Happy Valentine's Day

 I need another weekend.  It went too fast.

I took Leon to his mom's Friday afternoon and the kids all came over for their Friday night D&D game. We had spicy chicken and Mexican quinoa.

I sat in on the game for a bit, but decided to get some things upstairs done so left them to their mission.

Saturday morning, I did the BioLife thing and then met up with Maddy and the "girls" at Petco for the pup's manicures. ;)  On the way in, Maddy tripped and ripped her brand new coveralls in the knee.  She's ok but her coveralls had a big problem.  So after she dropped off the girls at home, she brought them over and I mended them for her.  They're not exactly like before but better than hitting the trash can. :)

She stayed for lunch and we watched another episode of Vicar of Dibley.

Then I spent most of the rest of the day working on a sample bodice again using the actual fabric.  There are pearls and glitter everywhere on this netting and it's super icky to sew with, but I'm getting it.

One side is lined with the satin all the way to the shoulder and the other is "kind of" see through above the breast area to the shoulder.  I'm not impressed with either side sample yet.  And after showing it to Meri, I don't have the vision correct yet either.  We'll see.  I've got more fabric to do it again if needed.

On Sunday, after church, Meri and I attended lunch at a friend's house who we'd dog sat for over Christmas.  We had a very nice time and the food was great.

Did I mention I gained 6 pounds over the weekend?

After that I unloaded groceries at the house and went to visit with Ada at the nursing home.

Then back home to get a little house cleaning done before Maddy and Matthew showed up.  They caught me vacuuming.  Oh well.  I don't remember the last time I'd vacuumed...  so I finished in front of them.

Is that bad that I didn't remember when?  Does that mean I'm getting old? 

Or that it had truly been a while?

Needless to say, it needed it.

I had picked up some snacky things and so had they.  :) Matthew wanted to watch the Super bowl while they did laundry and Maddy and I didn't.  So she and I cooked (Matthew baked the buffalo wings) and sorted through a very large tub of photos that Robb's sister had given to me.  We got the photos separated into the following sections.

1) life before college

2) college life and marriage before kids

3) early kids (just Ryan and Maddy days)

4) later kids (includes Meri) up to current.

5) all the negatives

I plan to purchase one of those machines that scan in negatives into digital pictures someday.

There is another tub that we got earlier sitting under my sewing table of more photos of Robb growing up.  I forgot all about that but at least we got through this tub last night.

The food was great!  I made jalapeno poppers and lil smokies.  Maddy brought chips and dip (my downfall), pizza rolls and buffalo chicken.  Whew!  It was good stuff!

Did I mention I gained 6 pounds this weekend?

They stayed until some time after the half time show.  Their laundry was done and we were done with the tub of photos so they headed home to watch the last bit there.

Regarding the half time show.  If I was sitting in the stands, I still would not understand what they were rapping and singing about.  SO much going on, too much going on and I didn't know the songs. 

It WAS refreshing to see actual instruments out there, like trumpets and a piano.  Somebody was in middle school band at some point! But they're not using it to their full potential...

And the outfits were just for gyrating.

Not impressed.

Ok yep...  I am officially old.

Enjoy and cherish your loved ones today!

Randomness and Valentine's Day

Ugg...  My power steering fluid leak in my minivan has gotten worse.  Now it's hard to steer even if you keep putting fluid in.  SO... I've put a call in to my car guy and it's going in tonight.  Cross your fingers and say a prayer that it's as simple as slapping some duct tape on the spot where the leak is happening and squirting a little grease here or there.

Ryan has his soundproof room set up in Robb's old closet now and is ready to start recording the voice over for his video that he's created.  It has to do with a video game called Dark Souls and how to play the entire game as a pacifist.  It's very clever and if you're in the gaming world, I'm sure it would make sense to you.  I hope it gets him where he wants to go.

As for now, all the stuff from Robb's closet is sitting in his bath tub.  I've only used that whirlpool bath once since he passed.  The twins used it a lot more when they were here.  Just DON'T turn on the faucet!!!  Or I will make you hurt.

I had to put two jars of canned beans down the garbage disposal this morning.  The seal broke on them, who knows when?  What a shame!  Oh well.  I'm going to start using my stash more often.

