Man, life is speeding by and I am not living up to my goal of blogging a weekly review. ARGH!!
Highlights from May /June:
May has been very busy with end of the school year events!! I wish everything would not all happen in May!
May 5th was the Beyonds Words Event at Tommy’s School. The children showcase their work related the years theme for all the parents to see. This year’s theme was Literature.
Tommy’s Art Project – The Lost Hero
Tommy’s Drawing of the Lorax
Tommy showing us the various books he made as part of Literature Week.
On May 15th – Joshua celebrated his 23rd birthday! He was happy to receive a kindle for his gift from the family.
My Boys……
Tommy particpated in the Read A Thon at his school and won a prize for the most minutes read in 3rd grade. He also won a skate board in the prize raffle. He was very excited, since I have been refusing to purchase a skate board for him. He has discovered the Happy Potter books and is starting the 4th book.
On May 22nd, a tornado touched down in our sister city, Minneapolis, MN. Luckily, over in White Bear Lake we only had some rain and wind, but we did heed the warnings/sirens and headed to the basement. The damage in Minnesota is nothing compare to Joplin, Missouri. Our hearts go out to the victims of the tornado in Joplin. It is a reminder to us in the Midwest to not take severe weather lightly.
Tommy also participated in the Culver’s Fundraiser. He really enjoyed working at the restaurant.
Over Memorial Weekend, my brother came to visit with his family. He and his wife were taking their daughter, her hubby and children to Walt Disney World. Tommy was so excited to see his cousins! I really enjoy seeing my great nephews.
Tommy and my great-nephews. Love these guys!
My brother, Dan and grandson Gracen.
Tommy had his acting debut in his first play every, The SuperPlay. He had a small part, but had a great time and is looking forward to participating in the drama club again next year.
Tommy was the Statue of Life in the play.
All the Statues….
Good golly, Miss Molly. We miss you. We said good bye to another family pet in June. Molly’s life ended due to recurrent cancer.
This week my brother in law, Pete is visiting from Virginia for the week.
This year winter hit Minnesota HARD!! This was the result of the first blizzard of the year and there were numerous blizzards!
December and January were crazy busy months for our family. My husband’s mother was in the nursing home and not doing very well there. We worked very hard between Christmas and New YEars Day to get my father in law moved from their apartment and into assisted living. Once my FIL was all moved in and used to the new place we moved my MIL out of the nursing home and in with my FIL. We were all so very grateful that have them back together, with an apporpriate amount of services to keep them safe.
I also celebrated my 40th birthday in Janaury. The day passed with little notice and it feels fine to be 40!
Books Read in January:
Red Hook Road – Ayelet Waldman – 3.5/5
Henry’s Sisters – Cathy Lamb – 4/5
February– as far as I can remeber passed with little trouble. We were very busy getting hubby’s parents situated in the assisted living. They had a few medical problems, but overall we made it through the month!
The environment at my office in February was very bittersweet. Many of my co-workers took advantage of the retirement packaged offered by our employer. We had overall over 100 retirements in the month of March. Argh. So we are very short staffed at the office and it is very stressful.
Retirement of a good friend, Sandra.
Books Read in February:
In the Woods – Tana French – 3.5/5
Saving Max – Antoinette van Heugten – 4/5
Glass Castles – Jeanette Walls – 4/5
March – was a very exciting month for our family! Josh asked Amy to marry him and she said “YES!”. They will be getting married on July 21, 2012. We are so very happy for them!!
Josh and Amy are engaged to be married!
Reading.. Tommy and Daddy have been reading many books – Here they are reading The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan. .
Books Read in March:
I Am Not A Serial Killer – Dan Wells – 4/5
Secrets of Eden – Chris Bohjalian – 3/5
Mothers & Other Liars – Amy Bourret – 3.5/5
Days of Grace – Catherine Hall – 4/5
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson – 4/5
Men and Dogs – Katie Crouch – 4/5
April –
MCS Gala is an annual fundraiser for Tommy’s school. This year we were very blessed to be able to share the evening with good friends. The picture below includes us all: My son and his fiance (Josh and Amy) , hubby and I, hubby’s sister and her hubby (Bonnie and Danny) and good family friends (Linda and Paul)
Bonnie and Dan Josh and Amy
Linda and Paul
Hubby and I
The big winners of the Night: Paul and Linda/ Bonnie and Danny won 4 tickets to a Twins game with seats in the Legends Club.
