Rest In Peace

For those of you who didn’t know, my grandmother “Mama Crock” passed away earlier this month. She had colon cancer, which spread to her liver. She was 88 years old.

Thinking back on her, I can’t help but smile. She was such a giving and happy person. She loved spending time with her family and friends. In her younger days, she loved fishing and traveling in her motor home with my grandfather. She really understood me. She and her husband married right before he went to war, very similar to myself and my hubby. I loved talking to her about those days and felt she truly knew what it was like to be a soldier’s wife and what it took to make a marriage last forever.

I will miss her dearly and I know I was so lucky to have her in my life.

Rest in peace, Anna Lou Crocker. I love you.

Stockings for Soldiers

This year I started a program called “Stockings for Soldiers” for a unit I adopted in Iraq. I took $10 donations for each stocking with a goal of sending 50 stockings to the unit. I thought I might have to put some personal money into this, but I got enough donations to cover sending one mesh stocking for each of the 50 soldiers filled with:

–> A holiday treat bag with candy (good stuff, no lollipops! I’m talkin’ snickers, butterfingers, hershey’s!)

–> A card (personally signed) thanking them for their service

–> Slim Jim

–> One pouch of flavored tuna

–> Individually wrapped packs of 6 oreos

–> Trial size deodorant

–> Either a Mary Kay shaving cream or lip protector

Each stocking has glittery tissue paper and a little shread to make it cute and is tied with curly ribbon. I will be sending these off here next week when I get done making them all. It has been a very rewarding job! If I recieve any pics of the soldiers or a reply, I will post it here.

Poor Sammie

Well, I have a sad update on Sammie and her baby fawn. The baby passed away at about 2 months old. However, Sammie has been hard at work and is soon to have another fawn. 🙂 So all hope is not lost.

Sammie Is a Mommy!

Sammie is also a deer who lives in my grandma’s (Mom’s mother) screened in patio. For real.

I met Sammie at Christmastime and she seems to love living there. Each day they let her out (she has a big flourescent orange bow around her neck) in the woods and after a bit she returns. Especially if Nanny or Pete (her hubby) try to go somewhere in the car or boat. She tries to go along, following the car or jumping in the boat! She has been their pet since her mother abandoned her on the creek bank as a newborn fawn. 🙂

Today, Nanny sent this e-mail, yeah she is a hip grandma:

Subject: New addition to the family! (Silly me, I thought it was a cousin!)

Hello everyone,

Much to our surprise, our pet deer, Sammie, gave birth yesterday to a little baby fawn, sex as yet unknown. I think she is even smaller than Sammie was when I found her.

Sammie stayed gone most of the day yesterday and all night last night and came home about 7:30 this morning. She acted strange and kept coming in and leaving immediately. After the 4th time I told Pete to follow her and that is when he found the new baby.

We brought both back home and they are now perfectly happy in the glass room, and the little one is exploring the whole room. All the company and dogs don’t seem to bother either of them. I have already started to take lots of pictures and will probably e-mail to some of you later.

A friend we know wants Pete to give it to her, but I somehow think that he won’t be able to do this. (Maybe the next one?)

Love, Ethlyn and Pete (Nanny)

I’ll post pics ASAP! 🙂 Too cute, huh?

Mesmerized

When I first moved home from Kansas, about 2 years ago, I was staying with my sister and her hubby for about 2 months. Often I could not find my dog, Oscar, a chihuahua mix. It was odd. He usually just loves to be where people are. Then I found out where he had been hiding. It was hard to tell which one he loved more, the iguana (Iggy) or the snake (Picolo). Both had been moved to my sister’s bedroom since I had taken over the spare room. He was MESMERIZED by them both, but especally Iggy. I dunno if he was in love or scared, but he would stare at him for hours if the bedroom door was left open. Sometimes he would creep towards the cage for a closer look, only to get scared again and go back to his original spot and stare some more!

The other night, I saw him with this strange gaze again, looking onto my patio. “Oh no,” I thought. I imagined the raccoons were there again. But no. It was a very small opossum. It had come right up to the glass door as if it knew the dog could not get to him. Oscar was hypnotized by it. The two animals just sat there staring at one another until my other dog, Chewy, a peek-a-poo, caught on and began her yapping until the poor thing ran off scared into the bushes. I’m not sure, but I think Oscar probably didn’t appreciate that too much.

Why does Oscar like animals so much? I dunno, but I wish I could take him to the zoo…he would love it. 🙂

All Nighter

In an attempt to get back on a “normal” sleeping schedule, I am pulling an all nighter. Wish me luck because every other attempt at this had ended in me crashing into bed at 8 am and sleeping even later into the day!

