Birthday cake and cheer competition

This goes under the "better late than never" tab:

Sunday, January 16, was my eldest grand daughter, Kennedy's, 8th birthday.  She also had a Cheer Competition on Sunday, the only one in the San Diego area, and I had planned to attend.  It was in the arena at San Diego State University.  My kids were out of town, so I met up with Kennedy and her teammates at the arena that morning.  Kennedy had a sleepover with a teammate, and the friend's mom did Kennedy's make-up and hair and got her into her uniform and drove them down earlier that morning.  (It's quite a process!)

It was a great performance - everyone on Kennedy's team did a great job, no falls or flubs. 

Kennedy is the little cutie with the blond pony tail, back left.

 Kennedy on the left.  She smiled throughout the entire routine.  So cute. 

The poor girl being raised up is really getting manhandled, but they did it!

 The Finale!  Cheers and Applause!

Aren't they just the cutest little things?  Kennedy turned 8 on this day, and I'd guess the rest of the girls are around the same age.

And here she is - their second First Place Trophy. This is the trophy that will be in the display case where they have their cheer/gymnastic classes.  All the participants got a white participant ribbon, and the winners got a pin.

All the participants also got a "goodie bag," similar to what they give you at 5Ks, etc.  It was funny when these younger girls were opening theirs:  I think they got a headband, probably some foodie type things, then one by one they pulled out a "woman's" deodorant.  They were all saying, What's this?, turning it over, then reading it.  Kind of embarrassing for some of them.  I thought it was kind of funny. One of "those" moments. There were lots of older teams, too, and I'm sure they were the teams being targeted by the manufacturer.

There was also a team of handicapped kids - they were in wheelchairs, on crutches, in walkers, blind, deaf, mentally challenged, etc.  Each team member had a spotter helping them depending on their needs.  It was the coolest thing to see, they did a fantastic job, and you can imagine the applause when they finished.  Still brings tears to my eyes thinking about it.  They also won a First Place Trophy, and it was definitely earned.

After the awards ceremony, we drove back to my house to bake Kennedy's birthday cake.  For the first time she made the entire cake - read the directions, helped me fill the measuring cup with the water and oil, cracked the eggs, etc. 

 Pouring in the eggs.

Kennedy even handled the mixer for the first time, but I helped her keep it steady.

 Pouring cake batter into the baking pan.

I have a new frying pan that can be put in the oven, and we decided to try it out with our cake, so we made a large one-layer cake, an upside-down-cake, but with chocolate batter.

 

I had some white frosting, so we divided it into three and made pink, purple and blue frosting with food coloring drops.  Believe me, this cake was a creation entirely out of an 8-year-old's creative brain!  She made three circles, one of each color, outside, middle and inside.
 

Then Kennedy used the "writing" frosting tubes I keep in the cupboard for these events.  First circles outlining the inside two colors, then four purple dots on the pink, and finally her initials in the center:

OMG!  What a beautiful cake!

All kinds of sprinkles later, with "princess" sugar decorations and candles, and we're done.    We put it in the back of the car to take home with her, and headed out to Hometown Buffet, Kennedy's choice for our Birthday Dinner Out.

 Birthday Girl with her Dinner

Poor Kennedy, her parents were out of town all weekend, and she had a sleepover for two nights, Friday and Saturday, then the Cheer Competition and coming to my house for our birthday celebration together.  She was so tired at dinner, I'm surprised she stayed awake, but she was asleep in the car on the way to her house.   A really fun day from beginning to end.

Have a great Thursday evening from Me and My Dog, Katie! :)

Virus is gone, this and that

WELCOME to our new followers, Keven and Ruth (and Whiskey) who are full-timers, and are in Mexico. They've been blogging since 2008. Thank you both for signing on to follow me and my dog, Katie as we make our preparations to full-time in our yet-to-be purchased Class C RV.

WELCOME also to Aracelis - it doesn't look like you have a blog, so I can't show it here. But I appreciate you coming on board to follow us on our future RVing adventures. Hopefully it won't be long before we're on the road.

I have my laptop back and everything is working fine. Thank goodness! Thank you for your comments, too. They were helpful. I DID change my AOL e-mail password, which was suggested by Susan and also by Tim, our IT man at work. He said to do it immediately, so I changed it before he took my laptop with him to his shop.

