Saturday, April 30, 2011

I saw the sun yesterday

We had a brief flash of springlike weather yesterday. Temps in the 60, the sun was shining, I went for a walk and hung out my laundry. It's over now and we're back to grey and blustery. Argh! When will it stop???

Apparently, most of the country was obsessing over the royal wedding yesterday. I don't get it, we fought that war over 200 years ago, but, whatever. I will say that I got sucked into it just a bit, but it was the hats. I don't get into clothes, hair, shoes, etc, but I am a sucker for a gorgeous hat and where's a better place to go hat obsessing than a royal wedding? So, I don't know what Kate's weddng dress looks like, but I DO know that Lady Frederick Windsor has about the most awesome hat in the universe, followed closely by the princess from Spain (I don't know who those people actually are, but they've got great taste in hats).


Tuesday, April 26, 2011

is it spring yet?

Hubs and Angel #2 are both in Kona right now enjoying the Hawaiian heat and right about now, I'm ready to join them. I'm pretty much over this whole so-called spring. Poor WE was so excited for his track meet today, and, once again, it was cancelled. At least this time it was because of rain, last time it was because of a blizzard. That means that they've cancelled 3 out of his 5 meets, and the only reason they could have one of those is because it was a pre-conference meet in an indoor track. The other ones were called due to cold and rain and/or snow. He's got another meet scheduled for Thursday and according to the weather forecast, it's looking like it's going to be a repeat of today, keeping my fingers crossed that the weathermen are wrong. Those poor kids are working their tails off, it's only fair they can attend a couple meets so they can show their stuff.

Got the cool news that hubs big sister is going to be flying in from New York for Angel #2's high school graduation. There are going to be 3 high school graduates in hubs family this year and they're all graduating the same weekend (#2 is on Friday and the other two, who go to the same school, on Monday) so she'll be able to make them all, how convenient is that? Angel #1 is graduating from combat engineer school in the Marines sometime in the beginning of June as well. Looks like my kids are really growing up.

Friday, April 22, 2011

fun with Rent-a-Grandma

Rent-a-Grandma and her new daughter in law spent the night here last night. I hadn't met, Batty, the D-I-L yet, so it was nice to get to know her. We got about 8-10 inches of snow dumped on us Tues/Wed and no one was happy about it but Batty. Batty's from Thailand and hadn't had the dubious pleasure of snow before. Grandma said Batty had so much fun playing outside, and after a snowman making lesson, there were snowpeople all over her yard. Once Grandma and Batty got here, Batty and angel #4 had a lot of fun playing snow soccer, snow badminton and sledding. They both came in the house soaking wet. Angel #2 had a couple friends over as well and they made a snowman in the side yard. I think the kids played outside more yesterday than they did the whole winter put together.

This morning, I rode with grandma when she took Batty down to the airport. From here she's heading to Texas, which should be a whole lot warmer than it is here. After her time in Texas, she's back to Virginia. Though Batty's only been in the US since the end of February, she's sure done a lot of traveling. Slowly, she'll get used to our country and our little idiosyncrasies. We have a picture of the kids when they were little, all standing inside the rear tire of a Big Foot monster truck. Batty liked the picture, but wanted an explanation. How to you explain monster trucks to a person from a country like Thailand without sounding like Americans are utter whackjobs?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

we'll be brown bagging it forever

Sunday, we had an all day service for our church. People come from miles around and have a wonderful day together. One of our kids friends was there and she had a surprise for WE. As one of their jokes, WE frequently tells her to 'get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich, woman!" Well, she made him a sandwich for his lunch on Sunday. It was a big sandwich. It was a HUGE sandwich. She started with a big, one pound loaf of Italian bread and loaded it up with meat and cheese. It weighed in at over 4 pounds by the time she was done with it. WE did what he could to eat it on Sunday, but barely put a dent in it. It's sitting in our fridge right now, whenever someone gets hungry, they lop a piece off, but it's going to be awhile before that baby gets gone.

WE is supposed to have a track meet tonight, but it'll probably be cancelled. We've got a winter storm warning in effect and estimates of up to a foot of snow in our very near future. **checking calendar - yup, it IS April. sigh There was a big invitational scheduled at the school for last Saturday, but that was cancelled due to weather as well. Which was just as well, since I really didn't want to sit outside on metal bleachers in 30 degree weather watching a bunch of boys run around in circles. They've only had 2 meets so far this year, one was a non-conference one early in the season held in an indoor gym at a nearby university, the other went on as scheduled though there were fears that it was going to have to be postponed due to snow on the track. I just LOVE spring in Wisconsin.

