Back to School, Another Anniversary, Building an Addition

So a lot has gone on in our house since my last update as you can see from my title! I guess I need to blog more often or I’m going to be writing books every time I update!

First off Michael and I celebrated 23 years of wedded bliss! Since we are doing the big addition project this year we kept it low key and spent the day on the boat with the boys and he brought me some roses. 

Secondly Jake and Josh went back to school, I am officially the mom of a kid in high school now! I wasn’t home for the big day since I leave at o’dark thirty (5am) but Jake was good enough to document the day for me with one photo of each of them. Not exactly what I had in mind but I’ll take it as it’s better than I would have got which is zip!

Here they are in all their happiness about going back to school…

School is in full swing, they are both doing well. Josh is playing soccer, doing karate and on the student council. Jake is playing baseball. So needless to say, I have no free time!

And last but not least, we have started the garage side of our addition. The foundation is in!

Hopefully the floor will be poured sometime this week and then the framing will begin. We hope to have it all done before the winter. Well I hope so I don’t have to clean snow off my car or trudge thru it ever again!

On the scrapping front, my friend Patty and I got together a few weeks ago to make Cards for Soldiers. We got about 50 done between the two of us on a Sunday afternoon. This past weekend I spent sorting all the cards I had received and packing them to ship them out, there were 2500! I have 8 boxes to go to the Post Office today! Pretty Awesome!  And I did a page last night for the first time in months! I honestly think the last time I actually made a page was back in May when I went away to a crop! It felt good! I didn’t finish until late so I haven’t scanned so I can’t share.

Oh and the last thing I wanted to share is a very talented blogging friend of mine Kimberly Geshwin is an awesome font maker and she is offering up a pretty cool deal. So if you have a fun and funky handwriting that you’d love to see made into a font, go and check this post out…http://gesweinfamily.com/?p=3259, it’s for a very good cause!

OK, that’s enough for now, I have to hop in the shower. Have a great week!

Long Time No Blog

It’s been awhile eh? I guess when you have like one reader (thanks Jodene) it’s not a huge deal anyway! Lots going on here! We have been in the midst of a construction project. Painters and construction. 4 years ago my fabulous husband decided to do hardwood floors in the house. Something I’d been asking him to do for years. Well this was a huge task because it involved tearing down some walls for the stairs and such. He eventually finished all the floors but never the stairs because we ran into some issues and we’ve been walking on plywood stairs ever since. Fast forward to this year, I decide I’ve had enough of looking at unfinished stairs and before we start more projects I’m hiring someone to finish the darn stairs, the trim all the way upstairs in the hall and into my bedroom and the windows! We had windows and siding put in and I decided that because the new windows are white and all of our trim in the house was stained that didn’t look right so btw, we need to hire painters because all the trim needs to be painted white now! So for the last week the house has been in quite an uproar to say the least! It’s starting to look great as the stairs are almost done and I can’t wait to see the finished product! It will be nice to have it all complete.

And then we will start all over again! We are adding on two additions! A two car garage with attic space above it on one side of the house and a big family room on the other side of the house. The garage will be first so that Michael will have somewhere to work on the other side. I hope this project doesn’t take another 4 years! Once it’s done I’m looking forward to doing some entertaining in my house because I’ll have a room big enough to do so!

In other news, we have been enjoying our boat. Last weekend Michael and I went out on it again while the boys were away for the week at my in-laws. We docked in Newburyport and walked around and did some shopping. Had lots of fun picking out some nautical decor for the downstairs bath. I decided since we are boat owners now I wanted a nautical themed room. We also found a yummy bakery where I got a gourmet cupcake, peanut butter flavored goodness! YUM! Michael snapped this photo of me enjoying it

Then he did some fishing and caught a few cod and this big cusk:

And we saw I pink boat which I loved so had to take a photo:

   And then we went out to the Isle of Shoals and saw the scenery there plus a bunch of harbor seals:

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It was a very nice day and I didn’t even get a little nauseous! We had a great dinner at a place called Michael’s Harborside before we headed home that night. I could definitely get used to that kind of life. Maybe in a 100 foot yacht! ;)

The boys and I also had our annual week at the beach with my mom in July! It was a fantastic week of perfect weather. We met my uncle and cousin for lunch one day, had pedicures with my mom’s friend and her daughter one day, the boys had a friend up for several days. Couldn’t have asked for a better week. Here are some highlights from that week as well:

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So if you’ve stuck with me this far you are a true friend! This was a long one! I’ll try not to be so scarce so I don’t talk so much next time!

