I'm pet sitting a dog. Her name is Princess.
Her owner said she was housebroken... she isn't.
Her owner said she was crate trained... she isn't.
Her owner said that she was giving her frequent baths...I'll have to look up the breed before I believe that, cuz this dog is a mess.
Princess is not quite a year old, and she's already a mother. Poor thing. She is clearly still a puppy.
Princess got here and I made her go outside first. She played with our dog, Lilly. I can't remember if I saw her go potty outside or not. I just know that she decided to go on my floor rather quickly after I let her in the house. I picked her up and ran outside with her...she decided to continue urinating while I was running for the door.
Princess is a ball of energy that Lilly is tired of now. She's said many times to me that "Princess can go home now!" Yesterday Lilly was limping, but her paw seems fine now. Lilly has thrown up water this morning...I think she's a ball of nerves.
I can only blog now because everyone is napping. I hope they continue to nap later as I have to leave them this morning.
I think that I'm too old for puppies.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Alone
As you all know, DH is out of town. He wasn't supposed to leave until today and this has been planned since January (I think). Anyway.
I had planned on going to a few things this week that required that someone watch Darly and since DH was supposed to be here that shouldn't have been a problem. But since he left town early it became a problem.
One of those things was Teacher's Night Out. This is just a social gathering of the teachers in our homeschooling group where we basically unload/debrief/talk about anything and everything and usually end up cracking our selves up terribly.
I didn't get to go to that Thursday.
The other thing was a Book Club on Friday night. I read the book twice and was rarring to go. But no DH, what to do?
I talked to Darly's friend's mom and she agreed to take Darly for a sleep-over. It acutally worked out great because E's mom needs me to take E for a sleep-over on Monday so she can go do something. Ha ha! So we're all set.
Friday afternoon was our Girl Scout meeting, so we agreed that Darly would just go home with them after the meeting. That ended at 4pm. The book club didn't start until 7pm. What to do?
Well it was just silly and wasteful to drive all the way back home...that would kill an hour all by itself. So I decided that I would just go to the mall...plenty to do there. And I had managed to crack my thumbnail while putting away groceries the other day so it seemed that a manicure was in order. Yes, that would be perfect.
So I get to the mall and try to decide where to get the manicure. I only know of one place in the mall that does them, but I wanted to see if there was perhaps someplace else in case they were booked. Well I couldn't tell from the mall directory if any other place actually did manicures. So I thought I would try to ask someone where the best place in the mall for a manicure was. Where to ask? Ah HA! Claire's Accessories! They would have to know...right? So I go there and it is PACKED! I don't know what was going on there but it was wall to wall people and it seemed that there was just the one person there working who was busy with an ear piercing at the time. I figured that she would be highly annoyed if I asked her, so I didn't bother.
I went to the pet store to try to wait out the people in the store. The pet store was full of cute bunnies and of course cute dogs. But one had diarreha right in front of me...YUCK! That place does not have healthy animals.
I go back to Claire's and they are still busy beyond belief, so I just decide to go to the one place that I know. I figure that they must have competitive prices if there is any other place to go. So I go in and yes their manicurist is available and they take me right in.
The lady was a character. She was saying funny things about herself and singing/humming songs and chatting away the entire time. She gave my hands/arms an awesome massage...cleared up my sore mouse-clicking finger right away (I'll have to get one of these more often!) and she did a great job on my nails. Oh and she glued my cracked thumbnail back together...no problem. "My Specialty!" she tells me. You would never know that it is broken. I was a happy girl and tipped her 20%.
The nail place is also where I get my hair done and as I'm going up to pay I bump into my stylist. She recognizes me (course we were just in there last week to get Darly's hair cut) and asks where Darly is. I tell her that Darly is on a sleepover so I'm out playing. A lady behind me says something like I deserve it (she doesn't know me from Adam, but anyway.)
So after the manicure...I of course have to visit the restroom and of course I still have damp nails. The only noticable damage is a tiny bit on my one thumb where the polish was pushed back a bit and you can see my nail. Luckily I picked a dark color so the other spots can't be seen.
Then off for dinner...that was uneventful... well except for the family that sat near me in the food court and the toddler with a full diaper. (why did I happen to look up then?)
I shopped around a bit after dinner. Our Discovery Store is going out of business so they have the stuff on sale...but even at 40 to 60% off the prices are high for me...I'm waiting for 70% as I don't really need this stuff anyway.
At J.C.Penney there's a cute t-shirt that I wanted, but it was only 30% off...I'll wait! I should check to see if Kohls carries the same shirt because they're always cheaper.
Then I go to where the book club is meeting and I grab a copy of the book off the shelf in case we need to look anything up.
I get myself some coffee & a cookie. I swear that "barrista" did not put the shot of vanilla syrup in my vanilla latte because I only tasted coffee. I'm grumpy! Course I didn't say anything.
The book club was great! We talked about the book for about an hour and then just chatted about stuff. IT was like being at TNO! YAY! I loved it. We even got booted out of the place at closing and chatted some more in the parking lot. Oh and we all agreed that we want to do this every month. Woo Hoo! More playtime for me.
So I come home and all that's here are me & the animals. Lilly notices that Darly isn't here. She's like "Hey! Where's Sissy?" But she doesn't give me much grief about it. The rabbits of course enjoy the quiet.
And now it's Saturday morning and oh wow! It's now 10 am and I can call about getting my kid...only I haven't showered yet. YIKES! I should do that.... Later!
UPDATE: Showered & called over to friend's house. They had just got up and were playing. Mom said that she didn't need to be anywhere and the girls were out of her hair so we would try again at 1pm to talk about breaking them up. She suggested that I go shopping. Instead, I'm looking at silly videos online...
I had planned on going to a few things this week that required that someone watch Darly and since DH was supposed to be here that shouldn't have been a problem. But since he left town early it became a problem.
One of those things was Teacher's Night Out. This is just a social gathering of the teachers in our homeschooling group where we basically unload/debrief/talk about anything and everything and usually end up cracking our selves up terribly.
I didn't get to go to that Thursday.
The other thing was a Book Club on Friday night. I read the book twice and was rarring to go. But no DH, what to do?
I talked to Darly's friend's mom and she agreed to take Darly for a sleep-over. It acutally worked out great because E's mom needs me to take E for a sleep-over on Monday so she can go do something. Ha ha! So we're all set.
Friday afternoon was our Girl Scout meeting, so we agreed that Darly would just go home with them after the meeting. That ended at 4pm. The book club didn't start until 7pm. What to do?
Well it was just silly and wasteful to drive all the way back home...that would kill an hour all by itself. So I decided that I would just go to the mall...plenty to do there. And I had managed to crack my thumbnail while putting away groceries the other day so it seemed that a manicure was in order. Yes, that would be perfect.
So I get to the mall and try to decide where to get the manicure. I only know of one place in the mall that does them, but I wanted to see if there was perhaps someplace else in case they were booked. Well I couldn't tell from the mall directory if any other place actually did manicures. So I thought I would try to ask someone where the best place in the mall for a manicure was. Where to ask? Ah HA! Claire's Accessories! They would have to know...right? So I go there and it is PACKED! I don't know what was going on there but it was wall to wall people and it seemed that there was just the one person there working who was busy with an ear piercing at the time. I figured that she would be highly annoyed if I asked her, so I didn't bother.
I went to the pet store to try to wait out the people in the store. The pet store was full of cute bunnies and of course cute dogs. But one had diarreha right in front of me...YUCK! That place does not have healthy animals.
I go back to Claire's and they are still busy beyond belief, so I just decide to go to the one place that I know. I figure that they must have competitive prices if there is any other place to go. So I go in and yes their manicurist is available and they take me right in.
The lady was a character. She was saying funny things about herself and singing/humming songs and chatting away the entire time. She gave my hands/arms an awesome massage...cleared up my sore mouse-clicking finger right away (I'll have to get one of these more often!) and she did a great job on my nails. Oh and she glued my cracked thumbnail back together...no problem. "My Specialty!" she tells me. You would never know that it is broken. I was a happy girl and tipped her 20%.
The nail place is also where I get my hair done and as I'm going up to pay I bump into my stylist. She recognizes me (course we were just in there last week to get Darly's hair cut) and asks where Darly is. I tell her that Darly is on a sleepover so I'm out playing. A lady behind me says something like I deserve it (she doesn't know me from Adam, but anyway.)
So after the manicure...I of course have to visit the restroom and of course I still have damp nails. The only noticable damage is a tiny bit on my one thumb where the polish was pushed back a bit and you can see my nail. Luckily I picked a dark color so the other spots can't be seen.
Then off for dinner...that was uneventful... well except for the family that sat near me in the food court and the toddler with a full diaper. (why did I happen to look up then?)
I shopped around a bit after dinner. Our Discovery Store is going out of business so they have the stuff on sale...but even at 40 to 60% off the prices are high for me...I'm waiting for 70% as I don't really need this stuff anyway.
At J.C.Penney there's a cute t-shirt that I wanted, but it was only 30% off...I'll wait! I should check to see if Kohls carries the same shirt because they're always cheaper.
Then I go to where the book club is meeting and I grab a copy of the book off the shelf in case we need to look anything up.
I get myself some coffee & a cookie. I swear that "barrista" did not put the shot of vanilla syrup in my vanilla latte because I only tasted coffee. I'm grumpy! Course I didn't say anything.
The book club was great! We talked about the book for about an hour and then just chatted about stuff. IT was like being at TNO! YAY! I loved it. We even got booted out of the place at closing and chatted some more in the parking lot. Oh and we all agreed that we want to do this every month. Woo Hoo! More playtime for me.
So I come home and all that's here are me & the animals. Lilly notices that Darly isn't here. She's like "Hey! Where's Sissy?" But she doesn't give me much grief about it. The rabbits of course enjoy the quiet.
And now it's Saturday morning and oh wow! It's now 10 am and I can call about getting my kid...only I haven't showered yet. YIKES! I should do that.... Later!
UPDATE: Showered & called over to friend's house. They had just got up and were playing. Mom said that she didn't need to be anywhere and the girls were out of her hair so we would try again at 1pm to talk about breaking them up. She suggested that I go shopping. Instead, I'm looking at silly videos online...
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Four Things About Meme
I was tagged this week by JUDY to do the "Four Things About Me" meme.
FOUR JOBS I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE:
Selling watermelons on the side of the road
Pet sitting
Landscape company
Data storage manager – long story there!
FOUR MOVIES I WOULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
Babe
Madagascar
Ratatouille
Harry Potter (1,2 & 3)
FOUR PLACES I HAVE LIVED:
Benton, LA
Tampa, FL
Clarksburg, WV
Osan South Korea
FAVORITE FOODS:
Steak
Shrimp
Squash
Stuffing w/ turkey & gravy & mashed potatoes – yeah, I was trying to come up with all foods that start with S
PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE NOW:
Camping!
Disneyland
Busch Gardens
TNO
FOUR PEOPLE I TAG TO DO THIS MEME
Jen
Maura
Lynn
Joan
The long story for the job: I was working at an Electric company in their mail room. Which was really misnamed because we answered the phone “reproductions” and mostly made copies for the company. But anyway, my job fell under the department of (gosh, what was our department called? I don’t remember…but we took care of everything that had to do with paper really.) Anyway the Data Storage manager found a new job in a different department and they needed to replace her. I don’t know why but somehow she was leaving the job before we could find a replacement for her. It was suggested that I apply for the job but I didn’t have enough experience for it…they wanted two years and I had only been with the company for 1 year and I had ½ a year of college which would go as ½ a year of experience…so I was only short by ½ a year. You could tell my boss really wanted me to have the job…she took a long time in hiring the replacement. But in the meantime I was trained to do the job so I could fill in and train the next person. I was GOOD at this job. This was like the perfect job for me, but alas I couldn’t have the job. So eventually they hired someone else to do the job and I trained her and eventually I went back to my old position. You could tell that the temp that filled in for me was REALLY disappointed that I came back. Oh well. Turns out that the person they hired was very lazy. There were times when I stopped by with her mail and she would ask me about something…just so I would do it for her. I also spent a lot of time there filing documents that were to be destroyed.
See one of our coal fired turbines exploded. So we were being sued by the nearby farmers and we were suing the manufacturer of the turbine…so lots of documents had been removed from the archives for the law suits. As part of the settlement it was agreed that all of these documents would be destroyed (we musta got big bucks for that!) So I spent about an hour each night working overtime filing these documents back into their boxes so the entire box could be destroyed. I ended up leaving before that was all finished.
FOUR JOBS I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE:
Selling watermelons on the side of the road
Pet sitting
Landscape company
Data storage manager – long story there!
FOUR MOVIES I WOULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
Babe
Madagascar
Ratatouille
Harry Potter (1,2 & 3)
FOUR PLACES I HAVE LIVED:
Benton, LA
Tampa, FL
Clarksburg, WV
Osan South Korea
FAVORITE FOODS:
Steak
Shrimp
Squash
Stuffing w/ turkey & gravy & mashed potatoes – yeah, I was trying to come up with all foods that start with S
PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE NOW:
Camping!
Disneyland
Busch Gardens
TNO
FOUR PEOPLE I TAG TO DO THIS MEME
Jen
Maura
Lynn
Joan
The long story for the job: I was working at an Electric company in their mail room. Which was really misnamed because we answered the phone “reproductions” and mostly made copies for the company. But anyway, my job fell under the department of (gosh, what was our department called? I don’t remember…but we took care of everything that had to do with paper really.) Anyway the Data Storage manager found a new job in a different department and they needed to replace her. I don’t know why but somehow she was leaving the job before we could find a replacement for her. It was suggested that I apply for the job but I didn’t have enough experience for it…they wanted two years and I had only been with the company for 1 year and I had ½ a year of college which would go as ½ a year of experience…so I was only short by ½ a year. You could tell my boss really wanted me to have the job…she took a long time in hiring the replacement. But in the meantime I was trained to do the job so I could fill in and train the next person. I was GOOD at this job. This was like the perfect job for me, but alas I couldn’t have the job. So eventually they hired someone else to do the job and I trained her and eventually I went back to my old position. You could tell that the temp that filled in for me was REALLY disappointed that I came back. Oh well. Turns out that the person they hired was very lazy. There were times when I stopped by with her mail and she would ask me about something…just so I would do it for her. I also spent a lot of time there filing documents that were to be destroyed.
See one of our coal fired turbines exploded. So we were being sued by the nearby farmers and we were suing the manufacturer of the turbine…so lots of documents had been removed from the archives for the law suits. As part of the settlement it was agreed that all of these documents would be destroyed (we musta got big bucks for that!) So I spent about an hour each night working overtime filing these documents back into their boxes so the entire box could be destroyed. I ended up leaving before that was all finished.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Answers to Comments from “What a Monday!”
Nicole said...
Oh, boy, I love it when the mice come out to play.