Friday, April 15, 2011

e-reading

I'm having fun playing with my new e-book reader, though I've decided that I'm going to have to come up with a short, snappy name for it, since it's a bit bulky to keep saying e-book reader whenever I talk about it. Angel #4 started messing with it and is now enjoying The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which is nice. At first she said she didn't need to read it because she saw the movie. *GASP* Now, don't get me wrong, I love The Wizard of Oz movie and have adored Judy Garland since I was a little girl (I love singing You Made Me Love You at the top of my lungs along with Judy) but watching a movie version of a book and thinking you know the story is flat out heresy. The movie is never, never, ever with a cherry on top, as good as the book. It's an irrefutable law of man and nature. So, I'm glad to see that my daughter will now learn about silver slippers and Winkies.

We got the good news from Angel #1 that his checking account is safe, as is the money in it. As a precaution, he's going to put the majority of his moolah into a savings account and only put the money he needs to pay bills into his checking, so if this happens again, there won't be as much money at risk. Thankfully, this turned out to be a free, though nerve-wracking lesson about life and its possible suckitude.

Last night was Market Day at Angel #4's school. We got to see a talent show put on by the students which was a lot of fun. Then, after buying tickets, we could walk around the school and purchase merchandise made by the students, food or donate tickets to the various 'street musicians' who were showing us their stuff. There were door hangers, bug jars, seedling trees, starter tomato plants, midway games and all kinds of things to do, along with a whole lot of noise and random, running around kids. #4 got together with a few of her friends and had a musical quartet. They played in a corner of the gym and collected a good share of tickets. All the money made went toward student centric things like field trips and fun things for the school itself. All in all, a fun, family filled evening.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

mean people suck

Poor Angel #1 discovered yesterday that someone cleaned out his checking account. The money he'd been saving up to buy a new motorcycle is gone. The money he worked his butt off for in basic training has disappeared. He's working with the bank today to get things straightened out, so hopefully he'll get the money back, but we haven't heard from him yet today to hear if he got any good news yet. The really sad part is that his 2 roommates accounts were also cleared out and one roommate had both his debit card and his ID stolen, so that means that someone who had been in their room is probably the thief. Someone who they'd considered a friend, someone they may have to depend on someday to watch their backs in a war. I hope they catch the guy real soon.

In good news, Angel #2 had her first ride along with the local vet yesterday afternoon and she absolutely loved it. To make things even better, what she was hoping would happen did, she's already gotten a job offer from one of the horse farms she'd visited yesterday. I don't know if she's going to pursue the offer or not yet, but it's nice to know that in this economy where people are fighting for work, she had a dream job fall right on her lap. She also got to give a horse a shot, do some testing and help with a castration, which she was morbidly excited about. The weirdest things make that kid happy.

Hubs and the kids got me an e-book reader for my birthday yesterday. Hubs also got me a yummy ice cream cake from DQ. I didn't know he was going to get me a cake, so I'd already made myself a birthday pie, we're not real big cake eaters in this family, pies go over much better - besides, cherry pie is my all time absolute favorite dessert. So now I've got all kinds of yummy stuff luring me into the kitchen.

Jeannie, we've got a big centralized DMV that is located about 40miles away from us. So everyone from the surrounding area goes to the same place, which is why it is so crowded. The only thing our local police department can do is register vehicles and renew vehicle registrations. That's why our DMV line is so painful. The friend we met up with there lives 40 miles in the opposite direction of the DMV from where we do, to give you an idea of the area they've got to cover. It ain't pretty. BUT, yesterday, I found out that there is a DMV office 25 miles away in the opposite direction that usually isn't so crowded, so next time we have some DMVing to do, we're going there.

Monday, April 11, 2011

blowed right by

Wow Jeannie, only 5 minutes at the DMV? Must be nice to live on your planet! It took me longer than that just just get through the line to get to the guy who told me what line to stand in.

We had a great day yesterday. We had an all day church event and got home around 4pm. All the way home, we were seeing lightning and hearing thunder all around us, be we didn't get much rain. Tough it was nice and sunny during the day, the temps were gorgeous, upper 70's baby!! Things were clear at our house when we got home, so Hubs, Angel #4 and I went on a long walk. There's an abandoned log cabin about 1 1/2-2 miles from our house, so we walked over there to nose around. On the way there hubs and #4 had a race along the top of about 15 big round hay bales that were lined up along a field, we inspected a flooded out culvert and honked at a bunch of Canadian geese who were resting in a field. There was a pussy willow tree (bush?) near the cabin. I haven't seen one of those in years. We broke off a couple of branches and now they're sitting in a jar on the kitchen counter getting all puffy and fuzzy.