I mentioned that I'd baked a ton of chicken drum sticks that I got at Sam's club for cheap.  I sealed them up in packets of 5 and froze them.  For dinner last night, I pulled out a packet and put them straight in the air fryer for roughly 20 minutes.  They turned out SO good.  I may fudge around on the air frying time next time, but Leon liked them!

And another miracle...  I opened a can of my homemade french fries and air fried those too, sprinkling some french fry seasoning on them and ooh... Leon liked them too!  I may experiment a bit more with those too.  Maybe bake them with a light oil drizzle... hmmm...  NEXT diet cheat day!

I made a collage this morning that I'm going to frame and hang next to my bed this Valentine's Day.  I will pick it up at Walmart this afternoon.  What do you think?

The top right picture was the last together photo we took, a week before he passed.

I need to go get some kleenex for my office.

Weekend in Brazil

Wouldn't this be a great front door mat??!  I think it might be the next one after our "Go Away" welcome mat...

 

I shared all the amusing things I found on FB with Robb as we headed to the big city to celebrate our "anti cruise", as Maddy dubbed it.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites and pretended we were on the cruise.  

Well, except for the absolute stillness of the hotel with no pitching on the waves at all... and no warm view from our window.  The temps were in the negatives most of the weekend.

There was a whistling wind outside our window though.

And to our chagrin, I got paged this weekend with a HUGE issue on a client's server.  Uggg.. I put in a lot of hours here and there babysitting it until late Sunday when I realized why there were so many files to process...  AHA!  That dropped it from 150,000 files down to a reasonable 2600...  

If only that extra work magically appeared as more money...  We would SO side the house.

Anyway, this is us this weekend in the almost exact same place we took the one from 3 years ago.

2018

2021

Robb noticed he had a lot more gray and was wearing the same shirt.

Our room was right off the elevators and apparently that's where the cool kids hang out.  If we were in the living room of our suite, we heard them laughing and talking.  I'm not impressed with the language of modern kids...   But I guess they impress themselves.

A couple teen girls knocked on our door and when I answered it they said oops - wrong room.

Robb thinks they'd dared each other.

FUN GAME GIRLS!!!

If they would have knocked again, I'd have made sure they were embarrassed greatly by their "mistake"... Where's my negligee?

On Saturday, we ventured out in the cold and saw a movie made for video gamers.  We were the only ones in the theater except for a couple young nerdy guys in the back.  Milla Jovovich kept things interesting tho and I enjoyed the movie!  Robb thinks I hated it.  This is the man who picked out No Escape for our anniversary one year and then wanted to take me to John Wick Chapter 2 on a date.  I've just grown accustomed to action packed movies with a lot of people killed.  It doesn't HAVE to be a romantic movie when we're on a date weekend...  

After the matinee, we went to a restaurant with a Brazil theme, that was AWESOME!!!  We didn't drink any wine but the rack of it behind Robb's chair was REALLY cool...

And I almost said it had a Brazilian theme, but that's totally something else, right?

This restaurant had a huge salad bar and on our table, we had a little wooden stand.  Red on the bottom and green on the top.  If we had the stand with green on the top, the waiters came by every few minutes with various types of meat on the skewer...  It was wonderful!  Better than the breadsticks hand outs at Fazolis and a LOT more frequent!  KEEP IT COMING!  We were stuffed by 4pm when we finally flipped it over to the red side.  So we didn't need any supper at all.

We'll need to take all the kids here sometime, but probably not Leon.  They don't sell hotdogs here.

It was a great weekend and now we're home...

Semblances of Normality

A break from the California stories to get caught up on life in general.

Last week was Valentine's Day!!!  My sweetheart sent me roses..  Aren't they beautiful?

They're still blooming and lovely. I'm pretty lucky...

Leon needed a box for his Valentine's Day party at school, so he called Dibbies on my flower box.  Mine came in the mail.  Pretty convenient for Leon!  He initially said that he didn't want to decorate it, but changed his mind after I cut out the opening.

His party was a lot of chaos and fun.  He got a bunch of candy to get loaded up for the weekend with.

On Saturday, Robb, Meri and I headed for my hometown to see Mom and Dad.  Mom gets carted around in a wheelchair now, much to her disgust, but it's saving her some energy.

