Avenue Q Tickets on Sale in Houston

Order now through October 12th for Avenue Q at Hobby Center in Houston.

This is currently the only Texas stop scheduled for this show.

Performance dates are:

Thursday, November 1st at 8pm
Saturday, November 3rd at 2pm
Sunday, November 4th at 7:30pm

Take advantage of a special Student/Educator discount on select price levels until the deadline of Friday October 12th. Variety of seating/pricing options.

Show description:

Avenue Q is Broadway's smash-hit 2004 Tony Award winner for BEST MUSICAL, BEST SCORE, and BEST BOOK. A hilarious show full of heart and hummable tunes, Avenue Q is about trying to make it in NYC with big dreams and a tiny bank account. Called "one of the funniest show you're ever likely to see" by Entertainment Weekly, AVENUE Q features a cast of people and puppets who tell the story in a smart, risque and downright entertaining way. The New Yorker calls it "SUBVERSIVE and UPROARIOUS!"

Order your tickets by logging on to:
http://www.broadwayacrossamerica.com/groupsales
and enter your special password:
Homeschool

DISCLAIMER: This show is not for everyone. Who is AVENUE Q appropriate for? Adults love AVENUE Q, but they seem a little, er, fuzzy on whether it's appropriate for kids. Avenue Q is good for teenagers because it's about real life. This show is not appropriate for young children because AVENUE Q addresses mature themes including drinking and sex. It's hard to say what exact age is right to see AVENUE Q- parents should use their own discretion based on maturity level of their children. But, we promise you this - if you DO bring your teenagers, they'll think you're really cool! Also, if you are easily offended by satire or adult themes, this is not a show for you.

Feel free to pass this info on to friends and family. You do not have to be a homeschooler to purchase these tickets.

When it Raynes it pours!

What's the old adage? Computers can't live with them, can't live without them! In this day and age we've come to depend on technology so much that if we didn't have our cell phones, blackberries, computers, ipods, we would probably just curl up in a ball, rock back and forth and whimper.

The past couple of days have been wreaking havoc on my business life. If it were something I did, that would be one thing, but I didn't do anything! It seems that the people of Go Daddy decided to switch their servers around and my website happened to be on one of those servers. But did my website get switched? Apparently not. Imagine my surprise when I was checking several sites that my images are on and they weren't there!! Hmmmm....then I began noticing that the last email I received was at 3pm that afternoon! It was now 10pm! I decided to check my home page and POOF! It was gone. All of my other websites seemed to be working. DSL modem working. Rebooted the computer, all working.

Call GoDaddy. Hmmm...looks like your DNS is pointing to a server that doesn't exist! Oh, well that doesn't bode well, now does it! Here, click this button, choose this server and you'll be good to go in the next 5 minutes to 24 hours!!

Well, 24 hours later and still nothing is working. Call the good people of GoDaddy back and now they've upped the wait time! It's no longer a 5min - 24hour wait before they'll do anything, it's now a 24hour - 48 hour wait!! I'm sure if I was Danica Patrick, they would be stumbling over themselves to get her site up. But, it's just me. A customer who's been with them the past 7 years and really, that doesn't count for much!! Plus, I don't drive a race car or look like her! :)

So, I sit and wait and ponder about the good ole days when we wrote letters, worked out of file cabinets and talked to people on the telephone and whimper!

SquirrelyMan!

About 4 weeks ago we became parents yet again! You'd think we were tired of boys, but no, not in this household. We didn't plan on adopting, but he kind of dropped in our laps and after taking one look at him we just couldn't say no. Rayne actually found him lying there helpless without a mother and when she showed up with this poor baby in her arms, we just couldn't say no.

How could you pass up a little boy that looks so cute as this?

This was taken when he was about 4 weeks old. When Rayne brought him home, he was still pink and no fur on him! Without having a clue on what to do, we knew to go to the internet! There we found The Squirrel Board and with their help we gave him warmth, food and shelter (well Priority Boxes do make for good shelter!). Since then, what we thought impossible has happened! He has flourished and grown. When he turned 5 weeks he opened his eyes and found that his mommies looked a little different from him, but he doesn't seem to mind. He's gotten used to the noise in our house, but we're hoping that doesn't affect him when we release him at 12 weeks.

He's now 6 1/2 weeks and is learning the enjoyment of tomatoes!