I had to laugh, I had a comment from The Midlife Cruizer that looked weird - she explained in her message that two keys on her keyboard weren't working. Can you imagine typing without a T or a Y? I could easily read it, though, and it made me laugh. Check out her blog and you'll see. : )

Rick, it WAS a Trojan - I thought that was a virus, but maybe it's something different?

A couple of people commented about Norton Anti-Virus. I do have a current copy installed, which may have made this episode easier. They are not 100%, new viruses are always floating around trying to get in, but having a good anti-virus is a big help if one DOES get in.

Okay, enough about that subject! 

One thing that was nice about being computerless was that I had an entire evening with no blog reading or writing, no web browsing, computer games, or e-mail.  I spent the evening reading my Kindle, then went to bed, fluffed up a bunch of pillows, got comfortable and continued to read.  I haven't done that in a long time, and it was a nice change.

Thursday I woke up with a bad headache - I don't get many headaches - but I went to work anyway thinking it'd go away.  It did, a little, but then I just didn't feel well.  I think I had the flu, so I packed up and went home.  By late afternoon I was feeling better, thank goodness.

This morning I had the oil changed in my car, filled up the gas tank, and went grocery shopping.  A handyman came over late morning to do some work around the house for two hours, and I got lots of little things fixed that were bugging me and that needed to be done before I lease the condo.

Then the appraiser from my condo insurance policy came by to look at the rain damage to my wall and carpet, took some photos and was on his way.  My HOA is starting work on the damage, the contractor and one of his workers was here yesterday and today checking things out in my bedroom, on the roof, and the outside walls.  They will start the work, I think, on Tuesday.  They are going to put up two plastic barriers from wall to wall with a "zip" (?) passage between the two just in case there is something toxic when they open up the wall.  There was a mold issue with another unit, so they are being very careful. The contractor seems to know what he is doing.

I put together a fabulous fruit salad for my lunch, along with a grilled cheese sandwich.   It had fresh Costco pineapple, super SWEET, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.  They were all really sweet, and I have half left over for tomorrow.  Great salad - it felt like a summer day, the sun was shining and I was eating a fresh fruit salad!

I cleaned out my stuck/clogged shredder, organized some files, did a little cooking, vacuumed, balanced my checkbook, ate my dinner and now I'm done.  It was a busy day, but now my weekend is clear.  I got so much done today, I think being home from work yesterday and doing nothing gave me extra energy today.

Nothing photo worthy to post for the day.  Sunday was my grand daughter's birthday and I attended her cheer competition at San Diego State University.  I'll report on that and have some photos next time.

From Me and My Dog, have a great Friday evening, everyone! : )

Virus - part 2

Afternoon:

Our IT guy, Tim, took my laptop to his shop and will work on it for me.  He said I do have a virus, but since I have Norton it may not have "imbedded."  We'll see. 

An e-mail went to one of the woman at work and she clicked on the link in the virus e-mail.  Tim checked her computer and it was okay, so I'm hoping if anyone else did that they will be okay, too.  He checked my work computer also and it was fine. 

We're pretty careful at work about the websites we visit, and I asked Tim if it was okay for me to read blogs on the company computer.  He said they are text documents and are no problem.  If they have a link, though, be careful unless you know where the link goes.

I've tried to contact everyone I knew was sent the phony e-mails, and heard a lot of stories about recent virus attacks, so I guess something is going around that is particularly bad.  Face book goes into your e-mail accounts, too, to reach the e-mails of people you might want to friend.  So that's concerning me now, too.

I was SOOO glad blogs are not a problem and that I won't have to worry about following all of you on your adventures.  Whew!

I think we can assume Tim will kill that virus and everything will be okay.  If there is anything to report I'll let you know. In the meantime, delete any e-mails you get from me in the next couple of days. 

From me and Katie, who has no clue what a computer virus is, have a great Tuesday afternoon! : )

VIRUS?

I received two e-mails at work from my home e-mail account this morning that I DID NOT SEND, and the e-mail had copies to various e-mail addresses from my computer, a couple of them were bloggers who had sent me e-mails.

I also have an e-mail from rveducation101 . com requiring confirmation of my subscription, and also has an opt-out link.  Also one from meetup.com and craigslist.  Something is going on, but I don't know what.  I NEVER click on links from e-mails, but go directly to the website myself by entering their website address.