She doesn't leave her room much anymore, but we were able to take her down for coffee and visit in the activity room.  Meri did her hair while we talked and I remembered that Mom always loved for us girls to do her hair for her in years past.  She secretly hoped that one of us would be a hair dresser.

Much like my secret hope that one of my kids would end up as a chiropractor...

Oh well.

I loved my pics with Dad too!  He's going through a lot right now.  

Our time with Mom is getting shorter and sooner than anyone is comfortable with.

Any siblings available have been getting on FB messenger facetime app with Mom and Dad every day for the past week.  I don't know why we didn't think of it earlier.  It's been great and Mom can see everyone.  What an awesome invention!

She asked, "Now who is paying for this call?"

Um.. no one.  It's free!

20 years ago, this was all so futuristic!

We got home late afternoon on Saturday.  On Sunday, after church, Robb and I went to pick up Leon and we treated him for lunch at a Burger King with a play land.  His kind of joint!

Then he played in the snow in our yard for much of the afternoon.  

Only coming inside to switch out frozen gloves.  

A neighbor kid invited him over to play in the snow too and they had a great time until they had a fight.  It's all fun and games until it's suddenly not.  Boys...

 These are the same boys who played in the neighbor across the streets yard after getting off the bus last Wednesday...  I won't tell the neighbors who messed up their side walk and pristine yard...

I'm pretty sure they don't read me.

Leon wanted ice cream for dessert and so after googling for a bit, we found a recipe to make snow ice cream with ingredients that we had.  It turned out really good and he enjoyed it for about three bites.  Robb and I finished his off while we DUOed with Maddy and Matthew.

This is the snow that we accumulated over the weekend.  YUCK!  It's SO deep and our driveway isn't even to the pavement yet.  The snowblower wouldn't go that close as it's packed down really good.  We're supposed to get more this weekend.

If nothing else, Leon is LOVING it.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to since getting back to the frozen tundra that is my home.

Potatoes are ALL the rage!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!  

I got roses from my Sweetheart and I am SO going to plant the trimmed stem into a potato! 

 

Have you seen this video?  I have saved the stems.  I just need some potatoes...

ANOTHER evening of busy-ness for us. Meri's long concert was last night.  Concert band/various choirs/jazz band. 

Meri is first chair for the clarinets!  That was new!  Good for her!!

During the choir portion, a girl walking onto the bleachers ahead of Meri accidentally kicked off one of her shoes under the bleachers 

and had to go throughout the rest of the performances with only one shoe on.  

When it happened the girls cracked up on stage.  

It was a long night and by the time we got home, Ryan already had Leon in bed.  Good thing I guess!  He's been under his sleep allotment lately.

Anyway, go grab those potatoes people and get your roses planted!!!

 Happy Valentine's Day!

Focus on Important Things

Well... we've gained another dog overnight.  This one used to live with us, and has forgotten what house trained means...  So we're doing frequent trips outside with her.  I think it's only temporary.

On a totally unrelated note, Leon is here for the weekend again! YAY!  Ok... it might be related.  

What a crazy world we live in...

I've decided we're having homemade pizza tonight.  Haven't done that in a while and it's Friday for goodness sakes!  And the boy is home. :)

I'm hoping to fit in an hour or so of sewing tonight so I have SOMETHING to take to my meeting tomorrow.

Ok, I'm done being boring...  

Oh!  Did I tell you what I got from my Sweetheart on Valentine's Day?  

Isn't it gorgeous??!  From an Irish woolen mill!  And I love it!!

Ok, back to focus.  

Have a wonderful weekend and fill me in on Monday with what you've been up to!

Sweet Date

When you've got kids, grandkids, you kind of have to go with the flow, right?  

Our Valentine's Day date turned into a date for three.  Ryan got called in to work.  SO what do you do then?  You find a place that all three of you will enjoy.

Fong's Pizza!  Leon had seen so many commercials on tv for this place and had always talked about going there, so we thought "Let's do it!"  He was asleep the entire way there and we thought we'd surprise him.  Oh he was... and angry.  

"I changed my mind and don't want to come here!"

He changed his tune when he saw the awesome decor and dragons on the wall.  

The pizza here is special.  Well, LEON got pepperoni but Robb and I got the types of pizza that they're known for.  Chinese food as pizza toppings.