LOL! We mice love to play. I know we need to pick up some supplies for Darly’s camping trip and we’ll probably go see the Titanic at the museum.
Goofy Girl said...
Phew! Sounds like a busy time!! I think I must be an adrenaline junkie or something, cuz I thrive on this kind of insaneness! LOL But taking breaks like today are welcomed.
TC said...
Wow, sounds insane!!!
I think I'd say I'd prefer to work with the preschoolers than to answer that phone :) You take the preschoolers, I’ll take the phones any day instead. Hee hee I’m not a fan of a room of small kiddos. Taught DD’s prek Sunday school class and was not a happy camper. I suppose most of my problem was that we did the class in the playroom and the kids would just scribble through their art work so they could go play.
Lynn said...
One of my jobs when I was in college, was at an answering service. I remember my dads advice to me at the time, which was 'Just take one call at a time'. Sounds like you had a really crazy day. Twelve would suggest that you and Darly go shopping while DH is out of town. I like the way Twelve thinks! I hope we just shop and not buy too much though, cuz I would like to save the extra $$ that DH is earning on this trip for our trip to see my mom.
Jen said...
Man, I've had paying jobs where I didn't have to work that hard! I hope they really appreciate you :-) they do appreciate me, but their hands are tied really in how to reciprocate that. They’ve offered to take me to lunch, but by lunchtime I really need to get back to Darly.
Oh, boy, I love it when the mice come out to play.
LOL! We mice love to play. I know we need to pick up some supplies for Darly’s camping trip and we’ll probably go see the Titanic at the museum.
Goofy Girl said...
Phew! Sounds like a busy time!! I think I must be an adrenaline junkie or something, cuz I thrive on this kind of insaneness! LOL But taking breaks like today are welcomed.
TC said...
Wow, sounds insane!!!
I think I'd say I'd prefer to work with the preschoolers than to answer that phone :) You take the preschoolers, I’ll take the phones any day instead. Hee hee I’m not a fan of a room of small kiddos. Taught DD’s prek Sunday school class and was not a happy camper. I suppose most of my problem was that we did the class in the playroom and the kids would just scribble through their art work so they could go play.
Lynn said...
One of my jobs when I was in college, was at an answering service. I remember my dads advice to me at the time, which was 'Just take one call at a time'. Sounds like you had a really crazy day. Twelve would suggest that you and Darly go shopping while DH is out of town. I like the way Twelve thinks! I hope we just shop and not buy too much though, cuz I would like to save the extra $$ that DH is earning on this trip for our trip to see my mom.
Jen said...
Man, I've had paying jobs where I didn't have to work that hard! I hope they really appreciate you :-) they do appreciate me, but their hands are tied really in how to reciprocate that. They’ve offered to take me to lunch, but by lunchtime I really need to get back to Darly.
Monday, July 09, 2007
What a Monday!
I was scheduled to work at Church this morning...this was planned about a month ago. I had talked to the Office Manager last week because they were changing over the phone system and she needed to not be there this morning...so she had me come in Friday so she could go over the new system with me.
As it turns out when they were setting up the new system there was a glitch with our Pre-School's line. So for now all their calls go to the Church's main line and then have to be transfered back to them.
Yesterday at Church we learned that one of our Members had passed away. So I checked in with the Office Manager to make sure that I didn't need to have any info to give out to other members. At that point we still didn't know anything. Our pastor was out of town on vacation and was flying back that day for the funeral, that we assumed would be on Tuesday.
So this morning I get there and the phones start ringing right away. The first call wouldn't talk back to me (I have my suspicions about this later on) so the second call I didn't answer with my greeting and they of course were concerned that they had misdialed. I appologized for that and had to put them on hold as the other line was also ringing. It was a call for the Pre-school. I sent it to voice mail and went back to the first call. It was the florist confirming the funeral...that I didn't have any info on and I was the only one there...except for the maintainence man. So I took a number to call the florist back.
Turns out the funeral was scheduled for 10am this morning! :O
Call the florist back and get that all arranged. Meanwhile tons of calls are coming for the preschool (they have a summer camp) and no one is there yet as they don't start until 9am and won't get in until 8:45am! I've got moms wondering if they need to bring in snacks and all sorts of weird questions that I don't have any idea about.
I don't know how many calls I took for the preschool. I know of at lest 3 where the calling party was shocked that they had gotten the Church office insead of the preschool. I got another 3 where the calling party had paid no attention to my greeting and started rattling off preschool questions. Finally I had confirmation from another person at the Church that the preschool director had arrived...so I could just forward calls to her. I tried that and no one was answering.
Was there a problem with the phones? I don't know.
So the next call, a lady who called in a few times before, I suggested that I take a message and run it downstairs so I could see what was up. I take it down there and the director says she was with a parent and didn't answer...she didn't know about the routing problem yet. About 2 calls later (after a call from her mother) she comes upstairs to find out what is going on with the phones. I explain it to her and she starts appologizing like crazy for not taking that one call. Turns out the parent she was talking to was just chatting.
I think the calls I got (about 3) were either someone who thought that they had dialed the preschool and were confused...or we have some weirdo who calls up churches and doesn't speak.
Since no one was expecting a funeral today...the Church was not ready for it. So we were all scrambling trying to straighten the place up. I had to hide the sign-up for the annual "Habitat for Humanity" golf tournament in the office along with the Food Club (buy supermarket certificates and the Church gets part of the money.) I also moved a few things and picked up a broken cookie from the floor.
The funeral went very well. The preschool calls calmed down after about 10:30 or so. LOL! I feel sorry for the person on phones tomorrow. Hopefully they get that all straightened out quickly. The office manager did come in for a few minutes at one point. She was mostly there for the counters though as they always have questions.
That's about it...I'm getting the laundry done now so that DH can leave town on Wednesday. Darly & I need to start planning some fun stuff to do while the cat's out of town. hee hee any good ideas?
As it turns out when they were setting up the new system there was a glitch with our Pre-School's line. So for now all their calls go to the Church's main line and then have to be transfered back to them.
Yesterday at Church we learned that one of our Members had passed away. So I checked in with the Office Manager to make sure that I didn't need to have any info to give out to other members. At that point we still didn't know anything. Our pastor was out of town on vacation and was flying back that day for the funeral, that we assumed would be on Tuesday.
So this morning I get there and the phones start ringing right away. The first call wouldn't talk back to me (I have my suspicions about this later on) so the second call I didn't answer with my greeting and they of course were concerned that they had misdialed. I appologized for that and had to put them on hold as the other line was also ringing. It was a call for the Pre-school. I sent it to voice mail and went back to the first call. It was the florist confirming the funeral...that I didn't have any info on and I was the only one there...except for the maintainence man. So I took a number to call the florist back.
Turns out the funeral was scheduled for 10am this morning! :O
Call the florist back and get that all arranged. Meanwhile tons of calls are coming for the preschool (they have a summer camp) and no one is there yet as they don't start until 9am and won't get in until 8:45am! I've got moms wondering if they need to bring in snacks and all sorts of weird questions that I don't have any idea about.
I don't know how many calls I took for the preschool. I know of at lest 3 where the calling party was shocked that they had gotten the Church office insead of the preschool. I got another 3 where the calling party had paid no attention to my greeting and started rattling off preschool questions. Finally I had confirmation from another person at the Church that the preschool director had arrived...so I could just forward calls to her. I tried that and no one was answering.
Was there a problem with the phones? I don't know.
So the next call, a lady who called in a few times before, I suggested that I take a message and run it downstairs so I could see what was up. I take it down there and the director says she was with a parent and didn't answer...she didn't know about the routing problem yet. About 2 calls later (after a call from her mother) she comes upstairs to find out what is going on with the phones. I explain it to her and she starts appologizing like crazy for not taking that one call. Turns out the parent she was talking to was just chatting.
I think the calls I got (about 3) were either someone who thought that they had dialed the preschool and were confused...or we have some weirdo who calls up churches and doesn't speak.
Since no one was expecting a funeral today...the Church was not ready for it. So we were all scrambling trying to straighten the place up. I had to hide the sign-up for the annual "Habitat for Humanity" golf tournament in the office along with the Food Club (buy supermarket certificates and the Church gets part of the money.) I also moved a few things and picked up a broken cookie from the floor.
The funeral went very well. The preschool calls calmed down after about 10:30 or so. LOL! I feel sorry for the person on phones tomorrow. Hopefully they get that all straightened out quickly. The office manager did come in for a few minutes at one point. She was mostly there for the counters though as they always have questions.
That's about it...I'm getting the laundry done now so that DH can leave town on Wednesday. Darly & I need to start planning some fun stuff to do while the cat's out of town. hee hee any good ideas?
Sunday, July 08, 2007
blogger doesn't want me to have a title for this post??? weird. I'll keep trying, might give me time to come up with something new.
right now I am supposed to be doing the budget for LLL...I should have done this back in April, so you can see how important it is. LOL! Okay yes it is important but I've been putting it off very well. Like right now I'm blogging instead of working on it. I did print out our Profit & Loss statement...now I just have to transfer those numbers to the budget worksheet and guestimate what we'll want to spend for this year 07/08. loads of fun.
DH will be leaving sometime this week for a trip to Arizona. I hope he remembers to drink plenty of water (no Pepsi!) while he is gone. The trip is scheduled for Saturday but he may leave early. The advantages of leaving early are that he'll get to fly commercial and will earn some extra money. The disadvantages are that he'll be gone on two nights that I was planning on going out and I'll have to find someone to watch Darly for me. Fun!
Dh also informed me that if his brother doesn't visit that I should go over to MIL's house to mow her lawn for her. Not a big deal realy, it's just I've never used her mower before (yes, I do know how to mow a lawn...you'll be suprized to learn that in my past life I actually own and ran a landscaping company! Yes! Really!) But MIL's mower has it's own quirks (don't we all) so DH was explaining them to me.
Well all of that didn't amount to much to tell you. *sigh* Now I've gotta get back to that budget. bummer.
right now I am supposed to be doing the budget for LLL...I should have done this back in April, so you can see how important it is. LOL! Okay yes it is important but I've been putting it off very well. Like right now I'm blogging instead of working on it. I did print out our Profit & Loss statement...now I just have to transfer those numbers to the budget worksheet and guestimate what we'll want to spend for this year 07/08. loads of fun.
DH will be leaving sometime this week for a trip to Arizona. I hope he remembers to drink plenty of water (no Pepsi!) while he is gone. The trip is scheduled for Saturday but he may leave early. The advantages of leaving early are that he'll get to fly commercial and will earn some extra money. The disadvantages are that he'll be gone on two nights that I was planning on going out and I'll have to find someone to watch Darly for me. Fun!
Dh also informed me that if his brother doesn't visit that I should go over to MIL's house to mow her lawn for her. Not a big deal realy, it's just I've never used her mower before (yes, I do know how to mow a lawn...you'll be suprized to learn that in my past life I actually own and ran a landscaping company! Yes! Really!) But MIL's mower has it's own quirks (don't we all) so DH was explaining them to me.
Well all of that didn't amount to much to tell you. *sigh* Now I've gotta get back to that budget. bummer.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
The one with pictures
The kids playing on the turtle built by their grandfather.
The flower girls (Darly is on the right)
"Here come the flower girls..."
Darly & the Bride
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
What I did for my Summer Vacation...
he he
Well Tuesday (June 26Th) I called up my step dad and got the go ahead to leave for the wedding. At that point mom was still in ICU but doing very much better and starting to return to her same cranky self.
So Tuesday night I was running around after doing all the laundry so everyone would have plenty to choose from to pack for the trip. I made sure we had all our travel documents (print outs of our boarding passes, car rental, hotel reservations...etc...) I was choosing and packing my things in the suitcases...making sure that Darly had everything that she needed and that she didn't pack anything unpractical...making sure the dog and rabbits were all set, ya know doing everything and fuming because DH & Darly were mostly playing.
Wednesday morning I got up early (I always do when we travel!) and I did some last minute things...making sure everything would go well.
I should mention here that if you don't already know this...I'm a very anal plan everything out control freak kind of person. Which in some cases works out very well for me and in others backfires in my face when something unexpected or unplanned happens. So I made for us a "day planner" on my Excel spreadsheet...where I had everything all scheduled. I also made packing charts for each of us...It had what all was going on that day so we would know when to pack what...like for the day of the wedding we needed not only our dress clothes but something to wear before the wedding. All planned out...perfectly.
So we get going at 8:05am (we were supposed to leave at 8am...but I'm a smart gal...I added "cushion" time into the schedule because DH is ALWAYS dragging his feet!) Everything went well with traffic and we get to the kennel to drop off Lilly. She of course did NOT want to be left there. The guy had to drag her back to the kennel while Lilly was trying to run towards me. I really wish I knew more of what happened when she was there, but I doubt that even the kennel staff really know as they just pop her into a run and feed her. The kennel suggests that you allow an hour for dropping off your dog...it NEVER takes that long so there was my cushion.
Next we head over to the car park. (BTW: the kennel & the car park are both off the same main road that we always use for getting to the airport. Very handy!) We parked the car and the bus came to pick us up right away. We were at the airport with plenty of time.
I headed to the bathroom while DH & Darly went to wait in line for the baggage check in. I got back in just enough time to show the ticket agent my ID so she could verify my boarding pass.
Security was at level ORANGE so the screening was wrapped all the way around to near baggage claim. The official there said it would only take about 45 minutes from that point. I teased that it might take as long as 5 hours and she wasn't impressed. Some folks just can't take a joke at all. Oh well...I think it actually took less than 45 minutes as whenever the handicapped line was not being used they would allow regular folks to use it too. We might have been in line for about 30 minutes..probably less...it all went very quickly.
Then we head to get lunch and bump into someone we know from Church. He was on a flight directly to Detroit but on another airlines...we had to stop in Nashville first. Our flight was delayed due to weather. We were flying Southwest.
Ever flown with Southwest before? Well they don't have seat assignments. Instead you get a boarding assignment which determines when you get to get on the plane...then you can sit anywhere you like...unless you are traveling with children...then you can't sit in the emergency row. So when you are waiting for your flight...you notice folks standing in line for boarding LONG before there is even a plane to board. I still laugh about this as it happens every single time. They are standing and waiting and there is no plane to get on.
