The Weekend

For the first time in quite awhile I'm looking forward to the weekend.  Yes, the LSU baseball team opens its SEC season at home with a big series against Arkansas - but I'm not working! 

I do have plans though.  My Better Half and I are planning to clean our storage room, which is a chore we tackle a couple of times a year.  For some reason our storage room is a junk magnet.  And when you have 6 grandkids, all of whom live within a few miles of your home, you can imagine some of the stuff that collects in the storeroom.

Strollers, car seats, jump ropes, bicycles, scooters, miniature cars, etc.  However, I can't blame ALL of the junk on the grandkids.  SOME of what has collected a large quantity of dust since the last time we cleaned the storeroom is ours.  Tools, scrap lumber, leftover tiles, paint, and other assorted goodies left over from our recent home restoration project are just a few of the items I find myself tripping over every time I venture into the storeroom.

All of it just sitting there waiting for us to find it a new home - whether that means in the garbage, at the landfill, or simply in a new corner of the store room.

So that's what awaits us this weekend...

Last weekend was a different story.

Both our daughters/sons-in-law had plans last weekend. Plans that didn't necessarily involve all of their kids. Plans that called for MiMi (My Better Half) and Paw Paw (that's ME) to help out.

But I was working all weekend. It was a home baseball series, so at least I wasn't out of town. All the same, that meant MiMi was called into action.  Now don't get me wrong:  MiMi is always willing to help out and we always enjoy spending time with our grandkids.  But at our age, they definitely wear us out !

So on Thursday afternoon, 9 month-old Carson came to visit for the weekend. Carson is absolutely a Sweetheart!  Carson has also just learned to crawl. So he's not quite as easy to "watch" as he used to be. The good news is that, at this point, he's still a slow-motion crawler, so it's not like he's going to disappear when your back is turned!

Later that afternoon, 7 year-old Kaleigh made the scene. She was going to spend the night, which meant that Paw Paw had to take her to school on Friday morning. Not a big deal because her school is just a few miles down the road.

So on Thursday night we all pitched in - Kaleigh included - and fixed her lunch box for Friday. Carson sat in his walker and watched as we prepared bologna, Cheese Nips and Fruit Rollups, and packed Kaleigh's lunch box.

Carson and I took Kaleigh to school on Friday morning (well, Carson actually just sat in his car seat and chattered while I drove), then we went home and waited for MiMi to get home from work so I could go work LSU's baseball game.

Then on Saturday, Kaleigh had a birthday party to attend. So MiMi packed up both Kaleigh and Carson, buckled them into their car seats, and headed off for the party, while I went once again to the baseball stadium to work another ballgame.

The party's theme was "Pampered Princesses".  Now, mind you, these are 7 year-old girls being pampered like teens getting ready for their senior prom!

Manicures, pedicures, facials and makeup!  Are you kidding me???  For 7 year-olds???

I do know that Kaleigh had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed being pampered for a day.  And in our eyes, she is definitely a princess - so I guess it makes sense after all.

On Sunday, I once again made the trip to the baseball stadium for another LSU baseball game. And late that afternoon our daughter Allyson and son-in-law Jimmy returned to town and picked up Carson.

I assure you MiMi was worn out - but, as I said, we most definitely enjoyed spending time with Carson!

So, this weekend is reserved for some long-overdue spring cleaning. 

When it's all said and done, we might wish we were watching our grandkids instead of cleaning out the store room!

Until next time...

Hurricane Season

I see in today's paper that the experts are predicting the possibility of an "extreme" season of hurricanes this year.

They are projecting the 2010 season to be much more active than 2009, with above-normal threats to the U.S. coastline.

Not good news for us south Louisiana dwellers.

Granted, we were fortunate in 2009 as Mother Nature spared the Gulf Coast.

Not so in 2008.

On September 1 of 2008, Hurricane Gustav hit the south Louisiana coast near Cocodrie as a Category 2 hurricane and proceeded to tear a path directly through Baton Rouge.