Fongolian Beef pizza! 

YUM!

  

We knew the kids would love to try this out, so we brought a few pieces home for them.

It kind of reminded me of when you want to make pizza but don't have the fixings, so you put whatever leftovers you have on pizza crust and bake it.  But this was better.  Plus I didn't have to clean out the fridge.  OR make it myself.

If I'd made this based on my reminiscence, it would have been leftover beef stew or spam on a pizza crust.  Yeah... no one is going to make a restaurant based on that!

If you're ever in the Des Moines area, check out Fong's!  Ryan had already had some of their food and had the crab rangoon pizza before.  

Doesn't that sound cool?

Valentine Showers

Happy Valentine's Day!  I hope you have a sweetheart to share it with.  I think my valentine is taking me to John Wick 2 tonight...  Actually I don't know where we'd find time to go to a movie on a weeknight.  And that movie is probably not the most romantic.  I've got the first John Wick recorded on our dvr and wowza...  if you want a wicked revenge movie, I guess that's it.  

Remind me what to do if someone steals my car and kills my dog...  Kill 50+ people and destroy every business you enter?  That doesn't sound right...

Back to the weekend!  On Saturday night, I was too tired to run Maddy back to the dorm so I sent her in my car.  She got pulled over immediately after leaving the hotel parking lot for not turning the lights on yet...  oops!  On her car, they flick on right away, not so in my ancient beast! The policeman was also suspicious of why she had a minivan loaded down with strewn blankets, pillows and snacks, snack wrappings, half drunk drink containers...  It was a mess...  It always is when we travel somewhere.  Seriously... who would be stealing a minivan like that?!  

She told him that her parents weren't the most organized....  *thanks*

So eventually he believed her story when her driver's license address matched the registration and he told her to turn the headlights on and get back to campus.  Whew!

Meri's jazz band performance was Saturday and the school bus broke down on the way back to the school.  Meri was planning on heading to Minnesota as soon as she got back.  Thanks to a kind parent who was picking up their kid from the side of the road, Meri got to get a ride to her car instead of waiting for the replacement bus.  However it threw her way behind schedule and she didn't roll into campus until after 1am.  Maddy was waiting up for her.  They came to pick us up for church Sunday morning.  

After an awesome potluck at the church, we headed next door and Meri set up for the second wedding shower of the weekend.  We decorated cookies, 

made Sherbet/Sprite punch, 

ate Maddy's favorite foods of granola bars and cheese sticks, and played lots of games that Meri had found on Pinterest.  So much fun!  Maddy got more items to tuck into Matthew's bedroom/storage for their future together.

 Leon had a blast with Matthew's dad downstairs.  Sorry Matthew!  Your Legos were played with extensively!!  BUT I did NOT let the boy take cookies downstairs.  Who wants to play Legos with month old crumbs mixed in?  I didn't think you did.  

Leon popped a few balloons on their living room ceiling...

 All the single (so far) ladies with their ring pops!

And the McVal sisters...  So much love with those two!

I decided I didn't like my dress that I made after all, so I won't show you that dress pic.  Next time I make something for myself, I am SO taking a pic of myself in it before wearing it somewhere...  

and then wearing something else.

After the shower, we hit the road to find the friend's house where the reception will be.  We got lost...  I had taken a wrong turn and ended up turning a few miles too soon.  I didn't have my gps with me and was going from memory of what Google Earth had told me.  

Note to self, WRITE THINGS DOWN!  or REMEMBER TO BRING THE GPS!  

We had been told the GPS takes you to the wrong address, but after we discovered we weren't anywhere near the place, Meri looked it up on her cell phone.  It took us RIGHT to it!  

I guess SOME GPSs work for this farm!

good!

We walked all around and the family showed us their fantastic house.  If it rains or is buggy, our wedding guests can all fit inside their house.  Seriously... It's that big... and beautiful!

Well, this is the barn.  Not their house.  I didn't get a chance to see where the dance will be, in the upstairs of the barn, but I trust the kid's opinions, so it will be great.

Thanks to a very warm February, the spring thaw had set in.  Leon ran all around chasing cats and lost a shoe in the mud, then ran with one shoe on and a socking foot through the mud.  And that's when we got a tour of the house.  Yeah... I'll carry the boy...  Or take off his socks and shoes.  That kid begged a banana off them!  