I’m headed down to my scrap room so I can get out of the painters way! Happy Weekend all!

We got a Boat!

Well I should say we got a bigger boat, because we’ve had a little 18 footer for about 8 years now. I’ve hated that little boat since we got it because I always thought it was too small for the ocean and it made me nervous. It was fine for bringing up to the lake to take the boys tubing and such but out on the ocean I always felt like we were going to die!

Anyway fast forward to last month when Michael sends me this text pic that says I found my father’s day present…

One thing led to another and we bought it. It’s a 24’ Rampage and it’s much nicer than our old free 18’ boat. It’s got a cuddy cabin that sleeps 2 and a toilet! So Michael picked it up on Wednesday and we went out on it for our first time yesterday to see some whales and do a little fishing.

We headed out to a place called Jeffrey’s Ledge off of Newburyport, MA and before we got there we saw this:

Unfortunately it is the only photo I got because it was rough out there and every time we were able to spot one they were down so fast I couldn’t get the shot. We saw about 5-6 throughout the day and it was very exciting. The best was the tail shot that I missed and wished I could have got but maybe next time!

Then we set up for some fishing. This was Josh’s first time with a big deep sea rod so he needed a lesson from dad first:

 

He immediately hooked on to something and had to reel it in all the way from 150 feet of water…

And was very excited to catch his first shark!

No photo of Josh holding his catch because sharks are not welcome on the boat! They are a boatload of trouble (pun intended)! ;)

Then it was off to do some more fishing on mouth of the river hoping to catch some dinner. The only thing we caught was the tail of a whale watching boat that we followed out to another place called Stellwagen Bank. This is where it was a real rough ride but we got to see a bunch more whales so it was worth it sort of (I’ll leave the gory details out). Unfortunately because of the roughness no photos, I couldn’t even stand up, never mind hold my camera!

We headed back in before it got too late and the boys decided to stop to fish for a bit. This is where my stomach decided it did not have much more tolerance for the rough seas and had enough! I’ll just say this was my first and hopefully last experience with sea sickness! LOL!  They did catch two fish before I said we needed to get back to dry land.  I’ve been out on boats many times before and haven’t had this lovely experience so I hope it’s a one time thing or I won’t be enjoying the boat as much as the rest of the family I guess!

So there you have the tales of our first experience on our new boat!

Happy Memorial Day

Thank you to all of those that serve our beautiful country past and present…

Recent Scrappiness

These are some of the pages I did during my weekend crop. I finally got a new scanner for Mother’s Day! I still have one more that needs some journaling on it to scan. I am loving my new scanner it’s much faster than the old one!

The splashes were a total lift from my very talented friend Leslie Ashe. She just makes the most amazing pages and when I saw them on one of her pages I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the photos of Jake jumping off a bridge last summer! Thank you for the inspiration Leslie!

TFL! Hope you had a great weekend! We are off to a baseball game and I have to go get ready!

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Headed to Maine

The boys and I are headed to Maine this weekend. We are going to spend the weekend with my SIL and family which will be fun but unfortunately I am not going there for the purpose of fun. It’s been a rough week for bad news for me. A fellow blogger lost her 20 year old son very suddenly last Thursday.  I’m not sure when I started reading Hallie’s blog but it was some time ago. When CJ went down to his training in FL we sent him care packages and grocery cards to get him fed well until he came home. And when he was going to be deployed to war we prayed for his safe return and I think when he got injured in training and ended up coming home more than a few of us were thankful that one mom didn’t have to worry about her son over there. I’ve told Hallie I’m going to meet her in person one of these days when I’m up in Maine since she lives 1/2 an hour from my SIL  since we’ve only talked via email and blog, I never thought it would be under these circumstances. But I want to go and support this wonderful family I’ve come to know and love via this amazing WWW any way I can.

