Tacos and catching up

Leon and I attended the Iowa Cubs game against the Louisville Bats on Friday night!  It was a lot of fun catching up with some college friends.  I hope more are able to attend next year!

My sister-in-law dropped us off with the intent of eventually finding a parking spot nearby and joining us but no luck.  Every single lot was full and she wasn't in a state to walk several blocks.  At least I got to visit with her for the drive from our parking ramp over! 

Leon didn't understand the game but was totally in it for the food.  Thankfully his dad gave me some money to keep the kid happy and boy did I!

He got a big slice of pizza right at the beginning and then ate half my peanuts.  Then we climbed over a fence barrier to our left, three more times to either find a restroom or more food and drinks.  He had seen a sign for Raising Cain's chicken fingers but apparently it was just an ad because there was NO booth for it.  He settled for a generic BBQ booth and only ate a teeny bit of the $14 plate of chicken strips and fries.  I ate the rest, not wanting anything to go to waste...  And since I'm counting carbs and blood sugar these days, I'm still working it off.

sigh.  The things I do for these kids!

It was delicious.

Ok - since a month ago, when I last blogged.

1) I did NO sewing.  I hope to remedy that this week.  I need SOMETHING to send to the fair.  I should actually sign up for some tickets today.

update: DID!  Signed up for 6 entries. Not sure if I'll have that many but we'll see.

2) Meri has a new boyfriend and I finally got to meet him a couple weeks ago. He's coming for taco night tonight too.  We like him. and she really likes him.  So things are good.

3) Leon and I visited with Maddy and Matthew and went on adventures in paint 

and boating!

4) Leon is out of school!!  and as far as we know, is now in the 8th grade.  You can't tell ANYTHING by those new fangled report cards. M=met expectations, N=nearing expectiations, S=sweet but trying, etc.  He is sleeping/gaming away his summer.  It's a challenge to get him out into the sun much less bed but we're doing our best! Thus the bribery with ball game food.

Come outside little boy!!...

5) staying as positive as I can about certain situations in my life right now.  

Robb would have said, "yep - told you."

6) possibly buying another car later this summer!  The current cars are nickel and diming us to death. One car will only drive smoothly if you put in a bottle of fuel injector cleaner and only if you put it in and fill it when it's around 1/4 of a tank.  Then you're good (maybe) until it's back down to a 1/4 tank.  weird.  Another needs new tires.  Another rattles when you start it and needs new tires too.

never ending.

7) I did something stupid (and almost died) with my riding lawn mower and that story is for another day.  Now the front tires look a wee bit bowlegged.  With any luck, Meri's new BF will help me bend it back into place today. I hope.

8) Leon and his middle school band played during Memorial Day out at the cemetery.

9) same day I realized that my blood sugar was way too high. That darn drunken peach cobbler.  

It's SO sweet!

and delish.

eh - I needed a wake up call.

10) Aggie's other grandparents came for a day and helped us all tear down the Eagle's nest from in front of our house and put up portions of it for a deck for Aggie's little house back in the yard. It's adorable!

pay no attention to the wheelbarrow!  it's not still there. This is an older picture.

and she is adorable too.

Just Grandma and Aggie

She is a stitch and a half!

Anyway, back to work and other things!  I hope you're having a beautiful week!

Eat a taco tonight!

Misremembering Memorial and plans

 Memorial Day isn't until NEXT weekend, not THIS one! Whew!  But no matter.  After Biolife this morning, I stopped and picked up some flowers for both Robb's stone and his dad's.  Will get them put out this weekend with help from the kids.

I took the Aggster for a walk yesterday and she's waving at the bus barn.  AND the cardtrol company was giving out free hotdogs and chips as customer appreciation so we picked up a couple meals for the gang back home.  I think they're still in the fridge.  Oh well, Leon can eat them tonight.

I'm headed to my hometown for a baby shower tomorrow.  Looking forward to spending some time with family.  Hopefully back in time to help Jen change out a bathroom air vent and a patio light.  Plans, plans.

I got some Aggie time in this morning while Jen got ready for work and hoping to have a bonfire, firepit tonight with Leon and the gang.  I've got a lot of branches and junk to burn and I'm thinking Leon wants to cook some marshmallows or hotdogs.  We'll see.

I ordered a cake for one of the confirmands at church this weekend.  The gal at the bakery did NOT understand the word confirmation and repeated the words back to me, "Congratulations on your consirmation".  Um, what's that?  That's supposed to be an "F".  I had to spell it for her a few times until she got it, I hope.  "F" as in Frank!  I guess Sunday will be the big reveal! :)

Oh well, It's not MY kid being confirmed!  That's not for another 2 years.

I joined a long hair for women over 50 group this morning.  I just got it cut on Wednesday!  

