That's My Girl

I have mentioned in the past that Teresa is involved with the Color Guard at her school. They have not been very active this year because they do not have a coach. However, several of the kids from last year decided to get together and put a routine together for the homecoming parade. The result...my Teresa on the front page of the Sunday paper. You Go Girl!!

Praying For Stellan

Poor little Stellan is in the hospital again. He is in pretty bad shape. This bout with SVT is happening very fast and he is not doing well with it. Please keep Stellan and his family and most importantly his doctors in your prayers as they decide what is best for him.
Since it is also his birthday. You can send birthday wishes too. What a crappy 1st birthday.
Here is a link to MckMama's blog.

Look At What I Got To Do!!!

For Christmas last year, my sweet, wonderful, awesome husband surprised me with quite the unusual gift. An introductory flight lesson! My husband...the one who not only *loathes* flying but doesn't like it when the girls and I fly either. Who'da thunk it?
My sister-in-law came down from Massachusetts to go up with me and she is the awesome photographer.
I never realized how close some of the towns in our area are "as the crow flies". It takes about 45 minutes to get from where the airport is to a little town near us called St. Michaels. Up in the air...they are about 5 minutes across the water from each other. I flew the plane over to our town and checked out the sites. I found our house, the coffee shop, and lots of other places. I circled around our house twice so that Dan and the girls could come out and see us flying past. Wicked cool!!


Here Marghee and I are in front of the plane.


















Here is the instructor. His name was Seth. OMG was he HOT!!! I do not normally check other guys out, yk since I'm married and all but when one is shoved under your nose it's hard to miss. I wish I had a better picture but these two with the plane were taken with my cell phone because my camera ran out of juice during the flight. I figure it's ok to look, right?? And maybe convince Marghee to come back and take her own lesson...with Seth as her teacher.

















Here is our neighborhood.

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I did not find a post-it note on a box of animal crackers at Target. There was not an incredibly vulgar picture drawn with the words accompanying it. It was not of a part of the male anatomy. I was not appalled to find it on something that children would be picking up and looking at. Who does things like that? I did take it off and throw it away.

I was not at Target solely to use a coupon I had for $1 off a Target Cafe item. I did not chose their popcorn & soda combo. This was not before 11am and right after cardio tennis. I always eat healthy snacks after working out and save popcorn for movie nights.

I did not look in the mirror on Monday after my shower and decide to chop a few inches off my hair...by myself. I am totally not too cheap to go get it cut. It has not been since February that I have gotten a haircut. It is not a really good thing my hair is very curly so you can't see how uneven it is. Teresa is not the only person to say anything about it.

When I was finished at cardio tennis on Wednesday I went into the Y to shower. When I was finished and getting dressed, I did not find out that my drink had leaked into my bag and my undies were rather damp. I did not consider going commando but decided against it. When forced to pick between sweaty, damp panties and drink dampened panties, the drink ones won hands down.

I do not need to warn everyone to watch themselves if they are driving in our area because my eldest daughter is the proud owner of a drivers permit. Yikes!

Teresa did not have a bit of an accident this week while trying to rush to grab the phone. I am not going to have to make a trip to Lowes to find a perfectly matched cabinet door. I am not hoping the landlord won't notice if it's not the exact same door. I *did* manage not to yell and scream at her when I found out...a big accomplishment for me as I am a yeller (but trying to quit)




























I do not have a post in the works that will shock and amaze you. My sister in law came for a visit this weekend and we went and did *not* do something totally awesome!!! I did not mention it several months ago in this post and this post but it had to be postponed and we did not finally get a chance to do it yesterday. Any guesses?!?!? Except you Heidi!

Have a great Monday!

Pedestrians Beware!!

Well...Maybe it won't be that bad but I feel a moral obligation to warn everyone that my oldest is the proud new owner of her first learner's permit. Dan is taking her out this weekend for her first driving lesson. Better keep an eye out when you're walking down the sidewalks.