When I get back I’ll have to deal with the second unexpected and unexplained death I heard of this week. Our Colonel in my squadron at work lost his beautiful 41 year old wife on Monday night while they were traveling back from a conference. It was a huge shock to our group. For those of you that don’t have a military background, it’s like a family and because we all knew Donna from her coming to all of our squadron events we were all effected in some way. The funeral will be tomorrow in Colorado so none of us can attend and we will just have to wait see the Colonel when he gets back to work on Wednesday. It’s not going to be good, they were a beautiful, and very happily married couple with a 19 yo daughter.

If you can spare them please send prayers for both of these families.

A New Smile!

Look who got his braces off! He was very excited to be able to chew gum again after two years. They gave him a big water bottle full of all kinds of chewy things he hasn’t been able to eat after all this time and a big balloon, it was very fun.

He got the day off from school for doing such a great job taking care of his teeth during the last two years and now hopefully he’ll do the same thing with the retainer he has to wear which by the way is lime green and glows in the dark…

 

I’ve been sick off and on for about a week now with a stomach bug and then a head cold sinus thing and am looking forward to enjoying the amazing weather we are having. Jake and I are off to American Eagle to get him some shorts and then some new sneakers since he can’t seem to stop growing. He’s now 5’10” and who knows what shoe size he’ll be now! It was size 12 last time we went in December!

Tomorrow a couple of my scrappy friends are coming over and we are going to work on some Cards for Soldiers! One of them I haven’t seen in ages and I’m really looking forward to it.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Nor’Easter

And a heck of a storm it was! It came in howling late Thursday night and our power went out about 11pm. It stayed out until about 5pm last night. Luckily after last years ice storm we invested in a small generator so we didn’t lose any food and had heat and a few lights so we were luckier than most. They said there were 300,000 people in New Hampshire without power and I believe it. This is what my front yard looked like and when I ventured out on Friday the roads and other yards looked much worse.

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We made the best of it like last year and the neighbors got together again and had a good time. Mom and I also did some shopping at the scrapbook store to prepare for our scrapping weekend the end of April since we got more rain than snow and the driving wasn’t bad. Although we are in for another storm tonight so we will have to see what that brings.

I also packaged up 700 Cards for Soldiers, went to the laundr-o-mat for the first time in 20+ years and stayed off the computer for 2 whole days! 

Now I’ve got to go get my clothes ironed for work tomorrow and see about some dinner! Have a great night!

Layouts

Since I have nothing too exciting to blog about I figured I’d share the layouts that I have been scrapping over the past couple of months. Since my computer has been upgraded to Windows 7 my scanner is no longer compatible so I’ve had to take photos of them. Please bear with me as I have not mastered the ‘taking photos of layouts’ thing yet but here are some I’ve done…

from our Labor Day trip to Florida:

 

a little close up of the paper flowers I made for that page:

a rare two pager for me but what else do you do with all those fabulous xmas card photos?

  

and yes one of the dreaded snow storms we had actually gave me a good layout!

I have a few more to share but I can’t find the photos for some reason so I must have filed the some place other than the norm! Back later! Happy Sunday!

Snowy Monday

Yes you read that right, another snow day here in New Hampshire. Thankfully it was a holiday today because it was one of those very wet heavy snows that made everything look so pretty but also knocked power out for a bit and made for long clean up! Michael had to go out to plow at 2am. Our power was out when he got up and it stayed out until about 6:30 am. Michael didn’t have time to hook up the generator when he left so I was very grateful to hear it come back on! I spent most of the day paying bills, doing laundry and stuff I should have done over the weekend but when I finished up with that I went down to my scrapbook room and  made some Cards for Soldiers.

It was a 4 day weekend for me and it was very nice! On Friday my friend Patty and I went to my favorite LSS Ink About It and shopped. Michael gave me some of his plowing money to spend so I had loads of fun! Then Friday night he took me out to a nice Italian dinner where I had something I have been dying to try ever since I’ve heard of it, Lobster Mac & Cheese. It was heaven! The restaurant we went to was so good!