This is my intro picture for the group.

I feel so lightheaded...  Eh - it was a trim.  I've had bangs most of my life except for a few times when I thought, hey, let's look like Christy Brinkley! (as in my senior pic on the top shelf) and then thought again.  When it grows into my glasses, it's time for a trim.  I don't do it myself anymore because my hairdresser will just shake her head and feel like upping her price.  I can't have her doing that!

Have a beautiful weekend!

A Memorable Shower

 Sunday was the wedding shower.  Maddy and Matthew showed up early afternoon as Robb and I put the finishing touches on the party room.  We had about 30-35 people in the room and it was cozy but still space to move around.  I had been worried and reserved another venue in town just in case, but cancelled it when the rsvp's rolled in.  Apparently a lot of people leave town for Memorial day!

Leon was a total ham and needed a nap, but oh well.

The happy couple looked adorable and enjoyed the treats and gifts.

 "I have found the one whom my soul loves." Solomon 3:4

They visited with my mom for a bit and I'm so glad they took time to do that, as she won't be able to go to the wedding.

Meri and I co-hosted.  She did the games and I did the video.

. 
I got a couple pics of Meri with Jen, Ryan's lady friend.

and Bethany, one of her fave cousins.  Bethy stayed here for a couple days afterwards.

After all the festivities, we went out for supper with his family before they had to leave town, then went home to relax.  

Leon was having none of the relaxing bit tho.  We DID get him to calm down for a pic but it seemed forced... and besides, this one shows Leon's personality. Total chaosity.

We spent Memorial Day watching Meri's band perform during a brief parade 

and then at the cemetery.  

And spent the afternoon at home.  

Most of us played a rousing game of Ticket to Ride.  GREAT game!  Robb grilled in, since we were out of propane for the grill, and the kids played the game again while I hemmed Matthew's wedding slacks.  Then those two lovebirds had to head north again. They're signing a lease for an apartment today to move into in a few short weeks!  Yikes!  Time is flying!!!!

TEN MORE DAYS...

Driving away waving

Well, the girl left yesterday after lunch and is in the process of driving with a boy to Colorado for the summer.  We WILL see her in a few weeks, but it just seems so far away... :\

Why do internships need to be in another state with one in between??

BUT we had a great time while she was home.  Besides all the busy activities, we got to watch several movies together, cook together, shop together, thrift together.  You will note that I didn't say CLEAN together...  We got to hear the same PopSeCo song over and over.  The same Knock Knock jokes over and over.  Hear her arguing with her sister late in the night.   

It was like she'd never been gone.

She didn't sleep in her own bed though the entire time and preferred the couch.  She had seen a spider on the ceiling near her bed and refused to use it until we found it.  That spider is an excellent hide and seek player!  We still haven't found him.

And Leon is going to miss her as fiercely as we do.  We'll skype a lot.

Robb and I have made a couple hour away trips to see cars that ended up not being what we expected.  If you answer an ad on Craigslist and meet at a Kum & Go, but they don't arrive...  When you DO get a hold of them finally and they give you a sad excuse for why they couldn't come but here is another address if you want to meet me here...  DON'T fall for it!  It's most likely sketch.  

So Robb and I had a lot of alone time driving back and forth.  

We may have come to conclusion about the cars, but we'll know more when we hear back from our explosives guy.

On Memorial Day, we attended the cemetery service and got to hear Meri's band perform.  Maddy and I walked, for what seemed like miles (it was actually probably 8 blocks) to find Meri's band marching.  Then walked back parallel, making faces, dance walking to the beat and in general trying to make her crack a smile while she was supposed to be marching.  

It was easy!

 Here is Star Spangled Banner when they reached the cemetery.  Meri is between the two guys in the front row in front of me.  She said that sweat was dripping down her arms in that uniform and she lived for every tiny breeze that came along.

Afterwards, we headed back to the house where Robb grilled some pork chops with a peach glaze and I'd made a drunken peach cobbler.  Sonya and Sluggy would have appreciated it.  I didn't have the ingredients for our usual drunken peach cobbler, so I found a recipe that included house ingredients and dumped a few glugs of peach schnapps into the mixing bowl.  

It cooks out...

Really!!  These girls are just goofy at times.

But it does give it a very good flavor.  However I cooked it too long and it ended up with a burnt divinity type thing on top.  

Still good if you have enough ice cream to drown it.  

We didn't.

Does she look taller NOW?

Watched the rest of Leap Year with the girls, as we only had 20 minutes left to watch and then we waved as our kids all drove off in different directions.

I can see our future in that sentence.

