Sickness, finales, and a play

I mentioned my little bestest buddy hasn't been feeling well.  Yesterday, she went to the doctor.  She then spent the night in the hospital because she has iron deficient anemia. I am so thankful she will feel better!  She had some blood transfusions, and some lipids.  I am told she is a little perkier.  I hope she will get to come home today.  Poor little thing has really just not been herself lately.  She has been pale, sleepy, lethargic and sort of fussy.  We all love her so much, we hate for her to feel bad.  Hoping she makes a quick turn around and has us all cracking up again soon!  

Last night, Preston had his final game of his freshman season.  His team beat Iola.  He was the team captain for the night.  I have enjoyed watching him play.   He does such a great job, and has a lot of passion.  We are proud of him.  

Today, Saige's 2nd grade class presented a play to the school for their morning assembly.  She was so excited about this!  She was 'little girl number 1" and she said she had practiced her lines  A LOT!   I asked her if I could come over and watch and was told NO WAY!  :)  Luckily, Mallory is a good sister and sent me some pictures!  

I am a little under the weather, and Quincy is home today not feeling well.  We are gearing up for an extremely event filled weekend, so I am feeding us all vitamin c and keeping my fingers crossed that we can pull it off.  

time

There never seems to be enough time in our weeks.  It seemed like a low key week for once, but someone must have found out about it, and they scheduled a bunch of junk.  We had the final parent meeting for Preston's upcoming band trip to Orlando.  As I read the itinerary, I was actually wondering why it was that I didn't volunteer to be a sponsor.  I love Florida, and the schedule looks like an absolute fabulous time.  Then they started in with telling the kids what they can and cannot do, what they can and cannot bring, code of conducts, needing to check with sponsors and rules, and I thought to myself thank heavens I did not say I would sponsor this trip!  :)  I do think they will have a lot of fun!  I am very excited that Preston gets to have this opportunity!  We also have a parent meeting for the upcoming track season, and the bus boss scheduled our first aide/cpr class.  I am a little saddened that he put this class during the Ash Wednesday mass at our church, but I really don't know what I can do about it.  I can dedicate my Lenten journey to deep breathing, trying to survive and jumping over all of life's little stumbling blocks.  

This little nugget has not been feeling well.  We think it is teeth bothering her, but she has not had an easy week.  Grandpa seems to be able to get her to smile though.  I'm hoping that she starts to feel better soon, but if not, my upper body strength training will continue!  At least it is an enjoyable workout!

I don't know if I have mentioned this, but Saige has a pretty amazing teacher this year.  She keeps us supplied with a lot of photos, and the kids are always doing some awesome project based learning.  I think when the year ends, Saige will be very sad to leave behind Mrs. Grinke.  

This is the last week for basketball for the freshmen team.  Last night, Preston's team beat Anderson County.  It was a pretty good game, and Preston seemed to play really well.  He even did a little time at point.  He had some awesome blocks too!  I am proud of him for all the work he has put into this season.

Weekend of running

When I looked at the calendar this weekend, I was happy that we didn’t have much going on.   what I didn’t know was that there just wasn’t much that I wrote down.  

Preston had a game in Wellsville on Friday evening. Jim and I went over to watch.  He played really well.   He takes all the errors for the team on his own shoulders.   You won’t find a kid who is harder in themself on the court I don’t feel like.  He constantly wants to get better, which is good I guess.   His team lost.  But we are proud of him.  Basketball season is long.  The freshman team has 2 games left, and then he will be finished for this year.   At least for now. 

  

Saturday, I went to a funeral for my friend’s grandpa.  My friend lived with her grandparents when we were growing up.  I spent a lot of hours at their house.  When the priest asked if anyone had any stories they wanted to share, I had a lot, but didn’t share.  Most of them were things like one Saturday morning we came into their kitchen.  Ron was sitting there eating breakfast in his underwear.  Alma (the grandma) said “go put pants on....we have company!” Ron looked up from his bowl of cereal, pointed at me and said “she’s here more than I am, she isn’t company.”   He did not go put pants on either.   I also remember Adreinne asking him if he thought there would be flying cars in our lifetime.  He said he didn’t know, but he hoped there would be self driving cars because there were so many stupid drivers on the road.  It made me laugh.  He used to yell “drive on fool, hell ain’t half full” at all the people who passed him.  Her grandma also yelled this at people.   They were pretty funny.   I once climbed a tree at their house, and that is how I discovered I have a fear of heights/falling.   Ron told me he wouldn’t leave me alone, but he wouldn’t help me down either, because it was good to figure things out on your own.  I got down.  I didn’t climb any more trees in my life.  Swimming pool time, horseback riding, knife throwing lessons, eating southern food, being allowed to drive down the road in the mower, ping pong tournaments, movies nights.   So many memories.  Such good times, I was lucky to be included in their family.   Lifelong friends are such a blessing.  

