Fall Colors

Fall Colors!
Current mood: happy

We are just starting to see color changes in the leaves on the trees here in upstate New York; it's going to be really interesting and beautiful for us to see fall! I actually scanned the leaf/photo that is my main photo. Today was pretty much a home day for all of us. The girls and I grocery shopped and Eric worked. It'll help me feel rested for my work week Monday-Friday this week. Not much else to tell. Oh, our windows are open again, and we are enjoying not having the A/C on. High today here in N. Syracuse: 74. Low: 55, just lovely.

(I do know that the temps will be increasingly colder, and my blogs may sound increasingly desperate...hmmmm...it'll be interesting)...

The Fair!!

The New York State Fair
Current mood: content
Category: Travel and Places

Today my two daughters and I went to the New York State Fair. We had to leave Eric behind since he was working, I work all next week, etc. Work sometimes gets in the way of the four of us doing things together, but such is life. The New York State Fair is held in Solvay, which is super close to where we live. I think it took us ten minutes to get there, which was great. We found the fair easily off of Route 81, then 690 West. The Fair was Huge!! It was really the biggest fair I've ever been to. I haven't seen that many food vendors anywhere. We had a rack of ribs from the Dinosaur BBQ stand-which were delish. We had salt potatoes, too, which are a local thing. We ran into someone I know from work from the education dept, which was cool. I said hi to her, introduced my girls, talked for a sec. My job is going well, by the way, still in an orientation since I have less than a year's nursing experience, so I'll do patient care next week. Anyway, the fair...it was sooooooo HOT today, a high of 89, I think, and it felt like it, but we had a great time. The girls rode some rides, the three of us rode the ferris wheel together, and I even got on the Tilt-a-Whirl with the girls, even though I no longer enjoy fast/scary rides. The girls begged me to ride with them. I really did enjoy it-we laughed and screamed. Sophia said, "Mom, you're a kid again..." It was one of those 'moments' I think I'll remember forever. Ok, gotta run right now. It is dinner time at our house. I'll write again later.

Loki

Loki is the pup's name: for the norse god of mischief/fire/chaos; sort of a borderline personality, sometimes good and sometimes evil. He is also a gift-giver: but the gifts he gives are things he has stolen...all of this is depending on which myth you're reading. I totally and completely stole this name from one of my brother's dogs...Great name, James! Thanks for letting me rip it off of ya.

(?) Loki (?)

A Puppy!
Current mood: drained

Got a puppy today!! A cairn terrier, 16 week old male. We are still deciding on a name, but we think it's going to be Loki...pictures to follow soon. A cairn terrier is the dog used in the Wizard of Oz, Toto. I'm totally tired, & am starting a new job tomorrow, too. All's well, tho, just need a leetle sleep. Blog more another day...

Wild Berries!

A copy of myspace blog:

Wild Berries!!
Current mood: exhausted


Today really was an exceptional 'family' day. The four of us went to Pratt's Falls, which is about 20 minutes from us, near the city of Pompey. The drive out to where the falls are is really gorgeous. It is more of a rural area, and we saw some farms and dairies, lots of rolling hills. Everything is still a beautiful summertime lush green up here.

At Pratt's Falls, we saw a waterfall and did some hiking on trails, then had to break for lunch (no, of course we didn't pack a picnic, this would have taken some planning). We ended up having lunch at Ann's Country Store in the town (or village) of Fabius, closeby. This small country store had a little of everything: groceries, a deli, and even an antique store in the back, where I found two small hot air balloon pictures, which I love to collect, one an acrylic and the other a watercolor. I asked the woman who rung us up if she was Ann (I'm a dork!); she kindly pointed across the store to Ann's daughter and said that she's the owner now. I paid a little more for the two framed paintings than I really wanted to, but I'm glad now I have them.

After the store, we went on to Highland Forest, another county park. Here we really settled in to hiking. The four us us walked up and down trails and talked and laughed for quite some time. Alissa and I paired off, and Sophie and Eric walked up ahead of us. Alissa and I kept picking up little stones, round ones and heart-shaped ones.