Memorial Day Randoms

Our lilacs finally bloomed this weekend!!!  Leon loves them and smells them as often as he can.  The tiny blooms have almost all fallen now.  But while they were still fresh, he and I cut off a few twigs of blooms and stuck them in water that we saturated with blue food coloring.  Within a matter of hours, the tiny white blooms were blue.  So cool!  

Until later that day, when I caught Leon standing on the counter after having pulled out the box of food coloring.  He had a little bottle of yellow open and was about to see how they would look yellow.  

 

HEY NOW!!!!  The food coloring has now been hidden and I'll forget where they are by Easter so we'll have to buy new then.

And since I'm only a four days behind.  We celebrated Memorial Day by attending the local cemetery service that featured Meri's high school band!  

We had to go almost an hour early to stake out our place beneath some shady trees.

Leon got a hold of my camera and took a few shots of memories for himself.

And these are the very last photos taken with my camera... It is in Colorado now for the summer!  

 

Maddy and a friend she'll be working with over the summer, came back late Monday night.  We enjoyed watching them eat a late supper of pork/peach kabobs and drunken peach cobbler that we make every year.  Well, we enjoyed the cobbler at that time too...

She spent all day Tuesday packing up her things for the summer and loading up the car.  Then she and Nate headed out on Wednesday morning.  They have an internship of sorts waiting for them in Fort Collins and I wish I could go along!  But oh well.

I'll live vicariously through her camera...  I'll be purchasing a new one for myself VERY soon...

While the dandelions bloom...

On Friday night, I sewed while Meri crammed her memory work with Robb.  Got most of the dress done except for a couple things.

On Saturday morning, Leon and I went to go see his other Grandma.  She hadn't seen Leon since his birthday.  We had a really nice time and he loves their back yard! 

  

 That afternoon, I sewed more.  Got almost all done except for the handwork on the hook and eyes.  Helped get supper on the table, then back at it.

Sunday came.  The BIG day!  The day Meri and another confirmant say a ton of Bible verses and sections of the Apostles Creed along with their meanings as well as answer a lot of questions in FRONT of the congregation from memory.  She did a wonderful job of it!  My confirmation, when I was 14, had a lot more awkward pauses and kicks to my sister, who was being confirmed with me.

  

Meri looked beautiful and we had a lot of photos taken afterwards.  The ice cream cake still sits in the freezer at church because it was too soft to transport home.  Who wants a lot of drippy ice cream on their car upholstery??  Well, if I'd had a spoon with me, I'd be just fine.  Oh well.  We'll pick it up tomorrow.

 

Sunday afternoon, my SIL and her family came back to the house with us to load up a tv cabinet that my MIL had found for her.  We sat in the sun and visited a lot.  She's great!  After they left I realized I hadn't gotten the ASG sewing group newsletter done yet and it was due to the committee for proofing, like the day before...  oops!  I locked myself in my office and got a rough draft of it done, then sent it off to them.

 That evening, Maddy wanted us to watch The Music Man with her.  I'd never seen it, even though it's based on an Iowa city not far from here.  Her college is doing that musical this next year and since she's one of only a few Iowa kids in the entire school, she wants to be a part of it!  She should be a shoe-in!  Just say something Iowish.  Pronounce boat correctly or something!

There are so many songs that I already knew in the movie.  

I had no idea that's where they came from!

It's iconic!

Leon watched it with us and thoroughly enjoyed it!  We only got through about half of the movie before exhaustion hit us all.  Leon asked to see the Buick Man several times the next day and got his wish.

Monday, Memorial Day!  The day to remember all who have fought for our freedom to speak freely, worship as we please and blog.  We celebrated by getting the house & food ready for a lunch with friends, then went out to the local cemetary for the service.  Meri's Middle school band played.  

 

I fiddled with the zoom on my new camera and caught, what it looked like, her napping. 

She says no, she wasn't.  The sun was shining right in their faces.

Leon didn't want his toes in the grass...

  

Then my bestie and her hubs came over for a lunch that consisted of mainly leftovers from the confirmation lunch the day before.  It was STILL GOOD!  Robb jazzed a couple things up with bacon.

Bacon improves EVERYTHING, yes?

After they left and the food was put away, I napped with Leon and Maddy.  ahhh...  Then made the changes to the newsletter that the ladies sent me back.

I think we need a sequel to Memorial day.  Just to nap more.

How Much Is That Doggie Biting That Kid's Behind?

The puppies are finding new homes...  One of them went to a friend of Maddy's in the next town, so THAT's cool!  We'll get to see her on occasion!

Everyone wants girl puppies, it seems, so I'm so glad we've got 6 girls for them to choose from!  Four puppies went on Saturday and none since.  hmm..  I guess there is a draw back from doing only the online ad...  Everyone is hunting through the Sunday paper like it's gospel! 