Wordless Wednesday - The Joy Of Mastering Hopscotch

Holly Hobbie Dress

Here is another old post to read. This one is from last year around this time.

We didn't do much to post about this weekend so I had to come up with something different. I noticed a dress in Rebecca's closet that she hadn't tried on yet. This dress was made for me by my grandmother when I was about 2. We've always called the dress my "Holly Hobbie" dress. Over the years, each of my girls have worn the dress with pictures taken. I went on a hunt a few days ago and found pictures of Taylor and Teresa but couldn't find Jaquelyn. Then I remembered that I used to used Searsphotos.com to develop all my film. Lo and behold I found her picture on their website. I took pictures of Rebecca wearing the dress and now I can post pictures of each of us wearing the dress. Cool, huh? Unfortunately, the bonnet disappeared along the way.

Here I am wearing it with the bonnet at 2 or 3






















































Here is Taylor at 3 or 4 with my grandparents. This is my grandmother that made the dress for me.













































Here is Teresa wearing the dress. Again at my grandparents house a few years later.





















































Jaquelyn wore it for Easter when she was 3.



































And finally it was Rebecca's turn.

I Love Pictures!

I was at a loss for posting ideas so decided to rerun an old post from back when I didn't actually have any readers.

Here is a really cool idea that I borrowed from my Mom. We all love pictures of our kids, right? Well you can only put up so many with frames. And then you have so many holes in your wall and if you happen to rent like we do it is a major pain when you leave to fix them all. (Although this time I invested in those cool 3M hooks that don't leave any marks on your walls....they work for the most part but aren't perfect every time.) I do still have some framed pictures on the wall...mostly ones from Sears and quite a few on the table in front of the wall as you can see by the pic.

Soooooo the perfect solution?? Put up a collage of pictures of your kids all over a section of wall with blue painters tape. It is really cool and so much fun. I love looking at it and noticing pictures that I haven't looked at for awhile. It is up to you how you do it. I trimmed a lot of my pictures so that I could get just the part of the picture I really wanted to see, but there are some that are still whole so they aren't ruined. Then just start arranging them on your wall, mixing them all up time wise.
It is a big hit when guests come over. Especially if you happen to have a picture of them up somewhere. Challenge them to find it. I will say that Teresa dubbed it the "Wall of Weirdos" but that is to be expected from the teen aged girls who are totally embarrassed when their friends come over and check out baby pictures of them.

Gotta Love Coupon Shopping!

I had a stellar day yesterday at the grocery store. Acme was having a great sale and I didn't even realize it. It's a good thing I read Shosh's and Sara's blogs or I might have missed it completely. I didn't make out quite as good as they did since I didn't have any coupons for cat/dog treats but I did pretty well with the other items on my list. I was dangerously low on oatmeal for the upcoming winter months and Acme decided to have a sale before I completely ran out. So glad am I. I picked up 4 big containers of Quaker Oats for .875 cents each. Gotta love it! These normally run about 4.99 so that was awesome in my opinion. Throw in some Barilla Picollini pasta at .25 cents a box and a ton of yogurt with great coupons and I am sitting pretty. The Quaker granola bars were a mere .50 cents per box and I even had coupons for Crush. I rarely see soda coupons so that was unexpected but welcomed.
All told I spent 43.07 on groceries that would have been 127.43. Definitely a good day at the grocery store. Gotta love coupon shopping!

Wordless Wednesday

So Much For Normal

I guess I spoke too soon. Dan's work sent him home because he is still not functioning where he should be. He goes back to the doctor tomorrow and we'll see where we are going from there.

