I'm still alive.  Life has been the proverbial roller coaster for the past week and I've just not felt like blogging- or really doing much of anything.  I've been trying to wrap up loose ends, sort out details, and try to resume normality after weeks of party planning.  School gets out in 3 weeks and I have so much to do in so little time.  I'm in the same boat as last year at this time and really, it stinks.

I should be packing and getting ready to go to Savannah later this week.  Unfortunately, someone in our household doesn't feel that it's necessary or "of any benefit to the children" to go.  So we will be missing my cousin's wedding this weekend and I'm really upset about it.  I've prayed for either a way to get there or for peace about not going for months, and I'm still at an impasse and not liking it.  So tonight, while at Granny's, instead of being busy planning our big trip, I was instructed on how to spray the garden, when to mow the lawn, and to look after the house.  I feel SO much guilt about this- we are the ONLY people in my family not going.  My uncle that had TWO strokes in as many weeks just 2 months ago is traveling from Oklahoma to attend.  Yet we stay here.  I can tell you that it has caused a lot of stress and resentment over the past few weeks.  A LOT.  I feel strongly that God wants us there and I'm not following His will, and I can tell you that if it was totally up to me, we'd be there in a heartbeat.

In general, though, I'd appreciate prayers.  I'm in a rough spot and not enjoying it.  I'll leave you with a little fun we had with a new favorite App- CamWow.  I think Preston needed to be wearing his zombie shirt for this pic!

Let's be random

It's another busy week around here, though definitely not as busy as last week!

I decided to leave up to party decorations from last weekend to use again this Saturday. It's worked well, although some of the balloons are a tad flat now. This will make it easy to get ready Sat. afternoon.

We were supposed to go to a bridal shower for Christopher's cousin's fiancee Saturday morning, but we got a call Tuesday that the wedding is OFF. Can't say that we didn't see it coming, but it's still a shock. The jury's still out whether we'll still be traveling to Gatlinburg in June since there's no wedding.

Again, at the same time as last year, I find myself realizing that there's only 6 more weeks of school left and I desperately need to get the scrapbooks caught up. Once school's out, my time is shot!

I ordered some gorgeous new fabric to make an apron dress for my shop since Kelly at Kelly's Korner is featuring "what you sell" next Friday. Unfortunately, I miscut the yardage and had to order more, so the dress is on standstill until it arrives. Measure twice, cut once...

Yesterday as I dropped the kids off at school and was driving home by the ball diamond, I see a high school boy standing outside his car in his underwear trying to put on his baseball pants! Someone must not have had time to get dressed before leaving the house for an early game!

I've been in a purging mood lately. I'm having a garage sale next month and I need to go through everything. I still need to finish going through the attic... It's a mess. Today I went through and weeded out recipes I knew I'd never try and wrote my "keepers" on index cards so I know they are favorites. I need to get them into a book that's easily accessible. Yet one more thing to add to my list.

We're having Mexican at Kate's party this weekend and I've been craving the dips more than the tacos themselves! Mom's making a salsa cheeseball and believe me, it's GOOD!

I threw all calories out the door today and made cinnamon roll pancakes. They are so good! After nothing but oatmeal and scrambled eggs for 2 months, this was a treat!

Tomorrow is my day to do computer lab at preston's school and I'll be taking him out to lunch. He's requested Sonic. Maybe he'll change his mind. I've been trying to get him to the new BBQ joint!

POW- Temp-Tations presentable bakeware

I'm baaaaaack! I've taken a little hiatus from the Product of the Week link-ups with all of the party planning, and I've been itching to share this one with you for weeks! It's Temp-Tations Presentable Bakeware!


My grandma got all of us girls the 9x13 Lid-it baker set for Christmas this year and we were all so excited! We'd been eyeing hers every time she brought it to birthday parties! Mine is the brown polka-dot, but they have all other colors. For $33, you get the glazed ceramic baking dish with plastic lid, a serving tray, wire rack and a matching spatula! I love mine! I especially love the lid, so when I make brownies in it, I can snap the lid on and don't have to worry about foil- because it's much harder to sneak brownies when you hear it crinkle!

The best part, too, is that they have other matching sets that you can also order with different sized pans and even insulated carriers. Now I can take a nice, pretty pan with me when I need to bring a hot dish and don't have to use my ugly old pans!

Thanks for stopping by!

Back in the swing of things

Today was the first day back to school after 10 days of spring break. Phew! No one really wanted to get ready, and who could blame them after "sleeping in" for that long- no one slept later than 7:00 the whole week... As soon as I dropped them off, I headed for Edwardsville to use my super cash at Old Navy. Some times I find a ton of stuff there and others I find nothing. Today I had to scrounge for something to use my cash on and ended up spending most of it buying new jeans for Preston. Every since it got nice out, he's went through all but one pair by being rough at school.

