Babysitting!!

Jessi had a continuing education class this last weekend so had asked me a long time ago if I would babysit! And as you can see from my previous post, we had a pretty big storm hit on Thursday night and Friday!

I made it into Woodland Park just fine but the town was virtually shut down! HMMMM - if I hadn't had to head for Denver, it would have made a GREAT snow day! But I was there and my boss (who didn't come in as I called him and told him NOT to!) said I could leave early and that's exactly what I did!

Because the radio announcer said to stay off the interstate as the accidents were so bad, I opted to take the back road up to Denver and that was a VERY wise decision!! There were a couple of snowy places but other than that, I made it just fine!!

I had an activity bag all packed for the weekend and as soon as Jessi left on Sat. morning, Evan drew out his first little note with what we were going to do! It was a fun day filled with crafts, games, playtime, and lots of laughs!


Evan loved using the glue stick - I think he would have glued all day if I would have let him! He was so proud of the crafts he did and we hung on the frig for mom and dad!

Kenzie, on the other hand, wanted to be right in the action also so I sat her up to the table and gave her colors and paper! If she ever got frustrated, I just gave her grapes, her favorite food!

Of course the BEST thing about having Nana stay is to wake her up in the morning!! I slept in the basement and because Evan and Kenzie are BOTH early risers, Jessi held them off till 6:45 the first morning and 6:20 for the second morning!! I appreciated getting to sleep in just a little bit!! But the hugs and tickles were well worth waking up for!!

Sunday it was nice enough that we could play outside and take a walk to the park! Our craft for the day was glueing macaroni of different colors and shapes to a paper plate - I forgot how much MORE fun the macaroni is to eat than to put on a plate!!

All in all, a great weekend - but I was ONE tired person when I arrived home..............

April 23 - Snow Day???

This is what we woke up to this morning!

It's still coming down - school is closed - I'm heading to Denver after work to babysit kids this weekend and was planning on playing outdoors!! Do you think we'll be building snowmen or what????

Gardening!

How do you like my fireplace? Do you think it's a new decorating style that I could promote?

As I told Amanda in her gardening blog, I AM NOT A GARDENER, NOR DO I EVEN ENJOY IT!! But Glenn, now he's still a farmer at heart and loves to grow things! Unfortunately at our elevation, it's pretty tough! But flowers do well, as long as you wait till AFTER Memorial Day to put them out - that's right, AFTER!

SO Glenn decided to start the pansies and marigolds inside this year and then transplant them outside, along with some cherry tomatos! The hardest part was trying to decide WHERE to hang up the grow light and that turned out to be quite a problem! The lower level is just too cool unless we have a fire going in the woodstove - the loft would have been perfect but where to hang a grow light? SO the main level it was! I was actually in scrapbooking when Glenn hooked everything up (without my permission of course but no matter) and the neighbor stopped by - him and Glenn came back to the room where I was scrapbooking and the neighbor commented on Glenn's new "garden area". I had no idea what he was talking about so ran out into the living room and there it was - hmmmmmmmm - not exactly MY style but knowing it wouldn't be there forever, I allowed him to keep it there!

Glenn refers to his plants as the "Jungle" and waters, mists, and fertilizes it with care!

I just smile, secretly knowing that I'm glad it's HIM and not ME that takes care of the jungle - I'll enjoy the flowers when they bloom!

FINALLY!

OUR WATER PIPES HAVE UNTHAWED! No more drippy hoses outside - No more letting the water run at night so the hose doesn't freeze! Anybody want to volunteer to help Glenn dig out the pipes this summer and bury them deeper?

An Easy Afternoon On The Credit Card!

Bet you just couldn't wait to hear about all my bargains at the 4-H Auction this afternoon! But there were no great bargains to be had this year! Darn - but I did donate one of my Swedish Weaved Blankets and I'm proud to say it sold on the live auction for $100!

Maybe it was a good thing I didn't spend very much at the auction today, since the Verizon bill popped across my computer tonight - yikes - it was triple the normal amount! After a brief conversation with my better half, he admitted that yes, he had been using his phone a LOT in the last month but of course forgot to tell me so I could call and put us on a higher minute plan! Double Darn!! He's in the dog house now!

I Can See Again!

Yes, I DID get my eyes checked on Saturday! I actually made an appointment at 9:30am because I figured if I didn't, I would talk myself out of driving to the Springs to get new glasses!