My Better Half, our youngest daughter, her husband and their 2 kids holed up in our house in Denham Springs to ride out the storm. Our oldest daughter, her husband and their 2 kids rode out the storm in their home about 5 miles away.

We had gone through several other hurricanes over the years, including Andrew in 1992 and Katrina and Rita in 2005, but we took more of a direct hit from Gustav.

In hindsight, we should have left before the storm hit. We did all the pre-storm preparations, including purchasing a generator, stocking up on essentials like water, ice, food, batteries and gasoline to run the generator.

So, from that standpoint, we were prepared.

What we weren't prepared for were the trees in our yard that were uprooted or snapped at the base and fell across our yard and driveway. We all huddled in the living room and watched as one by one the trees fell. Fortunately none of the 3 huge trees that crashed down hit our home.

The pictures you see above were actually taken after some of the cleanup had already been done. Our driveway was completely blocked by the fallen trees and we had to get a crew in the following day to cut enough of the debris away so we could at least get out of the driveway.

We spent the next week without power. We did have a battery powered black-and-white television so we could keep track of the news and see video of the other devastation that had been done to the Baton Rouge area and other parts of south Louisiana.

Cleanup crews from all parts of the country began arriving the day after the hurricane, but we actually contracted a Denham Springs crew to do ours. We watched as they cut our fallen trees into firewood-sized logs and stacked all the debris at the font of our property for the FEMA crews to pick up.

Even the grandkids' playhouses suffered damage from the storm - damage our insurance company actually covered !!

We managed to keep enough gasoline on hand to run the generator for a week; we cooked on the grill outside; we took cold showers every evening; and we managed to power enough floor fans to at least keep some air moving around while we all slept in the living room at night.

The important thing was that no one was injured, and the worst fate we suffered was a couple of weeks without the simple comforts we've all grown accustomed to.

We still have a few large oaks and pine trees on our property that have certainly become weakened due to past hurricanes. We were fortunate Gustav didn't inflict any more damage than it did.

I don't believe we'll take any chances and ride out the next storm.

Until next time...

Conner

This is one of our 4 grandsons, Conner. Conner is the third-born of our six grandchildren and he is a handful, to say the least!

To begin with, he's definitely all BOY! Conner will be five in July and I believe he is a fairly typical five year-old boy.

He is usually loud, he's full of energy, he loves to build things, loves to take things apart, loves to "help" his daddy with man-type chores like changing the oil, etc.

We've recently come to realize that Conner apparently skipped the "Terrible Two" stage of his life and saved it all up for the "Terrible Almost-Five" stage!


Now don't get me wrong. Conner is a good boy - when he wants to be. He can be sweet, he can be loving, he can be quiet, he can be helpful.

Again, when he wants to be.

Which, these days, isn't very often.


He is in pre-school and lately he has been coming home from school with notes from his teacher. Notes that say things like, "Conner forgot his inside voice today"; "Conner didn't follow instructions today".


Hmmmmm, sounds familiar! I remember bringing home a few notes like that back in my day!


A few weeks ago Conner and his big sister Kaleigh were arguing at home. As punishment, his mom and dad decided to make the two of them stand face-to-face and hug each other for two minutes.

Pretty good idea, I thought!

After all, nothing else seemed to be working. You can lecture him; yell at him; give him the parental "evil-eye"; pull him aside and speak quietly to him; swat his little bottom, etc. And he will stand there and look at you like you've got three eyes.


So maybe the hugging method might work!


Kaleigh didn't mind it at all - she thought it was fun! Conner, on the other hand, didn't like it one little bit. The last thing a five year-old boy wants to be forced to do is hug his big sister!





Now, in Conner's defense, he's also dealing with a BRAND NEW little sister who arrived on the scene about six months ago. So not only does he have a seven year-old sister, he now has a brand new baby in the house who is suddenly getting a LOT of attention!

