Warren Fairweather Relays~~March 25, 2006

~Misty's {LAST} First Track meet was held Saturday, March 25 {2006} at the Warren Fairweather Relays.
I can't seem to get my pictures to download in the order I wanted, but the FIRST one is Misty smiling "The Winning Smile" after she found out her shuttle team beat the school record! The SECOND is Misty jumping the hurdle just ahead of the Warren girl beside her! After she got over that one, Misty pulled ahead and beat all of them!! {YaY!!} The THIRD one is Misty and her hurdle team practicing before their shuttle relay. {GO MISTY!!!} And the BOTTOM photo is Misty and I joking around before she went on the field to stretch...I am always making such goofy faces when I get my picture taken! {Haha!}

~Here is a quote from The Marietta Times covering the event:

"The highlight of the day for Marietta’s girls team was in the shuttle hurdle relay in which the team of Misty Hart, Laken Adams, Erin Casey and Sophie Wagner set a school record with a time of 1:10.70.
“Laken was filling in for Brandi Robinson at the last minute,” Marietta girls coach Mollie Schramm said. “It was a pleasant surprise because it was below the goal they had set for themselves.”
Each leg was under 18 seconds with Wagner’s being just over 15 seconds, Schramm said.Marietta’s previous school record in the 100-meter shuttle hurdle relay was 1:10.96, set in 2002 by Jacquelane Wirtz, Catlin Whiting, Carrie Hendershot and Kelci Terry."

Yayyy for breaking school records and Yayy for wonderful {LAST} FIRST Track meets!! I hope this one sets the tone for all the rest, but all in all, I think it should prove to be a very rewarding and FUN Track season!!

~HAPPY ST. PADDY'S DAY!!!~

~Sammy says "Hey Kermit, It ain't easy being GREEN so pour me another beer!"!!~ Hehe!! Sammy just loves my Kermit The Frog house slippers for some odd reason! You can tell by the look in his eyes that he is enchanted with them! Humm......maybe he is in love??

Hope everyone remembered to wear GREEN today or risk getting pinched!! I guess we are headed to the Moose with Tink, Heather, Dave & Kim tonight for a little drinking of the GREEN beer, kissing the Blarney and making fools of ourselves!! WooHoo!!
~HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!!~

Headlands Beach, Lake Erie

~A view of the lighthouse with a big ship coming into the harbor taken from the shores of Headland Beach! I love this picture!! Denny and I had such a good time that day swimming, exploring and finding washed up "beach glass" in the pebbled shoreline! We walked almost clear out to the lighthouse to watch a group of teenagers jumping off the rocks into the water which was at least a 20-foot drop! Both of us laughed because we knew that had we been about 15-20 years younger, we would be out there like idiots doing the same thing!! {Haha!} BUT...Age and gravity have long since made us think twice before taking such risks, thankfully.~

~Looking at this picture on this cold, windy day in the "great city of Marie-ghetto", I cannot help but wish to be somewhere else.

~It seems almost everyone I know IS or HAS taken a wonderous adventure to some far off place, but I can never seem to get too far away from this damn town. Somedays I fear that "my time" is running out and I will never get to visit those places that I long to see...just once in my lifetime...Or that IF, by chance, I do get to visit them, I will be too old and tired to really enjoy them the way I would now or 5-10 years ago.{arg.}

~Most of the time I am quite content to take a trek through the woods, play around in Duck Creek or go feed the ducks at Buckeye Park but very often I find myself daydreaming about cruises to the Bahama's, Greek Isles, or Cancun. I would also love to visit The Keys, Belize, the Hondora's, Ireland, Jamaica, Africa, India and a deserted tropical island somewhere...anywhere except the middle of the Ohio River! {Hehe!}

~I guess, for now, "virtual tours" will just have to do, but someday...somehow, I WILL visit these places that seem to intrigue me so much and if I am lucky, I will not be too old!

Grandma Hart<3

~This picture of Grandma Hart, Misty and myself was taken at Keli and Mark's wedding last Fall. You can really see where Misty gets her good looks from! Grandma Hart is 82-years young, has a heart of gold and sense of humor that is quick to make me laugh......especially when she tells "penis jokes" or tries to pronounce "cundums"! Haha!~

Cleaning Up After The Flood of Sept. 2004

These pictures are still kind of hard for me to look at now because I remember how upsetting it was to see all the mess left behind after the flood waters receeded and wonder how we were ever going to get it all cleaned up.

The top picture is our first glimpse of Mom and Dad's garage, all the mud and muck left behind, the horrible smell and all their ruined possesions. That is me standing in the doorway holding my mouth. I was crying most of the time when these first pictures were taken.

The water was probably alittle over 4-foot deep during the flood as you can see by the wet line on the garage wall. Mom had cardboard boxes full of family photos, her and Dad's High School yearbooks, diplomas and many other family treasures setting on the bottom of a shelf in there. They set in floodwater for almost three days and most everything that was in there was ruined. I remember setting up a table in the driveway, going through the soaking wet, mud covered boxes and trying to lay stuff out on the table to dry in the sunshine. Everyone in the condo complex was cleaning up their own messes and piling their ruined possesions in the parking lot to be hauled away....there were lots of tears that day.

Anyone who has never experienced something like this probably has no idea of the many emotions one goes through knowing that the floodwaters are doing their damage and then after they have receeded and actually seeing the destruction.

One thing that sticks in my mind was the little statues of a horse and a woman lying down that Dad had brought back from Europe during the war. They had been stored in the cardboard boxes in the garage and whittled down to almost unrecognizable form by setting in the water for so long. It was hard to hold back the tears as I held them in my hand and remembered playing with them as a young child and hearing the story behind them. It was equally as hard to toss them onto the trash pile knowing that they would never be seen again when the bulldozer came and hauled them away.

The second picture is of the back entrance to Mom and Dad's condo with the waterline visable on the bricks. Inside we found mud at least 4-inches deep and the table which had apparently been floating around in the floodwater for three days.

I remember telling someone during the clean-up that IF this ever happened again I would put up a "For Sale" sign outside of Mom and Dad's condo and just move them somewhere else where they would never have to worry about flooding again, although at the time, the thought of it ever happening again seemed impossible.

On January 5, 2005 the Ohio River flooded again and Mom and Dad got about 2-foot of water inside their condo.

They had just finished having all new drywall put in and were getting ready to finish off the rest that got damaged in the first flood.

Even though the second flood was not as bad as the first, it certainly gives us all something to worry about when the Mid-Ohio Valley gets too much rainfall!

The "Island" Of Devola

~Sept. 2004~
As the floodwaters rose, so did the "Mighty Muskingum", covering Rt.#60 and turning Devola into an island! Misty and Denny rode their bikes down to just about where Woodside Veternary used to be and got this picture of how high the water was. I have never seen it that high in my whole lifetime of living here and hope to never see it that way again!