My ears hurt, my throat is scratchy and hurts, my head hurts, my sinuses hurt, even my eyes hurt and I am sneezing and coughing          I havent felt like this since last February….    I went thru 3 courses of antibiotics and prescribed decongestants to get rid of it last time…   I am hoping it is “just a cold”  but I dont think so.  It wouldnt be so bad except I am supposed to drive an extra sports trip this coming friday.  Another football game,  and hubby and baby are supposed to ride with me.  I guess I will have to see how I am feeling in a few days…

School was only a half day today so my afternoon route is done.  I am thinking I am going to go laydown for awhile and maybe watch a little tv and rest.  I am sure there is a movie baby wants to lay with me and watch.

Enjoy your tuesday…  the weekend is only 3 days away

experiencing very slow internet???  For the last few days the pages have been just barely crawling.  We have satelite and I know sometimes they have issues, but I havent heard anything lately…  We left Hughes(DirecWay)  about 4 months ago due to their rotten customer service and the fact that no matter what, we were constantly exceeding our bandwidth limit,  and this was with a professional business acct that we were paying $90 a month for.  We went to Wild Blue and have been very happy so far.  We actually pay less money a month and have been getting much better service and faster bandwidth.  Until the last few days.  The owner of the scrapbooking site that I work for says her internet has been slow lately too.  So I have just been wondering if it is slow for everyone or just a select few?

I drove my bus route this morning and then when I was done I had to take the bus up to the bus barn and get one of the big amber lights in the back replaced. The bulb burned out as I was driving my route this morning.  While I was up there I got them to replace my windshield wipers and wash off my bus too.  I have a rear seal leak but they said they would get that fixed the next time the oil is changed on my bus…   So I fueled up and baby and I headed home.

Miranda is watching cartoons and waiting for her cheesy garlic bread to get done in the toaster oven and I am trying to do alittle surfing…  

I lucked out and yesterday turned out to be a very quiet day…  I was even able to catch a 30 wink nap while baby layed on the bed with me and watched her “Labrynth” movie…  

Uhohhh  I hear the toaster oven dinging…  I am off to get baby’s garlic bread out for her…  Have a great Monday

Today is going to be spent doing as little as possible….   Maybe I can get a couple of Scrapbooking Layouts done…   Baby is watching a cartoon, Sara is cleaning the bathroom and Alex spent the night at his friend’s house, he should be getting home soon. 

I made a batch of crockpot chili the other night…  It simmered in the crockpot about 8 hours, I added beef stew meat and hamburger this time along with tomatoes, spices and some kidney beans.  It came out tasting very good.  Maybe we will have hamburgers out on the grill today and finish up the leftover chili.   Hubby had to work so if he is lucky he will get to take his hour off for lunch but then he has to go back and close the store tonight.  He doesnt get a day off til next Thursday.  Of course now that I am back to driving the school bus his days off never coincide with my days off…   No lounging in the early mornings for us…  One or the other of us always has to get up and get to work.

I drove the extra school trip yesterday morning.  I took the Show Choir and Jazz band to a liitle town not too far from here for a performance in the bandshell in the park.  It was sponsored by one of the small country banks and they even provided a sack lunch free to anyone who came to the park.  So for lunch I had my choice of a brat or a hotdog, chips, a cookie and either iced tea or lemonade.  It was really nice.  I sat on a park bench, ate my lunch and watched my daughter perform with the show choir.  They all did an outstanding job singing pieces from Beauty and the Beast.  Since it is a show choir there was also some dancing and acting as well.  The Jazz band was very good too.  So I spent an enjoyable hour in the park having lunch and listening to the performance and got paid for the entire 3 hours I was away for the trip.  After our kids performed we left to get them back to the school so I didnt see the other school perform but I am sure they were just as good.  It was a very nice way to spend a cool fall morning…  (no pictures though    I forgot my camera)  I know….   bad me