Josh and Amy won the raffle for the Wall of Wine! They won everything you see here – which was about 24 bottles of wine and related items!
On a sad note, we said farewell to a loved pet, Robbie. He was 16 years old…
Family time watching movies – Tommy discovered Harry Potter and we watched the movies with him. All of them! He is now very busy reading the books!
Dying Easter Eggs – 2011
After Easter, I was off to Duluth for Mommy’s Annual retreat weekend. I stayed in Duluth for 4 nights relaxing and attending a conference for work.
Whew….if you made it to the end of the picture intensive post, my dear reader, I am very impressed! I hope this is the last post like this. I have been struggling to carve out time each week for myself and to blog. I hope to be able to post a weekly update on a regular basis. That is the goal anyway!!
Thanks for stopping by and hpe to catch up with you all!!
Another Monday morning, leaving me wondering where has the weekend gone??? Time at home is so wonderful and the weekends pass so quickly.
Since the college daycare is closed on Fridays, I was home with Tommy. He had his last day of Vacation Bible School. While he was at VBS for the morning, I cleaned up the house. What a great way to start the weekend….the chores done!
After VBS, my friend Michelle came over to see if she could use any of the left over homeschool stuff for her preschool class. I was so happy she was able to use some of the things we have left from our garage sale. After she left, Josh and I packed up the remaining things in the garage to take it to Goodwill. I am glad he got me started on this, even though I didn’t want to do it. If I had procrastinated, who knows when the garage would be completely done! There is still alot of work to do….but progress is being made.
I ran to church to pick up our “Fare For All” items. Fare for all is a cooperative food buying program, that really helps to stretch our grocery budget. Next month, I hope to post about what we received from Fare for All and how we incorperated the items into our menu.
Friday Evening, we watched a movie, but ended up watching it in the basement since the tornado sirens went off again. So we spent the evening in Josh’s room watching the original “Karate Kid” movie.
We also have started our summer schooling with Tommy. He is enjoying it and being very good. He is hoping to earn an outing to Valley Fair. He has never been there so he is very excited. This last week he put together a big mosquito puzzle and worked on various workbooks. I really like the Summer Bridge Activities workbooks so are now focusing on those. It gives him variety and the activities are short. We sit outside and spend about 30 minutes to an hour brushing up on academic skills.
SATURDAY – I was up early and working on my Menu Plan for the week. I really needed to get groceries and have not been paying much attention to our budget lately. I decided I better get on track again, since we have added expenses in the summer with full time daycare for Tommy. It took me most of the day to get the list and shopping done. I was happy with my efforts on staying on budget. You can read more about it in my Grocery Budget Post.
While I was out shopping at the various grocery stores, my hubby, son and brother in law were busy in the garage. They cut the wire racks to fit under the loft and took 2 big loads of stuff to goodwill. Our garage is a bit messy again as they brought down everything that I need to go through and decide what we need to keep. I will be able to have over 30 bins on the new shelves. It is going to be great! The best part is that when reading Michelle Duggar’s book, I discovered a wonderful organizing technic she uses to store things in bins. It will change our lives …we will be able to find things very quickly once I have it all set up. This will be a topic that will need to have a blog all to it’s self……
We had a late supper of Grilled Whiskey Ham Steaks. These steaks were part of our Fare For All items. I have never bought them before, but they sure were great marinated and grilled. And of course, my 22 year old son had whiskey in his room. Always there to help his mom with her cooking!
SUNDAY –
I worked the info desk at the church in the morning. The VBS kids sang in church.