Saturday Patty came over and we made a bunch of Cards for Soldiers and I continued after she left since I was on a roll. Yesterday I snuck down to my room and did a few more. I haven’t been down in my room since before Sadie’s surgery so it was very nice to scrap! I made a total of 48 cards between Saturday and today and that’s pretty good for me since I usually hate to make cards! 

Which brings us back to today, which is almost over. It’s going to be hard to go back to work tomorrow after such a great weekend but at least it’s a short week! Well gotta go wake up Michael so he can go back out and plow some more! Have a great night all and a great week if I don’t make it back here anytime soon!

Happy 2010!

I hope everyone has a wonderful happy, healthy, safe year! The last few weeks of 2009 were not fun for me but I am hoping it’s not an indication of what 2010 has to bring but just all the bad of 2009 that we were going to get because 2009 was a pretty good year other than that!

Enjoy your long weekend!

Update

Michael is home from the ER with a compressed L5 disc and no head injury. He also has degenerative arthritis in his hip from an injury that happened a couple of years ago moving a wood stove. I think he finally realizes he is not a kid anymore and needs to be more careful!

And it just keeps getting better!

Hubby is now at the ER…

After working on his truck all day to find he couldn’t fix the problem, he had it towed to the mechanic. Can’t wait to find out how much that is going to cost. So we are down to one car for who knows how long. FUN. Then he had to work on the pond because the small pump that keeps the fish alive quit and with the frigid cold temps we’ve been having the fish would not survive. Then on to the generator hook up since a Nor’easter was on the way and if he had to leave us with no car I at least wanted to know we’d have power and heat! Oh and throw in turning our kitchen into a pen for the dog, including carpeting it and building a fenced in area for her for the next 3 months!

So you’d think that was enough work for one day right? Nope, he decides to go next door to help one of the neighbor’s kids with the snowmobile he bought to get it running in light of the earlier mentioned snowstorm. Well once they got it running he decides to take it for a quick ride to make sure it sounds good and what does he do, he hits a fire pit that is covered in snow! Off the snowmobile he goes, hits a rock with his head and he thinks something is broken in his leg/hip area. He can’t walk. He doesn’t want to scare the teenager he is helping so he hobbles home with a huge lump on his head, messed up vision and major pain in his leg and tells me he needs to go to the ER. I tell  him let me call a neighbor because I can’t leave the dog. He and all his stubbornness says nope, he’s just going to shower, take some Advil and go to bed.

Well needless to say that didn’t go well. I slept on the kitchen floor with the dog and heard him get up a few times during the night. He finally came down at 5 and said he was going to the hospital. Now that the snow has started and he can’t even get a pair of pants on.

So to all of you that commented yesterday, thank you for your good thoughts and if you could keep them coming, I think I’ll really need them as you may be getting an update from Jake saying the men in the white coats came and took me away if something else happens!

When it Rains

They say when it rains it pours or that good or bad things come in threes and I have to say right now I believe both. This is going to be a post full of bad news so if you are full of Christmas spirit and happiness you may not want to read much further so it doesn’t bring you down…

It all started about two weeks ago when Michael came home and said that things were not going well at work and he didn’t know how much longer he was going to have a job. He’s been with this company for 18 years. He has been pretty devastated to say the least and very grouchy because although his boss said he can’t run the company without him and he would be the very last to go he is very worried about his coworkers who are also his friends. This is not a good time to be unemployed no matter what field but especially in the construction world. We make the decision to start saving as much as we can, not exchange Xmas gifts with each other and do whatever we can to take precautions for going back to one salary.

Fast forward to this week when we take Sadie our puppy to the vet, and then decide we need a second opinion from a specialist and on Wednesday find out that she needs knee surgery right away not on one knee but both knees. They schedule the surgery on the left knee for the NEXT day. It’s $3500 for one knee. The next one has to be done as soon as the first one heels in about 6 weeks. And during the heeling she has to be confined to a crate, wear one of those God awful collars, and take all kinds of medications. She has to stay overnight in the hospital and boy Thursday night in our house is awful without her and I couldn’t wait to pick her up on Friday.