After we got back home it was off to town to get some groceries and Alex needed some new jeans and baby needed some new pants.  She actually needed some long sleeved shirts too, but I didnt see any of them out yet.  I picked up the Labyrinth movie with David Bowie.  Baby likes watching movies like that and remember how much I liked it when I was younger…   A little dark maybe, but I am sure she will enjoy the Jim Henderson puppets in it.    We managed to just beat hubby home from work…   He came home, changed his clothes and came into the computer room with his shoes…  He looked at me and said “I am gonna go run the streets awhile,  wanna come?”   Now how could I turn that invitation down?       I got my sandals on, ran the comb thru my hair and we left…   We didnt take the bike since I thought it was pretty cool and I knew it would be cold once the sun set…  (I was right)  We decided to stop for dinner….  Bad idea on a Saturday night around 6:30pm…   Every place we stopped was packed…   We also found out two of the places we always enjoyed going had closed their doors!   One was a steak place and the other a humburger joint.  No explanation on the hamburger joints doors other than an “I am sorry, we are closed, permanently”   Talk about a surprise!    We finally stopped at a place called ThunderBay Grill..   We had to wait about 30 minutes to be seated.  The ambience was nice, dimmed lights and a small light on our table…   We had an appetizer of tangled onions, (little skimpy onion rings) but they came out in a huge skillet.  No way we could eat them all so a bunch of them came home with us.  A couple of good Ribeye steaks, baked potatoes and salad and we were stuffed…   We rolled out to the car and drove home     A quick shower and jammies and we were down for the night     Maybe not everyones idea of “running the streets”  but it worked for us    We hadnt had a night out alone in quite awhile so it was real nice…

So that brings us back to today….  My daughter that was married in August left early this morning for her honeymoon in Jamaica…  That had been postponed due to the nasty storm that went thru in late August…  I hope she takes lots of pics and has a wonderful time 

I am going to head out, but before I do here is a picture of my baby wearing her new princess jammies….   

 She loves the little green and pink crowns all over the capri jammy bottoms….   Enjoy your Sunday everyone

There hasn’t been much new happening in the last week.  I did forget to mention that my daughter in laws’ mother passed away last thursday.  It was quite unexpected.  Her mother  suffered from asthma that she had been on medication for. She also ended up with a case of pneumonia which put her into intensive care in the big hospital in Iowa City.  This has happened a few times in the past so no one was overly surprised or worried about it this time.  She seemed to be getting better and my son told me on Labor day that she was being moved out of the IC unit.  My son called me a 3 days later to tell me she had unexpectedly passed away.  She needed emergency surgery to get a blood clot that was in her leg removed and also she was found blue in her room.  Shortly after that she died.   The visitation was Sunday night and the funeral was Monday morning.  She left behind my daughter in law, her husband, her son, who is a Senior in High School this yr,  and a 10 yr old daughter…   This poor woman was a year younger than I am…  Things like that really make me stop and think how lucky I am to be in semi good health and to be able to enjoy my husband and children and my grandchildren too.  Things can happen so unexpectedly…   My daughter in law seemed pretty together at the visitation, but I know from experience that the worst of it isn’t the visitation, or the funeral.  The worst is every day after when you want to call your mom and tell her something and you cant.  And now she has to worry about her younger brother and her little sister too.  I have no idea what will end up happening, maybe you could say a little prayer for all of them.

On a less solemn note….  TGIF!!!    I have to drive my afternoon route and then it is weekend time   I do have an extra trip I told them I would drive tomorrow which should last about 4 hours.  I am driving the Show Choir, (which my dd is a part of) to one of the neighboring towns for an outdoor performance in the park.  The jazz band is also going so it should be a nice performance.  I will take baby with, so she and I can watch the performance and I can get paid for it    That’s the nice thing about driving extra trips…   A lot of times I also get to enjoy the trip and not just drive.

The other bus driver is still arriving just barely late every day.  She is still trying to make her point.  The point is her route is too long and she wants some of those kids put back on to my route.  The DOT hasn’t come down to ride with her yet so everything is still in limbo.  A few of the other drivers are getting a little tired of the late driver too and have complained.  One of them is even keeping track of her time in getting to the school.  We are hoping they will change the bus line up around and put the perpetually late driver in the back…    I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

The weather has definitely cooled off.  We went from having the AC on to firing up the furnace for a few minutes early this morning.  The weatherman is talking about chances of frost overnight when the temps dip down into the 30′s.  That may make tomorrows’ Show Choir performance a little chilly..   I love fall but am not ready for any real cold days yet…   I am still hoping hubby and I can take our all day motorcycle ride up north to look at all the leaves changing colors…   I don’t mind wearing a sweatshirt to ride, but I don’t want to have to wear a coat and gloves   That’s about it for news…  I am going to leave you with a couple LO’s I was able to do this past week….

 My handsome son, Alex, as a young child, and as the Best man at his sisters’ wedding a month ago…   He is a senior in high school this year…

Pretty little Miranda, AKA baby    snoozing in our bed early one morning…

Me    taken when I was about 3 yrs old…   I love that happy smile

Here’s hoping each one of you have a happy, smiley Friday 

from my bone density test.  I was crossing over the river and looked out across the Mississippi  like I usually do….    What I don’t usually see is this!!!! 