After church we were going to take Tommy to the movie Toy Story 3, but he decided he didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay home and play with his friends. So that is what he did. He went off to play and I decided it is time to reconcile my checkbook. I had left it go for a couple of months and really needed to get things done. That was a nightmare…..I made a math error back about 2 months ago…I added a deduction what should have been subtracted. NOT GOOD! So once I sort of got that all figured out….I paid the bills.
For supper I made the Stuffed Cabbage Rolls. Very good! Since it was hot outside, I didn’t want to turn the oven on in the house. So we set up a table on the deck and brought the Roaster Oven out. I baked the casserole in there…it works just like a oven, but doesn’t heat up the house. I try not to turn on the oven in the house in the summer. This is a great alternative and works wonderfully. Thank you to the blogger, CoopersWife for teaching me about this years ago!
The guys cleaned up and did dishes after supper and Tommy and I went outside to work on his workbooks for a bit. I was determined to finish my book, June Bug by Jess Laurey, before I went to bed! Tommy works pretty independently so I can read and run and do a couple of chores while he works.
After the guys were done with kitchen clean up, hubby started a fire and we all spent the evening outside. My BIL and Tommy played catch (VIDEO COMING) and hubby enjoyed his fire.
We made smores with the giant marshmallows and enjoyed a wonderful evening in our backyard.
We called our smores, “Pig Nose Sandwiches” as the huge pink marshmallows looked like a pig snout after they were cooked over the fire. They were a tasty mess!! I stayed outside as late as possible reading and enjoying the evening.
MONDAY – the rude realization that the weekend is over!! I was up and made Chicken and Rice Casserole for the family. It is in the fridge and ready for hubby to cook tonight. I will be working late, so am going in a bit later too.
I used to feel very guilty working late, but now I try to prepare supper before hand and I leave a note how to cook it. I feel less guilty knowing my family has a good meal even though I am not at home.
Lunches are made. Tommy and Daddy are off to work and I am heading there myself. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I know I did! I love Summer and the simple pleasures in life, such as a relaxing evening with family and a good book in the backyard.!
Well, it is the end of day three of the great garage clean. I am very happy with our progress today and I even left to a Dr’s appointment this afternoon that took way too long. I am so very blessed to have such a wonderful hubby and kids. Grateful they are willing to help me! I don’t know what I would do without them.
Josh thought this would help sell the pool….I think the slide is a better option! LOL!
We took a little break and rode the scooter up and down the street. It was great way to too cool off.
Yep, that is right I am in the garage and can put my arms out and not touch anything!!! WOO HOOO!
This is our sell pile – two rows deep. We are only doing a one day sale, but I don’t know if I have room to get it all out at once. We will see!
Take a good look at this one. This is not a trick photo that is actually a car in the garage. I can’t remember the last time that happened. Could be years ago…….
Relaxing after a long, but very productive day!!!! It feels so good to have it all sorted and priced!
Tomorrow – we will go through some things in the house and price them. Should be a much shorter day.
Friday – set up for the sale…..hopefully particpate in the Manitou Days Parade.
Saturday….the big sale – hope a majority of the things find a new home!
Hello, my friends! Yep, you are not getting much more than garage chat this week. I am doing nothing else. I woke up sore and tired this morning, but this is worth it. I am going to be so happy to have things leaving my house.
What the garage looked like at the beginning of Day 2! (Left Side)
What the garage looked like at the beginning of day 2! (Right Side)
The Coke Machine we were storing for a friend. I can’t believe my hubby decide he was taking it to his friend yesterday. I think he just needed a break from cleaning the garage!! LOL!!
The sorting and pricing area.
What the garage looked like at the end of day 2! (Left Side)
What the garage looked like at the end of day 2! (Right Side)
Today, I need to make sure I figure out supper and do the prep this morning before i get busy in the garage. Yesterday, I was too tired by the time for supper and didn’t really want to cook. I threw together a taco salad, but I was not motivated to do it.
We are trying to save money this week, but not eating out. When you get busy it is so easy to just say, “let’s run through McDonald’s”, but so expensive.
