you know you must be busy when

you had no idea it had been over a week since blogging. But man, things are just buzzing around here like a moth in a bug light.

On the 21st, Angel #1 headed back to life with the Marines. He's in California again for the time being. He let us know a couple days ago that he's being deployed in December. I'm not too thrilled about my baby going to Afghanistan, but he's excited about it, besides, going to dangerous places are what you do when you're a Marine. Worrying about your baby is what you do when you're a Marine's mom.

Rent-a-Grandmas son's wedding reception was on Saturday. It was a beautiful day and a wonderful time. Since we don't get to her area much anymore, it was great seeing some friends that we hadn't talked to in a while. It was also nice to see the whole Rent-a-Grandma extended family. Through the years, we've gotten to know her sister and her family as well as her sister-in-law and her family. Everyone's kids have grown so much over the years. Angel #4 made friends with one of the nephews daughters, which was pretty cool, especially since, through a series of events, Angel #4 is spending the night at the girls house in the south side of Chicago tonight. #4 was invited by the bride and groom to go back to Virginia with them for a while this summer, so they headed out this afternoon. We're not quite sure when she's coming back. They're driving out there, but she's going to have to fly home at the end of the visit. The deal is that she's going to earn the money to pay for her flight while she's out there. One of the ways is by helping the bride, who's from Thailand, on her English. She and #4 really hit it off last time they were together and so #4 is really looking forward to spending more time with her.

Because of her spur of the moment trip decision, she needed to do some speedy work at home before she left. We've moving out of our house on Thursday, so she needed to get everything in her room packed up and ready to move out before she could go. She managed to get it all done, with a little help from me. Now, if only I could find the magical moving fairy who would come overnight and pack all the rest of our stuff up for me, I'd be one happy camper. There just aren't enough hours in the day for all the stuff that needs doing. Today, I painted a couple bedroom floors at the new place, brought two loads of stuff over and spent about an hour working in the garden, which is being sadly neglected due to the gazillion other things that are more pressing than weedfree onions. Since we're remodeling the new house, I don't really have places to put our stuff when we move it over there, so we've just been piling things up in the grainery, but sooner or later (hopefully sooner) hubs will get my kitchen cabinets off the dining room floor and back on the wall so I can at least unpack my kitchen things.

Sigh, I need a couple clones.

so, what came first, the egg or the egg?

Breakfast was interesting yesterday. Our chickens lay some huge eggs, so big sometimes that we can't close the egg cartons all the way. Yesterdays egg was particularly large, with a bizarre rippled pattern to the shell. The shell was also pretty fragile and cracked a bit when I was washing it, so it was first in line to become breakfast. I cracked it and put it into the egg poacher and saw, what looked like a double yolker, which I've had before, but then noticed that the color of the yolk wasn't yolk colored. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't another yolk, but another egg. Yep, there was a little egg, complete with hard shell, inside the first egg. It was about the size of one of those bigger shooter marbles. When I cracked the little egg, which had a really hard shell, incidentally, it had a little tiny yolk and everything inside it. How weird is that?

After breakfast, we loaded the family up in the car and roadtripped it out to some friends of our who live a 3 hour drive away. Angel #4 had spent the week with them helping out with their kids, so we needed to pick her up. We had a great afternoon with them, then decided to visit some other friends who live near them. They just bought a new house and we wanted to go check it out. We got the tour of the house, the yard and gardens and ended up staying and visiting with them until 8:30 or so before heading back on the long drive home. Our car doesn't comfortably carry 6 people, but we all squeezed in and had a great time on the way home. Traveling with the family is a great way to have good conversations with your kids, you just have to resist the urge to turn on the radio. It was a great trip and I'm so glad I had that extra time to spend with all my kids. With Angel #1 going back to the Marines on Monday and Angel #2 working her way toward her own apartment and independence, times like that are going to become more and more rare.

