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.

California Dreaming - Day 4 - Beaches and a sign

Back to sunny California!  briefly.

Sunday, day 4

On Sunday morning, Meri and I tracked down how to get to a church that is in fellowship with (the same flavor as) ours.  It turned out, with the lack of Sunday morning traffic, the drive was only 30 minutes or so!  cool...

The pastor and his family were super nice and offered to help Meri with anything she needs when she moves to L.A.  And they have two adorable little girls so Meri will get her daycare fix.  The service was bi-lingual so the Pastor repeated the entire sermon, paragraph by paragraph into Spanish.  Amazing!  Too bad I didn't understand that part, but if I was trying to become fluent in Spanish, this would be the place!

Afterwards, we drove to Venice and found the house (well, the area) where Abby was staying.  The house where she's staying is behind another one and we thought we were lost for a bit.  We stowed the fabric that we wanted her to bring back with her in the trunk of her car and then we set out.  

Lunch at a BBQ place in Venice which had this fabric store right across the street!  Since I'd blown my fabric budget already two days earlier, we didn't even go in.  Just admired from our restaurant.

The three of us drove through the Venice canals, which are beautiful!  

We drove through them several times, because we kept taking a wrong turn.

After speaking with my dad later, he said that he'd been to the canals a LOT when he was in the Marines.  He was stationed near here and an aunt and uncle lived nearby so he'd visit them on his days off.

I gave the girls an address of a beautiful house that we'd see and they'd look it up on Zillow.com to tell us how much it last sold for.  WOWZA, I can not ever afford to live on the canal!!!

Then we drove down into Malibu and I got to see where Malibu Barbie and all her friends live.  And probably where 2.5 men live.  More expensive houses...  

We stopped on the scenic area on Malibu beach and took some pics.

Location location location!

Public restrooms are scarce!  But we looked desperate enough for a Mexican restaurant to let us use their facilities.  Yep - we'll buy some pop there!  Then we headed to the beach!

It was cold!  Not Iowa cold...  but cold enough to wear a jacket and bristle in the wind.  Due to the chill of *gasp* 45 degrees, there were NO muscle bound men on Muscle Beach.  shoot.  I guess they're weenies.

We walked along the Venice boardwalk, after the girls raided the candy store on the corner of course...  Then we cut out onto the beach and saw the sights.

What silly people to surf in this chill!  BURR!  Not Iowa BURR, but still BURR none the less.

The birds were fun to watch and I have more than a healthy amount of photos of this particular one so I could get this photo!  He kept running away from me...

Meri talked me into buying her a sweatshirt to commemorate the day.  I'll never get to wear it...

On the way back to Abby's, she directed us down some side streets to a swanky little street where everything in the shops cost more than my house.  A block away, we drove past a beautiful Ferrari stopped at a stop sign.  We gawked and pointed and as soon as we were past, they peeled out.  

Cue rolling eyes on our part and saying out loud, "Daddy's Car..."

After that, we took Abby home and headed off ourselves.  It was an hour's worth of a drive back, and Meri wanted to see the Universal street all lit up at night.  We found it, but yikes.  While the street walk would have been great, finding parking and a shuttle to see it would have been a nightmare.  Meri was disappointed but she's the one who said "nevermind".  But while we were on that side of the city, I suggested driving out to the Hollywood sign.  She was all for it!

I'm guessing the stars of LaLaLand were flown out to it on a helicopter.  No way did they drive up windy tiny streets lined with houses full of angry people and next to no parking to reach it, as we did.  We drove and drove and was reminiscent of our ascent to Jerome, AZ, where Robb couldn't see the road on the other side of the hood of the car.  Yikes, it was scary!  BUT we made it to the dead end and parallel parked next to someone's bedroom window.  The houses seriously line the streets.  I could have knocked on their window for a glass of water!  But I didn't.

The road below was tame compared to what we drove up.

We walked as far as we could but then thoughts of public restrooms filled our heads again so we took our obligatory photos and headed back.  

I should have brought a hairbrush with me...

and a makeup artist.

 Then we stopped for a pizza on our way back to the hotel.  I don't even think there was meat on this one...  But it was good and I got full, so that's what counts.

 Another great day of our vacation!  

And there was still more to go...

California Dreaming - Day One

Oh my goodness... SO much to tell you!

On Thursday, Meri and I headed out early in the morning and arrived in Des Moines for our flight out.  We parked in long term parking and left our coats in the car.  We weren't going to need them where we were going!  The parking ticket was placed on the dash and we caught a shuttle to the airport.  