Tommy slept over at the neighbors last night so I don’t anticipate I will see him until noon. He stayed busy yesterday playing “dictectiv” ( that is how he spelt it). He had his notebook to write clues and give tickets to family members. He also had a digital camera to document his evidence. Last night I took a look at his camera and he must have wanted to make bloody hand prints or something. He must have gotten into the ketchup while we were busy outside to make some clues. he might be doing a guest blog later in the week as he wanted to share his pictures. You have been warned!
Well, I am on vacation with my family. Where are we going, you ask??? This is a working vacation. Do you have a list of projects that you need to complete and no time to get them done? We are trying to tame that list a bit. The first few days of the vacation only I was off so I took care of some projects of my own….I have been staying very busy.
Thursday – First day of my vacation – to Tommy’s school to pick up stuff and figure out what is left to do for the “End of the Year Picnic” for the school. Lost my car keys in the church that morning..GRRR. Snuck in my dental cleaning since I was off for the day. My Dr canceled my appointment so only had to sneak in the dentist. Then off to Sam’s to pick up the last of the supplies for the picnic. Delivered to the church and home to take care of some treasurer business for the parent organization and make a deposit to the bank. Still have one more to do. Back to help set up for and enjoy the “End of the Year Picnic” for Magnuson School.
Friday – Volunteered in Tommy’s classroom. Stayed to watch the 2nd grade talent Show. Home to relax a bit and then took kids to the movie Karate Kid 2 to celebrate the beginning of summer vacation! Made Tommy’s requested meal of beef Enchiladas and Spanish Rice. Stayed up and watch “Dear John” with hubby.
Saturday – tried to sleep in a bit….rain, rain, rain…..went to Sam’s graduation party. Stayed up late and watched a 1972 movie filmed in Duluth at Glensheen mansion called “You’ll Like My Mother”.
Sunday – Tommy’s Piano Recital (see video in post below). – watched “You’ll Like my Mother” again with family.
Monday the real working vacation starts. Project #1 is to clean out the garage and have a sale on Saturday. When we added the 5th bedroom to our house, we simply took everything out of the basement and stored it in the garage. We needed move it all quickly so the contractor could start on the bedroom quickly. We were on a bit of a time crunch as Josh needed to move back home. So we didn’t go through a single box, just piled it into the garage.
Now we are spending all week going through and sort all the boxes and pricing what we no longer need.
These are the before pictures of our garage. I will take a picture at the end of each day to share. It feels good to be working on this as it has been a project that really overwhelmed me.
Project # 2 for our working vacation – I need to finish planting my garden if it ever stops raining. I need to plant peas and green beans still. I need to start weeding as well.
Project #3 – finish Tommy’s mural in his bedroom. I have worked on it a bit and finished the pirate ship. There isn’t too much left. It is just a matter of finding time to paint. I love painting, so I will be a bit sad when it is done.
While it does feel very good to get some work done on these projects, I would rather sick in the outdoor porch and read with the kitty. He is enjoying the weather and being out side.
Project #4 – all proceed from the garage sale will be going to FINALLY finishing the treehouse. We will buy the wood to add the steps. This is a project that was started nearly 10 years ago when Josh was little.
Project #5 – complete the deck addition to extend our current deck to the garage.
As you can see we have grand plans. I will be happy to have Project #1 – 4 done by the end of the summer. I remind myself how blessed I am to have men in my family that are willing to help me with projects like that. I would never get to any of this with out my wonderful hubby and son.
Hope everyone is having a great summer so far! It feels good to be back to blogging again. I am still trying to catch up on all your blogs.
Well time for me to get outside and get busy on the garage.
February 23rd, already???? Where has the month gone??? I hardly get time to blog anymore beyond my menu. That really is too bad since I love blogging and it is the closest I think I will ever come to scrapbooking or journaling.
The first week of February brought Tommy’s Animal Wax Museum at school. It was very cute!! All the kids looked great. What a wonderful school and teacher Tommy has this year.
What a happy monkey my boy he was!!!!
Our taxes are done and we have received our state and federal returns already. The money has all been earmarked for upcoming expenses. We paid our car insurance in full so we could get our discount, saved some money for Christmas, and paid on our loans. I had hoped to have money left to buy a new dresser for Tommy, but will have to save up for that. I spent one Saturday getting all the paper in our home under control. I shredded everything in the file cabinet and got folders set for the new year.
