Demolish Du Jour and PARTIES!

 I may have mentioned this, don't recall.  Matthew accepted a job 2 hours away, and they've bought a house just over an hour away.  It's going to be so great for them!  They move this month.  The house is adorable and perfect for their needs.  They need to build another fence but they got experience at their house in Wisconsin so they know what they're doing.

ALSO...

A bridesmaid came by for her fitting and with just one adjustment besides the hem, hers is done. WHEW!  One almost down! 5 more dresses to go...

ALSO...

We had discovered that our patio room was pulling the deck away from the house so my brother came over a couple times and did some work on it but couldn't continue until the patio room was down.  It needed to come down!  So Matthew invited a couple high school friends, I invited my twin nieces and their handy husbands and my brother offered to help out, besides Ryan and the rest of us.  

On Saturday, I grilled out some lunch for everyone when they arrived and we got to it.  Within a few hours, that room was down.  There are piles of junk wood waiting to be burned, a stack of windows waiting for me to build a mini greenhouse out of,  piles of other remnants waiting to be taken to the dump and lots to sweep up.  

It looks more like it did when we bought the house 24 years ago. :)  And I got to hold some grand nephews and a grand niece.

We all got chances to swing sledgehammers and had a lot of fun mixed with hard work!  It was the perfect crew and I am so thankful for them all!  This wouldn't have happened nearly as quickly on my own.  and now the cleanup!

There are already plans for patio swings, hammocks and chickens!  The chickens will have to wait until next year.

ALSO THIS WEEKEND...

I have two nieces that just graduated.  One from high school and one from medical school and both of their parties were yesterday afternoon.  I had already rsvped for the medical school grad party before I knew about the high school one, so that's the one I went to.  It was in a Chicago suburb.  

Congratulations to both of my nieces!  Grace and Christi!

My brother, who was here for the tear down party, went with me on the 5 hour drive.  We made it a day trip and got to my sister's house by 1ish.  

Here we are with the new doctor!  My brother, me, Dr Christi, a sister and another sister (the mother of the grad).  We were only missing 4 sisters to have it all complete.

It was a great time!  But then I made my 30 minute rounds of hugging everyone, (Robb used to factor that into our schedule) and then Mark and I hit the road for Iowa again.  We got home around 10ish pm.  Whew!  It was a whirlwind trip.

So this morning before Mark left, he cut up more pieces of the junk pile so it would fit in my van for the dump, then he finished his trip home of another 3 hours on the road.

My knee is bothering me again and I need a nap...

and if I'm lucky, another weekend.

Paddling Furiously

Leon started swimming lessons yesterday!  He loves it!  His teacher, probably not as much.

He can be exasperating.  

"I don't want to dunk ALL the way... but I want to show you how I can get to the rope!"

sigh...  I had to yell over a few times for him to obey his teacher.

And since Duke is going to be a Wisconsinite within a matter of weeks, I took him to Petco to get a makeover.  They shampooed him twice, blow dried his hair, brushed him out, brushed his teeth, clipped his nails, cleaned his ears and gave him a cutesie little bow tie when he was done.  All for only $34!  The best $34 I ever spent...  

They said he was just perfect in every way and was the best behaved dog they have had in a LONG time!

And that's why Maddy and Matthew want him rather than any of the other dogs.

Isn't he handsome??!

When we got home with him, Reedus was sniffing him all over and growling as if we'd replaced Duke with a lookalike that smells nice.  I had to put Reedus in the garage kennel for fear of having a dog fight on our hands.  All Reedus induced.  Duke was just standing there looking confused.

Duke: "Calm down Son! It's ME!!!"

Anyway, while I was waiting for Duke to get dolled up, I checked out Walmart's fabric section.  They had just marked down a ton of their fabric and I found lots of stuff for 50 cents a yard!  PERFECT for trying out a pattern and some are just right for a few projects I have in mind for the fair...

  I'll show you some pics of the fabric tomorrow.  It's all the way upstairs.

I also returned two of the dressmaking dummies and as of last night I was down to five left.  I posted a pic to my sewing group and 4 people said that I could make arrangements with them to drop them off.  oops...  I only knew of 3 of you...  So I woke up at 1:30 and agonized in my head to remember what costumes I had on the deck for Meri's party and how many that was, subtracting the ones I returned to Diane.