We were jet set and ready to roll down the run way!!!

 

But first we had to make it through the TSA security.  We didn't have to worry about anything as we had nothing wrong with anything we had, however as we came through security, one of the TSA guys came over and tackled Meri.  Actually, she saw it coming as it was one of her close friends from high school!  And it was really a hug and well wishes.  I told her later that that was TSA's way of giving you a good pat down if you miss the first guy after the wand...

He didn't hug me though.  Meri was suspect, I guess... ;)

After a delay leaving Des Moines, due to plane de-icing, and then of course we worried over our connecting flight, we were pleasantly surprised that our flight out of Chicago was delayed as well. Whew!  So after a brief layover in Chicago, we started west on a different airplane.  

The scenery was beautiful from what I could see of it...

She occasionally let me lean over for a shot, or graciously allowed me to steal her pics off our FB family group page.  

By the time we rolled into Chicago (only an hour flight), we figured out the United online app so besides knowing now what gate to run to, we also found movies to watch on our phones!  Yay!  I'd been wanting to see Crazy Rich Asians!  We watched that one on the way and a couple on the way back.  I only got about a third of the way into my Dean Koonz book.

Meri did a lot of watching scenery while she had headphones plugged in.   

So it was a pleasant flight and we enjoyed our time together.

Doesn't this one look like we're actually in space?  Those phone filters are amazing...

We got talking to the woman in the next seat, just a little.  I notice you're playing Sudoku!  I too enjoy a game of Sudoku at times.  Yeah - not much more than that. 

 She was a little cold at first and Meri texted me to watch out for her, she seemed mean.  She wasn't, but I was still careful not to hog the elbow rest.

 And Lookey there!!!  We made it!  Los Angeles...

After some rigmarole trying to find our rental shuttle and car, we finally hit the road.  Well, almost.  We took the wrong exit out of the parking lot and had to get out of the car so that the worker there could drive it in a U-turn and get us back IN the parking lot without popping our tires.  Then sent us off to find a different exit.  

REally??!  The road is RIGHT THERE!  Just a few more feet and we would have been good.  Oh well... I'll play their game... for now...

For real then, we hit the road.  The GPS led us through the worse part of L.A. trying to get to our hotel in Pasadena.  We brought the GPS from home and while that said we'd be at the hotel in 32 minutes, Meri's phone GPS said 2 hours.  hmmm  One of these two is not accurate...  We trusted Meri's as it meshed with what the car rental guy said and it WAS during rush hour.

We texted my niece, Abby, a few times and she headed up to our hotel to wait for us.  Due to the traffic, she got to spend a lot of time at a coffee shop until we got there.  I'm so glad her busy schedule allowed her time to hang out with us!  We went to a Mexican restaurant around the corner from the hotel and heard all about her adventures trying to find a roommate that wasn't going to rip her off.  She's now renting a room from one of her makeup artists and very happy.  She's only going to be out there for a couple months, but she brought her car with her so she wouldn't have to rent anything for that amount of time.  Smart...

She headed back to Venice and we went to bed.  Whew!  It had been a long day!

And that was day 1.

Weekend Snake Guts

How would you like to come around the yard mowing and find this?!  

I must have caught it unawares while zipping around the apple tree...

I took the pic and sent it to Robb.  He texted back.  "We'll move."

Well, it's DEAD now...!  So we don't HAVE to!  I'll just protect us with the lawn mower.

On Friday, Leon and I went on an adventure and returned four of the mannequins from the grad party to their rightful owners.  I still have two left, but that lady lives a long ways away, so it will wait until the next sewing meeting.  We had some good conversations on the way but he mostly had his nose in his tablet...

He was mostly excited about the "fun place" that I promised that I'd take him.  When we got close to it, I realized that we'd been here before!  

He had been invited to a birthday party here back in preschool.    

He didn't remember and had a blast running all over the place.  I found a nice place to relax and realized that I should have charged my phone on the way down.  The percentage was at 8%...  sigh...  I got some pics in before it died.

 

 I dug out some quarters and he and I played some air hockey.  It was close...  Then later, he was playing with a boy and I found some more change.  He asked the boy to play it with him and then he got creamed.  I may have been holding back...  But Leon didn't care and was just excited to be playing the game with his new friend.

Loads more running around and bouncing and suddenly we'd been there an hour and it was time to take him to his mom's for the weekend.  darn.  I dropped him off and headed home.

My niece, Bethany, arrived the next morning and spent until this morning here with Meri.  They mostly avoided the house and spent money.  But they did play some board and card games with us in the evenings for a bit. 

