The Ringls

I was going through my photo’s today, cleaning out all the eyes-half-closed pictures that don’t get deleted when I import large quantities, and came upon a rather good set.

I love browsing through pictures and having a good laugh. Here’s a good and recent example…

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A father’s day celebration with the family. The biggest pro to living close to home is that we are able to get together for celebrations (that, and stealing food from mom & dad’s house)!  ;)

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Dad just couldn’t wait through 2 pictures to dive into that ice cream cake. It was good, so I can understand why.

That, and the lovely “wife swap” we have going on in the background made for a great family snapshot.

Another good party at the Wells house.

Whenever I go shopping I usually spare Stephen the JOY of going with me. The poor boy is usually left at home to his own devices. That meaning he plays video games until I get home and sees it’s dark outside and asks “what time is it?”

While we were visiting the Outlets the other day, walking off our dinner, we wandered to Banana Republic and Stephen pointed out a dress in the display windows and said “If that’s inside I want you to get it”.

Yes, you read that correctly. My husband was telling me to buy clothes. Am I lucky or what?!

After searching around inside we found the dress and I went to try it on. Standing at a whopping 5’1″ I have to try everything on because of how midget’y some clothes can make me look.

Let’s see what the dress looks like, shall we…

no, that’s not me

This is the only picture I could find online. It’s not quite the same because the dress in the AD is long, but the one we found was almost identical other than the length factor…

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yes, that’s me

Don’t you love the grainy and unfocused picture skills of  my phone?!  Ya, me either.

The dress is cute, and Stephen really liked it. However, I had to ask “Where would I wear this?”  I have plenty of dresses at home I’ve worn 1 time to a wedding. Most dresses I own are only worn to weddings. I think we need more date nights…

At the end of the day we went home without the dress. While I know it would have eventually been worn, I know it probably wouldn’t be for a while, and who knows – I could grow by then   I do know that I wouldn’t be using it this weekend at the lake… nope, this is going to be a swimsuit & tanktop filled weekend!

Have a Happy 4th everyone!

I wish I could leave this wet rainy Florida weather and be sitting in the exact same spot I was Saturday afternoon…

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If I had wings I could make it there in under 1 hour…

On occasion Stephen has to visit a different location for work. The company he works for has 3 stores, and yesterday he went to one of their Alabama locations.  On our drive that morning he asked me if I’d like to head over after work and have dinner together and visit the outlet stores. I, of course, said yes!!

After work I plugged in the address and our TomTom led me straight to him {side note: how did we travel before our GPS?!? It’s so incredibly convenient having something show me and tell me where and when to turn!}

After I picked up Stephen he took me to a small local place called Fish River Grill. When you sit down you are given a cup of soup called swamp soup. Both the look AND name made me question dipping my spoon into the greenish substance. Turns out it was really good, it had a mixture of  beans & turnip greens. I have never been a fan of turnip greens, so to eat something that 1) looked like it was taken out of an actual swamp, and 2) had turnip greens it, really took me by surprise with it’s great flavor.

After the soup we received a basket full of fries and our burgers…

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Hurricane Burger
(can feed a family of 4)

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The Swamp Burger
(smaller, but still more than enough for 2 people)

Being in Alabama I should know better than to be surprised by the amount of food you get for 1 entrée. Stephen’s burger was about the size of my hand, and sooo thick. It was crazy. My own burger was huge (but thankfully a good size smaller).

We were even more pleased when the waitress came up and told us we get a free cozy for ordering burgers. We happily accepted and chose 1 for each of us.

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Stephen chose the Camo to “complete the Alabama experience”.

While there we talked to the owner for a bit and she was telling us how she under-predicted the oil spill effect on their place. If people aren’t coming to the beaches, they aren’t coming to the outlets, and aren’t eating at the local restaurants like this Mom & Pop burger/fish joint. The oil spill is really starting to hit the coast, so hopefully we will get some northern winds to whip the oil in a different direction and give the Louisianna, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida coastlines a break.

After dinner we went to the Tanger Outlet to walk around for a while. Driving with a full stomach is anything but enjoyable, so we wanted to walk off that full feeling. It was a good decision!

We made it back to town around 10 last night. I have to say, it was a nice change to my normal Tuesday   I think mini-trips are going to become a new regular thing for us!

