Wednesday, May 30th

Today we are going to run some errands, if Jared will get on the ball and get his school work done. He has been saving money for an Ipod and now that he has enough it is burning a hole in his pocket. LOL! So, he really wants to go out today and buy it, but I told him that it all depends on him and how soon he can get done with school. I also would like to run to Hobby Lobby and look at stamps that are on sale, but that can wait if need be.

We need to be back no later than mid afternoon as Jeremy Lininger is coming over this afternoon for a while. He is working on training to become a paramedic and this weekend he has his practicals, which is a test to finish part of it up. But, before he can do that he needs to practice assessments on a few people and has asked to practice on us. I said that was fine as long as he wasn't going to poke us with a needle or anything. He assured me no one would get hurt. Wheww!

Tonight Jared has a baseball game and Mark has a meeting at church, but he may have to skip it so he can work on the pool. (Adam too!) It is nice having a in-ground pool of our own, but I will tell you it is a lot of work, especially when it needs to be painted. That is one hard job! I really do not like painting at all, but painting a pool and getting prepped is awful! I helped paint the walls last night and I had about all I could take. The roller was really heavy and paint is really sticky and doesn't go very far when being rolled. Plus to make things more difficult, our pool has a *small* ledge all the way around the deep end that we had to try to balance on and not slide down into the deep part while still painting the walls. I am sore this morning in places I didn't no existed. (in my shoulders and back mostly.) So, needless to say, I am glad that Jared has a game tonight so I won't have to help with the pool! The paint has to sit for nearly 2 weeks to be sure it is completely dry before we can fill the pool up again, so we really do need to get it done because at this point for me at least, by the time the water is warm enough for swimming it will be nearly July! Okay, there was my whine for the day!

I am liking this....

The more I play around with blogger the more I like it! I have found out a way to make a slide show of all of my scrapbook layouts, (you can see the slide show on the left), and figured out how to link to photo albums that I have in Winkflash, (you can see a link to the whole album of photos that I took on our vacation!). This really has so many more options than 360 did, and that is very nice!

Today is a stay at home day all day long and I can hardly believe that. It has been quite a long time since we have had a day like this. Seems like even if we have a day at home, there is always something in the evening. It is going to be a nice day today, nearly 90 degrees, but hopefully not too humid.

Adam and I have been doing some college exploration online and I made him take a SAT essay practice test this afternoon since he is taking the SAT on Saturday. He is not looking forward to it, but I keep stressing to him how important it is for him to do really well! At this point, I think he will be taking some dual credit courses next year at Bethel College, (or maybe IUSB, but it looks like Bethel is cheaper), and then for his first year of college he will probably go to one of the local colleges as well. Then for his sophomore year he will go off to some place that will be more in the area in which he wants to do his major. His latest interest is Marine Biology and we found that the University of North Carolina has a great Marine Biology/Science program and it is located in Wilmington, NC, which is where we stayed all night last year the night before we went to our rental home on Holden Beach. Wilmington is also the home of the Battleship USS North Carolina that we visited. Who knows if he will really end up going there, but we sent for info. The bad thing is that it is pretty far from home, but the good thing is, it will give us a good reason to have to go back to the beach!

Memorial Day, 2007

Yesterday as is our yearly family tradition, we went to Potato Creek. We left church right after the service, (couldn't miss that since I was on worship team!), came home to change and pick up Tucker and then were off to the park. The weather was not good when we left as it had been raining most of the morning and didn't stop until mid-afternoon. I got a funny photo of Joe, Mark and Dad cooking our hot dogs while holding umbrellas in the pouring down rain. I will be sure to post it here once I download it from my camera. Later in the afternoon, it finally stopped raining and we were able to move the chairs outside instead of sitting inside of our shelter. We walked to the nature center for a while and mostly we sat around talking and eating! Kassie brought her boyfriend, Brody, with her and they took a couple of walks with Jared. Adam just hung around with us mostly. Kim brought Keely, (sp??), her Lhasa, but she didn't really want to have much to do with Tucker. He really wanted to play like he plays with Chloe, but Keely was being a bit of a snob and just ignored him most of the time. She is obsessed with her ball and everytime someone would throw it, she would tear off after it and Tucker would tear off after her. She didn't think to much about that. We all got a kick out of watching it though.