We decided we will be having a garage sale in June. It is time to get rid of much of what is in our garage and things. Maybe next winter we will park in our garage??? I started by working on Tommy’s room for one day so far. I removed 1 garbage bag of junk and 2 bins of books. I donated one bin to Tommy’s school and will sell the rest in the garage sale. There is still a long ways to go in his room.
As a family we filled bags of food to go to Haiti through the agency Feed My Starving Children. This organization is a local and provides food to 6 countries. It was alot of fun. Tommy, Josh, Amy, Hubby and I all went and donated our time to this worthy cause with other families from Tommy’s school.
And to end my month on a high note (sarcasm), after coming home from taking Tommy to the eye Doctor to get his new glasses, I fell on the ice. I hit my head, earned a trip to the ER and now am home recovering from a concussion. So nothing like having the month go out with a bang!! So I am home nursing a headache and very sore body for a few days. I am so very happy that I did not break a hip or anything considering my history of osteoporosis. That is a blessing…
This coming weekend I hope to be feeling well enough to get groceries for the month and work at Church on Sunday for Magnuson Sunday.
I hope you are all having a wonderful month…………………
I feel like I have abandoned my blog and am determined today to update my readers and visit others! It is a lovely day in MN. I am sitting on the back deck and blogging away in the sun. Nothing better – plenty of things to do in the house, but I really miss my xanga friends!
School ended for my youngest son, Tommy the latest this year. His last day of school was on June 12th. That was the official start of summer at our house. Tommy is attending daycare at Busy Bees the daycare center at the college where my hubby works. The week of June 22nd, Erik was gone on a mission trip to Cortez, Colorado with our church. He did ok, but unsure if it will work out for him to go next year. He did get in trouble, but the youth leader did not have us come get him since it was late in the trip.
That same week, June 22nd – Tommy went to Vacation bible School for the first time. It never worked with my work schedule to get him there and picked up each day. This year I dropped him off and hubby picked him up on his lunch break and took him back to Busy Bees. That seemed to work pretty good.
In June we accepted the bid to finish our basement. We are adding a 5th bedroom to our house. It is more of a suite than a bedroom. Josh is moving back home in August and this will be his space until he is out on his own again, then hubby and I will take the room. It is a very large bedroom with a seating area and walk in closet. We spent most of May and a bit of June emptying out everything we had in our basement. We started sorting it, but it was taking too much time. Instead everything was moved into the garage and I will slowly go through it all as I bring the items in the house we want to keep. But luckily we had the basement empty and the floor sealed by the time the contractor was ready to start work.
In the beginning of June, hubby’s brother, Pete came to stay with us for a week or so. He came to visit as we were celebrating their parents 50th wedding anniversary. We had a nice party at the party room at my inlaws apartment building. Everyone was able to attend the my inlaws were very happy with the celebration!
Work in June was crazy for me with an emergency placement and just trying to get caught up to go on vacation in July. So far in July I have only worked 2 days. I must say this vacation was a very needed break. Hopefully I will be able to work the rest of the summer and get things ready for budget season.
Hubby, Josh and BIL worked very hard on getting the egress well completed so our window could be installed. We had alot of rain and the well collapsed once before the blocks were in place. OOPS…..they worked very hard and the results were great!!
JULY – brought our family vacation. We went to South Dakota to attend my cousins wedding and spend a week in the Black Hills. It was a hard trip for me. Even though I saw a specialist and received my official diagnosis in May, travel was not much better for me. Being diagnosed with IBS is the only thing in my life I would ever change. My family was understanding, but I hate to be a bother to them. I am blessed with an incredibly kind, supportive and patient hubby. He let me drive when I needed to eliminate some of my illness and he put up with many bathroom stops. If there is any silver lining in having IBS and traveling is that I lost 5 pounds in a week. So once we were in the Black Hills I spent time at the cabin while hubby, BIL and the kids went out exploring the sites. I was able to read three books and get a review or two written.