I had to have Kate at the dentist at 2:00 this afternoon to have her bracket replaced. She was not happy to be there, even for something that simple. We're gonna have to work on her attitude toward the dentist. I was hoping he'd give me some idea of when he wants to do the bottoms, but considering she was still pretty sensitive from the extractions 3 weeks ago, he wasn't ready to talk about that yet. She goes back for a regular cleaning and braces check in 4 weeks, so maybe we'll discuss that then.

And of course, our afternoon was hectic again with homework. I really dislike homework. Preston came home with 3 sheets of math, a book report and a friendship questionnaire. I guess his teacher is making up for lost time. But Kate and I made a fun discovery at the recycling place this afternoon! I looked in the bin as I was tossing our plastic and someone had thrown away a Mega Blocks house and TON of bricks! We grabbed them and brought them home and scrubbed them up. They are the same size as Preston's Legos, so now he has even more- as if 10,000+ pieces weren't already enough... Kate's been playing with the house more than anything, moving her Harry Potter Lego people into it. Ha!

Houston, we have a teenager

As of 12:28 this morning, Kate is officially a teenager! Scary! It really is hard to wrap my head around the fact that I have a child that old. Makes me feel even older! Today was her first of two family parties and although I really had my doubts this morning, it turned out to be really great! Yesterday may have been Friday the 13th, but there's an old movie called "Saturday the 14th" and it says the 14th is more bad luck than the 13th, and that certainly was the case today! Kinda made me wish we'd done the "lucky 13" theme!

It all started around 2:00 this morning when I awoke from a dream that glass was broken in my kitchen. It should have been a sign. Minutes later, Preston is up because it's storming. It was 4:00 before the storm finally completely passed and he was back to sleep for good. Sigh... I got up around 7:00 and looked at my cake in the fridge. I'd made a whipped egg white frosting and it weeped big time overnight and the cake was sopping wet! So that cake had to go to the trash. Luckily I had another mix. I went to get the cupcakes in my mason jars out of the oven (I keep them there so the cat won't get them) and I hit the tray on the bar and dropped 4 of them, breaking glass everywhere. See? It was a sign! I cleaned up the glass and got the cake into the oven and Kate comes in to say that one of her brackets for her braces had come off, and sure enough, it had. The dentist office was of course, closed today, so there really wasn't anything we could do. Christopher didn't think it qualified as an emergency, so he wouldn't call her dentist's home number. But all that aside, I was able to slap some canned icing on the new cake and decorate all before noon when everyone showed up, so it really was a miracle! Our theme was "vintage photobooth" and I tried to make everything vintage inspired.
This was our "make your own treat bag" display. I made paper cones with popcorn seeds, chalk, paper cones with cotton candy (shown before I put it in, but it melted before the party ended, so it still looked the same after), homemade fruit roll-ups and peeps (because they matched our party colors). I was going to have a big candy bar, but decided this would be best.
And here's the buffet. Kate got the flowers from her Aunt Jessie, Uncle Reid and Abbie and Issie. We made the yarn balls and pinwheels this week while the kids were home for spring break. Party planning kept them busy! Unfortunately, the pinwheels and one yarn ball kept falling off the ceiling, so they were down for good before the party even started!
I usually do helium balloons but decided to go a different route this year- hanging balloons! They kind of cascaded around the tables- the picture really doesn't capture how neat they looked!
The makeshift cake and what was left of the jarred cupcakes.
Kate got lots of presents, and her favorites involved Harry Potter. The girl is so obsessed, and she'll admit it! Tonight as I was tucking her in, she said she wants a British them next year! A cool idea, but I think I need to let today's party and next week's pass a while before I start planning another!
Blowing out the candles!

And then there was the photobooth! This was one of the best party themes we've ever had! It was so much fun! At times we were all roaring with laughter, but the real fun came after the party when we sat down to view them on the computer!

The birthday girl taking her turn.
Grandpa Ed
Grandma Lou
Pa-pa
And Preston! I can't wait to print them off in strips and get them off with her thank-you notes!

Bad luck aside, we had a great time! I think God was just trying to tell me that it didn't have to be perfect for everyone to have a good time. I'll keep that in mind come September for Preston's birthday.

Kate told me tonight that it was a good day, and really, that was all that mattered! Happy birthday, Kate!!!!

I'm still alive

I'm behind in a major way! My brain is seriously not with me this week, either!