When we got home, we discovered that we had extra passengers in the car we weren't aware of. Our friends yard was full of ticks, and now, so were we. I pulled 3 off of myself, 4 off Angel #2, #4 had one in her neck and I'm not sure how many hubs pulled off himself, at least 5 or 6. We were all paranoid after that, and soon all the kids were stripped down to their undies so I could do a full body tick scan on them. Of course, this had to be done in the kitchen so I could pop all the nasty culprits down the garbage disposal when I found them. Someone peeking in our window around 11:30 last night, would have definitely been wondering why there was an entire family standing in the middle of the kitchen in their underwear picking at each other like a family of orangutans.

Today is warm and slightly overcast, perfect for working out in the garden. I went out by myself for about 2 hours this afternoon and really enjoyed messing around out there. I replanted a few things that didn't come up and found deer tracks all over the place. Hubs was going to put up some fencing, now it's going to have to be sooner rather than later since I'm not spending all that time sweating out there to provide a Bambi salad bar.

so, which is better?

I looked at the extended weather forecast for this week. Tomorrow it's supposed to be a high of 70, partly sunny and nice (the exact words). Wednesday it's going to be a high of 70, partly sunny and pleasant. So, which one is the better day, partly sunny and nice or partly sunny and pleasant? And, what's the difference? What makes Tuesday less pleasant than Wednesday? Curious minds want to know.

We had a great time at Angel #2's graduation party on Saturday. I'm not sure how many people were here, I'm guessing around 40. The original plan was that we were going to set up folding tables in the garage for eating, but it was pretty stinking cold, so the set up was moved inside. Thankfully, we live in a house that can easily accommodate 40 random people wandering around, even a bunch of teenagers having way too much fun popping balloons and playing a very boisterous game of spoons in the basement. Our very good friends from Hawaii showed up early in the afternoon. They were our closest friends when we were living in Hawaii and moved to Colorado a few months before we moved back to Wisconsin. They were on a working vacation in the Midwest and made a detour through Wisconsin so they could spend some time with us and it worked out perfectly that it fell on the same weekend as the graduation party. What a great weekend.

well, we had summer, now it's over

We had a couple days of 90 degree hot miserable weather, but overnight our temps dropped and this morning it was 51 degrees outside. I guess we had our summer and it's on to fall again. We had a bigger temperature span in 12 hours in Wisconsin then we ever had in the 5 years we lived in Hawaii. We had a monster thunder storm last night, which created the break in the heat. The wind was blowing and there's trees down all over the place. Lots of rain and a creepily orange sky made it look like an apocalypse storm or something. Thankfully, no tornadoes that I heard of.

We're more than happy to have a break in the heat. The whole family has been working together to tame the weeds trying to take over the garden. The heat and humidity mixed in with the dusty, dry soil made us look and feel pretty nasty. The girls and I had a little break on Tuesday and after working in the garden all morning, showered up and headed to the local library to set up for the booksale they're having this weekend. It was still hard work, 3 straight hours of hauling and piling books on tables, but it was in the air conditioned basement of the library, so at least we got a chance to cool off. Then, to celebrate getting it finished, we headed to McDonalds for nice, cold frappes. After we got home, we had to unload all the books we bought at the sale. That's one of the perks of helping set up for the book sale, we get first dibs on all the books. Yay for books. I think we're going to help take things down next week, so I'll pick through the books that didn't sell and dig through those. You just can't have enough books.

Today, the girls and I went shopping to get the food for Angel #2's graduation party. She wants a costume/fancy dress party, so not only do I have to make the food, but I've got to get dressed up too. I'm not sure what I'm going to wear yet, I don't have a whole lot of costume stuff sitting around in the closet. I'm sure I'll think of something, I usually do.

we finally meet

Yesterday, we went to a friend's daughter's graduation party. I've known this friend for about 18 years. We met when our two oldest sons were babies. We didn't see each other often, about once or twice yearly at church functions, we spent a lot of time together in the nursery since we each had babies number two and three around the same time as well. Until our recent move back to Wisconsin, where we now see her every Sunday morning and Wednesday night at church. Anyway, after knowing Julie for all this time, I've never met her husband, though she would talk about him frequently. Last night, after all those years of hearing about him, I finally met him. Now I can finally put a face to the name. He seems like a really nice guy and we had a great time over at their house. Next weekend, I think they're headed over to our house for OUR daughter's graduation party. What a busy time of year.

