So we looked into having her take the Megabus from DC to Raleigh/Durham, and then a bus from the station to the hotel. Well the bus stops a couple of blocks away from the hotel, so she could use that for the trip down, but the bus that would return her from the hotel back to the Megabus station does not run on Sunday, so that would not work. A taxi from the bus station to and from the hotel would be very expensive, and since she has never been there before I am a little bit concerned about her being stranded someplace. Another concern is how many suitcases is she going to need to take with her; we don’t know yet what clothes she is going to be packing. We need to find out if she needs to pack any formal wear, or just business/casual attire for the entire weekend.

She’s already found a couple of ladies to share the hotel with the nights that she is going to be there, so that is good. I sure hope none of them snore! She is a very light sleeper. And I hope none of them need to sleep with the television on, either, because she never manages to sleep with any kind of flickering light or noise. That reminds me, I’ll tell her to be sure to pack some ear plugs and a sleeping mask to wear.

Our youngest son found out that she needs to go to the convention and that we’re having issues getting her there, so he volunteered to use a hertz coupon to rent a car, splitting the cost with us, and driving her to and from the convention. It turns out that he has a girlfriend that goes to college at Duke University and he wouldn’t mind going down there and visiting with her for the week-end! Problem solved!

How would you feel if your father started to smoke Black and Mild cigars? I was really surprised when we dropped by his house to find him smoking a cigar. I’ve never seen him smoke anything in his life! You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that! He told me that it was a gift from one of the guys at work, celebrating his new baby boy, and he decided to give it a try. Right about then Mom came home and chased him out of the house, telling him that she would not allow anyone to smoke anything in the house and she didn’t care WHO he was! Then she ran around the house waving a kitchen towel around, turning on the exhaust fans and opening the windows to get the smoke out of the house. Our dog Spooky, excited by all of the action and noise chased her around the house barking like crazy! I laughed until my sides ached!

Knowing how crazy this area gets when it snows a little bit, I was really glad that no one in the family needed to leave the house for anything. Being the weekend, no one had to go to work. So if it has to snow, this was good timing. Of course the school children would have preferred to have a snow day from school, but the parents are relieved that they don’t have to scramble to get back-up babysitters for the snow day. Thank you Jack Frost, for the weekend timing of the storm.

We have been calling the local pound every day. Been combing the neighborhood several times a day, knocking on doors asking everyone we see on the streets, not a word from anyone. We even did some Lost Dog flyer printing efforts, had over 50 Color Copies of this flyers printed using SuperFinePrinting and we spent a whole afternoon tacking them up all over and showing to whom ever we came into contact with. Still no word.

With each passing day, the odds are greater that Bilbo won’t be returning home, but there is always a chance. We have been hearing some very heart warming stories as of late about some pets traveling major distances, some taking years to get back home. We will keep hoping for our miracle story to develop and keep trudging along.

We do have one niece that doesn’t seem to base her life around these popular video games and she has asked for more sensible gifts (at least in our eyes) she wants some new clothes, some children’s books and a new puppy. Since we don’t think her parents would be too pleased with a brand new puppy arriving on Christmas morning we have decided to try and find the books that she has requested as well as finding her some nice clothes for kids her age that we feel would be appropriate for her age, which just might be a challenge in today’s very liberal society.

When I was expecting our first child, I subscribed to a lot of magazines dedicated to helping parents learn to be good parents. I was really glad that we live in the day and age when so much good advice is so readily available on such an important subject. I remember when my younger brothers were born my parents were reading a book on parenting, and from what I understand it was written by a pediatrician, Doctor Benjamin Spock. I remember reading that when I was pregnant and was rather surprised at the advice that was given; much of that has changed in our generation!

Many of the articles were actually giving advice to the expecting parents about starting to plan out how they were paying for college. Although I still had my baby in my belly, I did read those articles with much interest.  Right about that same time, the personal computer business was just beginning. The option to perform an online scholarship search back then was not available, but by the time my children WERE old enough to be going to college, the Internet was up and running.

Many hours were spent online trying to find grants and scholarships when the time came. The Internet has opened up so many opportunities to the consumer, businessperson, and student. This truly is a remarkable age.

When my parents took the family on one of their “we’ve just bought ourselves an RV” trips, we went to some kind of group outing. I guess it was an RV club that they joined. All I remember about it is being bored out of my mind, all of the RVs parked close together in a camp ground and going to a pot luck dinner (we took Swanson’s frozen macaroni and cheese) and then playing a couple of rounds of Bingo. I was very upset because I won the Bingo game where the prize was a curt trailer hitch, and I had no use for one of those! My parents were thrilled, but they didn’t give me anything for it, they just took it from me. I guess maybe that’s why I am not a Bingo fan! Win a dumb prize and have it taken away, why would anyone want to play a game like that!

Our youngest son has recently announced his sudden desire to further his education and become an engineer. This is something that he was totally against just two years ago. And guess who he is looking to for financial assistance, guess you don’t even need three guesses on that one. Now as much as I’d love to just fork over the big bucks that it will take for him to become this engineer, we are going to need to start looking for financial aid information, scholarships and grants for engineers to take care of as much of the cost as possible.

The Internet will come into play big time with this adventure. It really saved us a lot of time, hassle, work and guessing when we were researching physical therapy student grants for his sister a few years back. The wife is a whiz at this type of research and I’m hoping that she can work her magic and make this a reality for our family’s future civil engineer. Every family needs one!

Tree sap is not something that will simply wash off when I take the car to the automated car washing service. And the trees in our yard that my son parks the car under drip a lot of tree sap. My wife suggested that I put something else in that area to block it off so no one can park there – maybe plant a shade garden there. I’d rather put up a “no parking” sign, but I don’t think will help very much!

Having directtv at home has been good and bad for us – it’s great because we get all the game channels and I finally get to watch all the BRAVOshows all the women at my office talk about. It’s bad because it’s really torn us apart and made us all be in separate rooms all the time and that’s not really what I want for my family. I decided last week that I was going to institute a family movie night where we all had to watch the same movie together after dinner (the first week chosen by me, of course) but then we’d alternate who got to pick. My kids were actually really excited about it and have already been looking online to see which movies are playing next week when it’s their turn to pick! I know it’s only half the battle and we’re still watching TV but just getting my family to sit down in the same room is a really great start. I’m trying to hold this digital family together!

My best bud’s kids have been wearing these school uniforms for three years now, which is just about enough time to get a good picture of how their policy has been working. And since they have continued to wear these school uniforms for three years it doesn’t look like any changing of this new policy will be in order any time soon.

I have found an interesting website at Lydia.articlealley.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-school-uniforms-2189616.html that has been a interesting read. If you have a need or want to learn more about the issue of school uniforms it would be a great place to stop by.