I could NOT believe my eyes….   I immediately got off the interstate and drove down to a little spot along the river so we could watch it pass.  I didn’t have my camera  with me so I had to use my cell phone…    (the 2 nice pictures of the Nina are from the website)

The bridge in the background is the one I was going over when I saw the Nina about to start passing under the bridge.  You can just barely see her on the horizon.

Here she is across from me.  She is soooo much more impressive when you can actually see her moving..

I heard on the radio station that The Nina would be docked in our area for the next few days so I went and looked her up on the website TheNina.com      (Do NOT forget the “THE”,  I did the first time and got a porno site)  I am hoping that maybe we can get down and see her before she leaves our area…   A cute story…  Baby saw the ship and asked me if Harry Potter was on it     She loves watching those movies and she thought this ship looked like the one that the boys from the North come in on in the Goblet of Fire    I told her I didn’t think he was on this ship but who knows?  She was happy with that answer.   So we looked at the ducks…

and then we headed home….

That was it for our exciting day.  The technician at the Dr’s office said she thought my bones look fine but of course keep taking the calcium supplements…   I will get a report probably next week.

My ankle is hating going back to work.  Going up and down the bus steps and our front steps on an average of 10 times a day.  Plus the heat, plus the vibration of the bus and no decent position to put it in has it pretty swollen and sore.  I cant get the swelling to go down.  I have been putting the ice pack on it and even when I go to bed at night when I get up in the morning it is still swollen.  Not quite as bad as it is when I go to bed at night, but still swollen.  The Dr said it would probably be a good 6 months before I notice any improvement…

My job sux….   Yep, I mean the bus driving job.  This is the first time in many years that I have a comfortable number of students on my bus, (I have 44 right now)  and my route is actually 10 minutes shorter than last year so I am getting home by about 4:20pm.  I should be doing the happy dance,  but instead I am waiting for the sword to fall.  The other driver is complaining that HER route is too long.  She has about 30 students on her bus but she says some of them are riding on average of an hour.  This is the same driver that always seems to get what she wants…  In the past all those extra students I had on my bus were from HER bus.  I am relatively sure that what she wants is for me to take a bunch of those kids back on to my bus “since I drive right past their houses anyway” to make her route shorter.  It doesn’t matter that her number of students will dramatically drop again while my number sky rockets…   I told the girl in the bus barn that if I get all those kids back i wont be happy.  I told hubby I am ready to turn the keys in and tell them to come get their hunk of junk…   If things don’t work out I may end up doing that.  I am tired of always being the good guy.   It hasn’t gotten me anywhere but stepped on all these years….     Enough complaining….

Hubby is home from work so I am gonna wrap this up for now.  I hope everyone is having a great weekend 

and life just keeps getting busier…  Driving the school bus has gone about as I expected.  The kids havent changed since last year.  I am still having the same problems with the same students.  I drove a sports trip last friday night.  I took the High School Cheerleaders to Mendota, Il.  Thats about 2 hours one way from here.  So it ended up being a trip that started at 2pm and ended at 1am when we finally got back to the high school.  Hubby and Miranda went with me so we enjoyed the game and ate hotdogs, cotton candy and popcorn    Bedtime was about 2am and then I was back up and driving the band kids to a parade Saturday morning.  That took another 4 hours.  I was dead beat when I finally got home about 1pm.   I was able to get a nap in around 5pm after I got some stuff done around the house.  Sunday was spent getting some groceries since the kids were all coming over to spend Labor Day and have a cookout.   Hubby had to work, but the kids all showed up.  We had hamburgers, hotdogs and corn on the cob.  Luckily we had all the food grilled but a few hamburgers when the gas tank went empty on the grill.  That was pretty good timing I would say. 

Back to school today….  I have another short trip to drive in the morning, should only be a couple of hours.  A little extra trip pay is always good    I got a big promotion at The Scrapping Garden.  The owners asked me if I would be interested in a new job.  I will still be the forum administrator, but I am now also the store manager.  In charge of everything that deals with the running of the scrapbooking store.  It will be a big responsibility but I can handle it…  And they already told me that it would be no problem for one of them to cover for me if hubby and I have the channce to get a way for a couple days here and there.  So It’s all good

Thursday I have a bone density test.  My rheumatologist wants to check my bone density since I fell and broke my ankle. She wants to make sure my bones arent thinning….

Other than that life is pretty much the same…   How has it been for YOU!?