Caving for the kid

 The St. Patrick's Day feast was a lot smaller this year as the kids didn't want me to have too many leftovers.  But in the process, we didn't have enough leftovers to send to my bestie and her husband, so I've got another corned beef in the IP today and they're getting some shepherds pie that I'd frozen and maybe a fresh loaf of bread.  Ada will get to go home and enjoy it with her husband this weekend. :)

It's spring break this week for the boy!!  So he and I made a trip to Hannibal, MO to visit the Mark Twain caves.  A 4 hour drive, a 4 hour drive...  He was awake until 4am that night, because he can... and then slept most of the way there and back.  To keep me awake, I listened to talk radio and ate almost a half box of mini Reeses puffs cereal.

I won't even tell you how many little bits of it I pulled out of my collar at each rest area we stopped at.

AND he and I should probably never have seen that caving slasher movie a few months back.  I was the last in the line of people on the tour with pure darkness behind us and no lights in the cave except our souvenir flashlights.  I kept turning around to flash it behind us, freaking myself out even more.

Eventually someone with a small child ended up at the rear and I figured if they screamed, it'd be a good warning for me to run. or at least be a slasher buffer.

We got to the grounds JUST as they were loading up for the tour, so there was JUST enough time to use the restrooms and get in on the tour we wanted!  Two more minutes and we'd have to twiddle our thumbs for 1.5 hours until the next tour.

The Cameron cave was beautiful!  I didn't want to spend another $60 for the actual Mark Twain cave, because Leon is now 13...  If he was only 12 still.  sigh. and knew how to lie about his age... sigh.

Besides, he didn't even know who Mark Twain was, much less Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn or Jesse James.

I'm nothing if not a money saver!!!

There was a small tunnel that joined to another passageway and the kids or anyone who wanted to got to crawl through with the guide bringing them back around.  Leon wanted to do it and tried to talk me into it too. 

Um nope - I'm very protective of my knees.  I want to hang onto them long enough to have Medicare pay for bionic ones.

We got back to the gift shop and Leon chose a geode to crack.  Yeah, his shirt and hair are messy, but oh well.  He had just woken up. and no hairbrush in the car. and climbed through a tunnel.

So anyway, MAKING MEMORIES!

We got DQ blizzards for the drive home and he slept 3 hours after he was done eating.

Yay!  More cereal and talk radio for me!!!

Beauty & the Barbie

Because of the additional kids in February, I brought in my girls old Barbie house from the garage.  While they DID play Barbies with it, Aggie liked to "pretend" nap in it mostly.  Check out her little green book pillow that I made her for Christmas! :)  According to her mom, she knows that it's hers.

Here is the house sans kids.  My kids told me that they'd had an obstacle course where you had to shimmy through the Barbie door.  Wow, they must have been little things!

I have a huge box or three of Barbie and her entourage & paraphernalia.  For Maddy's 6th birthday, she'd invited all the girls in her class and had a Barbie, Makeup, Sleepover party.  Every single girl brought a Barbie for her.  She had a stash of them!

 So after we got back to just the two grandkids in March, Jen sorted them out and pulled out just a few Barbies and some furniture for Aggie to play with.  The house is now a permanent (for now) fixture of the livingroom.  She also combed out all their hair but it was still really frizzy on 99.9% of them.

I had read once that you can boil water and fix them so I looked it up and found how.

Easy peasy!

Comb first, check.  Pour boiling water into a shallow bowl and dip their hair in!

Then comb out again.

Now all she needs is a quick trim and she's golden!!

This particular one may have had a pony tail when we got her. oh well. HAIR CUT TIME!

We might have to do this for a few more Barbies.

AND now Aggie loves her dad's old Belle toy more than Barbie anyway.

Silly kids...

Not Your Grandma's!

 Maddy invited me to join her on Tuesday for a paint by number event.  She'd had a PBN done of their two pups from a photo and it was amazing! 

 All in pencil!  It really made me wonder how they did that!

She took a set of paints and I did took a different one and off we went!

Anyway, we had a ball, drinking our ciders (slightly alcoholic...  I had the honey crisp one) and painting away.  Matthew joined us after a while but didn't jump in with a paint brush.

I think it turned out super!  

I had supper with them and then hightailed it home. 

 It's not your grandma's paint by number!!

Weekend Adventures

 It was a quiet weekend!  I am planning a cruise in 2026!!!  with a sister or two around Italy!  With lots of stops and excursions.  So a lot of planning/plotting happened this weekend and phone calls.

And to get myself in the cruise mood, I watched The Poseidon Adventure AND Beyond the Poseidon yesterday afternoon.

Another sister contacted me that she and her daughter were going to be in Des Moines for the girls basketball tournament on Saturday and would I like to join them for lunch and a little shopping. Um yeah!!!  