So I headed out early Saturday morning and fought fog all the way down - yuck - my poor eyes were probably strained from just trying to see the highway! It was NOT a fun drive! So I go into the eye doctor and he asks me if I had my glasses with me (I don't wear them unless I need to read something) and I hand them to him, telling him they're progressive lenses! He looks at them and says, "Sorry, but these are NOT progressive lenses, these are reading glasses at a 1.75 level". I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but of course that wouldn't have set too well since he was the doctor and I was the patient. Needless to say, things were starting to make sense now!

Let me back up - after Thanksgiving, we did our usual shopping day and because we were leaving for Disneyworld with Jaime's, I put all of our packages AND my purse (since I never take a purse on vacation - which also had my "good" glasses because I never take my good glasses on vacation either!!) into the downstairs closet! When we returned from vacation and I went to work that next week, I noticed the frames were really bent on my glasses - I figured they must have gotten squashed in that closet! I also noticed when I looked out the top of the frame (which is just clear glass) that I couldn't see across the street very well - it was blurry! I decided at that point it was REALLY time to get my eyes checked!

After trying to adjust my frames and not getting anywhere, I actually went to a place in W. Pk and had the gal adjust them - they fit better but I sure couldn't see out of the tops any better!

So fast forward to my eye appt - now it made sense - I couldn't see out of the tops of the glasses because these were NOT my progressive lenses - probably not even my glasses! I had just been wearing reading glasses for the past 4 months! WHERE ARE MY GLASSES???? Who knows - all I can think of is that somehow they got exchanged with somebody elses glasses at some point in time!! Yes, the frames LOOKED like mine but how often do you actually look at your frames?? My glasses stay at work the majority of the time and I use reading glasses around the house!

Not the first time I've had strange things like this happen to me!!

Anyway, I had my eyes checked and yes, I needed a stronger lense but did decide to go with progressive lenses again since I do sit at the computer all day long! But now I have to get used to them again, since apparently I HAVEN'T been wearing progressive lenses the last 4 months!!

I ended up getting 2 pair - one for work - one for the house! They were having a fantastic sale on Tommy Hillfilger frames so I just couldn't pass it up! And surely, I can't lose track of 2 pairs of glasses - can I?????

Weekend Here I Come!

I had big plans on washing my windows on Saturday - guess what - it's going to rain or snow all day long! HMMMMM - that project will have to be saved for another day!

On to the next project on my list - getting new glasses - why have I put this off for years? I have no idea - but it's getting to the point that I MUST do something pretty quickly! So my plan is to head to Colorado Springs and get an eye exam and new glasses - I think I keep putting it off because I'm scared I won't find any frames that I like AND I also like to have somebody else's opinion - which won't happen because I would be going by myself! I'll let you know the outcome on this!

And my plans for Sunday? It's the big 4-H auction in town!! Remember last year when I told you all about the fantastic bargains I got??? Stay tuned.............

OUCH!

There is a LOT of picking up, moving, rearranging, and dumping to be done on our property! Now that the snow is going away (although there are still drifts along the side of the driveway), it's time to don the sweatshirt and gloves and start in - and that's exactly what I've been doing after work each day!

Glenn is getting a start on moving all the granite and the large racks into his place of work - but I have to be patient as I know it all takes time! But there's a lot of "other" junk that can be done also!

Now that Glenn is not using the big garage nor the wood stove in the small garage, we can move all the stuff that was stored by the side of the house, into the garages! I've been attempting to do that, a little bit each day! And the place is starting to shape up which is exciting!

Anyway, there was one item that was froze into the ground yesterday - so I grabbed an old wooden pole (probably the handle from a rake or hoe) and started prodding and digging to loosen the item - unfortunately my hand slipped and OUCH, I had a huge sliver ( I called it a piece of wood) sticking out of my thumb! (Yes, it had went right through my cotton glove!) I pulled the sliver out and gosh was that thing sore!!

When I later went inside, I took a look at my poor thumb and realized there were 4 more splinters in it and it was throbbing pretty good! Glenn suggested I just wait till the next day until my thumb festered up a little, saying the slivers would come out easier that way!

By the time I went to bed, my thumb was throbbing so bad I couldn't stand it so I grabbed a needle and the flashlight and told Glenn to have at it!! But after digging and digging and me practically screaming, those darn slivers just wouldn't come out and I told him to stop!

Sure enough, the next day they came out much easier!!! Not without a lot of pain of course but since we were outside, I could scream all I wanted!! (Just kidding - I'm really not THAT much of a wimp!!) My thumb doesn't look too good today but I'm sure by tomorrow it will be back to normal!! Oh, the perils of working outside...................