Today, Monday, we spent most of the day working on the pool. UGH! We had to drain it to get ready to paint it, but before the painting it has to be scraped and sanded. Honestly, I haven't helped with too much of it up to this point as most of the time I busy with other things, but I did help with a lot of the sanding today. It is hot and dirty work and definitely not fun. I think we are pretty much done with that part now. It still needs to be power washed and then it will be ready for painting. Later in the afternoon, we went over to Labordes house for a cookout. They are in our FIF group this time around with the VanDaeles. They weren't able to make it though, but we went to Labordes anyway. Nancy's parents where there as well as Ken & Mary Lou Stewart. Rachel had been away with some friends, but she got back just about the time we were finished with dinner. The weather today was just perfect, and we sat outside all evening and had a nice time.

A couple of nights ago, the boys and I started watching the movie, "The Patriot", but since it was so long, we only watched half of it and we finally finished watching the end of it tonight. We borrowed 5 movies from the library this week and I don't think we are going to get through all of them! I watched Mona Lisa smiles Friday night and it wasn't quite what I expected, but it was pretty good, I guess.

Switching to Blogger for now....

Well, I have been messing around with Blogger quite a bit today and think I am going to try to start using this instead of Yahoo 360. There are just things about 360 that are annoying to me and even though Blogger still isn't exactly what I would like to find in a blog, I think I like it better. I do like the photo albums in 360, but I don't always find them easy to work with, so we will try this for a while and see how it goes. For some reason both Yahoo Photos that is associated with 360 and Picasa Web Albums that is associated with Blogger, are very slow to load....very slow, and that is something that bothers me, but I think maybe the other advantages of Blogger will make it worth waiting for Picasa Albums to load since I won't be using photos every time I post to my blog.

Just testing this out to see if I want to move my blog here!
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Chicago Layouts

Pevious Blogs....

I was going to start switching over my old blogs from 360 to here at Blogger, but I think that it is going to take too much time to do all of that. So, to make it easier, all of the old blog posts can still be found at: Yahoo 360

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Today was an awesome church service for us. Jared got baptized today!

The morning started out not so great because I was on worship team again this week which means being to church early. Right before we had to leave, Jared tells me that he needs another copy of his testimony. That wouldn't normally be a problem, but you know how it goes....everything went wrong. First, it is on the other computer which isn't hooked up to a printer, so I have to burn it to a CD and bring it over to this computer. For some reason I couldn't get it to go into the CD....finally after about 4 tries, I got it to work. Then I bring it over to this computer and the ink it almost gone so even when I printed it only part of it could be read. Switched the printer setting to "better" and then thankfully it came out okay. By the time we left home, I all ready should have been at church for practice! Thankfully, we are less than 10 minutes from church, so we got there and I flew in and apologized. They were waiting for me even though thought they would have started with out me. Julie told me that really we weren't supposed to start until 8:45 so I was really only about 2 minutes late!

Anyway...the rest of the morning went much better from there. This month is Pastor's appreciation month and we had a wonderful presentation of appreciation and love to our pastor and his family, including a touching power point. After that worship team, a short sermon about baptism, and then the baptism service itself. Jared was one of 5 that got baptised today. Luke, Jillian, Angelica, Katie were the others who were baptised today. It was very nice!

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Babysitting for Aric again today and we have homeschool gym class. Today at gym is kinda bittersweet...this will be our last day for a while. The sign up for the next session is today and we have decided not to sign up again. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but for 7 years I was the Kind. gym teacher and so was there for every gym session. This year I decided to step down from teaching and since this is the session that runs up to Christmas time we have decided since we don't have to be there we are skipping this time. I know it is the right thing to do, but on the other hand, it is something we have done for so long that it feels kinda strange to me. I have had a lot of transitions in my life this year, and so this is just one more. It has all been for good, but just so much is changing at once. I stepped down from another design team that I had been a part of for nearly 2 years, after being an Awana leader for 16 years we moved up to Jr. High Word of Life, and after teaching gym for all of those year, stepping down from that too. Oh yeah...and after babysitting for Aric for 1-1/2 years that ended when he went to Kind. (that is why it is nice to have him back for a few days! ) All of those things took place within about a month of each other, so it has just been a bit different, but on the other hand freeing for me.

I think we are having leftover chili for dinner tonight and then after dinner Mark has a deacon's meeting and I have worship team practice again. (this will be the 4th night this week I have been at church!)