Angel #1 gave WE a Marine jarhead haircut Saturday night. When their hair is cut short, the boys have almost the same color, so now, when I can only see the back of one of the boys heads, I have a hard time telling them apart. Once I see the rest of them though, it's obvious who's who. Angel #1 definitely has turned into a man with huge, broad shoulders while WE is still in the middle of the whole boy to man transition, though WE is now taller than his big brother. He's got to take his glories where he can though, because even though he passed him by heightwise, #1 can still out run, out wrestle and out maneuver his little brother. Some day WE will equal or surpass #1 physically, but at the moment, he's still the dorky little brother.

finally silence

Angel #1 got home around 1am this morning and the first thing he did was attack his sleeping brother. Fortunately, they settled down and didn't get all wound up again until morning when they started arguing around 8am about who could do the most push-ups.

Angel #2's boyfriend has been spending the last couple nights sleeping on our sofa due to the fact that his mother is psychotic and he's working is way over to live with his grandmother. I think that besides his mother screaming obscenities, his house is usually fairly quiet, with everyone preferring to watch tv rather than talk to each other. He's having a bit of a culture shock being with our family 24/7, because it's really noisy and active at our house. I'm willing to guess that this is probably the first time in his life that he was woke up by a 15 year old boy galloping around the house like a horse while carrying his Marine Corps brother around on his back. This kind of goofing around went on pretty much all day and I was more than happy to have hubs take the boys out to the new house to get some work done. Now all the kids, including #2's boyfriend, have loaded up in the car to go to a friends house for a bonfire. For the first time since school let out for the summer yesterday afternoon, my house is peaceful and quiet. *sigh*

Thanks all, for the congratulations on the new house and on #2's graduation. So many changes in such a short time. The story of my life. Hubs is on his way to pick up Angel #1 at the airport. He graduated from combat engineer school today. Angel #4 and WE had their last day of school today and are already to goof off their way through summer. They'll have a rude awakening when we put them to work at the new house. We've already got them hauling out remodel garbage and weeding the garden. Now that we'll have them available 24/7...bwa-ha-ha They'll be our SLAVES!!! We gave our 30-day notice for the house we're living in now, so we've got a deadline to get the place livable. It wouldn't be so bad if hubs hadn't gotten carried away knocking out walls. Though it was necessary for some of them to go if we wanted the bathroom in, it just seems like walls were disappearing on a regular basis. Today it was the original bathrooms ceiling that got knocked out. It had to go so we can extend the plumbing to the new upstairs bathroom. Oh, so much work, but it'll be worth it.

Since it's such an old, beat up house, I'm going to have fun and go a little wild with the paint. I've got a plan for the kitchen and have searched the internet in vain for a kitchen with the color scheme I'm envisioning. I think that either means I'm ahead of my time or a crackpot. But, people made fun of my kitchen ideas when we built our house awhile ago, but once they saw the finished project, I got tons of compliments. Hopefully the same will happen this time as well. My first paint job will be the floors though. All through the upstairs, the living room and laundry room are all hardwood floors that have over a 100 years worth of coats of paint on them. I'm planning on adding one more coat to the collection. I'm also going to see how many layers of wallpaper I can get off the kitchen. My record is 5, which I peeled off the kitchen wall of the very first dilapidated farmhouse hubs and I lived in when we first got married. Now, 20 years later, we've come a full circle and are once again going to live in a dilapidated farmhouse. I've got a soft spot in my house for dilapidated farm houses, apparently.