Tonight

Ok, so I went to the funeral home tonight. As we pulled in the parking lot, I saw my "half Mom" Tricia getting out of her van. (I call her my half mom because she's the mother of my half-brother Larry,Jr. and half-sister Amy, and I never knew her when she was married to Larry, my biological father.) Amy is in California doing photography for a wedding this weekend, so she's not able to be here. I was surprised to see that Larry, Jr. was with her. For those of you who don't know, Larry used to "rent" a room in the basement of our house, and when he moved out, it was on less than good terms. I hadn't seen or talked to him in months. Tonight was kind of strange for both of us, I think, but we did ok. :)

I got the answers to some of the questions that I had in my last posting.

Papa Wright died from Lung cancer. He had been in remission for a while, but then he fell and I guess the fall woke the cancer up again. He did not look anything like what I was remembering him looking like. The man I remember had a lot of thick, white hair, he was husky and jolly. The guy in the casket had very little hair and was very thin. I'm almost glad that I hadn't seen him looking so different.

Yes, my biological father was there tonight. I spoke to him, and gave him a hug, but otherwise it was as if I didn't even exist. He barely looked at me, and didn't even acknowledge that his grandkids were standing there. I'm convinced that he doesn't remember their names. Sad, huh? The man doesn't know what he's missing with not having Jeremy and Carrie a part of his life. Oh well. Let him have it his way. It's not like I'm really a part of his family anyway, even though I was listed in the obituary. It's ok. I have all I need.

Oh yeah, before I forget... supper tonight was awesome! Everything really did taste as good as it smelled! :)

Going to bed now... have a good night, all! And Critty... see if you can find any typos this time! I didn't see any. LOL!

C:

Just stuff...

Hello. It's me. Back again. I am sitting here enjoying the coolness and cloudiness of the day. I have my ipod playing through the "over the counter stereo" in the kitchen, and the sound carries perfectly into the living room. I have the ipod on "shuffle" so that I have a wonderfully wide variety of songs to listen to. Right now, Cyndi Lauper is singing, but the song before that was Calling Levi, and before that was Brad Paisley singing about Alcohol. LOL! I never realized that my musical tastes were so varied. There was a time, not too long ago, that I would not listen to any country music. Now I'm enjoying it, as long as it's not too "twangy." Anyway, no matter what song is on, I much prefer to be listening to music over watching tv. There's usually not much on worth watching anyway.



Yesterday is rained. We needed that rain badly! So, thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Fay, our area got almost 3" of the wet stuff. I like rain. I like to go out in it, so JoAnn and I hopped in the truck and went to Walmart. I was trying to teach her some kiddie songs about rain, but she wanted to sing "Jingle Bells" instead. Don't get me wrong... I'm all for singing Christmas songs all year long, but a 4 year old's version is a little different than I was wanting to hear yesterday. Oh well. We had fun in the rain even though she wouldn't let me teach her any songs about the rain. :)



I have to go to the funeral home tonight. My biological father's step-dad, Papa Wright, died Tuesday. I'm ashamed to say that I don't even know how he died. The newspaper said that he died in a local nursing home, and it also mentioned that if one were to give a memorial contribution, to please consider the American Cancer Society or the choir fund for his church. I'm taking that to mean that he had some form of cancer. Very sad. And sadder still is that I was not very close to this man. I hadn't seen him for a while... maybe a year or so, but he looked great when I saw him last. I wish I'd been a better granddaughter to him. I loved him though, and I know he's in a much better place.

My paternal grandmother, Papa Wright's wife, also died of cancer. I was not close to her either. Part of this is because Larry, my biological father, is a deadbeat. He was not a part of my life when I was a child. He gave up his rights to me and allowed another man to adopt me when my mom re-married. I didn't see Larry at all from the time I was 2 years old, until I was 22. We had very limited and sporadic contact for the next decade or so, and now he does not contact me or my sister at all, and only talks to our brother once in a blue moon. I don't know if Larry will be at the funeral home tonight or not. I don't know if I want to see him or not. After all, I have a great dad now. Someone who treats me like I'm his own flesh-and-blood daughter. That's something that Larry never did. John Boyles is the person that I would have chosen to be my dad had I had the chance. :)

Anyway, I'm cooking supper for mom and dad tonight, and then we'll all go to the funeral home together. I'm cooking a pork tenderloin, macaroni and cheese, and green beans. Mom said that she would bring some fried apples and rolls. Mmmm. Sounds yummy! I hope it tastes as good as it sounds!