The perfect little round stones remind me of what my Grandmother always called 'worry stones': they're perfectly round or oval shaped and smooth, they're small, pocket sized, and you keep them in your pocket, and when you're worried, you rub your fingers on them. Not that I ever actually keep a worry stone in my pocket, but I always think of my Grandmother's story when I see flat round little stones like the ones we found today. The heart shaped stones were just a little something different, and Alissa and I liked them. I told her the worry stone story; maybe she'll remember me and my Gram and the little story of worry stones when she's hiking or at the beach when she is much, much older. Who knows.

After we decided that the 3.5 mile total hike would be the one we'd do, we decided to start to make our way back. On this trail, we found blackberries and raspberries growing alongside the trail. At first, we though we would have to go far off the trail to get at them, then discovered there were practically zillions of wild blackberries growing along this sunny patch of trail. The raspberries were there, growing close to the ground, and just here and there, but wonderful all the same. Alissa and I drove Eric and Soph nuts prolonging the hike and delaying us getting back to the car. We were apparently on a mission to get as many blackberries and raspberries as we could-eating every single one of them as we picked them and walked and waved at Eric just to go on ahead. We finally got back to our car, drove through rolling hills and rural areas, stopped again at Ann's for a soda, then made our way back to North Syracuse and home.

79

So, it's been a while since I've written on blogspot. I have been on myspace, and that website is just plain addicting. I have six days now until I start work full-time. It'll be good to be getting paychecks again. Today is just beautiful outside, though I haven't managed to get changed out of my pj's. I'm doing house stuff, cleaning and putting things away and laundry and such. And signing into myspace at times. I managed to call my friend Gula and talk to her a while. She and her family live in Coconut Creek, which is close to where we used to live in Pompano. Today's high is 79, which is just wonderful. Our windows are open and there's a nice breeze blowing through the house. Eric and Sophia are going off to a park somewhere, and Alissa is hanging out at home hoping I will take her to the mall or something, even though I've told her that's not gonna happen. Maybe I will watch a movie with her on the on-demand TV feature. It is just a home-kinda day. Oh, good, Alissa is going to go with Eric and Soph to a park. I should go. But I will stay home...I feel like I have such limited time left to hang out at home, now that I will be starting work next week. Yeah, a home day is just the thing for me today.

Salespeople will call

So I am cheating on blogspot lately. I have been myspacing a bit. I have two friends currently who are big into myspace, so I am trying to reconnect with the one friend, and continue the reconnect with the other friend. I have gotten one sales type of person who wanted to be "my friend" and another mystery person whose profile I could not read trying to be "my friend". Grr. A little annoying, but other than those two, myspace has been interesting. Hmmm. So I blog on myspace now, too. I guess once I start work on Aug 20th some of this will have to go by the wayside. Ha. I will be so much busier then.

I brought my niece to Cortland this evening, where her father was waiting for her. Nice of him to meet me halfway. We all really had a nice time with my 13 year old niece. Tomorrow I drive to Maryland to see my sister. My kids are really excited about that, seeing Aunt Niki and their cousins. I love to get snowballs at the Ice Shack, close to my sis's house, too. Yum! It is awesome that my sis is now just a day drive away-when we lived in Florida, it was a definite two day drive.

Ok, I simply MUST go and get some sleep. It is after ten, I have been getting to bed too late these days.

Hairspray, Nestico's, Etc...

Today my niece Sunni is with us. She and Alissa, especially, are getting along great-lots of giggling and playing with lip gloss and other make up items going on! Right now my daughter Sophia is standing here asking me what I am doing and reading every little thing I write. "Know what's embarrassing about you...?" I can think of many things. Ha. She goes on to say, "You hang my undies on the clothesline." Whew. Dodged that bullet. I really wasn't sure what was going to come out of her mouth. Oh, my-it is nearly 10PM and I gotta get some sleep soon. I have already asked/told the girls about the need for going to bed much earlier, all of us. I did all right today energy-wise, but I know I was about an hour shy of the sleep I need to function well. We ended up going to The Carousel Mall and seeing the movie Hairspray. It was pretty darned good, and the girls thought so, too-the ages of my girl companions today: 13, 11, and 7. I either was smiling or outright laughing the entire movie, and the girls were, too. We came home after that and went to an Italian restaurant within walking distance of our house, and yes, we walked to it-we had a great coupon "50% off Mondays", and I gotta tell you, the food was excellent, too. I simply gotta run now. Clothes to fold, kids to rope in, etc. Bye for now. All's well in Syracuse.