This week is spring break, so the kids have been home with me, keeping me busy on the one week of spring that keeps me so flipping busy that I can't already see straight- Kate's birthday week! Yep, she turns *13* Saturday and we've got 22 people coming over for the big party. The party that I had big plans to have ready weeks in advance. Today I just bought the tissue paper to make fringe and am making paper cones tonight for the cotton candy. Not to mention the cupcakes and cake that have to me made tomorrow and the food on Sat. I need to do things far in advance. I don't know why I do things like this to myself!

And to boot, our dishwasher quit yesterday. Sigh. Thankfully, Christopher could easily tell which part was the problem from the tons of blue corrosion from our hard water. He found the part online for $25 and it arrived this afternoon and is now working again! Phew! I didn't like the idea of a party with no dishwasher- he even sent me to Sears before he found the part and told me to buy a new one! The ones in the store were more expensive than the same ones online, so I'm glad I didn't buy one! BTW, if you have hard water, get a softener! So far, we've had to replace our water heater, all the valves on our boiler, the air tank on the boiler, the valve stems on our shower faucets and now the inlet valve on our dishwasher in just the past 4 years due to calcification. It's worth every penny for the softener!

And now I've got Preston's cold and feel like someone strapped a brick to my face. I can't take anything because decongestants make my heart all out of whack and I get short of breath, so I must forge through until I'm better. Maybe I'll be feeling better by Saturday.

Now I'm off to make paper fringe so that I'm not (hopefully) trying to make it tomorrow with all of my grocery buying and cake baking. Then again, I might just have to go to bed...

Easter pictures will come after this weekend!

Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

via

Pa and I have been busy this week. Busy spending hours treking up and down hills in search of morel mushrooms. Or any kind of wild mushroom to be honest! It's one of my favorite spring pass times. Kind of like an adult egg hunt, but much harder.

We went out Tuesday to the 40 acres P has up in Ramsey and found a good pound worth. Most of them were little bitty "pecker heads," but a few small morels were found, too. We went out again Thursday much farther back in the woods and hit the jackpot with the morels! Ones the size of my hand! All in all, we had a good 2 pounds of mushrooms.

Granny had us up for dinner tonight and she fried them. So good! I like mine extra crispy and salty. YUM!

Pa and I are taking Preston down to his land in Shob Monday while Kate is at a girl scout event all day to do some hunting. He's been disappointed all week that I've gotten to go and he hasn't! He's been talking about it for days, so I know he's excited!

Boys will be boys!

And I apologize that there are no lovely pictures to go along with this post. Trust me, you might be thanking me later!

Preston is all boy. He goes non-stop from the minute he's up until the very minute he decides to keep his little rear in bed and go to sleep (which has been an issue lately). Not to mention the fact that the kid has NEVER been a sleeper. It just adds to the bedtime frustration.

Sooooooo. Yesterday afternoon we headed up to Granny and Pa's land up in Ramsey to do a little fishing. Patience is not my children's virtue, so fishing didn't last long, and no fish were caught. My nephew, Glen, though caught enough for them to clean and fry up for dinner! Not bad for a 4 year old! Since fishing didn't capture Preston's attention long enough, we decided to venture into the woods to go mushroom hunting. Mind you, neither of us were dressed for the activity. We wore shorts and slip on shoes, and it didn't fare well, but we trucked on, and it was Preston that insisted we trek down into the creek bed to hunt. It was a bust. Darn!

We headed up to mom's afterward for dinner, and net door to help Pa plant the garden after we ate. Preston was our helper and we got lots int he ground. After that, he rode laps around their yard on his bicycle until he was soaking wet. And when Pa said he'd time him, he only wanted to ride more, so he rode even more laps, trying to beat his time eat time!

Then as we were ready to leave, he insisted that he swing just one time before we left. Bad move... Mr. P. fell off and did a face plant on the ground- HARD! I knew instantly that teeth had been lost (can you tell what's been on my mind this week?). We got him up and thankfully, NO teeth had been injured! Phew! No broken nose, either. Phew! But the kid royally skinned his face up and his eye was pretty swollen. We got him in and cleaned up and went home before anything else could happen. Poor kid was a mess. He even woke up at midnight to ask how his face looked. Most of the swelling was gone by this morning and it wasn't as red. You could see the scratches more today and he was still pretty boogered up. He had to go to school and tell everyone what had happened. And what did he do at school today? He cut his finger with some scissors...

I'm praying for a good day tomorrow! The second graders have an all day field trip/egg hunt at the lake, so he'll be outside all day. I have no idea how I'm going to get sunscreen on his face. The rain's supposed to hold off until tomorrow night, so hopefully it actually does so they can enjoy their fun day!