Back To Normal

Well we are back to normal finally. This is the first day in two weeks that everyone has been at school or work like they should be. Unfortunately I only get two days of normalcy. The public schools have Thursday and Friday off for parent conferences and some in-service day so three of the kids will be home again. I truly can't wait til next week....normal all the way. (providing no one gets sick or their head bumped)
This is really cutting into my tennis playing. :-( And I only have a few more weeks and then the weather cuts it off until spring. There are times it would be nice to live on the west coast or in the south. Tennis all year round! Oh well, maybe I will have to try out the racquetball courts more this winter. I am not looking forward to going back to boring working out on the various machines in the Y. Once you've tried Cardio Tennis, you'll never go back. It is so much fun! The hour goes by like lightning.

Boot To The Head

Well I know I joked about my poor hubby and his bump on the head but it really was quite the bump. He had a cat scan done Sunday evening at the emergency room but everything was normal. The doc said no work til Wednesday but see your regular doc first. We went and saw a doctor at the practice (his regular was sick) and she said no work all week! He was still feeling pretty dizzy when ever he moved around and being in a moving vehicle was particularly bad for him. He was rather slow when answering her questions, yk the ones they ask when trying to test your cognitive skills. Like, what day of the week is it...count backwards from 100 by 7's...who is the president...etc.
We went back today and he did much better ( with only minor cheating such as memorizing the counting backwards thing and checking the calendar for the date & day of the week before she came in). He has been cleared to head back to work on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday for his office). I am hoping he is truly better by then. Driving for himself is still a little iffy but hopefully by Tuesday that will have faded too.
It's times like these that I truly dislike the place he works at. They have NO sick leave. If you don't have any vacation time saved up and you get sick, then you don't get paid. This totally stinks!! He is hoping to be able to claim short term disability so we will get a portion of his check but otherwise, this is a whole week with no pay. Not good in times like these. I have applied to several places in town looking for a part time job to pick up some extra work but nothing has come of it so far. This is a definite disadvantage to living in a small(er) town. There are not nearly enough overnight positions available. Oh well, keep your fingers crossed and hopefully something comes up soon.

Wordless Wednesday - Locks Of Love

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

We had a very full day planned on Saturday with many errands needing to be accomplished on the other side of the bridge. At our very first errand I left 3 of the kids in the car while Taylor and I ran into Target. When we came out five minuets later it was not to find that Rebecca had thrown up in the van. I did not decide that she had just eaten too much at breakfast (4 cinnamon rolls) and was fine. We did not continue along with our errands. She did NOT throw up two more times. We did not still finish what we needed to do because I decided she wasn't really sick. (although we did keep a plastic bag with us) What kind of parent drags their child on errands while they are throwing up? Not Me!

I did not volunteer for some extra work on Saturday night and end up working until 3AM!! I was not then very cranky to everyone on Sunday causing my kids to ask me to go to bed early Sunday night.

I did not Not get to sleep early Sunday night because my husband slammed the back of his head into our metal futon frame which resulted in a trip to the emergency room. He did not give himself quite the concussion with the whack. It wasn't after midnight when we finally got home. I am ABSOLUTELY going to nap today.

Being the ever loving and caring wife, I did not take advantage of my husbands confused state at the emergency room and tease him. When he addressed me by name I did not look at him in all seriousness and say "My name is not Heidi". It did not totally throw him off and take him ages to figure out I was kidding. I do not continue to tease him with little things every now and then. I am soooo not that mean. I am not giggling right now as I am remembering.

I am not totally psyched to be in the top 10 on MckMama's Not Me list!

Still Not So Sick Kid

Unbelievable...Jaquelyn is still home sick. This stinking fever will just not go away. I can't ever remember her missing 4 days in a row of school but it certainly looks like she will not make it in tomorrow too.
She is not deathly ill by any means and you wouldn't even know she is sick to look at her. She just can't seem to shake this fever. Today she has been holding steady around 100 but other times it varies between 99-103. I have been to her school to pick up work for her to do and I will be heading there again tomorrow to get the work from today and tomorrow. So at least when (and I do mean when) she goes back on Monday, she won't be so far behind.


This is what she spent part of today doing.