It's been awhile...

So it's been almost 4 months since I updated this thing... Now that I know at least ONE person is reading it, I might actually keep up with it a little better.
Okay, here's a summary of what's been going on month by month:
May:
We got out of school and started our summer break.  At the end of May, Poppa was put into the hospital with blood clots in his lungs, and I couldn't go home, because I'd already used all of my sick days when Nannie was in the hospital in November with heart problems and when he was in the hospital in April with his ankle replacement surgery... Let me just say that that sucked!  But he's okay now, and he's been feeling alot better, so he thinks that the blood clots are already dissolved, or at least close to it.  That's about it for May...
June:
Lots of traveling back and forth between Arkansas and Tennessee... I had a few in-service days I had to do in TN, but I tried to spend as much time as possible at home.  I hung out with the boys that I grew up babysitting, and that was SO much fun!  I haven't really been able to spend alot of time with them the last few years, so I was really glad that it worked out that I got to.
I did one of the hardest things I've ever done back in June... I had to make the decision to put my 17 year old dog Sandy to sleep.  I'd had him since I was in the 4th grade, and it was to the point that he was blind, deaf, had no teeth, had arthritis and and when it got to the point that he couldn't walk anymore, Nannie called the vet and asked Joe what we should do.  Joe said to bring Sandy in and he'd check him for us to see if there was anything that could be done, but that we should probably prepare ourselves.  Joe checked him and said that Sandy still had a strong heart, but that the rest of his muscles were shutting down.  We could go ahead and put him to sleep and end his misery, or let him die in the next few weeks, where he'd be suffering the whole time.  We decided to put him down.  I stood there next to him the entire time bawling my eyes out while petting him, telling him how much we loved him, how sorry I was, and what a good dog he'd been for so long.
I know alot of people think it's ridiculous for someone to be so attached to an "animal," but Sandy had become a member of our family.  He had his own personality and he had his ways of communicating what he wanted.  When I was younger, he was the dog that would open my bedroom door during a storm in the middle of the night to come jump into bed with me because he could tell I was scared of storms.  In the wintertime, he always slept in the bed with me because he got cold under Nannie and Poppa's bed.  When the ice storm hit in January of 1999, he slept between my best friend from growing up and I to help keep us warm.  He literally slept on top of me after Ang's parents managed to get into town to church and were able to take her home after almost 4 days.  He LOVED water...  The first time we took him to the lake, he jumped out of the boat as soon as we stopped and were in the middle of the water.  He would jerk me over to the water so he could go swim when we were walking close to it.  We both loved to go swimming.  I had an old body board that I got one year at the beach, and he'd stand up on that in the middle of the water, and let me pull him on it.  He sat in my lap and let me cry into his fur when my grandfather died.  He was the dog that got into the bowl of peppermint while we were at church, and when we came home was running laps around the house because he was so hyper.  When he was a puppy, he liked to get the glass Christmas decorations off the tree and crunch them.  He wouldn't eat them, and somehow it didn't hurt him, but he loved the crunching noise they made when he bit down on them.  He LOVED bread of any kind... If he heard a wrapper in the kitchen, he came running!  Whenever Nannie would go to the store, she'd buy Sandy a loaf of white bread and he knew that he was supposed to get one piece everyday, and sometimes, we'd give him a second one.
I have so many memories of that dog that I could go on for hours, but I'm going to stop there... We ended up burying him out at some of my parents' best friends' house.  They have a farm, and we managed to dig a hole big enough for Sandy down by their pond.  We gathered rocks and stacked them up on top of where he was buried so the wild animals couldn't get him.  We found a big, flat, white rock, and I painted it and turned it into a marker for his grave.  Ugh... That day sucked.
July:
July 3rd was spent with the boys I used to baby-sit... Their parents were going to a concert in Branson, and the boys were wanting to get an early start shooting fireworks off, so they asked me if I'd care to come over so there would be an "adult" there in case something happened.  We blew up so much stuff! lol  The boys' older brother is a huge Star Wars nerd, and when he was younger, he collected all of the Star Wars Legos... When he outgrew them, he gave them to his baby brother, who is now 14... Aaron decided to donate them to the cause and we blew up some storm troopers, R2-D2, Han Solo, and a bunch more... We even blew up Chewy! lol  Yeah, I never put those pictures on Facebook for a reason... The oldest one would come unglued if he knew what we did to his precious Star Wars Legos! lol
The 4th, we went out to David and Barb's house... It was a blast.  I got to help their grandkids shoot off their fireworks, and their grandson is a hoot!  He loved anything that was loud, where his little sister hated anything that made a boom.  They're both really good kids.
