Its been a long time...

I see I haven't posted anything since October. It doesn't feel like its been that long, but I guess the time got away from me.

Around the same time as my last post, my mom got very ill. She had an emergency appendectimy and had some complications from the surgery. After being in and out of the hospital three times with a bacterial infection, collapsed lung, blood clot, and allergic reactions to the pain medication, mom was on her way to recovery. She is much better now and has been smoke-free since her surgery! I'm proud of her for that and for how strong she was dealing with all of the complications one after another.

I had started a new job at a local bank in November. It started out ok, but I quickly realized that was not the position for me. In February, I started giving riding lessons at a facility not far from my house. I juggled both the bank and the barn until the end of April when I resigned from my position at the bank. It wasn't that the bank was a bad job exactly. Just that my dream job finally came around and I had to go for it. It was getting too difficult to schedule lessons around my goofy hours at the bank and I didn't want to be loosing students because the bank wanted to schedule me 5 days a week for 4 hours each shift. That kind of shift just wasn't productive for me.

The lessons have really taken off. I'm thankful to finally be doing something I've always wanted to do.

Tony is still waiting for word on a start date for the Police Academy. We hear rummors for next month, then we hear rummors it may not be until the Fall of this year. I feel bad for him, I know how frustrating it must be just waiting for that stupid letter. Its almost as bad as when he was in the Marines and we would just sit around waiting for word, which of course, was always last minute.

This February we got dumped with snow. More snow than I had ever seen in my lifetime. I wanted to blog about it, but I spent three days straight shoveling the driveway, the cars, sidewalks, a spot for the dog to do her business, an area for the mail truck to pull over to get to our box, and even a large area in the pasture for my cooped up horses! My mom and dad had gone to Flordia for a business convention of my dad's. They missed all the fun! It was actually fun when it was snowing giant flakes the size of quarters. And it was coming down so quickly, it was unreal. Then in the morning when I got up to feed the horses and was up past my knee to get out to the barn, unbelieveable! It was beautiful but awfully heavy to shovel. I had to use the wheelbarrow to take snow away because the piles from shoveling were well over Tony's head and we were running out of room.

After about five other guys with plows on their trucks zoomed down the road watching us struggle with all the snow. A nice man drove by, stopped, backed up, and asked us if we wanted a hand. The picture is below, it took him about 3 minutes to do the driveway. We had been working on it for 3 hours and only made a tiny dent in it. Thank you to that kind stranger!

Tony and I took a trip to Tampa over Mother's Day weekend. I hadn't been down in almost two years. And his sister-in-law was having a baby shower for their second baby--a little boy. It was a nice get-away. Usually the heat does me in for. But either it wasn't that bad there, or I'm getting adjusted to the heat from my long days outside riding or instructing. So we had nice weather. I finally got to Clearwater and I loved it. The water is exactly as the name describes, clear! The sand was white and it wasn't too crowded. I really enjoyed my two trips to Clearwater.

Maggie just had the baby this past Wednesday. A healthy baby boy, named after his father, Louie. Their oldest daughter, Ava (my flowergirl), is five now. I wonder how she will adjust from being the only daughter and granddaughter to sharing the spotlight! I know I was a bit of a monster when my little brother was born. But we get along great now...took about 15 years though!

Thats about it for the updates right now. Hopefully my next post won't be months from now. :)