So how’s everyone today? I hope you’ve all had a good week. Mine was pretty average. We’ve had gorgeous weather. My brother is coming out today and we are golfing. I don’t golf, just drive the cart but the day is supposed to be really nice and I enjoy that. Then tomorrow we are all going to get Jared Allen‘s autograph. He’s a Minnesota Viking for those of you who may not know. He’s going to be in Buffalo. We’re all looking forward to it. Then I’m sure the guys will try to get in another round of golf and by that time I may need a few hours alone.
How’s about all of you? Things going okay? What’s on your weekend *to-do* list?
Us Girls..Our Views 
Lets see, this weekend I’m getting my hair done.. I’m excited!! Time to change it up a little bit 😀 That will be on Saturday. On Sunday Jason’s going up north hunting for the day so Hunter & I will probably be going bowling with my sister, her husband, my mom & Sean. We took Hunter bowling last Sunday and he LOVED it! He had so much fun. So I can see that we will be doing a lot of bowling in the future. I don’t work tomorrow so I’m sure I will be doing more house cleaning. Ugh, does it ever end? I think our warm weather is coming to an end so better spend some time outdoors while we can!!
How are you doing your hair??? I’m getting mine done Tuesday!
Sue it’s gonna be a darker blonde, with brown highlights underneath. So I’m really excited, gonna look really different.
That sounds awesome Jenny. I’ll bet that will really look nice. My next “hiding of the gray” I go a darker shade too. I always go a little darker in the winter. I can’t wait to see it.
Well, I’ve had a pretty good week I guess. Today I accomplished a lot and got everything done I wanted to! I got home this morning from work and made some phone calls and then headed to cloudy to run some errands. I had to go to Shopko, Cashwise, Mills Fleet Farm, and Crafts Direct. Guess how long it took me?? 1 HOUR! Yes, all those places in 1 hour! And I got everything I needed 🙂 I got home to find that Toby had come home to help me stain the deck 🙂 Wasn’t that nice?! I’m thinking he thought I’d do it wrong so that’s why he helped. We got it done though and it looks AWESOME! Looks like we put a new deck on. Can’t wait til it dries now! After the deck, I took a 5 min shower, and got ready quick to go to the high school volleyball game that was in Howard Lake. My cousin’s daughter plays for Kimball (Where my kids go to school) and Toby’s cousin plays for Howard Lake so it was fun getting to see them both. It was great to see Kevin and Karen, too. Otherwise, it was a pretty uneventful day! Tomorrow I have to be to work by 6am so I really should get my butt to bed. Night!
I was getting ready for the cleaning lady and he came here for the painting stuff and scared the crap out of me. He laughed!!!
This week has been mostly wet and cold and busy. Been dealing with some behavior again with the girls. I am kinda tired of this never-ending cycle, but I’m sure it could be worse.
Today I bought a new bathing suit (have yet to try it on, I hope it fits – you can’t return those, right?) The old one which I bought about 20 years ago still fits, but I don’t really like the style. I bought some shorts too which I may decide to wear over the suit – not sure.
So everyone bought the girls clothes for the birthday, and now their closet is even more stuffed than before. I pulled everything out and organized it and pulled out the outgrown stuff to give to my niece. It’s still packed, but at least it’s organized. Hopefully Miss A will hurry up and outgrow some of the stuff from last fall! I can’t bear to get rid of stuff that still fits the kid. On the other hand, I hope she can still wear the Christmas stuff again this year . . . .
So for some reason, my kids’ school does all kinds of stuff in October that is a pain in the butt. Two “field trips” plus Trick-or-Treating / costume party. Last year I went for two of the events, but this year I won’t be participating in person. I will have to leave their car seats at school (getting them in and out of the car is a huge pain). I will also have to sign up to provide treats, pack sack lunches, plan costumes, decide what to do about their “spirit days” (where they are supposed to dress in themed clothes which they do not own), pay fees, etc. I don’t know why the school chooses to engage in all this self-torture in October. I hope it’s worth it.
This weekend I don’t have anything special planned. I expect to try to do the usual stuff – work on Saturday until 4, take the girls out shopping, go to church/Sunday School, then work some more. I may decide to take the girls to an Indian dance on Sunday afternoon.
Oh well, that’s about it for me. I hope everyone gets some good weather for the coming weeks.
SKL, I can TOTALLY relate to your children’s school doing to much during October. I am signed up for my third field trip (each comes with a little project). They have a Fall Bazar (we need volunteers to man booths, help set up, help clean up, can you bake cakes for the cake walk?). And since I put 8X8 remnants of carpet (with cushion under them) in our 2 childrens classroom I got a list from the Principal last week…. they only have 17 more they want me to “volunteer” to do. Oh and our third grader needs to bring snacks one day for every single child in his class! Also our third grader had a little skit to perform before the PTA meeting last week.