The rest of the flight to Nashville was uneventful but trying to get to Detroit was not the same. We were supposed to leave at 4:30pm. We were all in line waiting to board when the captain comes out to announce that due to weather we weren't going anywhere for now and would get more info at 5:15pm. So I go to get some food. We eat and at 5:15 we learn that we aren't going to get any more news until 6pm. Finally at 6:30 they tell us to HURRY UP and board so we can make a small window to get into Detroit. We board but of course we didn't do it quickly enough and we missed our window. So next we are told that we will sit in the aircraft for an hour with the engines off to save fuel hoping for a chance to take off. they will have the fasten seat belts signs off so we can use the bathrooms and they will serve us water...but we can only go to the bathrooms one at a time in case we get the go ahead to take off so we can leave quickly. But the pilot forgot to turn off the fasten seat belt sign...the flight attendant reminded him to do that and some other person jumped up before I could go. And of course as soon as that person was out the captain said we had the go ahead to leave...so no potty break for me. We ended up leaving Nashville around 7:30 or so. The captain never turned off the fasten seat belt signs because they were expecting bad weather (we never got any!) but I had to go so I went and got scolded by the flight attendant. after I got back Darly announces that she has to go too but we were already on our decent so we made her wait until we landed. I think we got out of the airport at around 10:20pm! We were supposed to be in Detroit at 7pm.
We ate a very late dinner at Bob's Big Boy. You know how you have great memories of a place from when you were a kid and then if you go back as an adult it isn't so great? So was the case with Bob's Big Boy! DH & I both had fond memories that were totally dashed by this place. The service stunk and the manager was the worst about it. We stood there to get a table for about 10 minutes and it was because all the staff were just avoiding coming up there to get us. Bah! We'll never eat there again!
We start the drive to Birch Run and missed our turn off because I was looking for I-75 not US-23. We got almost all the way to Lansing before we realized that we had made a mistake...about an hour out of our way. So DH gets this idea that we should take a back road north to get to I-69 that will take us back to Flint & to I-75 where we want to be...but the back road doesn't go there directly and we missed our turn because a tree was covering the sign. We wanted 52. The sign said for 49 turn left and for 52 go...well we don't really know that because the tree covered that part up. We assumed that we go right for 52 since for 49 it was left. We were WRONG! So we're driving along for a long time and I keep trying to convince DH that we are going EAST instead of NORTH...but he doesn't believe me. Finally we find a 7-11 and ask for directions. We were heading East and were now only 10 miles from US-23...so we continue back to where we needed to be but not where we wanted to be.
WE finally make it to our hotel in Birch Run at 3:10am. The desk clerk was NOT amused to be checking us in at that hour. Can't say that I blame him one bit...but that is his job.
We get to our room and finally get to bed about 3:45 am. DH is all worried about us missing the free breakfast in the lobby that ends at 10am. Sorry it couldn't be helped. We ended up at Bob Evans instead. GREAT breakfast! Loved it!
So our plan was to hang our on our own on Thursday (28Th) and just enjoy Frankenmuth without our relatives. But at breakfast a Bob Evans, I say "what if we run into one of your relatives?" DH says "Nah, it will NEVER happen. What are the chances that we'll run into someone we know?" We bet $10 on that. What should we do first? Darly wants to go to the park. This is the park that has the turtle that her grandfather made (that has no identification on it. the only folks who know that FIL made this are FIL's family. I think we should do something about that, but I noticed that there are some cracks on it now so it might not be around long enough to bother now.)
We played at the park for a while, visiting all the important stuff and I turn towards the park entrance and notice a white van (very much like Dave's) driving in. I say to DH "I think that's your brother's van." He says it can't be. As the van is getting closer I can tell the front licence plate is a Harly Davidson plate...it has to be Dave's van as Michigan requires plates on both the front and back (Dave lives in NC.) Sure enough we watch as Steve, Denise, Dave and all the kids climb out of the van. Darly is so excited to see her cousins that she runs right over while DH is trying to hide from them as we didn't want to see them yet. I can't let them think that Darly is at the park by herself so I head over. Dh heads over eventually...beaten.
The kids & adults played. it was fun. We then decide to head over to Bronner's to look for a Wedding present from Darly to Niece. DH tries to loose Dave while we drive over, but Dave finds us with no problems...I guess the bright red car with Maine tags was a give-away. So all 6 Adults & 5 kids head in. (check my last blogging about going to Frankenmuth for a link to Bronners.) This place is HUGE and there were many times when Dave's kids were with DH & I or with Steve & his friend instead of with Dave & Denise. In the end we all made it out okay, the kids were returned to their parents and nothing was broken.
Dave & the gang decide they will try to get to St Lorenz to hear the bells go off... We decide to do some more shopping downtown. We end up at Rau's Country store for some candy. WE buy a mixed bag of candies...taffy, hard candy, caramels, etc. After this we are hungry and Zehnders is right next door...so we decide to give that a try.
Darly orders a Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwich...DH & I share a 3 piece chicken dinner. Zehnders is famous for their all you can eat chicken dinner...but it is $17.95 per person. If you order the 3 piece dinner you get all the same stuff and you can share it for just $18.95. Trust me, there's plenty of food! First she brings us some bread, butter, Cranberry sauce, Cottage Cheese, Cole Slaw and paté, cheese spread w/ toasted baguette. I tried my first paté (not bad), Darly tried her first cottage cheese (she loved it!), Dh joked with the waitress about the Stollen bread.
After this course, we were brought noodle soup. very yummy!
finally she brought out our dinners. With our chicken dinner we got mashed potatoes, stuffing, a bowl of vegetables and a bowl of gravy. I soon found that the very dry Famous Frankenmuth Chicken tastes much better if covered in gravy. Our family of 3 could have easily all shared this one dinner...I don't know if we were charged for the extra soups or not...but who cares? It was good, we were very stuffed and although DH teased that we should eat everything...even he knew that was going to be impossible.
After our dinner we headed over to Debbie's house. It was chaos as everyone was over there (as always.) Let me introduce the cast of characters here for you...
At first I was using SIL & BIL instead of names...but it gets complicated quickly...so here are the names:
Debbie - DH's oldest Sister
Pam - The bride & Debbie's oldest child
Nicole - Debbie's second
Eric - Debbie's son...the recent graduate
Jake - Debbie's youngest
Wendy - DH's second sister
Bob - her DH
Rachel - Wendy's daughter
Dave - DH's oldest Brother
Denise - Dave's wife
Avery - Denise's son
Harley - their oldest daughter
Nick - their son
Trevor - another son
Katie - their baby
(not here were Danielle, Dave's daughter who lives with her mom & Jessica who was with her dad.)
Steve - Dh's second brother who is single
MIL
Lynn - DH's cousin
Tom - her husband
Melissa - their daughter
Rich - Debbie's EX husband & father to her kids
Dionne - Rich's new wife
Okay, I think that's everyone that I'll be mentioning...I'll pop up to make changes if I need to.
So at Debbie's house we had Dave & his family staying there; Steve & his friend (a coworker); Wendy & Rachel; and us.
I was trying to find out all the stuff I needed to know for getting Darly where she needed to be for the wedding, but it was hard to keep track of everything as Debbie didn't know all of it and she also had to tell Wendy & Steve where they needed to be. I was disappointed that Pam hadn't provided more info, but she was busy and not even there...she lives in Saginaw.
We finally get back to our hotel after 10pm and we're bushed! The sun stays up longer in Michigan than in Colorado...the mountains hide it from us.
We get up on Friday morning and have a bit of time to do things before we head up to the wedding site. So we see that Ratatouille is playing at the theater next door to our hotel...but it doesn't start until 12. So we go play put-put golf. Darly beats us both...she got 3 hole in ones! She's happy...and then we go to see the movie. It was great! Very funny and highly suggested. Everyone will have fun and it is totally family friendly. Then we start our drive north for the wedding...and right away hit traffic.
It seems that everyone in Michigan drives north for the weekends...they either own a cottage up north or know someone who does so they all go. The roads were packed! We were barely going 10 miles per hour. And DH decides that he wants some of the candy we bought at Raus. It's in the trunk. Ya know how most cars have back seats that fold down so you can stick large items in? Well these seats do fold down, but we have no idea how to do it. I climbed in the back seat to try to figure it out. I was fussing with it for a bit and we all had a good laugh, but never did get to the candy. The traffic finally let up about 20 miles or so and we get going. I'm now paniced that we will be late for the rehersal as I wasn't quite sure what time it began. When we finally get to the turn off we get lost...it seems there was a conflict between what the directions were and my understanding of them. Luckily we found an police officer who directed us where to go...we weren't that lost. But then we get to the resort and don't have any directions as to where the wedding is. We drove around to the lodge and the restaurants but didn't see anyone's cars...so I called Debbie. We needed to be at the Club House (???!!!) she sends Nicole to the road to flag us in. Nicole thought that her mom was talking to Dave and was wondering who we were (she didn't recognize our rental car - go figure!) when we waved at her. DH had bet me the $10 I won earlier with the not seeing the relatives bet that Dave would be later than we were...he was right...Dave pulled in as we were walking up to the wedding site.
I sent DH to get gas in our car and get us checked into our hotel (which was down the road from the resort...much cheaper!) This creates a problem later...
The wedding site is behind the ClubHouse...it overlooks the golf-course and has lots of wooded area for a nice back drop for the "altar." The bridal party is lined up as they would be for the wedding and they practice leaving the wedding first (???)...then they go stage up for the entrance.
first Eric takes MIL to be seated...then he comes back.
then Jake takes Debbie to be seated...and comes back.
then Eric takes Dionne to be seated and comes back.
then Ryan - the groom takes his parents together to be seated...he gets to stay up front now.
Then Jake takes his stepsister (she's a bridesmaid) to the front. They both stay up there.
Then Eric takes another stepsister.
Then more groomsmen & bridesmaids go up and finally the Best Man & Maid of Honor (Nicole) go up.
Finally Darly & Harley (the flowergirls) go up...they aren't throwing petals...they are going to hold smaller bouquets.
And of course the bride & her dad come down the aisle.
DH, Dave & Denise are not back from checking into the hotel...but we are finished rehearsing (I'm just an extra for all of that, but I got some pictures) so we get on a bus to drive to the Lodge for the rehearsal dinner. I'm tripping out because DH doesn't know that the rehearsal dinner is at the Lodge...shoot they didn't tell us the wedding was at the Club House! DH also didn't bring his cell phone so there is no way of calling him...had I been thinking I could have sent him with my phone...but more on that later.
We get to the Lodge and wait for the others to join us...we finally give up after about 45 minutes and begin to eat dinner. They show up about 5 minutes later. DH was frantically driving around everywhere trying to find us...he asked at the Lodge but the front desk had no idea that we were having the dinner there...the Club House didn't know and of course none of the restaurants knew either. Luckily, Nicole went out to find them all and brought them back to the dinner. They were serving steaks buffet style. I told the girls to just take anything that they thought they would eat as I knew they are both picky and I figured it didn't matter. I thought I would be sharing my steak with the two of them (I couldn't eat it all!) but when I got back to our table I see that they were both served HUGE chicken finger dinners! There was no way they could eat all that food.
I told DH that he was sharing my steak when he arrived. We all had plenty.
At dinner we learned that Denise was NOT happy with her room at the hotel that we were supposed to stay at. It was too rustic for her. Seems that she was wanting to stay at the resort. They did end up staying at the resort...we gave Dave a hard time about that later.
Our room was rustic too...but I was expecting it. The description said that it was a Loft with two bunk beds. Well I misunderstood...the room was in a building they call The Loft and there weren't any bunk beds. I don't know how that got mistranslated...but we did have a loft in our room. It was small and had 4 twin beds in it...two downstairs and two up a ladder like staircase to the loft. Darly was in heaven and climbed up the ladder right away to claim her bed. She had DH sleep up in the loft with her in the second bed. I stayed on terra firma in a bed down stairs. (thankyouverymuch!) also crammed into our tiny room were a table, two chairs, two closets & a 3/4 bathroom. It all worked out just fine for us...once we got the temperature right.
Oh hair appointments had been set up for the girls months ago to get their hair done up for the wedding. Dionne (the bride's step mom) set them up with a place that she knew of. I was told the appointment was at 12pm on the day of the wedding. No one said any different until the day of the wedding. Dionne didn't have the directions to the salon with her and was going to have to call her parents to get them, but she would call me with the directions so that we could find the place...thank goodness we went to get the directions that morning at 10:30 because the rest of them had already left without us (and no call) our appointments were up to 12. (???!!! who sets up appointments like that???!!!) So we get our directions and head over there. Dionne, her girls and Harly have all been done up and are leaving when we get there. All the others had their hair done in a half up, half down do. The stylist says that Darly's hair won't do that...so instead we go for a ponytail style that ends up being more like a fancy bun. Oh well...this kid is cute no matter what you do to her.
We get back and take Darly to the Lodge at 2:45 so they can take pictures before the wedding. I forgot to pack Darly's necklace, so I send DH back for it. I help Darly get changed into her dress and all set. DH gets back with the necklace right about the same time they need to be meeting with the photographer. They will be driving all over the resort to take pictures..so DH & I go back to our room to get ourselves ready. We then go get some lunch that we share because we don't want to be too full.
At 4pm we go back to the Club House for the wedding and everything goes off beautifully. The flowergirls are perfect (well Harly was a bit fast walking up the aisle...Darly tried to make her slow down.) And the bride only cried a bit (Darly told me she had a hard time not crying too...we're an emotional family...I cried too.) After the wedding it's time for photos. It took a long time but finally they said that we could go to the Lodge for the dinner. One of the caddies said we could take a gold cart to our car...we had been telling Darly that she should learn to drive a golf cart before a car and she really wanted to do it, but we didn't think the caddie would really let us have the 9y/o drive us. So we walked.
The reception hall (the picture at the top, not the drawing below) looked very lovely. It seemed to me that she had the Groom's family in the first row of tables, then her mom's family and then her dad's. I think it worked out very well although I expected that we would be seated farther back from the front. Oh well...she had the flowergirls together and me & her mom in charge of them. Dave & Denise were at the next table over.
The dinner was HUGE! First we had appetizers of a cheese plate, a veggie plate, quesodillias & meatballs. Then salads, and then our dinner plate had two beef fillets and a chicken breast with potatoes & greenbeans on it! We were so stuffed and for dessert the groom's mom had made a ton of cookies, cup cakes, other treats & the wedding cake! I don't think I've ever had so much food...okay I just mentioned the Zehnder's place...but you know what I mean. Again the girls didn't really eat much, but that was okay.
And we partied all night. The DJ's played really good music...although I had no idea what some of the songs were. Denise gave me a very hard time about not dancing to Fergielicious...the one and only time I ever plan to listen to that. YUCK! And I did an awesome Air Guitar solo to "Let's Go Crazy!" I don't care if they're talking about it for ages...it was fun. ha ha
Zie Leben Hoch was done at 10pm instead of the traditional 12am because we only had the room until 12am and there is always more dancing afterward. The Bride & Groom chose "I Like Big Butts" for the song after that. I don't get that one, but they had fun doing it. DH & I played something nice and slow for ours. Oh well.
We headed back to our room and zonked out quickly...but then at 2:30 the sprinklers came on and were shooting right at the windows of our room! I heard them about 3 times...DH said he only heard them twice.