Ribs

Today Eric is making a big batch of ribs and we are having my stepsis and her family over. We've totally drained and refilled the hot tub, put horseshoes and a badminton net up in the backyard, and put all but one of our packing boxes away. That last box! We gotta get the stuff out of the last box. The silliest thing is it's a box that's only about a third of the way full. Oh, whatever. The other night we played badminton, the four of us, for a while and had a great time, so maybe we'll have fun with a whole bunch of people playing the backyard games. It should be a really nice day, too, since the scorching heat wave seems to have subsided for now. It went down to about 55 last night, which is just wonderful. High of 84 today. Ok, now I am off to do some sweeping and bed-making, just a bit to make the place look nicer. First coffee, breakfast, and coupon clipping, gotta run. Bye for now.

Not Much Going On Today...

After yesterday's busy-ness we are staying close to home today. Alissa and I made baked ziti early in the AM, and it turned out really good. Later, the girls and I dragged bags of cans and plastic bottles to Wegman's to get five cents each per can or bottle. We ended up with around five dollars-would definitely pick up a fiver if I saw it on the ground, so I will continue bringing cans and bottles to Wegmans for a nickel a piece. Anyway, not much going on here. I just ordered HBO, though I know it's costly...but it comes with HBO on Demand-I just love that on demand feature of watching shows when you want, not just when they are scheduled to be on, and you can pause the shows, too. We watched a couple of Bogey and Bacall movies with the free movies on demand feature on cable recently (The Big Sleep and Dark Passage-excellent movies). Gonna travel on Wednesday down to Maryland to see my sis and her family. It'll be fun. That's about all I have to say for myself today.

Banner Day

Today started off relatively quietly, then we managed to do a whole bunch of stuff! The girls are now registered for school-we finally stopped procrastinating and Eric helped by printing up a list of the stuff off the internet that we needed to have in hand to register them. All told, it took me 20 minutes to register those girls for school. Not bad. I then went shopping a little with just me and Alis, and we found some cool stuff (sweaters & tee shirts for the girls, and a Banana Republic leather purse for me!) at the local consignment shop. We went home, then the four of us went to the Carousel Mall and saw "The Simpson's Movie", which we all enjoyed. It was a good movie-pretty much like an extended show of the Simpsons, their usual irreverent stuff. After that the girls got their hair cut AND new bookbags for school at JCPenney. I am getting tired as I write this-it really was pretty much a mad dash from one thing to the next after a while. We didn't stop there. We went to Heid's, that awesome hot dog joint I blogged about previously. After that we picked up our snowblower we ordered a week or so ago from Ace Hardware. As a finale, we had ice cream at The Big Dip. Now we're home and wiped out, but happy. Zzzzzz...

The Beach

Today we went to Jamesville Beach, the four of us. Not the beach as in the ocean and sand, the type of beach we were used to in Florida, but the beach as in the lake and sand. We had a good time, though I was the only one who wouldn't go fully in the water. It was a little cold for me, and the icky stuff at the bottom of the lake kind of creeped me out, and I couldn't get my shoulders in since I was cold, and now that I think about it, I was really being a wimp. As we left, I saw a thermometer-umm 90 degrees! Next time I will go in for real. I took pictures on the throwaway camera, and the scenes were quite beautiful. we're definitely going back to Jamesville Beach, and we'll bring a picnic next time. Across the lake, we could see houses on the hilltops, along with many lakeside homes. There were plenty of trees close to the shore and throughout the park, and it was very nice in the shade, a luxury we often didn't have in Florida. It's just hot this time of year (about eight months of the year) where we used to live. Period.