This past weekend we were in Biloxi for a family reunion. We had an amazing time and I was able to  see some family that I haven’t seen in 20 years, since the last reunion on the coast!

One wonderful occurrence was that my immediate family was all together in one city at the same time! That is a rare occasion for us these days so I couldn’t help but share the special moment with you:

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We started as 6 and now we are a family of 10!  Gotta love it

I’ve been swamped since we got back, so hopefully I’ll have more  for you soon!

I can say that I am counting down to the 3-day weekend ahead!!  I love the  4th of July! For our family  it’s a time to eat some delicious bbq and relax in the sun with friends and family. That, and a reason to  high-five my brother Jeff and thank him for serving our country and protecting my everyday freedoms.

How do you celebrate?!?

I don’t care who you are or where you live, there are some things that make time stop for a few minutes and seem perfect…

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-Have a great weekend!

p.s. Can you believe that’s a medium? Good thing I didn’t order a Large, and that I’m sharing it!

I went by Habitat for Humanity the other day and spent a lot of time walking around the warehouse and [junk] yard. I have been on the search for a few things lately, like a new mailbox, some flower pots, and old windows. I came across some older windows, but nothing that really caught my eye, and then I saw this fabulous mailbox:

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another shot:

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It would need a little cleaning up, but I thought it was really fun & cute. It’s not your normal mailbox, which I like, and it shoots just a little personality out there for everyone driving by.

After looking at it and wondering if this was the mailbox I’d been waiting for (am I the only one that makes a big deal about such small decisions?!) I looked at the price…

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That red chalk says $40.00  and for some reason I thought that was expensive for a mailbox, so I left it. A few days later I went to a few places to check out mailbox prices (ours is pretty bad looking) and discovered that apparently $40 is not a lot of money for a mailbox. In fact, unless I want some cheap metal or plastic, $40 is a really good deal…

Now I’m just hoping that no one else saw the cute mailbox and it’s still there waiting for me when I go back by there today. Keep your fingers crossed for me, k?!

For the past 2 months the local news have been talking non-stop about the oil spill. I know it’s a horrible situation, and it devastates me that our own “needs” as a civilization lead to something that could cause so much environmental destruction. I have been ignoring the news lately because it’s so upsetting, but it really hit home today.

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My mom & I at the beach 3 weeks ago

My mom loves the beach. She loves the water, the sand, every bit of it. I love going with her because it’s like we’ve jumped back to when I was a kid. We pack some snacks, grab some cold beverages, talk, and if we’re lucky, take a short nap on the sand!  It’s an escape from the everyday wakeup, go to work cycle of life.

Today though, today changed a few things for my happy escapes with mom. Our city thrives off tourism, most of the FL coast does.  The picture above, white clean sand, beautiful clear water, well it doesn’t look like that anymore.

Today, tomorrow, months, or possibly years, that spot now looks like this…

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That beautiful blue sky doesn’t match that scene at all.

The beaches are now closed. My mom and I aren’t able to go out there and spend time together. Actually no, we aren’t allowed to do that anymore.

This oil spill hit home today. I pray that it doesn’t affect as many jobs as predicted. If surf shops are affected, that will put my job at risk. It will put a lot of jobs at risk of disappearing.

So, as much as I’ve been ignoring this situation I literally can’t any longer. I work less than 2 miles from that spot. I see the ocean from my windows at work. I guess it’s time to enjoy that clear and sparkling view while I can.

My sister, Helena, texted me a picture of a recent project she finished.

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She made the cushions and the pillow. Don’t they look amazing? And get this, it’s her first sewing project!!!

She totally motivated me to finally make some pillows for our couch with my leftover headboard fabric. They’ll be blue & free, so seems like a win-win to me

Over the weekend a nasty storm came through and one of these landed outside and fried our modem and router.

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I was kind of mad at first because we were fixing to watch “Dexter” on Netflix and the last thing I wanted to buy was a new router.

Thankfully on Sunday, when we went to visit our dad’s for Father’s Day, Stephen’s dad had a spare router laying around and gifted it to us. That’s $50 we didn’t have to spend. Thanks dad!

We also spent our weekend doing this:

We somehow went through a time-freezing wormhole and stayed up til around 5am Sunday morning trying to complete it. Ya… I still don’t know how that happened.

Thankfully ‘lightning killed our modem’ is covered with our cable company, so we’ll be getting that fixed soon.