He's now too big for his Priority Mail box and has been upgraded to a high rise cage! It has tons of amenities and as Rayne puts it, if she were a squirrel, she would love to live in it!! He has a cozy log home with his fur bed and a couple of small fuzzy stuffed animals, one of which the pet store thinks looks like a squirrel. He has ladders to climb, wooden sticks and ropes to hang off of and wood perches that we got from our own yard! Although he likes to play, for now he seems quite content to still curl up on his fur rug and sleep like most young uns do after eating.

So while we do have our run-ins with snakes and rats, every once in awhile we have fun animals out here too!

Ding Dong the Snake is DEAD!!!

Rats, chickens, dogs, what else? Well, those who know me have heard the story of Cocoa and the snake!! Seems a couple of months ago a snake with about a 1" fang span decided it wanted to have my dog for lunch!! Of course, me, not even thinking snake bite, thought he had gotten stung by a bee!! The poor dog all day had his little paw swollen until he looked like he was going to be a big dog when he grew up!! It wasn't until that evening when he rolled over and his entire leg and chest had gone black that we realized it was a snake bite and not a bee sting! Luckily, Cocoa survived as I had been giving him Benadryl all day and then all the "happy" drugs that the emergency vet gave him! A couple of weeks ago, Tom went around my soap shack and found two snake skins. The first one was slightly bigger than the other and both were longer than I am tall!! I know, not hard to do!

I had thrown down some ceramic eggs thinking that maybe I could trick that ole snake into eating them and killing it. But every day that I looked, those eggs were still there.

I was just thinking the other day that maybe that snake had moved on. The chickens don't really come around here anymore and our rat problem has gone away, so there isn't really a food supply for it.

So, this afternoon as I was heading happily to the soap shack, I had just called Tom on the cell phone and right when he picked it up, the only sound he heard was me whispering.......SNAKE! There on the path, right in front of me was a big snake! It looked about 3 feet long. Tom said, go grab the shovel and chop off it's head! Well, I would but the shovel was in the barn, meaning that I would have to step over the snake to get to the barn. Laughingly, I asked if I could go get the rifle! Heck, I think I did a good job on that rat!! But, Tom said no!! :) I walked slowly towards the snake as it stared at me and made a long arc around the back of it. As I passed it to head towards the barn to get the shovel the snake slithered into a crack in the wall of our well shed. I grabbed the shovel anyway and placed it by the tree cause I wasn't going into the well shed! No telling where that snake was.

When Tom came home this evening he wasn't in the house. Seems he was out in the well shed hunting snakes! He said he opened the door and the snake was under and old desk we had in there. He tried to get it with the shovel, but it was cowering back in the back. He thought he got part of it. After several tries, he grabbed the rifle! At that point, Rayne wanted to watch!! I was in the house but after hearing three gunshots, I went outside! I don't know what it is with several shots and trying to kill varmints, but it just seems one doesn't do it in this household!

When I got to the well shed, Tom had pulled part of the wood out and you see the snake trying to snap at somebody!! Tom had hit it in the middle. We got it pulled out of the shed where it finally died. Apparently, my sense of measurement is quite wrong. After getting the measuring tape out, this guy was a full 5ft 6inches long! A lot bigger than me!!

But now the nasty, dog eating, chicken snake is dead!! Whoo hoo!!! Our yard is safe again. Till next time!! :)

Kids and Playdough!

The fun of summer! The giggling of your child as you sit down to make wonderful crafts together!!! Errr what? Crafts? Uh, nooo. Yes, I am not a crafty person. What, you say? But, you make lovely soaps! Yes, but, to me that is fun and exciting and when I think of crafty, I think of rag rolling, and popsicle sticks and yes, making playdough and slime from scratch. That, is not me!! Luckily, I have a daughter who does like making that kind of thing and she reads directions rather well!! Now, her one flaw is that she does not clean up the mess she makes afterwards!

I was on the phone the other day with my sister and she was attempting to make Playdough from scratch using water and flour. When that became too sticky she started adding cornstarch. Rayne overheard our conversation and whipped out her handy dandy craft book and explained that her aunt was doing it all wrong!! Although it was too late to help her aunt, she took it upon herself to make her own playdough! Into the kitchen she went. Bowls clanging, tops popping, spoons clattering and Wallah!! Playdough!! A huge chunk of yellow dough that she could mold and meld as she wished!! This time she said she did clean up, but this entailed pouring water into the bowls she used and tossing them into the sink. At least the counters were clean!! We're making an improvement!

The next morning as I'm going through the house, I walk into my bedroom and notice on my beautiful duvet, the only thing I really like in my room, that there is something gross, runny and yellow on it!!! I call out to Rayne to find the dog that is sick! I get my duvet cleaned up and find more in the kitchen. I can also hear the dog now and it is our small 5lb Chihuahua that is not feeling well. We toss him outside and get everything else cleaned up.