I am assuming I have a virus that tried to attack my laptop at home.  I don't know where it came from - possibly a computer of a friend or blogger that is infected with a virus.  I have NORTON running on my laptop and I've just run a scan, and it shows that my laptop has no viruses.  It is active and functional and set to scan on a regular basis. 

If you get an e-mail from me:

Barbara De****   sm9****@aol.com

please do not open it or click on the link. Or anyone else.  If you get an e-mail with a link, key in their website address yourself to get to their site - do not follow their link.

I know this has happened before to others who have blogs, I've seen the postings back and forth, but have not been involved before. 

I'm not sure what to do at this point, except to warn you all.  I have e-mailed our IT person here at work to see if he has any ideas, and he e-mailed back that he will check my laptop.  Luckily I brought it to work today, so maybe he will able to check it today.

If I have any information wrong, or if  you have any suggestions, please comment - I'll add your comment to this post. 

I'm sorry if this affects you in any way.  Please be careful, I'll let you know what happens and what I can find out.

Comment moderation, word verification, and blog post labels

WELCOME to Mary Ann and William of  IN THE WIND Adventures of...  Mary Ann and William!  Thank you for following Me and My Dog.  We are hoping to "hit the road" in a year, but that time frame might be changing to a date sooner.  Meanwhile, I am plugging along, taking the steps I need to take to lease my condo, sell my stuff, buy the RV and get started on our Adventures!

Jeana at Four Windows with a view asked about the purpose of moderating comments.  The discussion in her comment section went into word verification use as well.  I don't use them, but after reading Jeana's comment section, I feel newly enlightened.  It seems bloggers use either or both for different reasons that all make sense, and that was interesting.

I don't use my cell phone for comments, I'd rather check Blogger, and I haven't, until lately, had any problems with spam.  The spam I'm getting, about 30 a day, are all caught by Blogger.  Of course, I have to delete them, but that only takes seconds.

I usually go into my Dashboard and read comments from there so I won't miss any. I don't have them e-mailed to me like some bloggers do.

One thing I have noticed, though.  Last week I wasn't as busy as usual at work, and read blog posts and made comments on my work computer.  When I do this at home on my laptop which is fast, I never have any problems leaving comments, typing in the word verification, and hitting the submit button.  It's gone, and I move on. I've never lost a comment.

What I've discovered using my work desktop (I have an OLD one in my office) is that because it's pretty slow, and I move too fast for it, I hit the "back" button or the "X" on the blog tab, and when it's too late, I realize there was a window saying I typed the word wrong or I'll see the word verification too late, and the comment page is gone.  Twice I went back and re-typed a short comment, but I also lost a couple of longer ones that I didn't want to re-type. 

I can imagine this happening a lot when you are in areas with poor signals, etc.  (Another reason to LOVE this laptop while I'm still living in my condo!)  I'm going to have to learn to be sure my comment has been accepted before hitting any keys to move on to another blog.

I've been blogging now since last August, and I keep learning new things about this program.  One is how useful using "labels" is. 

I just started is the Label option. It didn't seem useful when I first started blogging, but there have been a few things lately I wanted to check on that I had posted about, and it took a little while to find them.  If I had used labels, it would have been a snap.

I decided that since I had the time last week, I was going to add labels to my past posts.  There are more than 100 of them, so I decided I'd better do it now rather than later.  I made good progress.  That's one of the reasons I'm putting recipes, favorite photos, etc., on the blog.  I'll always know where to find them.

This is the best filing cabinet I can think of to use when RVing full-time.  As long as my computer is working, and/or backed up I will always be able to find information that I've posted such as RV repair info, camping sites, people I meet, favorite restaurants, whatever.  This might not be the purpose of a blog, but it is sure a nice side-effect.  I'll bet a lot of full-timers use labels to find things in past blogs.  A real space saver!

Katie and I had a quiet Saturday. Just a bit of shopping.  Tomorrow I am going to San Diego State University to see Kennedy, my oldest grand daughter, and her team compete in their cheer competition.  This is the only one close to home, and I wanted to be sure I saw at least one this year. Then she and I are coming back to my house to bake her birthday cake, she's 8 tomorrow, hang out for a while, and go out to dinner at Home Town Buffet.  That's where I took Gavin, her brother, for dinner on his birthday, and she asked if I would take her there on her birthday, too.  So tomorrow will be a busy day. 

Nothing photo worthy today.  Next time.

From Me and My Dog, Katie, have a great Saturday evening, everyone!  : )