Schneiderville: PULL UP A CHAIR, THIS IS A LONG ONE

We have certainly had a very busy first week of June! Jackson started swimming lessons last Monday and he is doing pretty good. He loves the water, but he prefers to play and do what HE wants to do and not what we are supposed to be doing in swim class. Anyway, it's been good for him to be in a "class" situation, I guess. Wesley is in the class, too, so Jackson loves seeing him there. We have it all this week too, from Monday to Thursday. Here are a couple of pictures of the cute little sweathogs.

Mom came into town this past Thursday. She wanted to go see Rick Bragg at his book signing in the Cool Springs area that was scheduled for Thursday night, according to his publisher's Web site. He wrote All Over but the Shoutin' and Ava's Man. This new book is called Prince of Frogtown. After having Jackson miss his swimming class for that night and coaxing Mary Lynn out of her house and picking my aunt Glendora up at a local hotel where she was staying for a seminar, we made our way to the Cool Springs area, leaving early enough so that we would not be late.

Well, with the rush-hour traffic and all, we pulled up right around 6:20 and the signing was at 7:00. Good, we're on time. We look over in the window of Barnes & Noble and there's a sign hanging that says the book signing we were there to be a part of wasn't until Friday night. Ugh. Needless to say, we lost a few people the next night when we went AGAIN. It lasted way too long for me and Jackson, since I couldn't sit in there and listen to the author, which I would have liked to do. Even though I hate to read, I think he's a funny person with a twisted wit. Here are a couple of pictures from the night.

Tom is making serious headway on the playground pad. Hopefully he'll be able to start building it soon. It has been so hot here lately that it has made it hard for him to work on it more than just in the mornings. Anyway, it will be nice when it's done. You can kind of see in this picture how it looks. It's only one side of it because I had my zoom lens on and couldn't get a better picture. You can see how those boards step down on the side there. It has to be like that since our yard is so sloped.

Saturday was the pool party in our subdivision, and even though I loathe tucking myself into a bathing suit, I went. Jackson loved sliding down the water slide with Tom and wanted to do it over and over and over again! I'm taking him tomorrow morning, so I guess I know what I have in store for me, huh? Does he look like a happy boy or what?

We took Buster in Saturday morning to the vet for his yearly shots and we took Barney also because he's having his yearly ear infection that needed to be treated. So Tom, me, Jackson, Buster and Barney piled into the Jeep and went to the vet's office. Mom was here, but Jackson wanted to go with us and the dogs.

Well, if Buster looks unhappy in the below picture, it's because he was told he was obese by the doctor and is now on a diet. He probably thinks we are starving him, because besides it being different food that is diet food, we are giving him half of what we were giving him. Bless his heart. He weighed 71 pounds and the vet said he should weigh 40, but realistically we hope he gets down to 50. Jackson is hugging him in this picture as if to say, it's okay my pot-bellied friend.

And now here are some random pictures of Jackson and Mom. It is so hard to get Jackson to look at the camera, much less smile for it. Those are his Hulk gloves in the last picture that he likes to beat on me and his daddy with, and the dogs if they'll stand still long enough.