When was the last time you needed a reminder that we humans are pigs?

Well if you are looking for a reminder of how Americans over do EVERYTHING and need to see what the world is going to look like because we have to do everything at an extreme then I have a movie for you! The delightful children's movie WALL-E. Wall-e is a tale of a robot who was left on earth to clean up after the filthy humans as the humans go live up on a space ship and relax and get away from all the trash. Of course the government promises that these little robots will have everything cleaned up in 5 years and when that doesn't happen they end up floating around in space for the next 700 years , all the Wall-e robots die and the one lone Wall-e is left to use them as replacement parts whenever he breaks. The humans of course don't learn there lesson from Earth so for the past 700 years they have been polluting space with their trash as well. They all float around on these huge chairs and get fatter and fatter and fatter and they have a computer screen in front of their faces at all time so they forget to look around and don't even realize they could go to the pool or run around the track or get a massage for that matter. They drink all their food...cupcakes in a cup sound good? So Wall-e is this sweet little trash compacting robot who falls in love with the robot Eve. Eve's job is to come to Earth and try and find eveidence of life...Wall-e does find a little plant growing inspite of the disgusting humans and the story goes from there. Pixar is obviously looking to make a statement. I walked out depressed, my son walked out confused and my husband fell asleep for about 15 minutes of the movie as the robots beeped at each other with their names...Wall-e, Eve...Wall-e, Eve...Wall-e, Eve...well you get the point.

Good Friends and The Buddah Bubble...

Last weekend my good friend Jasa Jawn Schummacher was in town from Fresno, CA. Her family owns a lakehouse at Lake Sinclair here in good old Georgia and we went down to spend the night last Friday. The first thing I will tell you is that it is amazing that this family, originally from Los Angeles, found this lake because when Jasa said it was in the sticks...she wasn't being dramatic...it is WAY out in the sticks. Because of dog boarding issues Bennett and I were the Lanier family members to partake in this adventure.

After driving 2.5 hours we were finally there, it was so great to see Jasa! I had not seen her in about 3 years and it was definitely worth the drive to say hello to a good friend. Bennett got to work making the best of his time at the lake house affectionaly named LATOGA (LA to Georgia). While I was running my mouth he was busy with smores by the fire, badmitton, night swimming and twister with a cute little girl named Grace. Bennett and I slept in this huge air conditioned dome tent which is affectionately called the Buddah Bubble or the Yucky(see picture above of the meditating Bennett). Thank you to JAsa's Mom for adding the A/C! It rained the next morning and Bennett and Grace played badmitton in the rain and about 10 board games and then once the rain cleared it was one last swim for Bennett and we were back to Alpharetta.

The next installment-last day of 2nd grade

3rd grade here we come!

Bennett's last day of second grade was a lot of fun! I took some pictures of him heading off to the last day of 2nd grade to arrive 6 hours later off the bus as a 3rd grader! Amazing. We are as I am sure you can tell from our blog that we are very proud of him. When he got off the bus all the kids at the bus stop got shot with silly string and water guns and to top off the fun, Bennett got straight A's on his report card!

After we got home from school Jessica was crazy enough to have volunteered to put together the neighborhood END OF SCHOOL PARTY!!! There was a moonwalk, cotton candy, tattoos, pool fun and lots and lots of chips. It was great fun until the drought lands of Georgia's sky opened up and poured down rain on the party! It was great to see the kids having a great time at the party...however we never did make it to the limbo contest and it was disappointing that it got cut short. No matter what Summer is officially here!

Trying to Catch up!

Hello all my blogger friends and family! The end of school rocked our world and keeping up with the old blog has been a serious struggle. I just got some cute pictures from the end of the school year of Bennett crossing over from a Wolf to a Bear from our Cub Scout Den leader. I thought this was as good a time as any to start catching up.





At the end of the school year the cub scouts have ceremony where they boys take off their Wolf neckercheif and get their new neckercheif for the coming year. Bennett is now going to be working on his Bear badge for cub scouts. We have heard it is a lot more work then the Wolf badge! Cub Scouts definitely takes the whole

family into account now so Mark and I will be busy whiddling or something crazy next year

This weekend I am going to updating the blog so here is what is COMING TO A BLOG NEAR YOU (in the very near future)

• Last day of School


• End of School Party


• Broken Wheel on Jessica's Car


• Replace door in the Lanier house


• Saga of tree falling on fence


• Queenie's trip to Tally


• Neighborhood block party


• Trip to the lake


• 10th office in 10 years at Cox Enterprises

and much more....

until then....

Pomp and Circumstance

On to Kindergarten!

My blogging today is about our dear friends the Dunbars! Jack and Elizah Dunbar graduated from Pre-K today. Their graduation ceremony was really, really cute. All the kids were all dressed up and had these cute little paper mortar boards on their little heads. They performed songs lead by their fabulous music teacher Ashlee Dunbar. Their favorite song was probably The Bear Hunt but they also sang some sweet songs that made all of us attending try hard not to cry. At the end they each let go of a balloon with a prayer tied to it and watched them go up in the sky.

I remember Pre-K graduation being such a big step for Bennett, and the Dunbar twins are ready to go, they are off to start their Elementary School career. I asked Jack if he was ready for Kindergarten and he nonchalantly said yep! We send our best to them both and wish them a fabulous summer! Bennett is of course available for Elementary School advice sessions if needed. We are so proud of you!

Blog-ga-log-a-ding-dong!

Spring Soccer Season Comes to an End

Bennett finally had his last soccer game and soccer party where he got a very cool trophy! His team won all their games except they lost 1 game and tied 1 game! GO Lightning! Bennett played alot of offense and scored a lot and assisted alot. He became a really good passer this season and was able to set up his teammates for goals. Sounds a lot like David Beckham I know.

Guitar Hero

So Bennett was nice enough to pose for some Guitar Hero pictures. He has completed Easy and Medium and is half way through Hard. If you haven't done Guitar Hero I will tell you that is quite an accomplishment. To put it in perspective I am through Easy and half through Medium. To get to this point I actually spent 6 HOURS one weekend trying to beat Tom Morrell on Medium! It is not easy.

Lanier's Cook Out in spite of gross back yard

We aren't letting the fact that our backyard has no grass and tons of weeds in it stop of us from enjoying this gorgeous time of year. We have been cooking out like mad. Bennett and Mark cook, and the dogs sniff. This weekend we had hamburgers on Saturday and then Lamb chops on Sunday! Gourmet huh? You wouldn't think in a backyard like ours you could serve up such gourmet meals...but somehow we make it work.

Last...but certainly not Least! MOTHER'S Day 2008

So I hope all those Mother's out there had a great Mother's Day and were treated like the fabulous women we all are. I had a great Mother's Day. My family took great care of

me. There was breakfast, poems, flowers, naps, reading by the pool, dogs getting along and a delicious dinner to end the day. It was perfect.

SPRING FEVER!!!

Well folks it is official! The Laniers are totally over committed and have SPRING FEVER! Bennett can't concentrate in school and I have some many other-then-work commitments I am fading fast! We are excited school is almost out though! I was hoping this blog would be about Bennett's last soccer game which was supposed to be on Saturday but it got rained out this weekend.

So instead I am going to blog about how fast this school year has gone. Here is a picture of Bennett on the first day of school and if you check out our picture of the week you will see Bennett now. He seems so grown up to me after 9 months of schooling. He has mastered multiplication and they are now doing division...which he isn't having any trouble with. Amazing! That is all for now.

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