It wasn't five dummies left, it should be six...  oh dear... Where could the sixth one be?  So after laying in bed frantically trying to think for 45 minutes, I got up and went downstairs for a mannequin hunt.  

Could someone have taken one?!  Who?!  Who would want one, of the people that have come into our house, in the last few weeks?...  

I found it in the dark, in my pajamas.  It had been tucked behind one of the doors that was covered with Meri memories, mere inches from the mannequins in the picture.  Whew!  Those things are expensive and I didn't relish the thought of having to buy a replacement!  But then I was keyed up and stayed awake for another half hour or so.  dang.

Today could be a long day if I let it.

The Museum of Meri

 It was a doozy of a weekend!  Robb brought the tables and chairs that we borrowed from church and stored the first batch of them on the deck for the night.  The rest stayed in the van.

Due to possible rain late Friday night, we couldn't do the setup of the deck and driveway until early Saturday morning.  Meri and her friends had strung up her Polaroid shots all over the house the day before, blocking certain cupboards.  Yeah... how are we going to make pizza for dinner??

Maddy and Matthew arrived and were a god-send in helping with everything! After the pizza was eaten first of course.

They set up the tent frame as far as they could go.  Whew!  That saved tons of time!  They helped us move the old car that doesn't work OUT of the driveway.  It's going to Teen Challenge within the next week or three.

Then at 4am the next morning, my alarm went off.  I'd only gotten about 4 hours of sleep as my mind had been racing about all the things I needed to do when the alarm went off.  And when I thought to myself, "GET YOUR MIND OFF THE SETUP!!!" I started thinking about what needed to be done for the tear down... "STOP IT!"

So anyway, the alarm went off.  We started dragging mannequins, tables, chairs, moving cars, setting up the tulle, positioning the piano and counter for the slideshow.  Got the IT guy (Robb) involved to coordinate getting the pics off my office computer and out to display on our big screen tv.  Teamviewer wasn't going to do the trick for this one.  The house wifi was JUST out of reach where I wanted the tv.  He also was in charge of being the choir/jazz band dj at the kitchen counter, playing my youtube videos of Meri's performances.

Beauty and the Beast played on the living room computer non-stop.

 

SO many friends and family came through.  Even though only about a hundred signed the guest book, Meri knew that lots hadn't done that and in looking at the cards that people left, we think we were at about 200 guests.

Matthew went around with Robb's cell phone and took loads of pictures for me to commemorate the day.  YAY!

  

As I was talking with some people inside, my mother-in-law asked, Who is that tall man on the porch, talking to Meri?  Hmmm..

 

Didn't know immediately, so I went out there.  Lo and behold, it was our best man from our wedding and his wife, whom we'd never met!  

 

They live a whole 12 miles away and we haven't run into them the last 5 years they've lived there.  REALLY?!!!  Yes.  What a great surprise!  We visited inside with them for a good long between filling up the bagel buckets and draining ice from the cream cheese spread varieties.

Another surprise guest was Meri, Ryan, Maddy and my old Taekwondo instructor!  I'm so glad he was able to come!

Maddy is the only one that didn't make it to black belt under his instruction.

I got some good visiting in with my favorite cousin, Julie, and her husband, who is the favorite cousin-in-law, through marriage.  It's who you know.  

Got a tight bear hug from an uncle with a big smooch on the cheek.  He always makes you feel super!

My brother and his friend came too!  I only got a pic of their backs.  darn.

Of course, Matthew got some pics in of his bride.  They will be celebrating their 1st anniversary in a week or so!

When I'd talked to Mark on Friday, he wasn't sure if he could make it, but he did!  It was a day of surprises.

We dubbed the deck display of Meri's life, the "Museum of Meri."  

 

All the dress making dummies looked awesome and we filled all eight of them.  

 with three tables full of memorabilia from babyhood on.

 

I was afraid we wouldn't be able to, but wow...  I even had to leave some costumes upstairs! 

 

 

A few of my sewing buddies showed up and admired the set up, then sat inside to talk.  I may be doing a write up for the next sewing newsletter, talking about the kindness of sewing friends!  :) 

On the back deck, we set up the 10-20 foot tent that we'd purchased for Maddy and Matthew's wedding.  We put a small rip in one corner while we put it up this time.  When we use it for Meri's future wedding (some day), We'll put flowers over that corner.  The tent was perfect and filled up almost all the deck.

