrate together like we have for the past several years. They are babies, though. We're celebrating 29 years; they are only married for 20. On September 10th, Mike & Bertie and Joe & I will traverse through Spain to Italy for two weeks, and back thru Spain on the way home. We will spend a week in the Alps and a week on the opposite coast from Rome. I think it's a beach resort for that week. I can't wait! But I'm sure it won't be as picturesque as last year's vacation on the beach in Miller Bch, IN!