While I was at the funeral, Jim took Saige to her basketball game.  Saige said she had a good time, but was more excited because daddy took her and Harper to Dairy Queen afterwards for cherry dipped cones.  

Today isn’t better in the busy department.  I am happy because the people we have been pet/house sitting for come home today, this is the last model meeting practice, basketball is winding down, and we are starting to gear up for a few new things.   Always moving forward, and always ready for a new chapter.   

Another fast weekend

I am not sure how lucrative Mallory's new side gig of photography is, but I love that she feeds my photo addiction.  I love this one!  She watched Evie on Friday night while her parents went out.  The pictures Mallory took were all great, but this one sums up my sweet, ornery girl pretty nicely.  She has really developed quite an ornery personality, and we all think it is hilarious.  We love her so much!

Preston (#10 in white)  had a home game on Friday.  His team beat Osawatomie.  Preston played well.  Basketball is starting to wind down, but we still have a few games left.  

Saige (#5 in white) had a game on Saturday.  Since I was in town with just her, I told her we would go out for lunch before we tackled the grocery shopping.  She got all excited and said "Anywhere I want?"  I said sure - as long as it is in Topeka.  She sucked in her breath and said "oooohh mom can we eat at Sonic?"  She seriously cracks me up!  The girl loves a good corndog!  

Saige is learning a lot and starting to put the pieces together a little bit.  She has a good coach and he is patient and kind with the girls, which I appreciate.  On Saturday, there was some sort of a mom who stormed the court, and they had to stop the game.  I couldn't figure out what was going, on, this is not even meant to be a competitive league, it is just instructional.  I figured out that she was mad at her baby daddy and they ended up calling security.  It was a little crazy.  Topeka always keeps things interesting for sure.  Luckily, they were able to finish the game, and Saige's team "won."  

The girl's rubber band bracelet addiction is getting a bit out of hand.  :)

Sunday brought model meeting practice and a cooking meeting.  The model meeting has one more practice before they perform it for a judge.  Every year, I freak out a little bit because they are no where near ready, and then it seems like they come together and perform well.  I hope that will be the case again this year, as the practice was a bit of a train wreck!   I guess time will tell.  

The cooking meeting was to learn about making sugar cookies.  The girls had fun making and decorating cookies.  I do not enjoy this type of cookie, as to me it is just too much time and energy.  I have agreed to make sugar cookies once a year for Jim at Christmas time, and other than that, forget about it!  They are Jim's favorite, so he was excited that the girls brought home samples.  

This is the kid's final day off for their unexpected long weekend.   I had to work, so I left them a list of things to accomplish.  I hope they get it done!  Jim agreed to spending his day off running vehicles in for service and oil changes and doing random other errands.  Weekends, even long ones, never last long enough!  

Surprise 5 day weekend

snow day naps!  :)  love my little family


Mallory did an amazing job of taking pictures of Spencer and Colin last week.  She sent me the file, but I stole these off of facebook.  I love them!  She is pretty talented.