And then we get to Friday, I get out of work and rush home to meet Michael so we can go get Sadie. The day just seemed to drag by! I get a call when I am about 20 minutes from home from Michael saying that his truck just quit and he is waiting for AAA to come give him a tow. He has no idea what is wrong with the truck and it’s about 20 degrees outside and he’s freezing. 3 Hours later he is still not home. We finally get Sadie home at 7:30 last night! Still have no clue what is wrong with the truck or how much it will cost to fix it.

Sadie is resting right because she just had a Codeine. She’s not happy that she is confined to her crate but she has to have very limited movement for the next 6 weeks. Her whole back leg is shaved up to her back  but the incision is only about 4-5 inches so it’s not too big. She has wagged her tail a few times which is a good sign but you can tell she is in pain because she whimpers once in a while. She hates the collar and when we have to put it on her she gets so sad it makes me want to cry. I hate to think we have to do this all again to the other leg. Poor thing, she doesn’t deserve this at all.

Oh and if you are still with me, this is all caused by a Luxating Patella. It’s also known as Trick Knee. Mostly common in small dogs but also starting to get more common in larger dogs such as Golden’s. And it’s Genetic. We have contacted the breeder because from the research we have done he should stop breeding the parents immediately but he wants more proof from us. There were 11 puppies in Sadie’s litter and we have no idea if any other pups have shown any issues but I hope not.

So if you made it through all that you really are a true friend and I thank you and ask for one more thing, a few good thoughts for Sadie’s fast recovery!

Thanks for reading!

I am Still Here!`

Wow! It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged! But since I’ve got like 2 readers I’m sure no one has really noticed anyway. Between work, school, homework, the holiday’s and I’m embarrassed to admit a Facebook game called Farmville I’ve had no time. But since we got our first snowfall last night I figured I actually had an excuse to blog so here I am with photos!

As it was just starting to stick last night

And what I woke up to this morning when the phone rang for Michael to go out to plow:

And since I’m here I’ll post our Christmas tree photos. We actually got our first fake tree this year. It was kind of sad not to go out and cut our tree down for the first time in 27 years but Michael really didn’t like worrying about the hardwood and I hated cleaning up all the pine needles every day because of how dry our house is! It doesn’t look to bad considering!

And one with the lights off:

So now I need to get back to studying for my final. It’s Tuesday night and I could use all the good thoughts you care to send please as I hate tests! Thanks and have a wonderful week!

Whirlwind Update

Phew it’s been a busy few weeks! We had one kiddo turn 11 on a Monday

Then on Wednesday the 2nd kiddo turned 14! Where has the time gone?

Then Friday I got a call from the School Nurse saying kiddo #2 had a 102 temp 20 minutes before school got out and he could not ride the bus that we had to come pick him up. Well I work 50 minutes away from school with NO traffic and hubby was about an hour away so we asked if she planned on staying there until we got there, guess what her answer was? You guessed right. Luckily we had a neighbor home who was willing to go get him. I rushed home and took him right to the immediate care to get him tested for the flu since she said a lot of the 5th grade as well as a bunch of teachers were out with it.   We were at the doctor’s within about an hour and 40 minutes. Poor kid was miserable and just wanted to be home in bed, but they took his temp it was 99.8! The doc said with no meds there is no way it could have gone down that much. I’m thinking the nurse needs a new thermometer. He was sick and did run a temp of around 100-101 all weekend but was better by Monday. He did miss Trick-or-Treat though so was very unhappy about that.

Jake on the other hand did not miss it. I thought he was too old to go out but since all his friends were going who was I to argue. He dressed up as an old lady. We had fun shopping at the Goodwill store for his clothes! He was pretty funny!

Our pumpkins never got carved since Josh wasn’t up to it and Jake didn’t care so they sat like that on the porch instead. Kind of a bummer but I didn’t miss the mess at all!

I passed my mid-term thankfully. I didn’t get the A I wanted but no one in the class got an A so I guess I’ll be happy with the B. At least I know what to expect on the Final. Now I have to work on my project. Maybe I can get an A on that! This teacher is tough!\

Oh and I just have to show you how big my puppy is! She’s not a puppy anymore, she’s 10 months and looks like a full grown dog. She is the sweetest thing too! I couldn’t ask for a better dog!

And speaking of that, I promised her a walk so I’m outta here! Have a great day!