We served bagels and Meri and her friends had made 3 kinds of spreadable cream cheeses.  Plain (they added a little milk to regular cream cheese), berry (raspberry, powdered sugar and some strawberry preserves), and honey/walnut (lots of honey, walnuts and powdered sugar).  All delish!!!  I may never have to buy Panera's spreads again!  Maddy and Matthew went at 6am to pick up the bagels from Panera and then helped set up everything.

A different bucket for every type of bagel.  And a tub of ice for the cream cheese spread.  

 

There were so many bagels leftover, I gave a flat to my sister-in-law and said, here!  Take some to work on Tuesday!  Did the same for Robb and a couple others.

Still have a full deep freezer...

We also served thawed mix fruit from Sam's Club, the mints that we'd made, Robb made several egg/breakfast casseroles and Meri asked one of her friends mom's to bring several pans of her famous cinnamon rolls with frosting to die for!  Oh yum...

Drinks were coffee, peach tea, lemonade and bottles of water.  We also had three toasters for those that wanted to toast up their bagels.  We froze a couple tubs of the tea into huge blocks of ice to put in with the tea so that as it melted, it wouldn't get watered down.  We also dumped some frozen fruit in with the lemonade and it was delicious!  Up until it kept clogging the spout...  Oh well, we scooped out from the top also. 

The weather was perfect!  It did heat up slowly during the morning, but with the tables in shade for the morning, the guests slowly pulled them closer to the garage to get them out of the sun.   By the time the party was over, we let the tables get sun.  no big.  until we had time to tear them down.

Meri had glue sprayed the boards and plastered on all the photos I'd saved on my computer since she was a baby.  She ran out of boards by high school and we improvised with some square plywood boards we had in the garage.  Now she has a couple things she can take to her new apartment in August!

 We'll do something different with the tall boards.

The red/black tulle started at the front pergola and wrapped around the porch posts to the back.

Meri had a tray of her senior pics that we had printed at the last minute at Walmart.  Not too many were taken by guests.  Bummer.  I think they passed there too quickly and didn't see them. 

Now we'll have to make playing cards out of them... :\  OR give them out with the Christmas letter this next December.  Yeah... we'll do that.

Her best friend made her those map roses.  Aren't they adorable?

The t-shirt boards and then more pics of the Museum of Meri.

AND the Beauty and the Beast corner.  Actually it should be the Belle corner because we didn't get the Beast costumes for it.  But it looked great on the deck!

On Sunday, when we got home from church, Maddy helped Meri pin on her cap and do her hair.

Then the obligatory "before the actual graduation" pics and encouragement.

 "Family that was there" pic.

 AND the ceremony...  I had kleenex handy and needed them.

  Processional

Choir.  They sang, "Only in Sleep" with Meri's beautiful solo.  If you missed it a week or so ago, you can click here.  Even in the stifling gym, we got goosebumps.

Apparently they get air conditioning NEXT year...

They played "We had the time of our lives" by Green Day and the seniors all grabbed a rose and took it their moms...  *sob*  Meri was crying by the time she got to me and I sobbed too, hugging her.  She got snot on my shirt.  The rose still sits in water by my sink.  SO pretty!

They even pronounced her middle name correctly when she walked across the stage!!!!

Meredith Aoife McVal.

 THEN she was graduated!

As soon as we wanted a pic with Meri, we were given the diploma instead.  So we'll take what we can get and posed with it.

She's so tough...

 Not really...  I love that girl.

 And we got her in one too with the both of us!

The Beast came by to congratulate her and I managed to grab a pic quick before he dashed off.  His grad party was immediately following this.

  

On the way home, we stopped for Slurpees or whatever they're called now!  We're making it a tradition!  If you graduate, we'll spring for Slurpees!

Well, that was the weekend in a nutshell.  The deck got back into place and the contents of the party are slowly sifting back into the house and memory boxes for Meri to share with her kids some day.

Maddy and Matthew stuck around until Monday afternoon, then headed back to Wisconsin.  We'll be helping them move into their house soon that they just signed a mortgage for last week.  

And Leon lost his second tooth and just realized that he could whistle now.  But couldn't figure it out when we asked him to do it again.

One hit wonder.

He wants a Museum of Leon party when he graduates from first grade. Ummm we just celebrate with ice cream at the end of each year, but the 12th grade is the biggie.  Ok he says.