Then there was the mission trip with the bunch from Harrison... I was absolutely miserable for the majority of the trip.  The day that I spent mixing cement by hand with a bunch of guys alot younger than me was the absolute highlight of that trip.  All I'll say is that there are a couple people that went on that trip that need to grow up and mind their own business... If you're reading this, you know who you are, and you need to realize that YOU.ARE.IN.COLLEGE.  The little high school drama crap where you have to be rude and hurtful to people who have been nothing but nice to you in order to feel important needs to stop.  That doesn't fly in the real world, and once you get out of the bubble you're living in and into real life, you'll find that out the hard way... And I won't feel sorry for you this time.
Okay, that's all I'm going to say about that trip, because I'll tell the people who need to know, rather than risk them reading it here. 
Mission trip with the group from Knoxville and Virginia... Absolutely AMAZING!  It's funny how much better people that you've just met will treat you versus people that you've known for years and grown up with will.  With the Arkansas group, I felt like an outsider the entire time... With the 2nd group, we were treated like family from the time we met them at the airport and they figured out we were part of their group. :)
That second trip was also the trip where I got to translate for a doctor for the first time.  Think about how complicated medical ENGLISH can be, and how hard some of it is to understand and explain... I was translating that into Spanish! lol  Luckily, I was working with a great doctor who was really sweet and tried to break it down into words that were easily translatable. :)  By the last day, I only had to bother a "real" translator a few times!  I was seriously proud of myself!
So then we came back to the U.S.  We didn't get to do Panama this year, and calling the children's home there to explain why we weren't coming sucked.  I'm going to start saving so that I can for sure go next year.
When we were driving back to Tennessee, I experienced my first blow-out... On a tire that had about 15,000 miles on it.  So I pulled over and got out to look at it.  Nannie was behind me and she pulled over in front of me.  I was calling AAA when a State Trooper pulled up behind me, and Nannie went over to tell him what had happened.  He said that if we wanted him to, he could put my doughnut on for me... So we said yes.  I called and canceled the AAA call, and we started talking to the State Trooper.  It turns out that he has a daughter my age, which explains why he was so nice and didn't care to get dirty to help me.  Seriously, he gave me a hug before he left and told me to be safe. :)
So then we get on our way.  We got to Clinton and stopped at a gas station so I could find a tire place.  It turned out that NO ONE in Clinton had a matching tire for my car...  So I called around Conway... No one there had one either, but there was a guy that said we could call his store in Little Rock and they'd have one brought from the warehouse.  30+ miles on INTERSTATE going 40 mph?  Thanks, but no thanks!  We went to Wal-mart and they had a Goodyear tire that would fit, so that's what I got.  So we got back on the road... About 20 minutes from West Memphis, Nannie's air conditioner went out in her car.  We stopped at Wal-mart to see if they could fix it... They apparently aren't set up to do major work on cars?  Whatever.  So we went to a Goodyear place that they recommended.  It was closing and all the mechanics had already gone home.  We thought the freon was out, so we went to an AutoZone... Turns out a belt had broken, so we bought the belt.  When we took off to find a repair place, Nannie's car wouldn't start.  So we called AAA and they towed us to the only place that was still open at this point... A truck repair place... As in, a SEMI-truck repair place.  They had a mechanic that had worked at a GoodYear type place, and he figured out what was wrong really fast.  The air compressor had locked up, which made the belt break.  We already had the belt, but they needed the compressor... So we went and bought a compressor at some parts place and brought it back.  At this point, it was about 9:15pm.  Nannie and I decided to get a hotel and stay the night in West Memphis rather than drive 2 hours to my house and then have to drive back first thing in the morning.  The next day about 11:15, we were on our way.  We made it to exit 6 on the TN side of I-40, and Nannie called me to say her air had stopped working.  So we turned around and took the car back.  We ended up getting back to Henderson about 6pm, and we had to take her car to a place here to get whatever it was fixed.  It was easy enough, but the truck guys didn't have the stuff to tell what was wrong or something.
August:
School started!  And that's about it...
September:
So far it's been good.  The Razorbacks whipped Tennessee Tech in football on Saturday, and someone gave me the link for a website where I could watch it for free instead of having to pay for a Pay-per-view, so that was pretty great!  Nannie and Poppa came to visit this weekend for Labor Day Weekend, and they ended up giving me my birthday present a few weeks early... A MASSIVE barbecue grill!  WOOOHOOO! :)  I got it yesterday, and I've already used it 3 times!
Learned a good lesson on it when I was cooking lunch today though... Wear shoes when grilling!  I stepped on an ember and burned a hole in my foot.  NOT a fun experience!  It's better now though.

Well, that's about everything... Hopefully I'll update soon! :)