An up and coming author

Bennett Lanier...the next J.K. Rowling or Dr. Seuss??

Bennett Lanier celebrated the completion of his work of art "A Dog Named Jelly" with his class at the Lake Windward Elementary Author Tea.

Bennett had been working on his book for 6 months prior to it's publishing. Jelly is an amazing dog who over comes many different obstacles and in the end luckily does save the day! His owner is boy who is a scientist and inventor. Together he and Jelly are an stoppable team. Besides being interesting and creative "My Dog Jelly" was also the longest story with the most chapters in the 2nd grade class.

The Author Tea was a lot of fun for us parents and the kids. We read all the kids books and instead of the author signing the book the parents got to tell each child how much we enjoyed their story by signing it. A great momento to have for years to come. The comparison in Bennett's book from 1st grade to 2nd grade is amazing. Last year his book was on the history on Monopoly (a favorite game around the Lanier house). It was very factual and precise. This year our young author stretched the creativity in both his writing and illustrations. We are very proud of our young author and look forward to many more interesting stories!

Greeting from Tucson

So it is about 4am here in Tucson and I am of course awake! West coast travel is so hard. I will be here for 2 days so I don't want to change my internal clock so I guess today is just going to be a VERY LONG DAY! Here are some pictures I took yesterday while sitting around my hotel room bored out of my mind.

Here is my huge square bath tub, that I am afraid to actually take a bath in because I don't know if it is clean or not.

Here is a picture of my room that even after just being in it for 5 minutes somehow has stuff everywhere!

And finally here is my laying on the bed watching TV...this is my blog picture debut :)

Today is a full day of meetings and tomorrow I leave at 6:50 in the morning. Off for some caffeinated coffee...

A few pictures from Spring Break in Tally

A few pics from Queenie, GGMa's and Bennett's visit to the Junior Museum

The boys are back!

Spring Break is coming to an end. The Lanier menfolk made it home safely from Tallahassee this afternoon. It was so nice to see their sunburned smiling faces. It is really nice to have them home. I was getting very lonely here in Alpharetta all by my lonesome.

Next week is back to business. I am leaving my boys again and will be traveling to Tucson on business Monday-Wednesday morning. Keep checking in, there is more to come.

Drake's Spring Break

Spring Break is Party Time for Drake Lanier!

As the Lanier menfolk are in Tallahassee on their spring break the lone Lanier woman has been holding down the fort in Alpharetta. As you can see from the picture I am being taken advantage of! You can tell from Drake's expression, she knows she isn't supposed to be up there and she knows it! I think the quote from this pictures is "What?".

Announcing Queenie's New Arrival!

Check them out. I don't believe they have names yet but here are the newest arrivals to Queenie and Poppy's laundry room. And yes Queenie was so excited she sent pictures of her new babies! Next time you see Queenie and Poppy make sure to let them know how clean their clothes look!

I do enjoy that they are Seminole Garnet! Maybe we should name one Bobby and they other Bowden.

The Laniers are now bloggers.

Welcome to our first blog! I am going to try and keep this up on a regular basis for all of our friends and family near and far. We quite frequently relate to episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond...hence the name of our blog.



So it is Spring Break and Mark and Bennett are off in Tallahassee. They have been having a great time on the compound. Friday they are going fishing! I on the other am home with the dogs. Drake has decided it is ok to sleep on the sofa in the kitchen while her alpha dog is away...picture to follow soon. Rhosie could care less. I will tell you that alone time sounded a lot better before I had it. I am getting bored now and ready for my boys to come home. Tonight you might find me talking to myself or to the TV...how different that is from every other day I can't tell you.


So we have now entered the world of blogging! Check back soon for more pictures and updates!