On the way back to Frankenmuth we stopped by Lynn & Tom's cottage near Higgins Lake. We finally met their daughter Melissa who got engaged that weekend. She was so cute asking for details about the wedding for ideas for her own wedding. Lynn & Melissa had just been up to a lodge near the lake to see about having the wedding there. The owner doesn't do weddings there, but might be talked into it. It's very lovely there and I think they could have a very nice wedding there. I'm debating on if I should send Melissa a note telling her that her bridal party might appreciate a better organized schedule of when and where they are supposed to be...but it seems that I was the only one bothered by this.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We got in late lastnight...too late to pick up Lilly so I went to get her this morning. She was so happy to be out of there and is very happy to be home. The first thing she did was run to her couch and rub her face all over it...as if she were saying "AH! My House! My Couch! I missed you!"
I've missed you all and will now go read through a ton of blog entries...right? ;)
Well Tuesday (June 26Th) I called up my step dad and got the go ahead to leave for the wedding. At that point mom was still in ICU but doing very much better and starting to return to her same cranky self.
So Tuesday night I was running around after doing all the laundry so everyone would have plenty to choose from to pack for the trip. I made sure we had all our travel documents (print outs of our boarding passes, car rental, hotel reservations...etc...) I was choosing and packing my things in the suitcases...making sure that Darly had everything that she needed and that she didn't pack anything unpractical...making sure the dog and rabbits were all set, ya know doing everything and fuming because DH & Darly were mostly playing.
Wednesday morning I got up early (I always do when we travel!) and I did some last minute things...making sure everything would go well.
I should mention here that if you don't already know this...I'm a very anal plan everything out control freak kind of person. Which in some cases works out very well for me and in others backfires in my face when something unexpected or unplanned happens. So I made for us a "day planner" on my Excel spreadsheet...where I had everything all scheduled. I also made packing charts for each of us...It had what all was going on that day so we would know when to pack what...like for the day of the wedding we needed not only our dress clothes but something to wear before the wedding. All planned out...perfectly.
So we get going at 8:05am (we were supposed to leave at 8am...but I'm a smart gal...I added "cushion" time into the schedule because DH is ALWAYS dragging his feet!) Everything went well with traffic and we get to the kennel to drop off Lilly. She of course did NOT want to be left there. The guy had to drag her back to the kennel while Lilly was trying to run towards me. I really wish I knew more of what happened when she was there, but I doubt that even the kennel staff really know as they just pop her into a run and feed her. The kennel suggests that you allow an hour for dropping off your dog...it NEVER takes that long so there was my cushion.
Next we head over to the car park. (BTW: the kennel & the car park are both off the same main road that we always use for getting to the airport. Very handy!) We parked the car and the bus came to pick us up right away. We were at the airport with plenty of time.
I headed to the bathroom while DH & Darly went to wait in line for the baggage check in. I got back in just enough time to show the ticket agent my ID so she could verify my boarding pass.
Security was at level ORANGE so the screening was wrapped all the way around to near baggage claim. The official there said it would only take about 45 minutes from that point. I teased that it might take as long as 5 hours and she wasn't impressed. Some folks just can't take a joke at all. Oh well...I think it actually took less than 45 minutes as whenever the handicapped line was not being used they would allow regular folks to use it too. We might have been in line for about 30 minutes..probably less...it all went very quickly.
Then we head to get lunch and bump into someone we know from Church. He was on a flight directly to Detroit but on another airlines...we had to stop in Nashville first. Our flight was delayed due to weather. We were flying Southwest.
Ever flown with Southwest before? Well they don't have seat assignments. Instead you get a boarding assignment which determines when you get to get on the plane...then you can sit anywhere you like...unless you are traveling with children...then you can't sit in the emergency row. So when you are waiting for your flight...you notice folks standing in line for boarding LONG before there is even a plane to board. I still laugh about this as it happens every single time. They are standing and waiting and there is no plane to get on.
The rest of the flight to Nashville was uneventful but trying to get to Detroit was not the same. We were supposed to leave at 4:30pm. We were all in line waiting to board when the captain comes out to announce that due to weather we weren't going anywhere for now and would get more info at 5:15pm. So I go to get some food. We eat and at 5:15 we learn that we aren't going to get any more news until 6pm. Finally at 6:30 they tell us to HURRY UP and board so we can make a small window to get into Detroit. We board but of course we didn't do it quickly enough and we missed our window. So next we are told that we will sit in the aircraft for an hour with the engines off to save fuel hoping for a chance to take off. they will have the fasten seat belts signs off so we can use the bathrooms and they will serve us water...but we can only go to the bathrooms one at a time in case we get the go ahead to take off so we can leave quickly. But the pilot forgot to turn off the fasten seat belt sign...the flight attendant reminded him to do that and some other person jumped up before I could go. And of course as soon as that person was out the captain said we had the go ahead to leave...so no potty break for me. We ended up leaving Nashville around 7:30 or so. The captain never turned off the fasten seat belt signs because they were expecting bad weather (we never got any!) but I had to go so I went and got scolded by the flight attendant. after I got back Darly announces that she has to go too but we were already on our decent so we made her wait until we landed. I think we got out of the airport at around 10:20pm! We were supposed to be in Detroit at 7pm.
We ate a very late dinner at Bob's Big Boy. You know how you have great memories of a place from when you were a kid and then if you go back as an adult it isn't so great? So was the case with Bob's Big Boy! DH & I both had fond memories that were totally dashed by this place. The service stunk and the manager was the worst about it. We stood there to get a table for about 10 minutes and it was because all the staff were just avoiding coming up there to get us. Bah! We'll never eat there again!
We start the drive to Birch Run and missed our turn off because I was looking for I-75 not US-23. We got almost all the way to Lansing before we realized that we had made a mistake...about an hour out of our way. So DH gets this idea that we should take a back road north to get to I-69 that will take us back to Flint & to I-75 where we want to be...but the back road doesn't go there directly and we missed our turn because a tree was covering the sign. We wanted 52. The sign said for 49 turn left and for 52 go...well we don't really know that because the tree covered that part up. We assumed that we go right for 52 since for 49 it was left. We were WRONG! So we're driving along for a long time and I keep trying to convince DH that we are going EAST instead of NORTH...but he doesn't believe me. Finally we find a 7-11 and ask for directions. We were heading East and were now only 10 miles from US-23...so we continue back to where we needed to be but not where we wanted to be.
WE finally make it to our hotel in Birch Run at 3:10am. The desk clerk was NOT amused to be checking us in at that hour. Can't say that I blame him one bit...but that is his job.
We get to our room and finally get to bed about 3:45 am. DH is all worried about us missing the free breakfast in the lobby that ends at 10am. Sorry it couldn't be helped. We ended up at Bob Evans instead. GREAT breakfast! Loved it!
So our plan was to hang our on our own on Thursday (28Th) and just enjoy Frankenmuth without our relatives. But at breakfast a Bob Evans, I say "what if we run into one of your relatives?" DH says "Nah, it will NEVER happen. What are the chances that we'll run into someone we know?" We bet $10 on that. What should we do first? Darly wants to go to the park. This is the park that has the turtle that her grandfather made (that has no identification on it. the only folks who know that FIL made this are FIL's family. I think we should do something about that, but I noticed that there are some cracks on it now so it might not be around long enough to bother now.)
We played at the park for a while, visiting all the important stuff and I turn towards the park entrance and notice a white van (very much like Dave's) driving in. I say to DH "I think that's your brother's van." He says it can't be. As the van is getting closer I can tell the front licence plate is a Harly Davidson plate...it has to be Dave's van as Michigan requires plates on both the front and back (Dave lives in NC.) Sure enough we watch as Steve, Denise, Dave and all the kids climb out of the van. Darly is so excited to see her cousins that she runs right over while DH is trying to hide from them as we didn't want to see them yet. I can't let them think that Darly is at the park by herself so I head over. Dh heads over eventually...beaten.
The kids & adults played. it was fun. We then decide to head over to Bronner's to look for a Wedding present from Darly to Niece. DH tries to loose Dave while we drive over, but Dave finds us with no problems...I guess the bright red car with Maine tags was a give-away. So all 6 Adults & 5 kids head in. (check my last blogging about going to Frankenmuth for a link to Bronners.) This place is HUGE and there were many times when Dave's kids were with DH & I or with Steve & his friend instead of with Dave & Denise. In the end we all made it out okay, the kids were returned to their parents and nothing was broken.
Dave & the gang decide they will try to get to St Lorenz to hear the bells go off... We decide to do some more shopping downtown. We end up at Rau's Country store for some candy. WE buy a mixed bag of candies...taffy, hard candy, caramels, etc. After this we are hungry and Zehnders is right next door...so we decide to give that a try.
Darly orders a Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwich...DH & I share a 3 piece chicken dinner. Zehnders is famous for their all you can eat chicken dinner...but it is $17.95 per person. If you order the 3 piece dinner you get all the same stuff and you can share it for just $18.95. Trust me, there's plenty of food! First she brings us some bread, butter, Cranberry sauce, Cottage Cheese, Cole Slaw and paté, cheese spread w/ toasted baguette. I tried my first paté (not bad), Darly tried her first cottage cheese (she loved it!), Dh joked with the waitress about the Stollen bread.
After this course, we were brought noodle soup. very yummy!
finally she brought out our dinners. With our chicken dinner we got mashed potatoes, stuffing, a bowl of vegetables and a bowl of gravy. I soon found that the very dry Famous Frankenmuth Chicken tastes much better if covered in gravy. Our family of 3 could have easily all shared this one dinner...I don't know if we were charged for the extra soups or not...but who cares? It was good, we were very stuffed and although DH teased that we should eat everything...even he knew that was going to be impossible.
After our dinner we headed over to Debbie's house. It was chaos as everyone was over there (as always.) Let me introduce the cast of characters here for you...
At first I was using SIL & BIL instead of names...but it gets complicated quickly...so here are the names:
Debbie - DH's oldest Sister
Pam - The bride & Debbie's oldest child
Nicole - Debbie's second
Eric - Debbie's son...the recent graduate
Jake - Debbie's youngest
Wendy - DH's second sister
Bob - her DH
Rachel - Wendy's daughter
Dave - DH's oldest Brother
Denise - Dave's wife
Avery - Denise's son
Harley - their oldest daughter
Nick - their son
Trevor - another son
Katie - their baby
(not here were Danielle, Dave's daughter who lives with her mom & Jessica who was with her dad.)
Steve - Dh's second brother who is single
MIL
Lynn - DH's cousin
Tom - her husband
Melissa - their daughter
Rich - Debbie's EX husband & father to her kids
Dionne - Rich's new wife
Okay, I think that's everyone that I'll be mentioning...I'll pop up to make changes if I need to.
So at Debbie's house we had Dave & his family staying there; Steve & his friend (a coworker); Wendy & Rachel; and us.
I was trying to find out all the stuff I needed to know for getting Darly where she needed to be for the wedding, but it was hard to keep track of everything as Debbie didn't know all of it and she also had to tell Wendy & Steve where they needed to be. I was disappointed that Pam hadn't provided more info, but she was busy and not even there...she lives in Saginaw.
We finally get back to our hotel after 10pm and we're bushed! The sun stays up longer in Michigan than in Colorado...the mountains hide it from us.
We get up on Friday morning and have a bit of time to do things before we head up to the wedding site. So we see that Ratatouille is playing at the theater next door to our hotel...but it doesn't start until 12. So we go play put-put golf. Darly beats us both...she got 3 hole in ones! She's happy...and then we go to see the movie. It was great! Very funny and highly suggested. Everyone will have fun and it is totally family friendly. Then we start our drive north for the wedding...and right away hit traffic.
It seems that everyone in Michigan drives north for the weekends...they either own a cottage up north or know someone who does so they all go. The roads were packed! We were barely going 10 miles per hour. And DH decides that he wants some of the candy we bought at Raus. It's in the trunk. Ya know how most cars have back seats that fold down so you can stick large items in? Well these seats do fold down, but we have no idea how to do it. I climbed in the back seat to try to figure it out. I was fussing with it for a bit and we all had a good laugh, but never did get to the candy. The traffic finally let up about 20 miles or so and we get going. I'm now paniced that we will be late for the rehersal as I wasn't quite sure what time it began. When we finally get to the turn off we get lost...it seems there was a conflict between what the directions were and my understanding of them. Luckily we found an police officer who directed us where to go...we weren't that lost. But then we get to the resort and don't have any directions as to where the wedding is. We drove around to the lodge and the restaurants but didn't see anyone's cars...so I called Debbie. We needed to be at the Club House (???!!!) she sends Nicole to the road to flag us in. Nicole thought that her mom was talking to Dave and was wondering who we were (she didn't recognize our rental car - go figure!) when we waved at her. DH had bet me the $10 I won earlier with the not seeing the relatives bet that Dave would be later than we were...he was right...Dave pulled in as we were walking up to the wedding site.
I sent DH to get gas in our car and get us checked into our hotel (which was down the road from the resort...much cheaper!) This creates a problem later...
The wedding site is behind the ClubHouse...it overlooks the golf-course and has lots of wooded area for a nice back drop for the "altar." The bridal party is lined up as they would be for the wedding and they practice leaving the wedding first (???)...then they go stage up for the entrance.
first Eric takes MIL to be seated...then he comes back.
then Jake takes Debbie to be seated...and comes back.
then Eric takes Dionne to be seated and comes back.
then Ryan - the groom takes his parents together to be seated...he gets to stay up front now.
Then Jake takes his stepsister (she's a bridesmaid) to the front. They both stay up there.
Then Eric takes another stepsister.
Then more groomsmen & bridesmaids go up and finally the Best Man & Maid of Honor (Nicole) go up.
Finally Darly & Harley (the flowergirls) go up...they aren't throwing petals...they are going to hold smaller bouquets.
And of course the bride & her dad come down the aisle.
DH, Dave & Denise are not back from checking into the hotel...but we are finished rehearsing (I'm just an extra for all of that, but I got some pictures) so we get on a bus to drive to the Lodge for the rehearsal dinner. I'm tripping out because DH doesn't know that the rehearsal dinner is at the Lodge...shoot they didn't tell us the wedding was at the Club House! DH also didn't bring his cell phone so there is no way of calling him...had I been thinking I could have sent him with my phone...but more on that later.
We get to the Lodge and wait for the others to join us...we finally give up after about 45 minutes and begin to eat dinner. They show up about 5 minutes later. DH was frantically driving around everywhere trying to find us...he asked at the Lodge but the front desk had no idea that we were having the dinner there...the Club House didn't know and of course none of the restaurants knew either. Luckily, Nicole went out to find them all and brought them back to the dinner. They were serving steaks buffet style. I told the girls to just take anything that they thought they would eat as I knew they are both picky and I figured it didn't matter. I thought I would be sharing my steak with the two of them (I couldn't eat it all!) but when I got back to our table I see that they were both served HUGE chicken finger dinners! There was no way they could eat all that food.
I told DH that he was sharing my steak when he arrived. We all had plenty.