After eating supper, things started getting dark and the lightning came back with a vengeance. Since there was no rain yet, the whole family went out on the deck with blankets and pillows and watched the lightning show for about a half hour, til the rain sent us back inside. We had a little wind and rain, but nothing major. The area around us wasn't so fortunate. There were tornado touchdowns in quite a few places. One cousin has to replace his roof and fix an 8 in hole in his bedroom wall from where a chunk of something literally blew right through the wall. Another cousin reported that though her place had minor damage, their neighbors gazebo had disappeared. There was some bad weather out there yesterday. I'm glad it decided to bypass us.

And in some happy news. Hubs and I went for a walk this morning and saw flowers blooming in the corner of our yard. FLOWERS!!! Yay! Spring's (hopefully) here!!!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

smile

My birthday is coming up, this year, that means I have to get my drivers license renewed. Turns out, that even though I relinquished my Wisconsin drivers license when I got my Hawaiian one, that WI keeps your license active until it expires. So, instead of having to go through the whole rigamorole of changing residencies and stuff, I just had to renew my license before it expires, which will be on Tuesday. I've known about this for awhile, but have avoided doing anything about it because, no one wants to go to the DMV. It's not a happy place. One thing that the Hawaii DMV has over the WI one is that at our local HI office, they let you look at your picture and if you don't like it, they'll let you get a retake before committing it to laminate. Since Wisconsin doesn't really care that you look like you just swallowed a frog on your drivers license picture, I think I'll be missing my HI license when I have to pull out my license to identify myself.

Once nice thing about going to the DMV was that we just happened to see our friend Loopy, who was getting his truck registration renewed. So we got to sit and play catch-up with him, which made the eternity we sat waiting for our numbers to be called seem just a little more pleasant.

Afterwards, we went shopping for barn boots for Angel #2. She's doing work study for school for the last quarter. For some reason, she thinks it's more enjoyable to shovel horse poop than take a college lit class. I would have opted for the lit myself, but to each their own. On Tuesdays, she's also doing a ride along with a local vet when he does his horse rounds. She's pretty excited about that as well. I still think I would have opted for doing an in depth study of The Great Gatsby, but if she wants to look at horses private parts and get pooped on, more power to her. Someone's got to do it I guess.

The weather's been really getting nice lately. Angel #4 is thrilled to be able to get outside and do something. The problem is, we really didn't have anything to do outside. So, when we got #2's barn boots, we also picked up a couple tennis rackets, a soccer ball and a baseball glove, among other things (it was the thrift store, so we still got out for about $20). She and hubs spent the rest of the day after she got home from school out in the road playing badminton. It's nice to at least see the hope of summer coming up. Before you know it, the temps will be in the 50's and everyone will be running around in shorts. I love spring in Wisconsin

Monday, April 4, 2011

Mom clean

Friday night, WE and I went to the town's first responders benefit fishboil. I love me some fishboil! Hubs and angel #4 had left early Friday morning to help a friend who lives a few hours away move into a new house. They've got a baby, so #4 wanted to go along to brush up on her babysitting skills. Angel #2 had to work Friday night, which is why WE and I were the only two nomming on boiled fish.

Saturday, I spent more quality time with my boy when I decided it was time to sort through all the clothes in his room. There are two levels of bedroom cleaning in our house, kid clean and mom clean. Saturday was a mom clean day. He's grown a lot in the last year, well over half a foot, and a lot of his clothes were looking short, tight, or just downright ratty. By the time we were done gutting out his closet, we had 2 paper grocery bags filled with clothes to head to the thrift store and an entire 13 gallon garbage bag filled with stained, ripped, buttonless clothes and a pair of shoes whose soles you could almost see through. Once we found his floor, we gave it a thorough vacuuming and I washed a couple loads of random clothes that smelled horribly of boy funk. One nice thing now that I no longer have to deal with when mom cleaning a room is random toys. I used to have a pile of Legos, Barbie dolls, Beanie Babies and other debris piled outside the bedroom door waiting to be hauled down to the basement toy room. One of the benefits of getting rid of everything when you move is that once your kids outgrow toys, they get left behind during the move. Though Angel #4 did bring some Barbie dolls back up with her, the only time I've actually seen them out since we lived here was when my 4 year old niece came to visit. I've got to say, I sure don't miss toys laying around and am happy that doing the Steppin' On a Matchbox Car Dance is a thing in my distant past.