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Last night we had WOL Track-N-Treat and tonight as usual was regular WOL club night. I had the ice breaker tonight and had the kids break into teams and one had to throw marshmallows into the other ones mouth. The team that got the most caught, chewed and swallowed on 5 minutes won! Our winners where Jared and Morgan Jordan....Jared was the marshmallow eater and he ate 16 marshmallows!

Tucker got a haircut today and I told them to make it shorter than last time, and boy is it! I hardly recognize him since it is so short now, but he still is cute and I know it will grow back.

We babysat for Aric today...he was so excited to come and stay with us. After babysitting for him for at least 1-1/2 years, this August he went to Kind., so we haven't had him for a while. This week is parent/teacher conferences, so no Kind. for the rest of week, so he will be with us. I did this layout of Aric a while back and it is so typically Aric. This photo was taken at Awana last spring for Think Summer night.

Dinner tonight: Chili
Dinner Tuesday: Crockpot Potato Sausage Casserole

Monday, October 30, 2006

Woke up in the middle of the night with a headache and it didn't go away until late morning. Got up and then ended up going back to bed for a while in hopes that my headache went away. Thankfully, when I woke up for the 2nd time, I was feeling much better.

I did something really cool with my Crop-A-Dile today!! I was looking through a scrapbook catalog and saw these really neat ribbon boxes. They came with dowel rods to put spools of ribbon on and then there were holes on the sides to stick the ribbon through. I started thinking....I store my ribbon in those cardboard photo storage boxes, some pretty ones that I picked up for real cheap at Micheals quite a while ago. I think I paid maybe 1.00 or 1.25 for them. The boxes in the catalog were 4.95 each. Well, I knew Mark had dowel rods down in the basement so I sent Adam down to cut some for me to fit the inside dimensions of my boxes. I the took my Crop-A-Dile and punched holes all along the edge of my box, lining them up with each roll of ribbon. It was SO easy!! I used the farthest depth that the Crop-A-Dile punches and so the ribbon comes out just under the edge of the lid, which hold the ribbon in place. I am pretty proud of myself for figuring that out and now I have two awesome ribbon storage boxes and that were much cheaper than I could have bought them for!

Went to my Beth Moore Daniel Bible study today and it was another great session, but my, did it make me think. This past week of homework and the next are going to be quite challenging. Speaking of which...I haven't done my daily WOL quiet time yet today, so I guess I had better wrap it up here and get to it!

Dinner Tonight: Tuna Noodle Casserole

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Busy day today. We had to be at church early because Jared had to practice singing with the other teens and I had worship team. We had our yearly missions dinner right after church and just about the time we turned onto St. Clair, I realized that my dessert was still at home. ARG! So, after worship team practice, I went back home to get it. I missed Jared's first song, but got back in time to hear half of the 2nd one. Adam stayed home sick today so he missed the mission dinner. He felt kinda sick to his stomach and was running a low grade fever. There was a short program after the dinner and by the time we got home, he was feeling better.

We had a Word of Life meeting this afternoon and the Hembrees and Sherry came over to our house, so Adam, Travis and Jared hung out for a while.

Since the time changed yesterday it was dark today around 6PM, UGH! It was a beautiful sunny day so it really should have stayed light longer, but I guess even if we hadn't of changed time it still would have been dark at 6PM because that would have been the time we would have been on all along. It is just going to take a bit of time getting used to it getting dark earlier now. I liked it better when it was staying light later!

Dinner Tonight: Popcorn

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Saturday, October 28, 2006
I am so frustrated today. Trying to get my 360 page set up is taking me forever and well, it just hasn't been a good day. What I really want to do is just go and take a nap, but at this time by the time I get to sleep it will be time to wake up and make dinner. ARG! Oh well, what I really need to be doing is my Beth Moore Daniel Bible study. It is getting more tough as time goes on, but I know it will be worth it.

Adam's waterbed fell apart again, and so we went and looked at new beds today. Didn't buy anything, because the more we thought about and talked to the guy at the waterbed store, I think it can be fixed. Sounds like Mark will need to buy larger brackets and longer screws to hold it together. So, until that happens, Adam doesn't have a bed, which doesn't make him very happy. I guess we have to get it drained first and then we will see what happens from there.

It is SO windy today, we are even under a wind advisory. At least the sun is out and the temp is 46 right now, so that isn't bad for nearly the end of October. Our time will change tonight so we will get an extra hour of sleep, but since we have to be to church about 30 minutes early, it won't make that much difference. {sigh}

Dinner Today: Salad