As I'm sitting in the living room, Rayne comes in and says, "I think I know what happened." It seems her playdough is missing! Yes, the yellow playdough she made the day before!! Apparently, the 5lb dog has eaten the flour, salt, yellow dyed concoction and his body is now letting him know that it didn't like the taste of it! So, he's letting Rayne know this by showing her on my duvet, the floor and as we lean back on the couch, we find he has left us this message there too!!

Ahhhhh, the joys of kids, dogs and Playdough!

Let The Good Times Roll

Last Friday as I was scrolling through a mountain of emails, I came across one from a very good friend of mine whom I've known since 2nd grade! In the email she said, Berta is in town, Meesh happens to be in from Boston, we've contacted Glenda who is on her way in and it wouldn't be the same if all of us weren't here. Can you come on in as well? What fun!! I called up my wonderful husband, checked out what his plans entailed for the weekend, which wasn't much. So, I had a babysitter!!

The next day I headed out for Houston and had a mini reunion with friends I've known since high school! Well, with the exception of Rhonda as mentioned above!

We headed down to the Heights and checked out some of their shops in a very unique way and one that most people don't get to experience! Heights shopping by braille! We had intended to go down during the Yale Art show and White Nights, but it was raining so there wasn't any art out, but the shops were open. We ducked into an antique craft mall and were checking out the interesting things inside when the power went out! No problem, that's what cell phones were for, right? We were able to get out of the glass shop safely without knocking any valuables over. After concluding that the ice cream shop was not the best place to go when the power was out, we went to another shop called Retropolis! What a cool place and even cooler when there are no lights!! It's a vintage shop and it was like playing in grandma's attic!! Now, if we could've only found those go go boots!! We were in there for an hour when the power came back on and then it was a whole new experience when we saw what they really had!! MORE COOL STUFF!! After another hour of running around and playing dress up, we headed out to another friend's house for a barbeque.

I did receive a phone call from Rayne saying that she was getting a ton of restricted calls on her dad's cell phone. I told her not to answer them and to give the phone to her dad. Turns out she was at her cousins house. So, I just told her not to answer the phone. Five minutes later, I get a frantic phone call from her saying that fire trucks, police cars and an ambulance looked like they were heading to our house and she can't get her dad on the phone! I call home and get a busy signal. I wait and call home again and my husband calmly answers the phone. I ask him if anything is going on and he says no. I tell him about the phone call I got and he says didn't happen there, but he did tell her to come home. Another five minutes go by and I get another phone call from my daughter crying because she says that dad is grounding her from his cell phone since she let her cousin use the phone to dial numbers and now he thinks that she may have inadvertantly dialed 911, hence the restricted calls coming in and all the fire trucks, police and ambulances going by! Yes, my family cannot run without me!! :)

Jennifer and Sean welcomed us all into their home for great fun and great food and crack dip! Berta even stayed up past 10pm!! Believe it or not!!

Back to RubinSmo manor we went for more fun and games!

The next day we went to see Berta's mom and also got an unexpected visit from Norman! After having a great lunch at Shanghai River with the gang, I headed home. Upon arrival, my house and famiy were intact and they were very glad to see me!

Thank you Rhonda for inviting me. I had a great time and it was a blast seeing everyone again.

Old Yeller

Yes, you know. The movie about a boy and his dog? Well, Rayne decided she wanted to watch that movie this evening before going to bed. As I was trying to catch up on emails from a fantastic weekend of girlfriends (more on that on another post) she walked into my room to let me know the movie had ended. She's standing behind me to tell me the movie is over. I ask her, "Did you cry at the end?" "No" she says. I'm thinking that's a little odd, but okay she might be a little young for the movie and not apt to give in to emotions quite yet. So, I still type away with my back to her and say. "You mean, you didn't even cry when Old Yeller died?" Then I hear with a quivering voice, "No, but it was a good movie". I whip around and she's standing there with tears in her eyes!!! I laughed!! Yes, I know, bad mom!!! But, I said, "You were crying!!!!" Then she starting laughing and crying at the same time!! I told her that everyone cries at Old Yeller. You aren't human if you don't cry!!! So, now she has me crying cause she's crying and we're both laughing our heads off because we are both crying! I give her a big hug and kiss and then she starts singing the end song. Yes, it was pretty funny and cracked me up that she did get so emotional over the movie and that she also knows that it's okay to cry at sad movies!!! She's going to do great at chick flicks!!!