I can't take him anywhere...  And we'll be lucky to leave the wedding reception without a kitten...  They'll have a batch ready to go to new homes by then.  *yay*

But now that we have a visual of the farm, I have a better idea of how to organize things for the reception.  Yay!  It's going to be fun!

Because of getting lost, I was almost out of gas.  The family gave me directions to the closest gas station and we set off with a wing and prayer.  I have NEVER seen the gas gauge THAT far past empty before.  wow...  Rolled into the town on fumes and prayers answered.

Then headed back to drop off kids and then head home.  Meri stayed a little longer before she left.

We broke the punch bowl into a million pieces when I opened the hatch for some of their things...  REALLY?  Oh well, it was a garage sale find years ago.  The last time I used it was probably 20 years ago.  Meri was the most sad about it breaking.

I was exhausted.  We all were.  FINALLY got home around 8:30 and was ready for bed.

So now it's Valentine's Day and I'm not as tired anymore.  

Planning a nice evening with my sweetheart.

I hope you do too!

McValentine's Weekend Foibles

Per usual, I've been busy this weekend...   

On Friday night I did relax by making some homemade pizza with a few twists.  I found a video that someone posted on FB about making food roses.

Nailed it!  Kind of...  Some looked like mutants.

For the last couple times I've made pizza, I've also added cheesy breadsticks to my repertoire.  

Oh man, these are easy AND yummy!  I roll out a thin strip of dough about a couple inches wide and 5-6 inches long.  Then, because I had gobs of string cheese in the fridge, I wrapped one up in the dough and then baked them.  I made several.  

I haven't figured out how to make them not explode yet, but I'm willing to keep trying it...  They make the BEST breadsticks!  So soft and yummy...  You can brush them with egg white and sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top if you feel fancy.

After supper, I sewed and sewed.  

On Saturday, I sewed and sewed.  

I'm determined to finish these bowling shirts by next weekend!  

 I used my new found hobby, because you just can't have too many of those!!!  and embroidered their names onto the shirts in true bowling shirt fashion.

On Saturday afternoon, Meri had a Jazz band competition about an hour away.  

We loaded up and enjoyed it so much!  

After some confusion afterwards about who was going home with who, we ended up in the right cars and made it home.  

I worked more on the embroidery. I'll show you pics of that tomorrow.

I also proposed an idea to Ryan about putting in velco for the shirt closure rather than buttonholes.  He said that if I expect him to wear it more than once, please do the buttonholes...

But yuck.  I hate button holes!  

It typically takes me 3 weeks to do them and that's just gearing up to do it.  It only takes, in reality, 30 minutes...  But you have to psych yourself up for it and be extremely careful.  At least with my machines you do.  Plus I couldn't find the button holer contraption for my machine so I winged it with setting #17 and traced the heck out of the shirt before I did it.  Also ran several test runs on sample fabric to give me enough nerve.

That was Sunday afternoon.  After praying about it at church and after visiting Ada at the nursing home and commiserating with her about it,  I even put in a call to Doctor Phil, but he wasn't available.

The button holes are done!  I just need to find buttons to fit them now. :)

Talk about the cart before the horse!!!

If button holes don't spell out LOVE for Valentine's Day, I just don't know what...

 Sunday evening I traced out the image for the back that I wanted to paint onto the shirts and went for it.  

This one is Leon's and it is done except for buttons.

On Ryan's I made the mistake of moving it too soon because I was painting on our bed and Robb wanted to go to bed.  Whoops!  Just a minute!!!  There are a couple smudges now.

But all in all, I think they're turning out ok.  No one is paying for these, so that's good!

I don't know if they'll go to the fair yet.

Found out yesterday that my mom had fallen at her nursing home and broken her nose!  I feel so bad that she's clear over there and I'm clear over here...  I'm so thankful for the siblings that were visiting them this weekend and the ones that live in town and can be there for her!

I have a lot of siblings.

So it's been a long but short weekend and I'm exhausted.  This week I need to concentrate on getting my sewing group's newsletter ready to roll AND get ready for Maddy and Matthew to come this weekend!!

What did you do this weekend?