I spent my free time sewing.  I made two pairs of black leggings and let the girls pick which ones they wanted.  Will make more of those now that I have Meri's size perfected!  Easy peasy!  Two hours later a new pair is done.

Meri was asked to sing with a small group of people for a funeral grave side service.  So right after church, she ditched us and ran home to practice with them in our living room.  I found that she DOES care what people think of our house!!  When we got home after lunch out with Bethany, she had done a bit more tidying...  Nice...  She's going to have to have more friends and their parents over more often...  She and a couple of the guys from the group have decided to start a new singing group called Dead Set.  Not sure if they're get a LOT of funeral gigs with that name, but I liked it.

Robb and I took Bethany to lunch at the pub where Ryan works.  It was early enough that we were the only customers there for almost 30 minutes, so Ryan was able to sit and visit a little.  He also brought us out some jalapeno cheddar balls to try out.  Oh...  those were delish!!!!

Bethany had to leave this morning, so she and Meri went to Meri's favorite coffee shop before she hit the road and Meri went to work.  I've got a TON of fettuccine noodles left over from Bethy's favorite meal last night and am wondering what to do with them.  

But not for lunch.  I have a lunch date with Ada today. :)

Weekend Whining

Guess what?  It's SPRING!!!!

The trees are finally budding out except for that one tree that we suspected last year of dying on us.  It does have tiny nubs on some of the branches, but I'll bet we have to cut it down by next year before we have another catastrophe on our hands.

I'm slowly getting the mulch spread out onto the landscaping.  As much as I use the gloves, my finger tips look like my mom's always did when she would stain and varnish something.

And guess what else?... It was a busy weekend.

On Friday, I took Leon to his mom's as Robb wasn't getting back from his trip until a little while later.  After I dropped off the boy, I called Robb and they were just driving through the same big city as I was in!  Yay!  They met me at a Casey's somewhere between us and I got my hubs back!  We let Tom leave by himself from there.

On Saturday morning, Meri went in one direction for choir and band, Robb stayed home and got unpacked as well as got some worky work done and I headed to my hometown alone.  A nephew's wife was having a baby shower in her honor and I wanted to attend.  

I got into town early enough to pick up my dad and then my mom for an early lunch.  Dad chose a burger joint that he would take us to whenever we went to the dump with him.  It had ice cream cones, seriously, a foot tall off the cone itself.  They still do!

I reminisced about how after school, all of us kids would whine that we were dying of thirst as Mom drove through this section of town.  Look!  There's the 7-11!!  They sell pop!!!!  As soon as we turned the corner past the Catholic school, all the whining would suddenly stop.  It was all residential from there until home so why bother?  Mom didn't remember that at all but laughed at our childish ways to attempt to get what we want.

The shower was really nice and Vianna got a lot of nice things for their first child.  

There were lots of games too!  I won the first one for having guessed how many animal crackers fit in the giant baby bottle!  There were 220.  And for my efforts I won a spa basket, complete with a bottle of wine!  Woohoo!  I was hoping this wasn't the kind of game where you unwrap the gift then give it to the lady of honor.  Because that would be awkward.  

Um... here... You're not supposed to be drinking this.

But I got it and took it home.  I've got plans for it.

 

And how ironic!  My BIL had just posted on FB about a cruise that he and his family had just gotten off of and said that the "Bahama Mamas" that will be enjoying a cruise next January will enjoy this view!  And at that instant I had just won this Bahama Mama basket!

  

So I suppose my sisters and myself are now known as that for this trip!  I'm down with that!

Another game consisted of everyone getting a cup of water with a tiny baby frozen in an ice cube.  As soon as the baby broke free of the ice cube, you were supposed to yell, MY WATER BROKE!

Well, I was thinking it was a longer game and left it sit there, but other ladies were poking it with their pens and being grabby with their hands in the cup!  HEY!  NO FORCEPS ALLOWED!

Ah well, I'd already won something, so I didn't care.

Below is my grand-niece, Maddy and Matthew's flower girl.  She still has the poses down!

So after eating so many chips, salted caramel candies, lots of pop and good food during my drive there and back, I've gained 3 pounds in one day.  I'm drinking lots of water today to flush it out of my system.  Wish me luck!

Back to work!  Lots to do, Lots to do...

Who is Jack?

This is what my front yard looks like after our blizzard yesterday.  The big hole in the snow is from where Leon made a snow angel before getting on the bus...  The blizzard was so bad that it caused a huge car pile up on the interstate not far from us.  At least one fatality and several injured.