I have learned that just because the school is doing it, doesn’t mean that we have to be involved in it. But there is a very fine line between being over involved and slack. At this point I am a master tight-rope walker… I think. lol
Imagine my angst last year when October was the girls’ first full month of “school.” I thought it was going to be like that all year long! But no, only October, it seems.
It may sound like a whine, but last year, my biggest issue was that they needed car seats for my kids. The ones I have are a royal pain to get in and out – especially since I have two, scrunched next to each other to also allow an adult butt in the back seat. So I drove for the first field trip, which was not bad, except that they didn’t let us back into the school later! That was a communication issue (between the teacher / admin), but I have no desire to re-live it. For the other field trip, I just didn’t let my kids go, because there was no way I was getting those seats out of the car in time with the schedule I had that day. Since then, I’ve had to get the seats in & out a few times and I’m getting better at it. Plus, I really don’t want my kids to miss the fun stuff now that they are old enough to really care. So I will suffer through it. This is how it’s going to be until my smallest kid is 40 lbs, and since she’s 30 lbs now (and doesn’t eat), that may be a while.
For the treats, I like to order cheap little toys from Oriental Trading Co., but I think it is too late for Halloween, so I will see what I come up with. I really don’t like the idea of them getting all that trick-or-treat candy PLUS a sweet treat from each kid in the class. Imagine all that sugar in a sensory-challenged 30-lb kid. It’s actually cruel – to her and me!
I’m not sure why but this is a busy time of the year at school. You’l have fun I’m sure.
You can return a swimming suit but I hope it fits. I HATE getting a new one.
I had a pretty miserable week. I’ve been sick since early last Saturday morning… and only yesterday started feeling better. Still not 100% but trying to dig myself out of the hole I’ve created for myself workwise. So… as you can imagine I will be spending lots of time doing that this weekend!!
I hope you all have a great time 🙂
Sorry Lucy. I’m glad you’re feeling better. Try not to work too hard over the weekend.
My week has been pretty busy. Work has been good. I have managed to meet the kids at school each afternoon at 3 and we ride bikes home or walk. They get to have popsicles or fruit for a snack and chill out until 4 then it’s homework time. My Mrs. is also night school principal at the highschool where she teaches. I guess that makes sense. How could she be night school principal at a school where she does not teach. (duh) That is three nights a week, which means I am solo on the dinner and nightly routines those three nights. Mostly we have a good time but none of are completely grown up yet so there are some clashes every now and then.
The biggest (family) issue this week is that I made a new house rule for the kids. Absolutely no TV on a school night. This week was the first week that they (each) brought home papers with a failing grade. Even when I did allow TV on a school night it was either Animal Planet or QUBO channel and the TV was off by 7pm to begin baths, reading, teeth brushing, prayers and bed.
This weekend looks busy. If you are one of my Facebook friends you may have seen the big load of firewood that needs splitting. So I am going to borrow one of my friend’s log splitter. Splitting and stacking about a ton of oak firewood is hard work but we mostly enjoy it. Our kids will likely have their first outdoor fire this weekend.
Also the guy I am borrowing the log splitter from lives in the country and they have some acerage with a few deer stands. He said I could bring our son out and sit in one of their stands. The boy will be too excited about that. I’ll go ahead and bring some cob corn out to my friend so they can put it out for the deer. Heere in SC we can purchase up to 4 antlerless (doe) tags so I got 4. I hope we see something worth eating ’cause I haven’t harvested a deer in… gosh.. 2 maybe 3 years, I think.
Sunday morning we get to see our church family. We usually go to lunch after that (usually either Mexican or the cafeteria). I need to check out the movies to see what came out today. We usually catch all the “G” rated movies and some of the “PG” movies too.
Hope everyone else has a fun filled and productive weeikend.
Joy, I just love it when we have family come to visit! Enjoy your family time!!!!!!!!!
Way to go on the no tv thing. I never had to do this. TV was so much different when my boys were young. They didn’t have all these choices and “cartoons” or shows they wanted to watch weren’t on all the time. I think it must be a lot harder to monitor that now.
We don’t do TV (except when Aunt S is here), but I have been allowing the girls a little DVD time in the morning. I started letting Miss E watch while Miss A worked on her therapy, and then Miss A would watch a little too. Then I’d call the girls to get dressed, etc. But Miss E is a true vidiot and we ended up with behavior issues over the stupid thing. So yesterday I told her she wouldn’t be seeing a video this morning, and she was heartbroken. I thought we’d have a scene this morning, but we didn’t. Darn screen. It’s not evil in itself, but it’s so easy to let it take over and mess things up.
I love oak wood fires. My parents used to have a woodburning stove when I was a teen, and it was my job to keep the fire going. I really enjoyed every part of it, except for the strict schedule. I would procrastinate and have to re-build the fire between school and my paper route. But it was fun.
Thats frustrating I just wrote a whole bunch and hit a button bam all gone. I better go get more coffee and try again. Maybe I’ll go check out your other posts and be back. Ugg.
I’m sorry you lost your comment. I did go and look to make sure it didn’t fall in the spam folder but it wasn’t there. Sorry Starla. I hate when that happens.