At dinner we learned that Denise was NOT happy with her room at the hotel that we were supposed to stay at. It was too rustic for her. Seems that she was wanting to stay at the resort. They did end up staying at the resort...we gave Dave a hard time about that later.
Our room was rustic too...but I was expecting it. The description said that it was a Loft with two bunk beds. Well I misunderstood...the room was in a building they call The Loft and there weren't any bunk beds. I don't know how that got mistranslated...but we did have a loft in our room. It was small and had 4 twin beds in it...two downstairs and two up a ladder like staircase to the loft. Darly was in heaven and climbed up the ladder right away to claim her bed. She had DH sleep up in the loft with her in the second bed. I stayed on terra firma in a bed down stairs. (thankyouverymuch!) also crammed into our tiny room were a table, two chairs, two closets & a 3/4 bathroom. It all worked out just fine for us...once we got the temperature right.
Oh hair appointments had been set up for the girls months ago to get their hair done up for the wedding. Dionne (the bride's step mom) set them up with a place that she knew of. I was told the appointment was at 12pm on the day of the wedding. No one said any different until the day of the wedding. Dionne didn't have the directions to the salon with her and was going to have to call her parents to get them, but she would call me with the directions so that we could find the place...thank goodness we went to get the directions that morning at 10:30 because the rest of them had already left without us (and no call) our appointments were up to 12. (???!!! who sets up appointments like that???!!!) So we get our directions and head over there. Dionne, her girls and Harly have all been done up and are leaving when we get there. All the others had their hair done in a half up, half down do. The stylist says that Darly's hair won't do that...so instead we go for a ponytail style that ends up being more like a fancy bun. Oh well...this kid is cute no matter what you do to her.
We get back and take Darly to the Lodge at 2:45 so they can take pictures before the wedding. I forgot to pack Darly's necklace, so I send DH back for it. I help Darly get changed into her dress and all set. DH gets back with the necklace right about the same time they need to be meeting with the photographer. They will be driving all over the resort to take pictures..so DH & I go back to our room to get ourselves ready. We then go get some lunch that we share because we don't want to be too full.
At 4pm we go back to the Club House for the wedding and everything goes off beautifully. The flowergirls are perfect (well Harly was a bit fast walking up the aisle...Darly tried to make her slow down.) And the bride only cried a bit (Darly told me she had a hard time not crying too...we're an emotional family...I cried too.) After the wedding it's time for photos. It took a long time but finally they said that we could go to the Lodge for the dinner. One of the caddies said we could take a gold cart to our car...we had been telling Darly that she should learn to drive a golf cart before a car and she really wanted to do it, but we didn't think the caddie would really let us have the 9y/o drive us. So we walked.
The reception hall (the picture at the top, not the drawing below) looked very lovely. It seemed to me that she had the Groom's family in the first row of tables, then her mom's family and then her dad's. I think it worked out very well although I expected that we would be seated farther back from the front. Oh well...she had the flowergirls together and me & her mom in charge of them. Dave & Denise were at the next table over.
The dinner was HUGE! First we had appetizers of a cheese plate, a veggie plate, quesodillias & meatballs. Then salads, and then our dinner plate had two beef fillets and a chicken breast with potatoes & greenbeans on it! We were so stuffed and for dessert the groom's mom had made a ton of cookies, cup cakes, other treats & the wedding cake! I don't think I've ever had so much food...okay I just mentioned the Zehnder's place...but you know what I mean. Again the girls didn't really eat much, but that was okay.
And we partied all night. The DJ's played really good music...although I had no idea what some of the songs were. Denise gave me a very hard time about not dancing to Fergielicious...the one and only time I ever plan to listen to that. YUCK! And I did an awesome Air Guitar solo to "Let's Go Crazy!" I don't care if they're talking about it for ages...it was fun. ha ha
Zie Leben Hoch was done at 10pm instead of the traditional 12am because we only had the room until 12am and there is always more dancing afterward. The Bride & Groom chose "I Like Big Butts" for the song after that. I don't get that one, but they had fun doing it. DH & I played something nice and slow for ours. Oh well.
We headed back to our room and zonked out quickly...but then at 2:30 the sprinklers came on and were shooting right at the windows of our room! I heard them about 3 times...DH said he only heard them twice.
On the way back to Frankenmuth we stopped by Lynn & Tom's cottage near Higgins Lake. We finally met their daughter Melissa who got engaged that weekend. She was so cute asking for details about the wedding for ideas for her own wedding. Lynn & Melissa had just been up to a lodge near the lake to see about having the wedding there. The owner doesn't do weddings there, but might be talked into it. It's very lovely there and I think they could have a very nice wedding there. I'm debating on if I should send Melissa a note telling her that her bridal party might appreciate a better organized schedule of when and where they are supposed to be...but it seems that I was the only one bothered by this.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We got in late lastnight...too late to pick up Lilly so I went to get her this morning. She was so happy to be out of there and is very happy to be home. The first thing she did was run to her couch and rub her face all over it...as if she were saying "AH! My House! My Couch! I missed you!"
I've missed you all and will now go read through a ton of blog entries...right? ;)
Monday, July 02, 2007
home again home again! and update on Mom
We're home, I'm bushed, so I'll keep this quick.
The latest I heard on my mom is that she's been moved back into her own room at the hospital on Friday (29th). I will call tomorrow to get a better update as it was after 10 when we got home tonight.
more later. Thanks so much to everyone for the prayers.
The latest I heard on my mom is that she's been moved back into her own room at the hospital on Friday (29th). I will call tomorrow to get a better update as it was after 10 when we got home tonight.
more later. Thanks so much to everyone for the prayers.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Prayers & good thoughs needed
We had just got home from VBS today when my "step-dad" called. At first I saw the caller ID and thought it was my mom. I figured she was gonna whine about us going to the wedding.
But when I answered it was my "step-dad." Ut oh!
Vance (my "step-dad"- they aren't married, but have been together since 1993) said that he had to put my mom into the hospital yesterday because she couldn't breath. He said that she had pneumonia back in March and has still be coughing and hacking ever since. He finally took her to a pneumonogist (lung specialist) a while back who told her it was arthritis in her lungs. Meanwhile she is still coughing and hacking.
She was recently put on oxygen at home and that helped some...but yesterday was just too much. In fact she was "out of it" totally not herself. She was appologizing (this woman NEVER applogizes for ANYTHING!) So of course Vance knew something was wrong.
She's been in the hospital for 24 hours and the doctors have run x-rays & MRIs but still can't agree on what is wrong with her. One says pneumonia the other says not.
I'm not doctor...but a good dose of Anti-biotics never hurt anyone (well except for the yeast infection...but that's minor at this point). LOL! I have to make jokes about this to get through it.
So I'm pulling out all the stops here and I'm asking anyone to send prayers & postitive thoughts her way.
What's worse is the timing...we have plans to go to Michigan on Wednesday. I guess worst case, I go to FL (try to get the airlines to change my ticket) and Tom & Chrissy head to Michigan for the wedding.
Thanks everyone...will keep you posted.
UPDATE: My stepdad was at the hospital and she was getting worse again. Her heart rate was up and she was struggling to breath again. The nurse came in and Vance asked if they could see a lung specialist. The lung specialist had her moved to ICU and started running a bunch of tests that haven't ever been done on her (which to me seemed like something that should have been done right away...like running a culture on the mucus in her lungs and doing blood cultures too. ) This was just done so we won't know anything for a bit.
They've upped her oxygen and put her on a full face mask which perked her up. They also gave her some pain meds...but they hadn't kicked in yet and mom was asking for her purse where she keeps her vicadin. Luckily my stepdad didn't let her have it.
UPDATE AGAIN: Just talked to my stepdad and while my mom is still in the ICU, she is stable and doing much better. The tests confirmed that she does have pneumonia so they are putting her on Anti-biotics for that. My stepdad wants them to check a few things with her arthritis & osteoporosis medications while they've got her captive.
But when I answered it was my "step-dad." Ut oh!
Vance (my "step-dad"- they aren't married, but have been together since 1993) said that he had to put my mom into the hospital yesterday because she couldn't breath. He said that she had pneumonia back in March and has still be coughing and hacking ever since. He finally took her to a pneumonogist (lung specialist) a while back who told her it was arthritis in her lungs. Meanwhile she is still coughing and hacking.
She was recently put on oxygen at home and that helped some...but yesterday was just too much. In fact she was "out of it" totally not herself. She was appologizing (this woman NEVER applogizes for ANYTHING!) So of course Vance knew something was wrong.
She's been in the hospital for 24 hours and the doctors have run x-rays & MRIs but still can't agree on what is wrong with her. One says pneumonia the other says not.
I'm not doctor...but a good dose of Anti-biotics never hurt anyone (well except for the yeast infection...but that's minor at this point). LOL! I have to make jokes about this to get through it.
So I'm pulling out all the stops here and I'm asking anyone to send prayers & postitive thoughts her way.
What's worse is the timing...we have plans to go to Michigan on Wednesday. I guess worst case, I go to FL (try to get the airlines to change my ticket) and Tom & Chrissy head to Michigan for the wedding.
Thanks everyone...will keep you posted.
UPDATE: My stepdad was at the hospital and she was getting worse again. Her heart rate was up and she was struggling to breath again. The nurse came in and Vance asked if they could see a lung specialist. The lung specialist had her moved to ICU and started running a bunch of tests that haven't ever been done on her (which to me seemed like something that should have been done right away...like running a culture on the mucus in her lungs and doing blood cultures too. ) This was just done so we won't know anything for a bit.
They've upped her oxygen and put her on a full face mask which perked her up. They also gave her some pain meds...but they hadn't kicked in yet and mom was asking for her purse where she keeps her vicadin. Luckily my stepdad didn't let her have it.
UPDATE AGAIN: Just talked to my stepdad and while my mom is still in the ICU, she is stable and doing much better. The tests confirmed that she does have pneumonia so they are putting her on Anti-biotics for that. My stepdad wants them to check a few things with her arthritis & osteoporosis medications while they've got her captive.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Tags & Memes
I got tagged as:
Lynn over at A Tired Mama tagged me with this Rockin' Girl Blogger pink tag thingy. She also wrote something very nice about me...and I truly appreciate it...Thanks Lynn. Wow! You think I'm cool. hee hee
"Now I must choose 5 women bloggers worthy of this beautiful pink button and that shouldn't be too hard. If you get tagged, grab your well deserved pretty pink badge up top and slap it on your site and then list 5 Rockin' Girl Bloggers. Here's my list...in no particular order...:
Kailani: Kailani is a busy mom like me, but she thows in an extra kiddo and she works as a flight attendant too! I don't know how she manages to do it all, but she sure comes up with some very funny flight stories. People are sure funny and I love hearing about the weird stuff they do while stuffed into a plane.
Catzee: Is a very cute tortishell kitten who bloggs about her adventures in figuring out our world. She is very curious and shares her world with her older brother Rascal, who as you can see has his own blog too. Sometimes it's a hoot to check out the other side to the story as the cats have very different personalities but get along pretty well under the same roof. Their mom also blogs about her attempts to do her yarn work with curious kitties around.
Carmen: is a fun-loving (maybe not for long?) single gal living & working in VA. She has a very cute cat named Pooh and takes trips to die for. We all live vicariously through her adventures.
Jen: My good real live buddy who got me started in all this blogging business. Jen is a homeschooling mom to 4 great kiddos who are always good for some blog fodder. Lately she's been telling stories of her girls growing up, but she hasn't blogged about them. She may be too busy with her plumbing problems.
Ladybug: Is a very cool Mom with two lovely children who seem to have no heads. ha ha Actually I've been one of the very few privileged folks to see her kids heads. I don't know how LB does it as she is way more busy than I am, but yet she manages to blog too...maybe she doesn't sleep? Well I know she didn't sleep for LLB's slumber party. Poor gal. I hope she gets a nap today.
I actually have many more blogging friends that I think are Cool Rockin Girl Bloggers, but I just went down my blogroll from the top. I love you all!
Music meme
Seen at Janet's
1. Go to the Billboard #1 Hits listings (scroll down and you'll see them separated by decades on the left in the sidebar)
2. Pick the year you turned 18
3. Get yourself nostalgic over the songs of the year
4. Pick 5 songs and write something about how these songs affected you
5. Pass it on to 5 more friends
Okay, Like Janet...I'm gonna comment on the entire year. hee hee
1985
December 22, 1984 - February 1, 1985: Like a Virgin- Madonna that was soooo ironic! that's all I'm sayin.
February 2 - February 15: I Want to Know What Love Is - Foreigner I think I was learning more about what Lust is.
February 16 - March 8: Careless Whisper - Wham! featuring George Michael All I can remember about this was he was arrested soon after this for those "indecent acts."
March 9 - March 29: Can't Fight This Feeling - REO Speedwagon Hee hee. I remember sitting in sociology class and this girl Amy that I knew complaining about how stupid this song was...specifically the line "...row this ship onto the shore and throw away the oars forever..."
March 30 - April 12: One More Night - Phil Collins Didn't pay much attention to this song back then.
April 13 - May 10: We Are The World - USA For Africa I always prefered the Band Aid song...I was more into European artists.
May 11 - May 17: Crazy for You - Madonna I thought I was crazy for a guy back then...he sure made me do some crazy things (get your mind out of the gutter!) I mean being so focused on spending time with him that I ignored important things like my family and schoolwork. Almost blew my scholarship!
May 18 - May 24: Don't You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds Ah! The Breakfast Club! I remember seeing this at the $1 theater pub w/ same guy mentioned above. We may or may not have ordered illegal for us drinks. We knew some of the folks who worked there and they thought that we were the same age they were.
May 25 - June 7: Everything She Wants - Wham!
June 8 - June 21: Everybody Wants To Rule The World - Tears For Fears Graduation time!
June 22 - July 5: Heaven - Bryan Adams This was Rubin & Mickey's song. I always thought that Rubin was gay, but apparently Mickey was trying to convince him otherwise.
July 6 - July 12: Sussudio - Phil Collins Did anyone understand this song?
July 13 - July 26: A View to a Kill - Duran Duran Loved Duran Squared!
July 27 - August 2: Everytime You Go Away - Paul Young We used to sing..."Everytime you go...away...you take a piece of MEAT with you..." LOL!
August 3 - August 23: Shout - Tears For Fears Funny, I'm remembering all these songs past June as happening earlier. I guess they were on the charts a long time.
August 24 - September 6: The Power of Love- Huey Lewis & The News Back to the Future!
September 7 - September 20: St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion) - John Parr Went to the movies w/ guy mentioned above...we paid to see Backwoods Massacre, but got bored and started to keep ourselves otherwise occupied...but soon realized that we were more interesting than the movie (all eyes were on us) so we snuck into St. Elmo's Fire. The theater was doing some collection for charity and the very same ticket taker had come in with a bucket to collect. I think he did notice that we were just in the other movie...but he didn't say anything. Whew! I must have not seen this movie again cuz I don't remember it...and no we didn't try to be occupied again!