Well, duty calls... I'll be back later! Have a great day y'all!

C:

Back in the swing of things....

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life." That's what I told Jeremy this morning, as I woke him up at the very early time of 6:45 AM! I'm not sure that he heard me, because if you know Jeremy, you know that he is not a morning person at all, and he doesn't often comprehend what people are saying to him until he's been up and at 'em for a few minutes at least. (he gets that from me!) Carrie, on the other hand, was up and eating breakfast before Jeremy was even in the shower.

Why did I have to wake them up so early today? Because neither of them set their alarms for the right time, and today is the first day of school... Jeremy's first day of his last year of Middle school... Carrie's first day of her last year of Elementary school... gosh, where did the years go? It seems like just yesterday I was putting Jeremy on the school bus for Kindergarten. Now he's in 8th grade! And Carrie's in 5th grade! No fair! My babies are growing up.

I was looking around for some pictures and I came across some the ones of Jeremy and Carrie's first day of school. My how they've grown!

kindergarten and preschool

kindergarten and 3rd grade

5th and 8th grades

It's amazing that I only have 4 more years to take pictures of the two of them together on the first day of school. Then only 3 more years with pictures of just Carrie... Nah, I don't wanna think about that!

Anyway, now that school has started, things might start to get back to normal. That means homework, ball practices and games, the phone ringing off the hook for Carrie, early mornings, late nights... but hey, that's life. They're only kids once, and they won't be home forever. I might as well enjoy it while I can. In the meantime, I'll stay busy, and will keep praying that they'll grow up to be awesome grownups, because they're already awesome kids! I love you, Jeremy! I love you, Carrie!

C:

Wedding bells were a' ringin'

Well, I am now somebody's Mother-in-law. Sort of. This weekend was my step-daughter's wedding, which means that my step-daughter's new husband is my step-son-in-law. Since I think of Morgan as my own daughter, that means that Nicholas is my son-in-law. I love it!

The wedding was beautiful! It was held in the chapel at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, NC. That's where Christy L and I went to college, 20 years ago. Since GWU is in between Lynchburg and Dallas GA (where Nick lives), we decided that the chapel would be the perfect spot for the wedding. That way everyone would only have to travel 4 hours instead of one group having to travel all 8 hours to get to the wedding. We didn't realize that the date that Morgan and Nick had chosen was Orientation weekend for the new freshmen at the college! Anyway, it turned out that the chapel was the perfect size for the wedding. There were 62 people there, including the bride and groom. After the ceremony, everyone went out to Golden Corral for a "reception dinner."

Here are some pictures of the beautiful bride and her wedding day!

getting in the dress

putting on the garter

getting beautiful with Aunt Rhonda and SIL Christina

Peekaboo Morgan

so pretty
Morgan and Daddy
Nervous Nick
the ceremony
the kiss
Mr. and Mrs. Brown

our family

Our new kitty

Meet Tucker, the newest member of our family!

This past weekend was a big one for us, with Morgan's wedding and all. While we were in NC staying with our friends Christy and Richard, we sort of adopted a new kitten. One of their neighbors had dropped the kitty off at their house thinking that he was Tanger, Christy and Richard's cat. Now you have to understand that Tanger is a big boy kitty, MUCH bigger than this little ball of fluff who looks like he might be around 3-4 months old. Since Christy and Richard already have 2 kitties, we (the 2 Christy's especially) plotted to let the new kitten come home to Virginia with us. We gave him a name, Tucker, which is short for Currituck, one of the lighthouses in the Outer Banks.

Ricky was not for this idea. He is not really a cat person and is allergic to just about everything, including cats. I think he knew that he really didn't stand a chance though, because all of us wanted to bring Tucker home with us. We won, and Tucker is now a member of the Burns family. :)

Tucker loves to play!

Tucker playing with his Seagull

Tucker in his kitty cube

Jeremy and Tucker

All "Tucker-ed" out!

Welcome to my Blog!

Well, I figured that it was about time for me to join the world of Blog. I tried using MySpace for a while, but I just didn't like it for some reason. A friend of mine uses this blog site, and I like the simplicity and ease of it, so here I am.

I hope you will enjoy these glimpses into the life of the Burns family!

Christy C: