Great Start to the New Year

Our New Year started out in a positive direction. New Years day which is also Amy's Birthday found us enjoying a great family holiday meal and celebration. We were surprised that there were gifts involved! We expected a very small holiday but in fact Me, Amy and the boys were totally spoiled.
Josh and Amy went up earlier in the day to begin cooking. This was the first holiday dinner that either of them has ever cooked. Josh was in control of the ham and turkey, Amy was in control of vegetables and my mom was in control of desserts. Carrie always has control of the deviled eggs because nobody can make that as good as she can.
Amy spent the fall knitting socks for both my Mom and Carrie and she also made a magic ball of yarn for my mom. My mom also loves to knit and crochet. This ball of yarn includes little gifts within that my mom will find as she creates her next project using the yarn. We managed to find a coffee maker for Josh and bought him a pound of coffee and once we found out what my sister had in store for Donnie, Amy and Josh went out and got him something that would add to his enjoyment.
I was the only one with the camera so you don't get to see me and Amy opening gifts but we were spoiled. My mom gave us a heated mattress pad which was so desperately needed and matching fleece PJ's also needed and very welcome. My sister bought each of us a shirt and pant set along with slippers and everyone got a Starbucks gift card. We got an extra treat of fancy cocoa. The boys spent the night with my Mom and Sis and Amy and I went on home to enjoy a nice quiet evening in a warm cozy bed with our new PJ's sipping on luxury cocoa...beautiful ending to the first day of 2010
Here is the day in pictures:

Helping Hands Holiday Charity Benefit

Amy and I took part in the Holiday Run for Helping hands.  She didn't get the day off as we had hoped but the run was set to start at 1 PM and she didn't need to be into work till 2 PM so we hoped we could do the run and get her back in time to go to work.  We have only missed one Helping Hands run and that was the year I didn't have a wheelchair or a scooter and was seriously limited in mobility  I am able to get around now and we sure didn't want to miss one that helps children who have been abused or neglected.

Here are a few pics from that run:














Here is the article from the local newspaper

Annual Toy Run at Helping Hands makes children's Christmas brighter

As the bikes rode in and the children began to see the toys and teddy bears attached to the bikes, their eyes lit up with joy. The sight of hundreds of bikes, while overwhelming, brought such excitement.

As each biker parked their bike, they gathered their gifts and made a steady stream into Helping Hands, leaving their gifts on a table. Each wore a smile knowing they were making a child's holiday a little brighter.

"It is really great to see so many people show up even when things are really hard," said Director of Helping Hands Carmen Landy. "It is really awesome. We are blessed to see them over and over; they don't stop coming no matter how tough things get with the economy. Today is a remarkable turnout, and everybody's spirits are so high."

Landy thanked everyone who has supported Helping Hands over the past year and invites anybody who is interested in adopting a child for Christmas to give her a call at 648-3456.

"We get new children all the way up until Christmas Day," said Landy.

Helping Hands is a United Way agency that provides 24-hour residential care to child victims of abuse, abandonment or neglect. Residents' ages range from birth to 21 years old.

For more information about Dixie Thunder of Aiken ABATE, visit www.dixiethunderaiken.com.

Contact Rachel Johnson at rjohnson@aikenstandard.com.

Original Article is here-->>http://www.aikenstandard.com/results/1206Toy

Well, we are still thankful...

Well at the last minute (Last Night) my mom called to say my sister just got in from Charlotte where she has been away on business. Finding out that Amy was actually going to be home this year for Thanksgiving My sister didn't want to just cancel and reschedule thanksgiving like we had planned. She decided she wanted to drive down here and take us out to a buffet dinner for the holiday since it's rare that Amy is home on a holiday....so we made the plan to go out, everyone got in to bed a bit early. My son wakes me up saying he was sick to stomach. Because he has some serious social anxiety problems and rarely leaves the house we considered nerves, gave him some belly stuff and waited a bit...still sick and had evidence to prove it. So..we arranged for someone to be here with him and Amy and I would go out to dinner with everyone. Don't worry...I wasn't leaving a young child.  My oldest son is a handicapped adult and with another adult nearby to help out he's perfectly okay to be left with a minor ailment...just didn't want anyone reading this to think I was leaving a sick little one at home.

We knew we needed some slime/fix-a-flat because Amy came home from work saying the tire was bad.  ThenI told her that sucks because my sister was coming down to take us out to dinner.  So in the middle of the night we call my sis who was going to bring us some slime tire sealant when she came down.  Amy goes out the truck to get something before taking her shower and the tire was flat, flat...on the rim and you can't use slime that way cuz there is no way to pump the tire. 

 

So...we consider popping off the tire, having my sis come down, we will slime the tire, pump it up at Amy's gas station, bring it back pop it on the truck, check on the kid, if he can't go we will go on to dinner. 

Well..... 

All we had was an old bottle jack for a car we used to have and a scissor jack that goes to the lumina that isn't running anymore...no clue what is wrong with the Lumina this time.  Anyhow we tried the bottle jack and had to put it so far under the truck to hit a flat point that we had to use my crutch to jack it up...it wouldn't go high enough!  Crutch however worked quite well as an emergency jacking tool.

We tried the scissor jack and the truck fell off the jack twice because of the angle we had to get the jack because in this case the jack was too big to fit under the only area that would work as this jack has a lip that is suppose to go into a slot on the Lumina.  The truck has no such slot so we had to find a piece of solid looking metal where the lip would overshoot and not leave an unlevel jacking surface.

So since the scissor is too tall


 

We Get Amy and the Neighbor kid (my youngest son is with my mom and sister 2 hours away) to each use a jack. We will raise the truck high enough with the bottle jack to get the scissor in a better position and hopefully finally jack the truck up. 

Almost there...bottle jack raises the truck, scissor goes in, cranking it up...the side support we used isn't strong enough it bends and drops the truck, gotta bottle jack it up to get the scissor jack unstuck and out of there 

DEFEAT! We don't have a truck jack because the truck didn't come with one and we haven't been able to afford a replacement jack.  The truck is grounded till we can find someone with a truck jack to come up here and get the !@#$% Tire off....so we ate oatmeal for thanksgiving dinner cuz yeah we are at the end of the month and out of food and we were thankful that nobody got their head crushed under the truck when it dropped that last time. 

Joey...my sons friend learned a valuable lesson in how NOT to jack up a truck. Of course we knew this was dangerous, but when you rarely have the right equipment for a job you do what you gotta do and you hope to come out of it with life and limb intact.  Nothing new for us but hell I felt like venting today cuz I really wanted something better than oatmeal!

So now THIS tire which is not the previously slimed tire that blew back in September while hauling floor repair lumber, no this will be my newest tire running on slime hoping to make it till income tax time so we can buy 4 used tires. 

How as your thanksgiving??

New Year Begins

New Year BeginsWe had a very quiet family dinner with my Mom and Sister over the holidays.  While my mom was in Virginia with her sister she and her sis were making beaded bracelets and necklaces and my mom presented us with her hand made gifts for holiday gifts.  She did a wonderful job!  We all sat around after dinner having coffee and watching the "House" marathon.

I wore the new shirt I got from my secret Santa and the new shoes I got from a GON member who granted my wish.  I was thrilled to have a long sleeve shirt to wear and nice warm shoes.  There is no smoking permitted at my sisters house anymore as she quit.  So we have to go out on the porch for smoke breaks.  Those warm shoes came in really handy since her front porch is brick and really cold!

Our new year always begins with Amy's birthday.  Amy turned 32 years
old on Jan 1 this year.

Happy Birthday to my best friend and life partner!!!

We celebrated her birthday with a midnight dinner at Ihop in Aiken SC

My computer gave out on me around the 30th of December and my son hooked me up with his computer.  After we got it all hooked up and I installed the Ubuntu operating system the computer kept shutting off.  Come to find out my last large hard drive was short circuiting.  I moved quickly to transfer all files I could in between shutdowns so that I am now running off two smaller drives.  Hopefully I will get another hard drive sometime in Feb.

I'm glad to be back on the Linux operating system though.  I have always hated MS Windows but wound up going back on windows when my last hard drive blew because the drive I plugged in was too small to do much with.  Since then I had done some computer upgrades for folks and got a few more scrapped drives and was just waiting for the right time to switch OS's well the computer failure presented the perfect time for me.

That is about it for now....not much happening these days.