 

Yesterday we got two calls, one from Minnesota, which may be the second Minnesotan dog we sell with this batch.  People are driving from 2-3 hours away!!  I pity their drives home with whiny dogs and whiny kids...  I say whiny kids, because each wants to hold the new whiny puppy...

Our Memorial Day service got rained out yesterday and it was held in the middle school gymnasium instead.  Which is nice because then we don't have to haul our lawn chairs AND the band doesn't have to sit in the wet grass.  We could still hear the 21 gun salute from where they were shooting off the guns at the playground.  The speaker was an 82 year old soldier who was in the Korean war.  MAN!  If he didn't sound just like my dad telling stories of training and war.  I got pretty emotional about it and my sleeve was pretty rough on my eyes...

Below are the pork & peach kabobs as they were being removed from the oven.  They WOULD have been grilled, but we were out of propane and it's WET out there!! 

I'll show you pictures of our flooding creek tomorrow AND tell you what I've been sewing on.  YES!  I got a whole hour to myself yesterday and took a blouse apart.  I'm doing a "New Dress A Day" self challenge.  I really should have gotten a before picture before I jumped in with the seam ripper... 

Poor Leon was sick all weekend and is still running a temp this morning.  Poor kid!  Sunday night I slept on the couch with him for a while.  My back is feeling it today...

 

Got to run!  Lots going on today at work and hopefully at least one more puppy to find a home today!

Memorial Day, honor, sewing & food 2012

Memorial Day is a big deal in our town.  Lots of patriotism around here!  Every year we bring our lawn chairs, sunscreen and sunglasses and attend the local Memorial Day service at our cemetery.  The whole thing starts with a parade up town, but we've never attended the parade.  Our main goal is typically to grab a choice spot for our lawn chairs at the cemetery.  The middle school marching band always plays for this service and my two oldest have had their spot in the blistering heat.  Next year Meri gets to enjoy it!

But this year was a little different.  Maddy has been selected to attend Girls State in a few weeks and since she is the selectee of our town, she was asked to read the poem In Flanders Fields for the Memorial Day service.  Cool!

Just before the service started, a helicopter came in for a landing to deliver the key note speaker.  Too bad the field behind had just been plowed.  LOTS of dirt got kicked up and it was such a breezy day anyway...  The speaker was a Brigadier General who had grown up in our town and reminisced about scouring the ground after the Memorial Day services for left behind empty shot gun shells!  My kids used to do that too!  Every once in a while one crops up around our house.  Usually in the utility drawer.

Maddy did a great job reciting the poem!  I'll stick it on Facebook later.  Check out her skirt!  That's the one that I made from this tutorial.  You can't see it REALLY well in this picture, but it blows in the wind nicely during the video of her recitation.

A BIG Thank you to all the U.S. veterans past and present!

After the program was over, everyone found the bricks with their Vet loved ones in the newly paved areas and then lots of folks went over to get a close up look of the helicopter.  While we were preparing lunch, we heard it take off and managed to catch a glimpse of it between some trees.

 

We had a few friends over for lunch which consisted of the usual Memorial Day feast at our house.

Pork & Peach grilled kabobs
Vegetables grilled
Calico beans
Corn on the cob

and topping it all off is the Famous Daves recipe of Drunken Peach Cobbler.  Oh how I wish we could have that all year long!  I guess we could, but then it wouldn't be as special I guess...

 

As for sewing, I got a LOT done!  80% on the dress and it's turning out so cute!  100% on another professional looking skirt.  60% on a tank top that Maddy decided wasn't professional looking enough so it will get finished AFTER the Girls State stuff gets done.  And then Maddy found a tutorial for a scarf top which I'm making out of just two big squares of fabric that I"ll have to hem because they didn't start out as scarves.  No big!

Anyway.  I'll show you those items "hopefully" tomorrow.

 The rest of the day we moved our bucketful of puppies to the yard and let Meri and guests play with them while I cleaned up their garage area.  Then I sewed. sewed. sewed...  Taking a short break to go up to the ice water town pool with Tiffany, Meri and Leon.  I don't think the pool heater did a very good job yet on warming up that water yet...  Let's give it a couple more weeks, huh?  brrrr....  Then back to more sewing and socks.

How did you spend Memorial Day?

In memory of their service.

Thank you to all the veterans that have served our great country! We attended cemetery services in honor of them, having to split up between cemeteries because of the high school band and because my FIL is buried at a different one.

It was a beautiful day and I got some sun. Mainly because we showed up almost 1.5 hours early at the cemetery and the sun kept moving....
We got home in time to meet up with some guests and enjoyed some pork, peach kebabs on the grill.
Then called a tow truck to clean up a mess from the evening before... sigh... this should be my new headline pic, huh? Yet another reason to remember the day!
Hope you had a nice Memorial Day!