THEN this is where one of my sisters was this weekend.  I think she's flying back into this mess today.  But isn't the ocean beautiful?  Some day... some day...

 And Brooke in all her glory.  She got 96% on her report on James & Dolley Madison! 

Way to go Brooke!!!

Doesn't she look authentic?  Kristin found that hat at a thrift store.

On another note.  Since Ryan and Meri were both snowbound with us last night, Ryan insisted that we play the "You Don't Know Jack" game on one of his game systems.  Robb and I used to have the computer cd version of this game way back when Ryan was 5 or so and it wasn't appropriate for him at that time!  You play this game using the game system, a tv and your smart phones.  Hilarious...  

So we let Leon play Roblox in the living room and we got into our game.

We played a few weeks ago with Jen, Ryan's girlfriend.  Here is how one of the games went.  There are several different types of the game, but one was the "pointing" part of the game.  So everyone is sent a command to their phones.  For example, "Point to someone who is the last to lose their temper?"  And then one person is the "faker" and they get a totally different question or it says to pretend to fit in and point to someone randomly, the faker not knowing what the real question is and they point randomly.  So it's a clue as to who the faker might be and everyone else can vote for who they think the faker is.

Well, during one of the questions, Robb was found out to be the "faker" and we didn't get to the rest of the questions, which was just as well, because as an answer to the next question, he'd answered Jen without knowing the real question.  Which was, "Who in this group have you seen naked?"    

That could have been awkward...

So anyway, if you get access to that game, try it out.  It's a hoot!  Especially with a crowd.

And after a few games of that and then time with the boy, I didn't get any sewing in at all.  Maybe over lunch today.

I can only hope.

What I Love

Thankful list for today.

Sometimes I need reminders...

My husband.  It's amazing how better I sleep when he's here!

My kids & their significant others.  Or as they probably refer to themselves as blog fodder.

My grandson.  the biggest contributor to my blog and one of my bigger responsibilities.

My job.  While I do gripe at times, I'm thankful I have employment.  Especially from home. Telecommuting is pretty addictive.

My followers!  You guys are awesome.

My headphone.  My chiropractor is thankful for that too.  Well, maybe not as thankful as I am.

Catching up with old friends.

Of course God.  Without Him, all this life stuff is meaningless.

I'm pretty sure that Southern Gal must keep a list on her fridge all week long to get her list so exhaustive.  I'm exhausted after just writing a few...  Oh yeah, you may or may not be able to get to her blog...

Brooke trying on the dress when it arrived.

I want to spend my lunch sewing on Meri's Belle dress.  It may or may not happen.  Not feeling so hot.  I might just veg on the couch...

Kristin showing off the hat she got to round out the outfit.

Early out today for school.  It'll be great hearing Leon's voice calling through the house.  He'll spend his free time with his dad, until his dad goes to work.

The final product.  She's lovin' it!

Have a great Wednesday!

No More Diversions Left...

I got the temporary adjustments done on the pink Victorian dress for Brooke.  I'll mail that off today if I can.  I used some iron in tape to take the hem up two inches.  She's only wearing it once...  Who knows?  Maybe Maddy will want it back someday for Halloween!  

Oh and I took up the sleeves about 4- 5 inches.  Whilst Brooke IS getting taller, her arms have not caught up yet.  I can only hope Kristin measured her arms correctly... ;)

Before

After...

Does it look better?  Definitely shorter sleeves!

Then last night I also had an hour free, so I cut out the Belle skirt and gathered the waist line.  I'll sew that into place today over lunch.

Here's what I'm planning for the Belle dress.  It's basically a denim bustier vest thing and I'm going to sew the skirt waist to it.  Otherwise if she bends over, the blouse will untuck and she'll have to keep adjusting the vest.  Don't want that.  So the side zipper of the vest will also blend in with the skirt and she'll be able to take it off in one fell swoop for quick costume changes.  

Hopefully.  At least that's my plan.  So...

Sew...  More on that later.

I've got brownies in the oven to celebrate Ada's birthday this evening and a L. Frank Baum biography to wrap up for her.  Not sure if I ever told you, she is a HUGE Wizard of Oz fan!  as well as the color of purple( I hope I have some purple stuff in my wrapping paper box) AND she loves to read famous people's biographies.  She was a teacher, so she's a history buff, so mostly past presidents and historical figures, but as I mentioned, she does love WOZ...  So I just hope she hasn't read this particular biography yet.  She doesn't use the internet so I feel comfortable telling you all this here.

Who are YOU going to tell?

Anyway, back to work.  Percolating percolating...