Our evenings were filled with wonderful home cooked meals, hot tub, pool tournaments and visits with family and friends. The trip home was not all it was cracked up to be!! I got a speeding ticket in Highmore, South Dakota. We also stopped in Pierre to visit my brother and his wife. We were very late getting to my parents house in Aberdeen, SD. We slept there and headed back to MN the following morning. All went well until we got near the cities. A fuel truck had been overturned on I94 and the freeway was closed going both ways. ARGH!! We refused to wait in line….so my amazing hubby studied the hudson map book and got us to a different exit onto the freeway by taking different back roads. The freeway was closed for 9 hours, but it really didn’t slow us up too much since we found an open entrance to the freeway in Albertville. It was very weird to be driving on the freeway we were the only cars on the entire freeway.
It is good to be home…..I am person of routine and structure, more so as I get older. Last week Tommy had Sports Camp and hubby was at a conference all day so I stayed home and transported Tommy. Work was started on Josh’s new bedroom while we were gone. It was great to come home to walls!!! I went back to work last Thursday, but found I wasn’t ready to deal with it all. So I took Friday off and helped move the library at Tommy’s School.
Hard to believe we are already preparing for school to start!! Where did the summer go? Rooms are being prepared at the school for painting and the first MPTP (like PTA) executive board meeting is scheduled for this coming week!! I took on a few more responsibilities at Tommy’s school and church in general. I am the treasurer for MPTP and a Scrip Coordinator with the school. Starting in August I will be assisting at the information desk at church a couple of Sundays a month.
Isn’t xanga an interesting place?? Even though I have been away from xanga I must say I found my thoughts and prayers including a wonderful xanga friend, Cheryl. She is going through treatment for cancer and I am amazed by her strength and love! What a wonderful godly woman, I am blessed to have met on xannga!!
I will post a separate blog with some pictures from our vacation! This one is jsut getting too long!!! If you made it to the end of this post, please pat yourself on the back!! Thanks for continuing to be a faithful reader.
Hello everyone….I sure miss posting on xanga, but life keeps getting away from me. It easier to just quickly log into facebook and do a quick status than a real blog post! But I have some pictures from this weekend so I thought I should do a picture blog.
It has been a very busy weekend! Friday morning started off with getting Erik to church to leave for his Mission Trip to Cortez, Colorado.
Erik, Danny and Tommy before packing up for the Mission Trip.
I ended up working Friday as I had a placement to complete. I got back into town around 4:30 and Tommy’s school was lining up for the Manitou Days Parade at 4:50. ARGH!! Hubby and Tommy were already downtown WBL waiting for me. I got to Tommy’s School float just as they were getting ready to leave to line up!
It was great fun participating in the parade. Hubby and Tommy walked and handed out freezies to the crowd. I was on the float refilling bags of Freezies for everyone to hand out. We got home around 9:00 and Kristen came to spend the night with us. We had a snack before bed and got Tommy and Kristen all settled for the night!
SATURDAY
We headed to church to check out the community garage sale before I needed to work at the garage sale. Each year there is one lady that is at the sale that has great clothes for Tommy! Again this year we hit pay dirt at her booth. I found soccer cleats, a columbia jacket and a bunch of clothes for Tommy. I spent a totally of 26.00 at her booth.
Hubby took Kristen and Tommy home and I stayed to man the jumpy thing and hand out freezies for the school at the garage sale. I was there from about 10:00 until 1:30. I will say it was hot and time didn’t pass that quickly. But it was fun. Once home I made lunch for everyone and then I took a nap.
Tommy and Kristen cooled down this afternoon with the Slip and Slide.
Hubby, Josh and my BIL, Steve spent the day working on the window well for the egress window! It is almost done!
Hubby and Josh learned how to split the bricks!
The egress window well….I think they are doing a great job!
Tommy and Baby enjoying the piles of dirt from digging the window well.
Tommy garage sale purchase, a green exercise peanut!
As you can see Tommy has been very busy today. He went to sleep right away tonight! Well time for me to finish up here and get to bed as I have alot to do tomorrow!!