That makes Conner the middle child.

I am also a middle child and I'm all too aware of what middle children are like. We are typically the outcast, the rebel, the risk-taker, the attention-seeker, the trouble-maker. Right, Mom and Dad??

Boy, do I feel sorry for Conner's mom and dad !


Until next time....

The Ponderosa

This is our home, a 2-story Colorado Spruce log home located in Denham Springs, 13 miles east of Baton Rouge, La.

My Better Half and I decided last spring to completely remodel the home, inside and out. What an undertaking!!

We started off by bringing in one of those PODS contraptions, which sat in our driveway for 2 months. Into that PODS contraption, we moved everything out of our home - I mean EVERYTHING!

Our options were to either rent an off-site storage room and store it all, which would require actually moving all our furniture to the storage facility - or bring in a PODS contraption and park it at the end of the driveway, which meant we only had to carry it all out the door and into the PODS contraption. We opted for the PODS contraption.

At our age, it damn near killed us both! We did enlist the occasional assistance from our 2 sons-in-law to help with some of the big stuff, but I can promise you My Better Half and I are way to old to be moving every piece of furniture out of our home!

But that's what we did.

We started with all new carpet throughout the house, which actually only took 2 days to have done. The next steps to the remodel job included all new floors, countertops, backsplashes, toilets, ceiling fans (of which we have 11), a new kitchen sink (which my son-in-law installed while I was out of town), and floor moulding (which My Better Half and I - along with our oldest daughter, Allyson - stained ourselves).

We then purchased new furniture for the entire home and had it moved in. Our old stuff we either gave to the kids, donated to charity, or hauled away to our friendly neighborhood landfill.

A lot of it went to the landfill.

We then contracted a log home restoration company in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin to do a total makeover of the outside of our log home. This was a job that involved a corn cob blasting of the entire home, which left mounds and mounds of tiny bits of corn cob piled up outside our home - not to mention all the particles of corn cob that ended up INSIDE our home due to the blasting process!

Once the blasting was complete, 2 coats of borate were sprayed on the logs. The borate kills mold, mildew, critters and all the fungus among us. After the critters, mildew and fungus among us were treated, 2 coats of stain were applied to the entire exterior of our home. The final step involved caulking between every log on the home to ensure a good seal to help eliminate drafts, as well as tiny spaces for critters to gain entrance to our home.

My Better Half HATES critters in the house!

The restoration process took just over a month to complete and the job was completed just days before Christmas, 2009.

Fun...? NO! Worth it...? YES!!

We are now in the process of getting new doors and windows for our home, which will complete our remodeling.

Well, that and having to spend the rest of our lives paying for it all !

Until next time....

In The Beginning...

Until this very moment, I was a virgin when it came to blogging. And I'm not really sure what has caused me to create this page other than the fact that an old friend of mine has inspired me. For the record, when I say "old", I don't necessarily mean that SHE is old. I'm referring to our friendship.


Luann Sims Dolan and I went to junior high and high school together many, many years ago in Houston. Back then she was Luann Sims - she added the Dolan sometime after we graduated.


For the past several months our graduating class has been planning our 35th high school reunion (so now you know that Luann Sims Dolan really IS old - my apologies, Luann)! During this process I have become reacquainted with Luann through the wonderful world of Facebook.


About 8 months ago Luann debuted her blog page (mudpud.blogspot.com) and I became an avid "follower". Hers is chock full of her favorite recipes, tales from the farm, and - best of all - a smattering of her special brand of humor.


So, for what it's worth, I decided to create my own blog page, Gumbeaux13. In the long run I believe this will be more for my amusement than for anybody else's, but if others happen to enjoy reading what I have to say, so be it.


Who knows what will be forthcoming from this page - I honestly have no idea at this point. From time to time I'll just check the refrigerator and cupboards of my mind and mix up my own special brand of Gumbeaux!


See you soon....