My household size has changed yet again and I suddenly found that I had time and energy to go out and do things without leaving people in a lurch.  I met them at the Jordan Creek Mall and after some shopping, enjoyed a lunch at Zombie Burger.

Check out the crazy clothes we found!

NO hems on the jeans.  Why do I bother with hem tape?!

lol!  And no we didn't buy anything here.  Everything was super expensive.

And patches with no finished edges.  They would NEVER pass as fair quality!!

But hanging with a sister is pretty awesome no matter what.

I also stopped in to see my mother-in-law while in the area and we did a little shopping too.

When I got back, Ryan and Jen wanted to go take in a movie, so Aggie and I were on our own that evening.  Leon and Meri had gone for a sleepover at Maddy's.  Hanging with Aggie was a lot of fun and after I snuggled with her until she fell asleep, I fell asleep next to her for a couple hours. Woke up in time to go to bed.  Oh I needed it!

It's GUUUURRRRREAT!!!!

 Another kid sick today.  Turns out it's hand, foot and mouth and it's going around.  

MY house apparently.

So I had a visitor in my room last night from 10:30 on with a high temp and wanting to talk about all their bad dreams.  It's been a rough night culminating into having Spongebob on my bedroom tv at 4am so I could at least get another hour or two of sleep.  And then finding out the bed is wet.  

It's going to be a GREAT day!!

The silver lining is fresh sheets ahead of schedule.

Last night was Leon's school concert.  Only Ryan and I could go but it was a good one and for a bit we wondered if Leon was actually IN the band, but then he ran in with his clarinet after everyone was almost seated. :)

Pouring rain and strong winds until around 11ish last night and then it turned into snow and strong winds.  School, work for others and daycare is closed today.  

Yay me for working from home... :\

My poor goose this morning!  

I'm not going out to set it back on the bench, so he's going to stay there until further notice.  The wind is still whipping around the house and he'd just get knocked off again.  I didn't really WANT to sew a parka for him this late in the spring, but if I knew where my sewing machine was, I might.

So I'm upstairs getting hunkered down with work and listening to the fam downstairs getting breakfast and their daily dose of Scooby Doo.

Did I mention that it's going to be a GREAT day?!

Examples for life

 One kid home sick today and Ryan is here to hang with them.

It's only 10:16am and I am on TOP of the work emergencies so far!!!

I got all my 64 oz of water in Sunday and yesterday and my weight is already dropping again. *little tiny bits but I see it!* WHEW!  Water is key!!!!  And I should stay away from chips and dip.

A friend from college posts several very nice Godly posts and thoughts every day.  A couple weeks ago, on the 4th anniversary of Robb's passing, he posted how you need to "let go" of someone that is not in your life anymore and referenced King David, who immediately stopped crying for his infant son and moved on with his life the moment the child died.  Well, David did a lot of things that aren't exactly good examples of Christian living...  

and while my friend did make a good point from his standpoint and I'm sure it had nothing to do with me, the timing for me was very bad.  I commented on his post...  um...  I won't say what I said.  Nothing terrible but I did stick up for people/myself that have lost someone dear to them.

It just occurred to me that I haven't seen him post anything for a while and started to feel weird about it and then just remembered.  Oh yeah!!! I blocked him for 30 days! lol! ...I was not in a good place.

Anyway, I need to throw a batch of laundry in while I still have some "go get it all done" mojo.

Have a wonderful taco Tuesday!

Making plans

 Work was weird today.   I got a lot done and the one programming project that I thought I was going to sweat over today, turned out to be nothing I needed to deal with!  At least not yet.  I've put it on my "3 months down the road" todo list now.  *Thanks God!  You love to answer prayers!!*

I worked from my old office quite a bit today.  Ooops  - just realized I left the light on out there.  Eh - I'll turn it off in a bit.

My office still smells like cat.  It's more faint than it used to so there's that.  I've got little odor eater thingies set here and there.  It'll be a work in process.  And I probably won't work out there again for a few months.  You never know.

Since Leon and I missed our Kwik Star slushy lemonades last week on the cheap day, I took him today after I picked him up from school.  It was nice hearing about his latest expensive obsession.  He wants a 75 gallon tank in his bedroom that has a complete eco system with axolotls, crabs and a few other creatures that you pretty much put a lid on and it takes care of itself.  REALLY?!  I'm guessing there could be stagnant water in his room. again.  He's checking into the need for a bubbler.

But since it's still in the investigative stages, no one's forking over money yet.  He's starting baseball soon, so we need to invest in sporting gear this week.

There were children in the house today with Jen.  Some coughing, some rashes, fevers, etc.  I hope things calm down and the house is empty tomorrow.  Wouldn't THAT be nice!

The next quiet day, I'm going to dance around the house and sing.

I'll turn off the security cameras briefly. :)