September 21 - October 11: Money For Nothing - Dire Straits Hey, I just quoted this when we installed our new Microwave oven! Cool song...also remember this song much earlier as we had MTV when it came out and did not have MTV when I graduated.
October 12 - October 18: Oh Sheila - Ready For the World
October 19 - October 25: Take On Me - a-ha Oh I loved this song! I bought the cassette tape! I might have been the only person to do that. ha ha
October 26 - November 1: Saving All My Love For You - Whitney Houston Ya know? After all the years of her with Bobby Brown, any good memories have been tainted!
November 2 - November 8: Part Time Lover - Stevie Wonder Still wondering about that song.
November 9 - November 15: Miami Vice Theme - Jan Hammer Never did get into that show much...but did think that Don Johnson was cute.
November 16 - November 29: We Built This City - Starship Did everyone's radio station change that part to their own station?
November 30 - December 6: Separate Lives - Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin What I SHOULD have been doing, but I wasn't!
December 7 - December 20: Broken Wings- Mr. Mister
December 21, 1985 - January 17, 1986: Say You, Say Me - Lionel Richie Say WHAT?
Lynn over at A Tired Mama tagged me with this Rockin' Girl Blogger pink tag thingy. She also wrote something very nice about me...and I truly appreciate it...Thanks Lynn. Wow! You think I'm cool. hee hee
"Now I must choose 5 women bloggers worthy of this beautiful pink button and that shouldn't be too hard. If you get tagged, grab your well deserved pretty pink badge up top and slap it on your site and then list 5 Rockin' Girl Bloggers. Here's my list...in no particular order...:
Kailani: Kailani is a busy mom like me, but she thows in an extra kiddo and she works as a flight attendant too! I don't know how she manages to do it all, but she sure comes up with some very funny flight stories. People are sure funny and I love hearing about the weird stuff they do while stuffed into a plane.
Catzee: Is a very cute tortishell kitten who bloggs about her adventures in figuring out our world. She is very curious and shares her world with her older brother Rascal, who as you can see has his own blog too. Sometimes it's a hoot to check out the other side to the story as the cats have very different personalities but get along pretty well under the same roof. Their mom also blogs about her attempts to do her yarn work with curious kitties around.
Carmen: is a fun-loving (maybe not for long?) single gal living & working in VA. She has a very cute cat named Pooh and takes trips to die for. We all live vicariously through her adventures.
Jen: My good real live buddy who got me started in all this blogging business. Jen is a homeschooling mom to 4 great kiddos who are always good for some blog fodder. Lately she's been telling stories of her girls growing up, but she hasn't blogged about them. She may be too busy with her plumbing problems.
Ladybug: Is a very cool Mom with two lovely children who seem to have no heads. ha ha Actually I've been one of the very few privileged folks to see her kids heads. I don't know how LB does it as she is way more busy than I am, but yet she manages to blog too...maybe she doesn't sleep? Well I know she didn't sleep for LLB's slumber party. Poor gal. I hope she gets a nap today.
I actually have many more blogging friends that I think are Cool Rockin Girl Bloggers, but I just went down my blogroll from the top. I love you all!
Music meme
Seen at Janet's
1. Go to the Billboard #1 Hits listings (scroll down and you'll see them separated by decades on the left in the sidebar)
2. Pick the year you turned 18
3. Get yourself nostalgic over the songs of the year
4. Pick 5 songs and write something about how these songs affected you
5. Pass it on to 5 more friends
Okay, Like Janet...I'm gonna comment on the entire year. hee hee
1985
December 22, 1984 - February 1, 1985: Like a Virgin- Madonna that was soooo ironic! that's all I'm sayin.
February 2 - February 15: I Want to Know What Love Is - Foreigner I think I was learning more about what Lust is.
February 16 - March 8: Careless Whisper - Wham! featuring George Michael All I can remember about this was he was arrested soon after this for those "indecent acts."
March 9 - March 29: Can't Fight This Feeling - REO Speedwagon Hee hee. I remember sitting in sociology class and this girl Amy that I knew complaining about how stupid this song was...specifically the line "...row this ship onto the shore and throw away the oars forever..."
March 30 - April 12: One More Night - Phil Collins Didn't pay much attention to this song back then.
April 13 - May 10: We Are The World - USA For Africa I always prefered the Band Aid song...I was more into European artists.
May 11 - May 17: Crazy for You - Madonna I thought I was crazy for a guy back then...he sure made me do some crazy things (get your mind out of the gutter!) I mean being so focused on spending time with him that I ignored important things like my family and schoolwork. Almost blew my scholarship!
May 18 - May 24: Don't You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds Ah! The Breakfast Club! I remember seeing this at the $1 theater pub w/ same guy mentioned above. We may or may not have ordered illegal for us drinks. We knew some of the folks who worked there and they thought that we were the same age they were.
May 25 - June 7: Everything She Wants - Wham!
June 8 - June 21: Everybody Wants To Rule The World - Tears For Fears Graduation time!
June 22 - July 5: Heaven - Bryan Adams This was Rubin & Mickey's song. I always thought that Rubin was gay, but apparently Mickey was trying to convince him otherwise.
July 6 - July 12: Sussudio - Phil Collins Did anyone understand this song?
July 13 - July 26: A View to a Kill - Duran Duran Loved Duran Squared!
July 27 - August 2: Everytime You Go Away - Paul Young We used to sing..."Everytime you go...away...you take a piece of MEAT with you..." LOL!
August 3 - August 23: Shout - Tears For Fears Funny, I'm remembering all these songs past June as happening earlier. I guess they were on the charts a long time.
August 24 - September 6: The Power of Love- Huey Lewis & The News Back to the Future!
September 7 - September 20: St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion) - John Parr Went to the movies w/ guy mentioned above...we paid to see Backwoods Massacre, but got bored and started to keep ourselves otherwise occupied...but soon realized that we were more interesting than the movie (all eyes were on us) so we snuck into St. Elmo's Fire. The theater was doing some collection for charity and the very same ticket taker had come in with a bucket to collect. I think he did notice that we were just in the other movie...but he didn't say anything. Whew! I must have not seen this movie again cuz I don't remember it...and no we didn't try to be occupied again!
September 21 - October 11: Money For Nothing - Dire Straits Hey, I just quoted this when we installed our new Microwave oven! Cool song...also remember this song much earlier as we had MTV when it came out and did not have MTV when I graduated.
October 12 - October 18: Oh Sheila - Ready For the World
October 19 - October 25: Take On Me - a-ha Oh I loved this song! I bought the cassette tape! I might have been the only person to do that. ha ha
October 26 - November 1: Saving All My Love For You - Whitney Houston Ya know? After all the years of her with Bobby Brown, any good memories have been tainted!
November 2 - November 8: Part Time Lover - Stevie Wonder Still wondering about that song.
November 9 - November 15: Miami Vice Theme - Jan Hammer Never did get into that show much...but did think that Don Johnson was cute.
November 16 - November 29: We Built This City - Starship Did everyone's radio station change that part to their own station?
November 30 - December 6: Separate Lives - Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin What I SHOULD have been doing, but I wasn't!
December 7 - December 20: Broken Wings- Mr. Mister
December 21, 1985 - January 17, 1986: Say You, Say Me - Lionel Richie Say WHAT?
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
I bet you're wonderin'...
why I haven't posted anything new in a while? You're thinking "she can't have fallen off the planet because she's been commenting a bit." So why haven't I been posting?
Mostly too busy to even think of anything blog worthy. But I've been toying around with an idea. hee hee
I also wanted to give Darly a chance to answer Island Girl's questions...but she's been busy too. I'll have to do that in a separate post. And thanks to Bone we will be offering a more frequent Darly session...it may be more questions you ask her...it may be (like Scone suggested) questions that she asks you!...or it may just be her very own creation. The gal has talent...don't know where she might be getting that from at all.
So here's the idea I was playing around with.
How much does it cost to go to your neice's wedding?
Well let me see...
Airfare for 3 on Southwest: $714.30
Car Rental from Avis w/ discount: $166.32+ taxes
Car parking in Denver: $29.94+ taxes
Hotels (yes two...one in hometown & one in wedding site town): $384.45
Kennel for animals: $108.50
update shots for dog to stay at kennel: $145 WAIT A MINUTE! All I really needed for her to stay at the kennel was the kennel cough shot so that's: $16.50 The rest of that was the "well it's due next month, so you might as well save yourself a trip..." stuff
Haircoloring/cutting & styling for me: $129+tip
And finally (I think, unless something else comes up) a gift for the Bride & Groom. I was telling DH that whatever we give we should also add on the price of the Flowergirl dress that neice sent us...so say we were planning to spend $100, we should spend or give $135 to cover the dress and maybe more than that to cover shipping the dress to us as well.
I should also mention that we're being sneaky. So far I haven't heard anything from the bride or her mother that we need to be in town early for anything...ie. a bridal shower. (When I married into this family my MIL threw me a shower so that all of DH's female family members could meet me. It was very nice and I got a lot more loot! At the same time they had a shower for DH with all the men & the kids. So no, he didn't get another bachelor party. ha ha) We get in one day before the wedding rehersal...we aren't going to tell anyone that and will let them know we are there at about 8pm of the day before the rehersal. That way we have an entire day to ourselves to do what we want...otherwise we could get stuck at SIL's house doing nothing and eating food that we don't really want.
But here's the deal. In Dh's hometown where niece lives there's a tradition of CRASHING Wedding Receptions. If you're getting married in town...expect for the entire town to show up at your reception. MIL said at some receptions they hire a "bouncer" to keep uninvited guests out. But MIL says that the uninvited guests usually bring gifts, so she didn't think the "Crashers" were a big deal and kinda liked the tradition. But neice is on a tight budget for her wedding and she wants a formal sit down dinner...in order to afford this she has a very small guest list. In fact SIL was talking to her cousin/best friend about the plans and mentioned the date...so cousin was all excited and planning to come to the wedding when SIL had to tell her that she wasn't invited. So to avoid the wedding crashers, neice is having her wedding 2 hours away from hometown...which is why the extra hotel is necessary. DH & I were bummed because this means we won't be able to attend Church in his hometown. While I've seen the Church where he was baptised, I've never been to a service there.
I hope that DH isn't keeping a running tab on how much this is all costing because my mom got all whiney when she heard we were going back to Michigan this summer. Dh said we would try to go visit her in October when we normally take our family vacation...might have to stay with her to afford it. YIKES! I just thought of a pretty good idea... arrange a house swap with my brother & his family. We could go stay at his house in Florida and they could come stay here in our house...we use each other's cars & take care of eachother's pets...and then have our vacations. Hummm? I wonder if my husband & brother would go for this idea? I'm thinking NO!
Mostly too busy to even think of anything blog worthy. But I've been toying around with an idea. hee hee
I also wanted to give Darly a chance to answer Island Girl's questions...but she's been busy too. I'll have to do that in a separate post. And thanks to Bone we will be offering a more frequent Darly session...it may be more questions you ask her...it may be (like Scone suggested) questions that she asks you!...or it may just be her very own creation. The gal has talent...don't know where she might be getting that from at all.
So here's the idea I was playing around with.
How much does it cost to go to your neice's wedding?
Well let me see...
Airfare for 3 on Southwest: $714.30
Car Rental from Avis w/ discount: $166.32+ taxes
Car parking in Denver: $29.94+ taxes
Hotels (yes two...one in hometown & one in wedding site town): $384.45
Kennel for animals: $108.50
update shots for dog to stay at kennel: $145 WAIT A MINUTE! All I really needed for her to stay at the kennel was the kennel cough shot so that's: $16.50 The rest of that was the "well it's due next month, so you might as well save yourself a trip..." stuff
Haircoloring/cutting & styling for me: $129+tip
And finally (I think, unless something else comes up) a gift for the Bride & Groom. I was telling DH that whatever we give we should also add on the price of the Flowergirl dress that neice sent us...so say we were planning to spend $100, we should spend or give $135 to cover the dress and maybe more than that to cover shipping the dress to us as well.
I should also mention that we're being sneaky. So far I haven't heard anything from the bride or her mother that we need to be in town early for anything...ie. a bridal shower. (When I married into this family my MIL threw me a shower so that all of DH's female family members could meet me. It was very nice and I got a lot more loot! At the same time they had a shower for DH with all the men & the kids. So no, he didn't get another bachelor party. ha ha) We get in one day before the wedding rehersal...we aren't going to tell anyone that and will let them know we are there at about 8pm of the day before the rehersal. That way we have an entire day to ourselves to do what we want...otherwise we could get stuck at SIL's house doing nothing and eating food that we don't really want.
But here's the deal. In Dh's hometown where niece lives there's a tradition of CRASHING Wedding Receptions. If you're getting married in town...expect for the entire town to show up at your reception. MIL said at some receptions they hire a "bouncer" to keep uninvited guests out. But MIL says that the uninvited guests usually bring gifts, so she didn't think the "Crashers" were a big deal and kinda liked the tradition. But neice is on a tight budget for her wedding and she wants a formal sit down dinner...in order to afford this she has a very small guest list. In fact SIL was talking to her cousin/best friend about the plans and mentioned the date...so cousin was all excited and planning to come to the wedding when SIL had to tell her that she wasn't invited. So to avoid the wedding crashers, neice is having her wedding 2 hours away from hometown...which is why the extra hotel is necessary. DH & I were bummed because this means we won't be able to attend Church in his hometown. While I've seen the Church where he was baptised, I've never been to a service there.
I hope that DH isn't keeping a running tab on how much this is all costing because my mom got all whiney when she heard we were going back to Michigan this summer. Dh said we would try to go visit her in October when we normally take our family vacation...might have to stay with her to afford it. YIKES! I just thought of a pretty good idea... arrange a house swap with my brother & his family. We could go stay at his house in Florida and they could come stay here in our house...we use each other's cars & take care of eachother's pets...and then have our vacations. Hummm? I wonder if my husband & brother would go for this idea? I'm thinking NO!
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
You asked, she answered!
You can still ask questions. These are just the answers so far.
Darly’s answers will be in bold. and my comments will be italicized.
Goofy Girl said...
What do you like being about a kid? One word: SLEEP OVERS !!!
What's something different about yourself? I don’t like spaghetti. She probably says this because I find it highly unusual that my kid doesn’t eat spaghetti. I mean what kid doesn’t eat spaghetti?
What's something in the world you'd like to change? Air plane prices and France not liking U.S.A. um okay. Well I understand the airplane prices…as she likes to travel…but the France/USA thing? Not so sure on that one. Perhaps she would like to go there and wishes they were more friendly to us?
The Meezers said...