3 Granddaughters - One Special Easter Dress

When Rayna was born on March 2nd, 2002, I bought her a cute little dress that Jaime dressed her in for Easter that year - she was 4 weeks old!

Of course, Jaime saved all of her "girl" clothes and passed them down to Jessi when she had Mackenzie! And when Easter rolled around in 2009, Mackenzie wore the same dress when she was 4 months old!

Now fast forward to Easter Sunday of 2010 - little Aleah, who is 9 months old, wore the SAME dress! How special is that to have all 3 granddaughters wear the same dress for Easter over an 8 year span????

Easter - Part 2

Did I forget to mention in my previous blog about the DIVINE homemade cinnamon rolls that Jessi had ready for us when we got up on Saturday morning? Or the fact that us 4 girls actually got over an hour by OURSELVES at Caribou Coffee to catch up with each other with NO KIDS! And the guitar lesson that I gave Rayna and her friend Kealy on Saturday night where they both learned to play 2 chords? I surely wouldn't have forgotten to say that Glenn DID get to go fishing with Robby and Brad but that they left at 8:30pm and didn't arrive home till 1:00 in the morning?

Easter morning arrived bright and sunny! Jessi and I had a lot of morning chores to get done to feed the 9 adults and 8 kids for lunch! A funny story about Jill's portion of the meal - she was to bring the crunchy coleslaw - she emails me earlier in the week ( as I had emailed her and told her to bring a DOUBLE batch because there were so many of us) and asks me if I'm SURE she needs to bring a double batch as that sounded like a lot of coleslaw - I emailed her back we did INDEED need that much for so many people. So she emails Jessi and asks her the same thing and Jessi replies just as I do - bring enough for a double batch. SO when she arrives, I ask her why she brought enough for a quadruple batch of coleslaw!!!! Seems like we had a recipe discrepancy!! Jessi's and I's recipes in our personal cookbooks have a single batch recipe, using one bag of coleslaw - the recipe in the "Gran" cookbook is printed already as a DOUBLE recipe so of course that's why she was thinking it was WAY too much - of course it was............

After a ton of pictures before and after church, we all sat down and ate - I was going to say we sat down and had a leisurely meal but actually that wasn't the case - with 8 kids, it was a little hectic! By the time I sat down with my plate, the kids were DONE and the adults were over 1/2 way done - but no matter - I did say it was FINALLY time to say the prayer so Jessi asked Evan if he would say it and he promptly says, "Nope - I have to go poop!!" So much for that!

We all met later on in the afternoon for Easter baskets and another egg hunt in the back yard!

The baskets were fun for the kids and Mackenzie didn't mind a bit as we piled a hat, sunglasses and bunny ears on her! Little Aleah didn't know what to think of all the commotion! But she sure enjoyed it all!

Another wonderful Easter has come and gone - and it's time to look forward to summer fun!

Easter - Part 1

He Is Risen! He Is Risen Indeed!

What a wonderful weekend to spend with family! Egg hunts, Easter baskets, church, a nice big meal, dressing up those darling grandchildren - and as always, the promise of springtime in the air!

Usually Jill hosts our Easter get-together up in Ft. Collins but reality has set in with our ever-growing family! I had to give up Christmas - Jill had to give up Easter!! It's so much easier for the 4 families to get together in Denver since there are two houses - more space, more sleeping arrangements for the kids, more refrigerator space!! Look at it this way, after we've trashed one house, we just go to the other one - (just kidding).

Easter weekend turned out really nice, weather wise - yes, it was a little cool and a lot windy at times but it made for some great kite-flying!

Saturday morning found us at an Easter Egg Hunt in Courtney's neighborhood (Jessi's friend). It was a well organized hunt with different sections for the age groups and the kids not only picked up a lot of eggs, but each got a prize! Of course it was a little crazy when they all ran out and after all the eggs had been picked up, we couldn't find Kylan! Lo and behold, he had ducked under the crepe paper that was separating the next group of hunters and was picking up THEIR eggs!

After lunch, naps and some kite flying, we colored eggs - Rayna had a couple of her friends there also so we had a great bunch of egg dippers! Evan and Kylan are getting much better at putting the eggs in the colored water and I believe only 1 or 2 cracked during that process!

It was a wild and crazy afternoon! And the sad part - you have to crack open those beautiful eggs to make the devilled eggs for the next day!! To be continued.............