Joel came home from his National Guard duty tonight, so I did get a “nap” from 11 pm to 2:30 am. That will have to do if I am gonna change this mess. I will still be a night owl, but bedtime must be 3 am at latest. No ifs, ands, or buts. I think. 🙂

Mary Kay Seminar 2007

Yep, it is the one week countdown to the MK Seminar 2007! Yep, I am a big dork and super excited about it!

If you are not in Mary Kay, I can only imagine how you view us MK ladies, especially during Seminar time. We are even crazier in groups! So if you see a bunch of pink t-shirts at Trail Dust, look out– it’s the MK ladies, loud and proud! Hee hee. And I’m one…

We just can’t help but be so excited during Seminar. We go to helpful business classes during the day, take pics of ourselves in Pink Caddies on breaks, do a line dance at lunch (or get to attend the special luncheon —like me!), then in the evenings we have formal awards with inspiring speeches and lots of applause. Everyone dresses up in their finest and some groups even go in a limo. It is a big to-do in our eyes. We even have our own celebrities in MK. They are National Sales Directors. We oooh and ahhh over their triumphant stories of success, loving every minute. Other MK celebrities include “The friends of time”. They do huge song and dance numbers for us. They are pretty cheesy at times, but no less fun. We all dance around to some modern song with MK lyrics, like last year’s “Be a Star, Drive a new Car” to the tune of “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy”. We are just too clever, huh? 😉 Add that to being with great friends from out of town—it is just a blast.

Here are some pics of past MK seminars: See the party for yourself!

“Sandwich Light”

When I was growing up, I would visit my dad at his parent’s house every two weeks like clockwork. My grandma, “Mama Crock”, has always been one of my favorite people. I love her funny sayings, such as “You want horns, but you’ll die butt headed” (this was said when I wanted things I could not have) and “Woooo, this is a sandwich light!” (she said some red lights are so long, you can eat a sandwich at them).

Today, I got a new meaning of the phrase “sandwich light”. I had been to Wal-mart, and stopped on the way out for a happy meal. Nuggets, fries, and a “Hello Kitty” pencil box. Perfect. I was happily eating some of the fries on the way to my next errand. The light was rather long and I thought of Mama Crock’s saying….just as someone in the car next to mine started yelling something and brought me back to reality.

Some kids, ok well 19 or maybe 20 year olds, in a black mustang were trying desperately to get my attention. I am NOT looking good, so I know they are not trying to get my number! This guy seriuosly is trying to get me to give him fry! I roll down my tinted window, and he flashes his dog tags. I say, “Those don’t impress me! I don’t share with my hubby sometimes and he was in the army!” “Please, just one fry,” he begs as his friends crack up in the back seat. “Well, I only got a happy meal, it is kinda hard to share a happy meal,” I say, seeing if he will give up now.

Nope! “Pleeeease! Come on lady, it’s just one fry”. Well, dang. It was just a fry. I let him come get one. We were at the longest sandwich light ever, so why not? His friends were still laughing hysterically as he got back in his car. It was just one fry, but to him, it was one funny story for later, entertainment for his friends, and one sandwich light made a bit shorter for me. 🙂

The Noise

Last night, as I was up in the wee hours (as usual), I hear a strange noise outside the sliding glass door that leads to the patio. “Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” it rings out, in a high pitch. “What the heck was that?,” I thought, thinking it could be a cat or a oppossum (having seen one right by the patio in the past). The noise stops, so I thought, “Oh well…whatever it is must be gone”.

“PURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!” goes the noise again, louder this time, closer. “Ok,” I think to myself, “What on earth???!” I decide to investigate further. Scared to open the patio door, I turn on the patio light and creep to take a peep out the vertical blinds.

*GASP*!! I jump a mile high as a raccoon scurries away from my patio, up into a tree where his or her lover and/or friend raccoon is patiently waiting. We look at one another, both scared to move. They seem to almost belong in that tree, making me feel like an imposter. Meanwhile, the dogs are going CRAZY and barking at them frantically. For crying out loud, I live off the service road of the tollway in an apartment. This is raccoon territory now?

As they rush off in the night, out of my view, I relax. But each time I hear that noise, I feel the city go away, and the wilderness creep in, if only for a moment.

A Good Week

I am alone with my doggies for 3 weeks. Joel has gone to El Paso with the National Guard and I barely know what to do with myself! Of course, work helps the time go by a bit faster, as well as working out and blogging (of course!). I am looking forward to the last week in July. Joel will be back and Heather is coming into town for the Mary Kay Convention here in Dallas. She will be staying with me for four days. 🙂 Yes, that will be a good week.