Darly, does you like meezers - um, I mean kitties - or woofies better? I know you has a woofie, but doesn't you want a meezer - um, I mean kitty, too? - Miles I LOVE Kitties, but I can’t have one for 2 bad reasons. One: my woofie chases fast moving objects. Two: my dad won’t allow any more animals in the house…3 is our max capacity. I have another reason. Trina & Trudy. Cats are hunters by nature and while there are many many cats who get along just fine with rabbits, I just don’t want to risk it. Besides, we would have the dog chasing the cat and the cat chasing the rabbits…what a mess. And speaking of mess…you should see all the hair in our vacuum cleaner!
Bone said...
I'm trying to remember what I asked last year so I don't ask the same questions again!
Darly, what is your favorite thing about your Mom? Uuummm ‘cuz she loves me. gee, I would have thought that I have some better qualities than that. Ha ha
What is your favorite thing to do? PLAY!!! She likes to read a lot, make crafts and go shopping too.
Do you have any chores? yes clean my messy room !!! and clean up her messes in the living room, kitchen & the office. But she doesn’t do any of them. I have to threaten to vacuum up her doll shoes to get her to move!
Lynn said...
Darly,
1. What do you like being homeschooled? I have recess whenever I want! If you care what I like about it, I like that we learn what she’s interested in at her pace…I think she retains the info better.
2. Who's your best friend? Um…her name? E. edited by mom to delete friend’s full name. We’ve had this unfortunate problem of her best friends moving away. So E is NOT allowed to move. I hope her parents don’t mind. Hee hee
3. How excited are you about being in the wedding? Can you believe that it's coming up soon? I’m not too excited. And NO!!! LOL! I think she is getting nervous about her roll in the wedding. I think she needs to focus on the fact that she’ll get to see her cousins. It will be a fun trip…although, we really cannot plan to do vacationy stuff right now as we don’t know what the Bride has planned for us.
Joan said...
Darly...since I'm about to leave on a trip to Ireland, my only question involves traveling...
If you could pick one place in the world to visit, where would it be and why? Just one ?!? I guess England. hummm I think she might like Disney World better. LOL! But you did say the world. I would rather go to Germany…but I guess the language thing made her choose England. BTW: no one asked this, but Darly wants to be a librarian when she grows up.
Carmen said...
Hi Darly, I'll ask you some more questions.
What's your favorite outfit to wear in the summer? A cute green t-shirt w/ blue hibiscus flowers on it and some shorts.
Are you a Harry Potter fan? Or is there another book you like better? I’ve never read Harry Potter, but I have a LOT of favorite books one is : DOG by Daniel Pennac. Darly tried to read HP#1 about a year or so ago. But she put it down and hasn’t gone back yet. We have #1-6 waiting for her here (I’ve read them ALL a few times). I expect that she’ll pick them back up soon…well as soon as she can since she’s busy reading her other favorites. She just finished up “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator,” that’s the follow up to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
PS: My sister didn't like pizza. We all thought that was weird. ;) this is the same sister who ruined your plans so she could have her “me” time with a glass of whine? (misspelled on purpose.)
Traveling Chica said...
Oh those are soooo cute! :)
1. What's your favorite book? I have a lot of fave books like the Judy Moody books. And Junnie B Jones, Animal Arc, American Girl, Ramona…etc.
2. Do you like summer or winter better? Summer. she’s her mom’s kid. Hee hee I can’t stand being cold and when it’s finally warm enough, I lay around outside like a lizard soaking in the sun…sometimes in the winter I’ll lay in front of a window if it’s sunny out.
Bone said...
I’m not too excited. And NO!!!
LOL I'm with you, Darly. This is fun. I think Darly should get to blog once a month :) I’m sure that Darly would like that a lot. She loves the comments from her thoughts. I guess that’s another way she’s like her mom. It’s fun to write something that everyone likes.
Darly’s answers will be in bold. and my comments will be italicized.
Goofy Girl said...
What do you like being about a kid? One word: SLEEP OVERS !!!
What's something different about yourself? I don’t like spaghetti. She probably says this because I find it highly unusual that my kid doesn’t eat spaghetti. I mean what kid doesn’t eat spaghetti?
What's something in the world you'd like to change? Air plane prices and France not liking U.S.A. um okay. Well I understand the airplane prices…as she likes to travel…but the France/USA thing? Not so sure on that one. Perhaps she would like to go there and wishes they were more friendly to us?
The Meezers said...
Darly, does you like meezers - um, I mean kitties - or woofies better? I know you has a woofie, but doesn't you want a meezer - um, I mean kitty, too? - Miles I LOVE Kitties, but I can’t have one for 2 bad reasons. One: my woofie chases fast moving objects. Two: my dad won’t allow any more animals in the house…3 is our max capacity. I have another reason. Trina & Trudy. Cats are hunters by nature and while there are many many cats who get along just fine with rabbits, I just don’t want to risk it. Besides, we would have the dog chasing the cat and the cat chasing the rabbits…what a mess. And speaking of mess…you should see all the hair in our vacuum cleaner!
Bone said...
I'm trying to remember what I asked last year so I don't ask the same questions again!
Darly, what is your favorite thing about your Mom? Uuummm ‘cuz she loves me. gee, I would have thought that I have some better qualities than that. Ha ha
What is your favorite thing to do? PLAY!!! She likes to read a lot, make crafts and go shopping too.
Do you have any chores? yes clean my messy room !!! and clean up her messes in the living room, kitchen & the office. But she doesn’t do any of them. I have to threaten to vacuum up her doll shoes to get her to move!
Lynn said...
Darly,
1. What do you like being homeschooled? I have recess whenever I want! If you care what I like about it, I like that we learn what she’s interested in at her pace…I think she retains the info better.
2. Who's your best friend? Um…her name? E. edited by mom to delete friend’s full name. We’ve had this unfortunate problem of her best friends moving away. So E is NOT allowed to move. I hope her parents don’t mind. Hee hee
3. How excited are you about being in the wedding? Can you believe that it's coming up soon? I’m not too excited. And NO!!! LOL! I think she is getting nervous about her roll in the wedding. I think she needs to focus on the fact that she’ll get to see her cousins. It will be a fun trip…although, we really cannot plan to do vacationy stuff right now as we don’t know what the Bride has planned for us.
Joan said...
Darly...since I'm about to leave on a trip to Ireland, my only question involves traveling...
If you could pick one place in the world to visit, where would it be and why? Just one ?!? I guess England. hummm I think she might like Disney World better. LOL! But you did say the world. I would rather go to Germany…but I guess the language thing made her choose England. BTW: no one asked this, but Darly wants to be a librarian when she grows up.
Carmen said...
Hi Darly, I'll ask you some more questions.
What's your favorite outfit to wear in the summer? A cute green t-shirt w/ blue hibiscus flowers on it and some shorts.
Are you a Harry Potter fan? Or is there another book you like better? I’ve never read Harry Potter, but I have a LOT of favorite books one is : DOG by Daniel Pennac. Darly tried to read HP#1 about a year or so ago. But she put it down and hasn’t gone back yet. We have #1-6 waiting for her here (I’ve read them ALL a few times). I expect that she’ll pick them back up soon…well as soon as she can since she’s busy reading her other favorites. She just finished up “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator,” that’s the follow up to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
PS: My sister didn't like pizza. We all thought that was weird. ;) this is the same sister who ruined your plans so she could have her “me” time with a glass of whine? (misspelled on purpose.)
Traveling Chica said...
Oh those are soooo cute! :)
1. What's your favorite book? I have a lot of fave books like the Judy Moody books. And Junnie B Jones, Animal Arc, American Girl, Ramona…etc.
2. Do you like summer or winter better? Summer. she’s her mom’s kid. Hee hee I can’t stand being cold and when it’s finally warm enough, I lay around outside like a lizard soaking in the sun…sometimes in the winter I’ll lay in front of a window if it’s sunny out.
Bone said...
I’m not too excited. And NO!!!
LOL I'm with you, Darly. This is fun. I think Darly should get to blog once a month :) I’m sure that Darly would like that a lot. She loves the comments from her thoughts. I guess that’s another way she’s like her mom. It’s fun to write something that everyone likes.
Monday, June 11, 2007
You get to interview Darly
I was looking at some of my old posts tonight and Darly was looking over my shoulder at a post we did last year. We ask You the viewer to ask Darly questions and she answered them...I of course had to add my comments. Darly remembered what fun it was to answer those questions and she has different answers for many of them...so she asked if I would ask you to ask her some more questions.
So here it is...ask Darly your questions and she'll answer them...right here at Fefyfomanna.
So here it is...ask Darly your questions and she'll answer them...right here at Fefyfomanna.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Small town Parade!
One of the greatest things about living in the small town that I live in here is that they have not just one parade, but TWO every year. The first parade of the year is during the Parker Country Festival and that was today. They have another parade at Christmas time and it is a Carriage parade with lots of horses.
So today was our parade and I couldn't remember seeing what time the parade started anywhere. So I hopped on line and found that the start time was 10:30am. Whew! I had over an hour.
DH decided that he should really go to MIL's house to do her yardwork, so I suggested that I take Darly to the parade while he did that. DH wisely suggested that he could drop us off and then we would just have to walk home. Not a bad thing. We normally park about 1/2 the way and walk in. It's less than two miles from the farthest point back to our house...although we did walk through all the vendor booths...so give us another 1/2 a mile or so of walking total.
We told Darly that DH was going to drop us off at the parade. She figured out before we even left that we were either going to have to be there a long time (waiting for DH) or have to walk back. Smart girl! I didn't tell her that the waiting for DH thing wasn't an option.
So I wake Darly up and have her get ready to go. We thought that we would be able to pull into this one area to drop us off, but they had that area blocked to prevent folks from trying to park there. So DH did a U-turn and dropped us off at the end of Mainstreet where the parade was setting up. We freaked out a kid who was helping the police keep folks from trying to turn onto the blocked road...but as I got out, I told him that he was just dropping us off and the kid was fine.
Darly & I walked to the parade starting point and found a good place to watch. It was a very good parade and we got TONS of candy...I forgot to bring a bag so I was trying to figure out where to put all the candy. After the parade we went to the bank and asked if they had any bags (which I know they did because I saw others with them!) and they were happy to give us a bag and asked us to come back for a chance at the money grab (put you in a cage w/ a fan blowing around money and all the money you catch goes into your new account you open with them.) yeah right!
After that we headed to the vendor booths. We saw at least three chiropractors, bunches of insurance sales (one gave out free sunscreen!), two Airbonne booths, and tons of other stuff. I ended up walking right past most of it. We got Darly's face painted for free - it didn't look all that great and it didn't last at all, but what do ya want for free? Darly was happy.
Instead of eating the WAY overpriced fair food we walked over to McDonalds and joined the very packed air conditioned room of all the smart folks. After that we stopped by the pet store and visited lots of very cute puppies and a very talkative Meezer cat. (I bet his future owner won't get much sleep! LOL!) Darly fell in love with lots of cuties. There was this one puppy (Shih Tzu or Lhasa Apso) who was flat on his back, front paws at his sides with his head in the food dish. It was so cute.
We then checked out the Beadery Cafe. They have a coffee bar & where you can make bead crafts. The first thing I noticed was that they had the very best radio station playing. hee hee I said "Oh listen (to Darly) they have a really Great Radio Station playing!" and the owner's daughter says "Oh you listen to KLOVE?" and I said "All the Time!" and then she started asking me about a contest they had just recently had there. She was cute...she had tried to win, but never got through. Her question would have been too easy though...she said she wanted to know the second line to a song. You were supposed to stump the DJs. Oh well.
Next stop... Ice Cream at Baskin Robbins. We both got sherbert. Rainbow for Darly & I got Lime Daquiri Ice. Very tart & refreshing. We checked out the rides but didn't see any that we wanted to spend that kind of money on, so we headed for home.
Darly got tired so we rested at a Church's picnic area that is about 1/2 way to our house (very nice) I took off my shoes and cooled my feet in the shade. Then we headed home. She might be napping...I could go for that.
Wonder how Dh is doing? He's supposed to be mowing a yard.
So today was our parade and I couldn't remember seeing what time the parade started anywhere. So I hopped on line and found that the start time was 10:30am. Whew! I had over an hour.
DH decided that he should really go to MIL's house to do her yardwork, so I suggested that I take Darly to the parade while he did that. DH wisely suggested that he could drop us off and then we would just have to walk home. Not a bad thing. We normally park about 1/2 the way and walk in. It's less than two miles from the farthest point back to our house...although we did walk through all the vendor booths...so give us another 1/2 a mile or so of walking total.
We told Darly that DH was going to drop us off at the parade. She figured out before we even left that we were either going to have to be there a long time (waiting for DH) or have to walk back. Smart girl! I didn't tell her that the waiting for DH thing wasn't an option.
So I wake Darly up and have her get ready to go. We thought that we would be able to pull into this one area to drop us off, but they had that area blocked to prevent folks from trying to park there. So DH did a U-turn and dropped us off at the end of Mainstreet where the parade was setting up. We freaked out a kid who was helping the police keep folks from trying to turn onto the blocked road...but as I got out, I told him that he was just dropping us off and the kid was fine.
Darly & I walked to the parade starting point and found a good place to watch. It was a very good parade and we got TONS of candy...I forgot to bring a bag so I was trying to figure out where to put all the candy. After the parade we went to the bank and asked if they had any bags (which I know they did because I saw others with them!) and they were happy to give us a bag and asked us to come back for a chance at the money grab (put you in a cage w/ a fan blowing around money and all the money you catch goes into your new account you open with them.) yeah right!
After that we headed to the vendor booths. We saw at least three chiropractors, bunches of insurance sales (one gave out free sunscreen!), two Airbonne booths, and tons of other stuff. I ended up walking right past most of it. We got Darly's face painted for free - it didn't look all that great and it didn't last at all, but what do ya want for free? Darly was happy.
Instead of eating the WAY overpriced fair food we walked over to McDonalds and joined the very packed air conditioned room of all the smart folks. After that we stopped by the pet store and visited lots of very cute puppies and a very talkative Meezer cat. (I bet his future owner won't get much sleep! LOL!) Darly fell in love with lots of cuties. There was this one puppy (Shih Tzu or Lhasa Apso) who was flat on his back, front paws at his sides with his head in the food dish. It was so cute.
We then checked out the Beadery Cafe. They have a coffee bar & where you can make bead crafts. The first thing I noticed was that they had the very best radio station playing. hee hee I said "Oh listen (to Darly) they have a really Great Radio Station playing!" and the owner's daughter says "Oh you listen to KLOVE?" and I said "All the Time!" and then she started asking me about a contest they had just recently had there. She was cute...she had tried to win, but never got through. Her question would have been too easy though...she said she wanted to know the second line to a song. You were supposed to stump the DJs. Oh well.