The kids are ALL growing up!!!! 

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping

I had a busy weekend.  But  before I jumped into the grad party prep list, I relaxed on Friday night and watched 9 to 5 all by myself!  I had been up since 3am and was exhausted, not wanting to jump into any projects right away.

  

And actually, it WAS on the list.

Meri and Robb had plans and I was in the mood to watch it.  So I vegged out for the evening! Yay!

Saturday morning was when all the big fun was!  I taped up the walls and hung painters plastic all over the dining room.  The ceiling had to be painted.  

I probably would have gotten done sooner, if I hadn't fallen off the step stool!  I've got a nasty bruise on one leg now.  Aleve is my friend.

As you can see, there are big patches of places where the bathroom upstairs has leaked over the years and been patched up.  For some reason, I was never lucky enough to get the right color white!  Too many splotches of glossy white or county white that just made it look yucky.  So Robb picked me up a gallon of flat white ceiling paint and lo and behold, it matched the rest of the ceiling perfectly!  So I painted just from the windows to the chandelier.  

It looks great!  If you don't pay attention to the smallish spot over the hutch that I missed that I'm not showing you.  Painting white on white is difficult...

I also pulled down all the curtains on the main floor and washed them.  As I was pulling them down, amidst the dust bunnies, a few of Leon's toys fell out.  Yikes!  How long has it been?  

Probably the LAST graduation party...

As I was putting the ones in the living room back up, I decided that we needed something at the top.  When we moved in, the previous owners had had a beautiful sun ray there and we just hadn't put anything there.  

So I got the grandchildren clock that my mom had made for both sets of my grandparents one year.  This one has (all my maternal grandparents) grandchildren's names and birthdays painted in gold on each of the rays.  I just recently inherited the grandchildren clock from my paternal grandparents as well!  It doesn't have a clock in it, but I can pick one up.  I just don't have a good place to put that one yet.  One of my mom's hobbies was ceramics, once upon a time.  

Oh - the clock doesn't work in this one.  Maybe I'll get that fixed.

And I didn't like the awkward gap just under the clock, so I stuck a silk flower there since this pic.

Up to this point, this one had been hanging in our bedroom.  This is much better!

I also had a stack of Meri's high school t-shirts for this very purpose.  We might be doing one more board as she said she had some more.  Good!  These will be on the deck along with the costumes on mannequins.  I've got clips on the back holding the t-shirts on.  It turned out pretty neat!  

Sometimes those wild hairs pay off.

This morning, Leon and I checked out his pineapple that we planted in my garden before he got on the bus.  The trees are budded out so nicely, I had to take a pic.  We're expecting thunderstorms later, so no telling how long those buds will be on the trees.

And I mentioned this on Friday, today is our anniversary.  

I can't believe it's been 30 years today...  

Where has the time gone?!

Perculatin' over here

I worked from Panera Bread yesterday morning for a while until I picked up Ryan and attended one of the last of Meri's choir performances of her senior year.  Here are the songs they sang.

Meri's high notes in this one... WOW.

I loved it.  Afterwards she wanted to leave with us because she had plans for the afternoon.  So we signed her out and Ryan treated us to lunch at a fast food place that always reminds me of a Mexican Subway.  That kind of torilla, that kind of beans, rice, meat, salsas...  Pretty awesome!!

Got home and got swamped with work.  BUT I did get some stuff done around the house in the last few days.  Minor things, but they needed to be done.

Mulching and spray painting that silly deck bench.  Meri will be gracing that during her grad party.

Fixing a few spindles on the deck.  Had I but known how easy it is!  Well, granted... it took 20 minutes per spindle, but I'm getting it figured out.  Not sure if I'll use the Flex Tape on some of the broken spindles or just replace them...  I guess it depends on if I can find my stash of the stuff.

I'm sure a professional handyman would scoff at my attempts.  Just don't look too closely...  And it will get painted.

 One of these spindles is not like the others...  Yeah, Lowes didn't have an exact match.  SO WHAT!?

Leon picked out the purply plant and I, of course, picked the ivy.

I love the stuff!  It reminds me of other ivys I've known and loved.  

I know the ivy will bush out a lot, but it's ME planting it.  It'll die by the end of the summer...

If it doesn't, I'll move the pot inside and let it die there.

So loads more to do in getting ready to partay, but I've got 16 days.  What could go wrong?