Saturday, July 25, 2009

My Issues With Grammar

I don't know if it's my training that I had writing papers, or what, but I have serious issues when I hear people use extremely incorrect grammar. I mostly keep it to myself, because I know I don't use perfect grammar all the time, and I tend to type my blog the way I speak. But, I just need to tell everyone about one of my absolute biggest pet peeves when it comes to grammar. It's not anything obvious, but it's something I hear ALL the time. It's the phrase "but yet." "But" and "yet" are redundant! I have the official word from languageandgrammar.com.

When using both but and yet as coordinating conjunctions, you can only use one (otherwise, you’re creating a redundancy).

Use either but or yet when conveying two ideas that are in contrast, thus separating them. Tony Dungy’s family lives in Tampa, but he’s part of a family in Indianapolis or Tony Dungy’s family lives in Tampa, yet he’s part of a family in Indianapolis.


So, there you have it. The phrase "but yet" is wrong, and now you can all feel self conscious whenever you say it in front of me because, yes, I notice every time!




Thursday, July 23, 2009

Weekend Getaway

A couple of weeks ago, we went with my family to a little (or not so little) house up in the metropolis known as Suches, GA (I'm kidding - it is the furthest thing from a metropolis, which made it the perfect getaway spot). It was up in the mountains, so there was a little bit of nausea on the way up and on the way down, but no puking, thank goodness. It was a little touch and go for me on the way home, though. We had a great weekend. The house is right on a little river, so the men did an awful lot of fishing while me and my sisters took the kids tubing. In the information book, it said we all needed to wear life jackets, but we quickly got over that and decided we'd be ok without the bulk. It started off really nice and relaxing, and the information book said the trip would take about an hour. But, the river was a little lower than usual, I guess, so it took us more like 2 hours. We still had fun, but were so relieved when Andy and Jose met us rowing up stream in a canoe. We had all started to wonder if we were ever going to find the house, or if by some chance we started off in the wrong river. So, once they met us, as is the norm when you toss a man into the equation, it all went crazy. The craziness added to the fun, but the kids started moving around and wanting to get in the canoe, and then Andy got out of the canoe and Steph got in it, which displaced Alli, who had been sharing a tube with Steph, and Andy got in a tube to let Steph have his seat in the canoe, and I got out of my tube to hand Evan to Andy, and Drew saw the empty tube, so she jumped in it, and then all of a sudden everyone was carried away by the current and me and Alli were standing there in the river with nothing - no tube, no canoe, no life jackets. Andy kept yelling, "I'm coming back for you honey," but the current actually picked up at that point, and there wasn't much he could do on his belly in a tube. So, we walked back, which proved interesting because the river bed is extremely rocky and in some places it was up to my knees and 2 feet later it was up to my chest. I ended up laughing through most of it, but Alli was not pleased.




That night, Steph and Jose brought out some fireworks that they had leftover from 4th of July or New Year's or something, so we started a nice fire and played with the fireworks, and of course, where there's Jose there are neat pictures. Here's one I thought was especially precious.

So, here comes the typical Clark family disaster that seems to accompany everything we do. Drew, being the active child she has always been, incurred another black eye. The first really severe one she ever got was when she was around 2 years old. She fell and hit her eyebrow on the base of the rocking chair, which cause a massive knot on her head, and a pretty good black eye, which peaked right on Easter Sunday, and to this day, she has a little place where her eyebrow doesn't grow. One the Friday night that we arrived in Suches, me and her and Andy were out in the yard throwing the softball, and Andy decided to toss one way up in the air for me to try to catch. Well, in my adulthood, I have been hit with a softball enough in my life to know that if I'm not going to catch it, I better get out of the way. It doesn't make for the greatest softball player, but it helps me avoid injuries, which is more important to me now than catching the ball. Well, Drew is just a better softball player than I am at this point, and she knows how to get right under the ball to catch it. So, when I missed and Andy laughed at me, she asked him to throw one in the air for her to try to catch. So, he did. She did an excellent job of getting right under it. Unfortunately, she didn't quite get her glove in the right spot and the ball hit her square on the cheek bone right under her eye. It was pretty traumatizing for us all. She SCREAMED, and Andy got to her before I did and saw that it immediately swelled up and buried her face in his shoulder to hide it from me so he could prepare me for how bad it was, which really just freaked me out more. I am SO not an overreactor. My kids get cut, and my response is usually, "It'll make a scab, you'll be fine." But, when I saw her face, I almost cried. To avoid traumatizing her any worse, I turned and ran in the house to get an ice pack and get myself under control a little. It was definitely the worst black eye I have ever seen not in a movie. It busted the blood vessels in her eye on the left side of the iris, which made her look really freaky. It was so swollen on that side that if you didn't look at the right side of her face you wouldn't recognize her. But, it's mostly healed now, except for a just a little bruising and some broken blood vessels. Other than that, the weekend was really nice! :)

Friday, July 10, 2009

Fun With June Bugs

When Andy was a kid, he used to tie a string to the feet of a june bug and fly them around like a kite, so he's now passed that tradition on to Evan. Here's a little video of them.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

4th of July 2009

Last night we went with my side of the family to see fireworks at this neighborhood called Sterling on the Lake. It's one of those huge subdivisions that they're trying to turn into its own little community, so they have all kinds of events, like free concerts and stuff. It's just down the road from my parents' subdivision, so we went down there and took a picnic dinner and watched the fireworks. Fortunately for us, Jose was there to take all kinds of awesome pictures. In all of these, he used the flash to take the picture in the dark, and then left the shutter open to capture light afterwards, and he has all these different colored flashlights, so we did some neat stuff with them. Just to further explain, because I can be a little slow on these things, the flash captures the image, and then leaving the shutter open only captures light after that, so you can dance around in the background with the flashlight, and all the camera captures is what the light did. Here are a few of what we did with the kids: And, of course, what would a 4th of July post be without pictures of fireworks? Again, Jose took the picture with the flash and left the shutter open to capture the fireworks, which made for great pictures!

Garbage Pail Kids

Does anyone else feel like you're responsible for the majority of the problems with today's landfills, or is it just me? I just loaded all of our garbage in the back of Andy's truck and all I have to say is, wow.