Next stop... Ice Cream at Baskin Robbins. We both got sherbert. Rainbow for Darly & I got Lime Daquiri Ice. Very tart & refreshing. We checked out the rides but didn't see any that we wanted to spend that kind of money on, so we headed for home.
Darly got tired so we rested at a Church's picnic area that is about 1/2 way to our house (very nice) I took off my shoes and cooled my feet in the shade. Then we headed home. She might be napping...I could go for that.
Wonder how Dh is doing? He's supposed to be mowing a yard.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Bunny cam
too cute!
No these babies are not mine. I found them on YouTube. The owner is a teenager who raises show bunnies. The babies are from 3 different litters, one litter is 8 weeks old (the bigger ones) and the other two are 4 weeks old. The owner kept just one of these cuties and found homes for all the rest.
Darly wants to changes the words to the Llama Song to post with this. Maybe I'll get that up later tonight or this weekend.
here’s a bunny
there’s a bunny
and another little bunny
fuzzy bunny
funny bunny
bunny bunny
lop
bunny bunny
cheesecake
bunny
tablet
brick
potato
bunny
bunny bunny
mushroom
bunny
bunny bunny
lop
i was once a treehouse
i lived in a cake
but i never saw the way
the orange slayed the rake
i was only three years dead
but it told a tale
and now listen, little child
to the safety rail
did you every see a rabbit
kiss a rabbit
on the rabbit
rabbit’s rabbit
tastes of rabbit
rabbit rabbit
lop
half a rabbit
twice the rabbit
not a rabbit
habbit
rabbit
rabbit in a car
VW rabbit
Rabbit
Lop
is THIS how it's told now?
is it all so old?
is it made of lemon juice?
doorknob
ankle
cold
now my song is getting thin
i've run out of pop
time for me to retire now
and become a LOP!
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Where in the world is Renee this month?
I've been trying really hard to get Darly to see her bestest friend but lately things just aren't working out...and I've also tried to plan a camping trip for us, but that doesn't look like it's happening either.
Here's why:
Wed 6/6 worked at church* from 9am to 12pm, took Darly to park, no one there so we went to the mall to get me a hair appt & eat lunch, then took Darly to her gymnastics class. Got home to realize that I had forgotten to take anything out for dinner...we had hot dogs.
*working at Church to cover for the Secretary who is on vacation.
At Church there are only a few folks who volunteer there who are willing to do the computer work. So the Office manager saves up work for us to do. I'm not sure why they keep just finding out that they need certain info, but it seems each time I come to help out they need more data entered so they can have the software print out a report. Wednesday I got to enter all the Baptisms that have happened since May of 2006 when they ran out of pages in the "Big Red Book" and couldn't find any more.
Thurs 6/7 work at church 8 am til 12pm. I was supposed to be there today at 8 but the secretary forgot to tell me that. oops! trying to get Darly to see bestest friend, but realized that bestest friend is scheduled to do a coop class that we didn't sign up for. Probably won't work out then.
Today, Thursday, I got to Church about 7:55. I was the first one there. Luckily the construction crew was there so I could get in. I finished up one of the baptism items (someone had entered a family incorrectly...had the guy's mother as his wife. LOL!) And I got to start entering the Church's inventory. What a fun job that is. NOT! For insurance purposes, we have to keep a record of EVERYTHING in the Church. So I got to type out... in closet 2a, 95 folding chairs, value $15ea. It was great fun...not. But it is good to be helping out. I also got to learn how to operate the folding machine. Very interesting piece of equipment.
Unfortunately Bestest Friend and her family are going away for the weekend and Darly can't go visit with them...so she'll not get her sleepover and will be very bummed when I tell her.
Friday 6/8 work at church 8 to 5. Darly will be helping me unless I can get her a sleepover. see above...no sleepover. :(
No sleepover so Darly had to go with me to help out at Church. Unfortunately there wasn't much work she could do at Church that she wanted to do. She ended up reading upside down from a chair for most of the time. (she puts her feet & bottom in the chair and hangs her head down to the floor and reads upside down...I don't ask.) Since it was so quiet at Church we got to go home early.
Saturday 6/9 we will got to MIL's house to get her yard taken care of.
See the parade post above!
Sunday 6/10 I get to usher at Church to fill in for DH as he is leaving town. Not sure what we'll do after Church. Hummm girls in trouble ;)
DH left at about 9am for his trip and then Darly & I went to Church. I was ushering with the former Church president. Mr. Ex-Pres normally ushers at the 8am service, so I had to fill him in on how we do communion at the 10:30. It all went off mostly w/o any hitches...except one lady who was sitting in the Narthex came in before I was ready...but I just waved her on through. See our Church has four sections of pews and then there are also pews out in the Narthex for overflow and noisy children. (this past Sunday it was for quiet sleeping babies though.) They have 4 communion stations (one for each section) but the two outer sections of pews are much smaller, so they of course are done sooner. When that happens, we are supposed to send the larger sections to the outer stations...but that makes things very tricky for getting back to the pews. What they should do is go all the way around and back to the middle eisle to return to the pew...but they don't. LOL Oh well it worked out okay.
Monday 6/11 more work at Church 9-12 this time. Darly to gym at 4:30.
I got to Church first and had to find a way in. Soon after I got there a group that does medical screenings showed up to set up...turns out they were at the wrong Church. I had to go send them next door. One of them was smoking a cigarette...I hollered at him "HEY! THAT'S NOT HEALTHY!" he said he knew.
I started entering the inventory again...but only got one page done when I was asked to do another task. We are trying to make sure that everyone's info is entered into the system correctly and the same way...unfortunately we have a "Too many cooks in the kitchen" thing going on as each different person who works on something has their own idea of how it should be entered. So I spent today making everyone entered as Adults Only was really TWO adults...many were single! While doing this I found a family with TWO wives! LOL! That's not really what happened of course. Turns out that Mr & Mrs had two kids. Both kids got married and eventually moved away...but the DD was never moved out into her own family and someone changed her status to spouse...so it looked like she was married to her dad. What's even weirder is that the DIL has the same first name as the DD. We had a lot of fun working that out...good thing the DIL works for the Church so I could ask her what is going on.
Tuesday 6/12 supposed to go to the zoo, probably won't; Darly has a doc appt for a physical so she can go to summer camp.
Wednesday 6/13 another attempt at park day and then gym at 4:30
Thursday 6/14 Hair appt for me so hopefully I look good for the wedding. Can't go to Night Out 'cuz there's no one to watch Darly.
Friday 6/15 going to see IMAX film on Beavers then will study animal habitats in Girl Scouts (should look for badges to cover) DH comes home
Saturday 6/16 Gym make up for Memorial Day.
Sunday 6/17 should be normal...we'll see
At least I don't have 4 things scheduled for one day...yet.
Here's why:
Wed 6/6 worked at church* from 9am to 12pm, took Darly to park, no one there so we went to the mall to get me a hair appt & eat lunch, then took Darly to her gymnastics class. Got home to realize that I had forgotten to take anything out for dinner...we had hot dogs.
*working at Church to cover for the Secretary who is on vacation.
At Church there are only a few folks who volunteer there who are willing to do the computer work. So the Office manager saves up work for us to do. I'm not sure why they keep just finding out that they need certain info, but it seems each time I come to help out they need more data entered so they can have the software print out a report. Wednesday I got to enter all the Baptisms that have happened since May of 2006 when they ran out of pages in the "Big Red Book" and couldn't find any more.
Thurs 6/7 work at church 8 am til 12pm. I was supposed to be there today at 8 but the secretary forgot to tell me that. oops! trying to get Darly to see bestest friend, but realized that bestest friend is scheduled to do a coop class that we didn't sign up for. Probably won't work out then.
Today, Thursday, I got to Church about 7:55. I was the first one there. Luckily the construction crew was there so I could get in. I finished up one of the baptism items (someone had entered a family incorrectly...had the guy's mother as his wife. LOL!) And I got to start entering the Church's inventory. What a fun job that is. NOT! For insurance purposes, we have to keep a record of EVERYTHING in the Church. So I got to type out... in closet 2a, 95 folding chairs, value $15ea. It was great fun...not. But it is good to be helping out. I also got to learn how to operate the folding machine. Very interesting piece of equipment.
Unfortunately Bestest Friend and her family are going away for the weekend and Darly can't go visit with them...so she'll not get her sleepover and will be very bummed when I tell her.
Friday 6/8 work at church 8 to 5. Darly will be helping me unless I can get her a sleepover. see above...no sleepover. :(
No sleepover so Darly had to go with me to help out at Church. Unfortunately there wasn't much work she could do at Church that she wanted to do. She ended up reading upside down from a chair for most of the time. (she puts her feet & bottom in the chair and hangs her head down to the floor and reads upside down...I don't ask.) Since it was so quiet at Church we got to go home early.
Saturday 6/9 we will got to MIL's house to get her yard taken care of.
See the parade post above!
Sunday 6/10 I get to usher at Church to fill in for DH as he is leaving town. Not sure what we'll do after Church. Hummm girls in trouble ;)
DH left at about 9am for his trip and then Darly & I went to Church. I was ushering with the former Church president. Mr. Ex-Pres normally ushers at the 8am service, so I had to fill him in on how we do communion at the 10:30. It all went off mostly w/o any hitches...except one lady who was sitting in the Narthex came in before I was ready...but I just waved her on through. See our Church has four sections of pews and then there are also pews out in the Narthex for overflow and noisy children. (this past Sunday it was for quiet sleeping babies though.) They have 4 communion stations (one for each section) but the two outer sections of pews are much smaller, so they of course are done sooner. When that happens, we are supposed to send the larger sections to the outer stations...but that makes things very tricky for getting back to the pews. What they should do is go all the way around and back to the middle eisle to return to the pew...but they don't. LOL Oh well it worked out okay.
Monday 6/11 more work at Church 9-12 this time. Darly to gym at 4:30.
I got to Church first and had to find a way in. Soon after I got there a group that does medical screenings showed up to set up...turns out they were at the wrong Church. I had to go send them next door. One of them was smoking a cigarette...I hollered at him "HEY! THAT'S NOT HEALTHY!" he said he knew.
I started entering the inventory again...but only got one page done when I was asked to do another task. We are trying to make sure that everyone's info is entered into the system correctly and the same way...unfortunately we have a "Too many cooks in the kitchen" thing going on as each different person who works on something has their own idea of how it should be entered. So I spent today making everyone entered as Adults Only was really TWO adults...many were single! While doing this I found a family with TWO wives! LOL! That's not really what happened of course. Turns out that Mr & Mrs had two kids. Both kids got married and eventually moved away...but the DD was never moved out into her own family and someone changed her status to spouse...so it looked like she was married to her dad. What's even weirder is that the DIL has the same first name as the DD. We had a lot of fun working that out...good thing the DIL works for the Church so I could ask her what is going on.
Tuesday 6/12 supposed to go to the zoo, probably won't; Darly has a doc appt for a physical so she can go to summer camp.
Wednesday 6/13 another attempt at park day and then gym at 4:30
Thursday 6/14 Hair appt for me so hopefully I look good for the wedding. Can't go to Night Out 'cuz there's no one to watch Darly.
Friday 6/15 going to see IMAX film on Beavers then will study animal habitats in Girl Scouts (should look for badges to cover) DH comes home
Saturday 6/16 Gym make up for Memorial Day.
Sunday 6/17 should be normal...we'll see
At least I don't have 4 things scheduled for one day...yet.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Thair be Pirates!
While surfing the blogosphere I found a contest. I know, what's so special about that, there are contests everywhere?
But this contest is for winning both Pirates of the Caribbean movies that are on DVD (course you can't win Pirates 3...it's still in the movies!)
So to get me a few more entries in the contest...I post about the contest. Easy peasy. So here it is:
My wonderful post about the wonderful contest going on over at SIMPLE KIND OF LIVE her colleenie weenie contest: june
I really hope I win...but if I don't, I hope one of you...my friends wins (and lets me cover to your house to watch the movies.)
But this contest is for winning both Pirates of the Caribbean movies that are on DVD (course you can't win Pirates 3...it's still in the movies!)
So to get me a few more entries in the contest...I post about the contest. Easy peasy. So here it is:
My wonderful post about the wonderful contest going on over at SIMPLE KIND OF LIVE her colleenie weenie contest: june
I really hope I win...but if I don't, I hope one of you...my friends wins (and lets me cover to your house to watch the movies.)
Saturday, June 02, 2007
SIGH!
It's another boring saturday here. DH had to work, so Darly & I are left to our own for entertainment.
We were supposed to go to a friend's baptism today. But Darly woke up throwing up. How fun is that???
She's been at it for 2 hours...no idea why. She feels a bit warm to my hand, but then my hands are always cold...so I just sent her to get the thermometer. I'm sure she isn't sick...she's never sick. I'm wondering if perhaps she's allergic to something as the only thing she ate last night that was different from the rest of us were Twizzlers.
We finally got a Pepto Bismol down here and she seems to have gotten empty. I'm betting that she'll be eating like crazy in about an hour...hoping it all stays down.
I should go do some more laundry...blech!
UPDATE: Darly was feeling better and did eat a lot today...with none of it coming back up! But I went outside to read my book and managed to sunburn my legs...you should see how I'm sitting to type this...it isn't pretty! DH said my legs look like lobsters and he expects that I'll be the one puking soon. I've never done that puking from too much sun thing. But I did do something stupid... I put Aloe Vera on my legs...and then a bit later went to take a shower...as the water was warming up I had bent my legs and the aloe on them stuck together. When I went to stand up it was like I was ripping a bandaid off my legs. OWCH!
We still don't know what made Darly's tummy do the flip flop...I'm thinking it was the red dye that she ate, but it could be the artificial flavor. I don't really wanna test it again.
We were supposed to go to a friend's baptism today. But Darly woke up throwing up. How fun is that???
She's been at it for 2 hours...no idea why. She feels a bit warm to my hand, but then my hands are always cold...so I just sent her to get the thermometer. I'm sure she isn't sick...she's never sick. I'm wondering if perhaps she's allergic to something as the only thing she ate last night that was different from the rest of us were Twizzlers.
We finally got a Pepto Bismol down here and she seems to have gotten empty. I'm betting that she'll be eating like crazy in about an hour...hoping it all stays down.
I should go do some more laundry...blech!
UPDATE: Darly was feeling better and did eat a lot today...with none of it coming back up! But I went outside to read my book and managed to sunburn my legs...you should see how I'm sitting to type this...it isn't pretty! DH said my legs look like lobsters and he expects that I'll be the one puking soon. I've never done that puking from too much sun thing. But I did do something stupid... I put Aloe Vera on my legs...and then a bit later went to take a shower...as the water was warming up I had bent my legs and the aloe on them stuck together. When I went to stand up it was like I was ripping a bandaid off my legs. OWCH!
We still don't know what made Darly's tummy do the flip flop...I'm thinking it was the red dye that she ate, but it could be the artificial flavor. I don't really wanna test it again.
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