OK I’m back did you miss me? This week-end we plan to go and take pictures of the Tamarack trees. I’m looking forward to that. The smoke has been bad lately from the prescribed burns I think I’m a little allergic to the wood smoke, I’m very congested. I’ll be glad when things settle down and the air is clear. Navars been very busy doing the school teacher thing. Lots of hours it’s an interesting shift in our lives a bit stressful. But for the most part I think it’s going OK. I just looked outside looks pretty cloudy and gray looks like rain. Hope you all have a good week-end.
I can’t wait to see the pics of the trees. You take such great photo’s. We were just talking above about how this time of year is busy at school and now even you say the teacher is busy now too. Good luck with that. It’ll die down.
The smoke here so far isn’t so bad. I can smell it every now and then but it hasn’t been too bad yet. I can’t breathe it either. I so miss sitting around a fire.
Personally, I couldn’t be more happy this week is OVER! My days during the week are fairly quiet, if you don’t count Miss Lillian gabbing away. No one comes here, it’s just her and I all day. I like it that way. This week, I had my sump pump go out Sunday and the contractor couldn’t get here until Tuesday. When it went out, I had bedding in the washer, and 3 loads of clothes on my floor. Guess what got soaked?! So yeah, I had wet dirty clothes for 2 days. Not a happy momma! So Tuesday he came and replaced that, and at the same time the cable guy was here…for almost 5 hours!!!! I missed my evening TV! Wednesday, cable guy had to come back to hook my phone up, Thursday he had to come back to put another box in my bedroom. I HATE STRANGERS IN MY HOUSE!!!!!!! ugh…so glad it’s Friday! 🙂
This evening we are going to some new friends of ours house for dinner and cards. I’m a tad nervous, and I know I shouldn’t be because they are super nice people. It’s just that they are clearly not on our level, financially, we have never had friends of this stature. She is the HR director for our hospital, and he is an architect. Nicest people ever, but far from what we are used to.
Saturday, we are going to meet Paul and Joy, and Uncle Darryl, and who ever else is coming, down at one of our local car dealerships to meet Jared Allen, as Joy has already said. Bailey is thrilled! Saturday night, I declared a movie night with my love, cuddling on the coach! 🙂 Not too sure about Sunday. It’ll be the first Sunday in 6 weeks that we’ll be able to be home. I’m sure we’ll watch some football! GO VIKINGS! I have my fingers, eyes and toes crossed that they beat the Cowboys!
How’d the party go last night?! See ya this afternoon.
Well, I *had* planned a nice quiet weekend, but, alas, this one is going the way of all the others! Tonight is the last football game of the season, and also Cub Scout Night. The entire pack is gathering at 5 and walking over to the game en masse to attend. Then after, most of the kids and adults are going back to a local church for a pizza party and lock-in sleepover. Josh will not be attending that… he’s been fighting a cold, and I’m thinking that starting pizza and a movie at 10:30 at night is probably not the best idea for him. Especially with 30 other kids running around and screaming. So we’ll sleep in our own beds tonight and be back at the football field bright and early tomorrow morning to do our Service Duty, and clean up the mess. And then at 2, he has to be at a friend’s house for her birthday party.
Sunday is a Bears Game, of course, so that takes up several hours and my voice. Steve is making a marinade as I write this, for beef ribs. He’ll soak them for the rest of the day today, and all day tomorrow, then spend most of Sunday, smoking them. It’s a lot of work, but I love when he makes those… they’re fall-off-the-bone tender, and mouthwatering good.
This week was a busy one. Josh did well at his Tae Kwon Do tourney last saturday, so this week he was all gung-ho over his lessons (M,W), Tuesday was Football, with a make-up game on Thursday night. That was the end of that, thank goodness. We love football, but Oct. has been wicked busy. Tuesday night was also Cub Scout Pack night, where we wrapped the scouts in toilet paper halloween costumes. Talk about hilarious! This week also saw Steve and I buying and being fitted in our Scout Uniforms (oh, don’t get me started on that… they have “ladies” uniforms that Just. Don’t. Fit. if you have hips of ANY kind. And the sleeves are made for orangutans. Just sayin’)
We had the house roofed last week, and we found out that our chimney was a piece of crap. Honestly, every guy who went up there and looked at it told us that they were completely amazed that it hadn’t blown off in the storms that Iowa is known for. It had been attached only at the base, and then, only to about a 3″ high piece of aluminum. This is a 5-foot-tall chimney we’re discussing!! The plywood frame was completely rotted out. The whole thing had to be rebuilt, and nearly everyone we talked to was totally booked. We finally found a guy in the next town who was able to do it, and he’s finishing it up this morning. Yesterday, Steve and I spent all day staining the siding that he’ll put up there. Figured we’d help out a little, not just because it’s fun, but because we’re hoping it’ll save us a few bucks.
Here’s hoping next week is a little less crazy, although I’m already stressing over our Den Meeting on Tuesday.