Well, this week has been an interesting one.  We had normal plans.  Normal things to do.  Normal doesn't always work out.  Wednesday, they called for a trace to 1 inch of snow.  Our mornings go something like this - I wake up early, get myself ready, wake the kids up, make sure the girls hair is done and they are wearing matching clothes, and remind them of their chores.  They do chores, I wake up Jim and leave on the bus.  Jim takes over the child/school preparations.  Wednesday, it looked like a normal day.  I took off on the bus.  The weather people were saying small amounts of snow changing over to rain.  Sometimes, when the weather is bad, we make Preston ride the bus to school.  Wednesday, we did not.  I had no trouble getting around on my bus route.  I didn't think anything of letting Preston drive himself.  I did not think anything out of the ordinary was happening at all.  Somehow, as I was waiting for my shuttle kids to load, the weather went downhill quickly.  The roads went from fine, to crap in literally 15 minutes time.  It was too late for them to call off school, it was too late for Preston to ride the bus to town, it was too late to do anything except pray that it all worked out ok.  Preston made it.  All the buses made it.  The roads were terrible.  The predicted snowfall totals were very far off.  I believe we got around 4-5 inches of snow.  I had a pretty hard time getting bus kids home Wednesday evening.  I was relieved when they cancelled RE, and I skipped out on going to a funeral visitation for a co-worker who passed this week.  I was just happy to be home.  And I was ecstatic when they called off school for Thursday.  Jim had city council and got home very late.  He said that the roads were drifting and that visibility was bad.  It was a good day to be off school yesterday, as the weather turned brutally cold and the snow was blowing.  I was a little bit shocked to see them call off school again today.  I am not sad about it, just a little shocked.  Saige was sad.  She and Madison made cookies yesterday for her Valentine's Day party, and she spent quite a lot of time making her Valentines.  Her teacher sent out a message to not be sad, they will just celebrate on Tuesday....because Monday is a holiday.  So that is how we got a surprise 5 day weekend.
Happy Valentine's Day to us!
Several years ago, I decided that we should celebrate Valentine's day in the spring, as every year it seemed like someone was sick.  This year, we are not sick, but Jim has an opportunity to go to Kansas City with his friend Jay to watch semi-professional wrestling.  I am going to high school basketball to watch Preston.  The amount of romance here is so high, it is almost unreal!  ha!  It is a good thing we are flexible!  Truthfully, I have a "I don't wait to eat  at a restaurant for more than 30 minutes" rule, so we would probably never go out on Valentine's Day anyway!    Next week maybe!  :)  

birthday weekend

We had a fun weekend.  Friday night, I got to drive Preston's team to Prairie View for their games.  Preston's team won, and Preston played really well!  (Preston is #10 in blue).  I am glad I got to go!  

Friday was grandparent's day for 4th graders.  Harper's teacher sent me these cute photos.  Harper said it was a fun day!

Saturday was Mallory and Madison's 24th birthday!  Colin brought them a cake.  Everyone needs a brother like Colin!   :)  It was nice to see Colin and Spencer for a while before they all went out for the evening.  I was excited to have baby duty!  Evie, Saige, Harper, Quincy and Clayton all had a lot of fun playing!  

I think the girls had a good birthday!  They make me so proud!  They have grown into fine women.  I love them both so much!

While Mom and Dad are away....Evie loves her some popsickles!  She also stayed up way past her bedtime and had a lot of fun getting out every single one of her toys!

Saturday was a day I was looking forward to.  We had no real plans, no real commitments, no ball games.  I got home from Preston's basketball games at literally 12:30 in the morning.  I thought to myself 'that's ok, I can sleep in, have no real plans, and I can get all caught up and have a little time to relax!'  Yea, I should never think.  Not only did I get up at the normal time, but we worked hard all day.  We had a fire going to burn a brush pile and it took out part of the yard (and a wee bit of the neighbor's yard), so I also got to practice my fire fighting skills.  I walked inside after getting the fire out, to find a hysterical 8 year old.  She saw the dogs running down the road, and was so worried.  So we jumped in the car to go get them.  Drove around yelling for them for quite a while.  Came back in the driveway to find the dumb things sleeping on the front porch.  It was one thing after another all day long.  I think I would prefer to just go ahead and run errands like normal.

Sunday, the kids had model meeting practice.  We practice at my office. When the girls and I walked in, I realized I should have taken out the trash, it was not too good smelling!  I sent Quincy to take it to the dumpster while we set up, and she comes back with treasures. 

I mean, who throws away a copper stamped photo of the last supper....Mom?  Who would do that?  Who?  

I guess it has a new home now.  :)  It is actually pretty neat, and my photo doesn't do it justice.  I will be cleaning it before we hang it up, since it is a dumpster dive find.  

This weekend means the browser history on my computer has things like -

can you bleach copper? 

how do you get burn stains off fabric?

 how do you set up a still?