A Very Over Due Update

 So I don't get much time to blog these days... ok, I don't get any time at all. 

I'm actually home sick today from work so I thought maybe I would take a little bit of time just to check in, show that I'm still alive and maybe one day I'll have the time to come back to this little hobby. 

I think it has been... 4 years since I updated? A lot of things have happened since then. My eldest daughter graduated High School and then Started College and just got Married a month ago. 

My youngest daughter graduates High School this year. She's still active in the shooting sports but had to drop band because they expected it to be her life and well that wasn't going to fly for any of us. 

I started working at my job as a full time salary employee doing not only my original drafting job, plus the engineering files but now help with maintenance planning and do all the MRO purchasing. It's a very demanding position so in away while I hate coughing my lungs out right now I am also glad just to be working from home while I'm sick because it has been a lot less stress. 

I still do some prep cooking though I need to get better at it because eating out has become too much of our lives with me working all the time.

My husband has been working from home for the last 18 months so that doesn't exactly help things. 

Oh we got a new dog a few years ago and a new cat. Sadly Polly (the cat) died of cancer and Blacky (the dog) died from seizures due to old age. 

So now we have Copper and Shadow. They are butts and completely different personalities. 

Hmmm other news. 

I got a camper this year because I needed to start getting out of town though that only happened for the first time last weekend because this summer the camper turned into more of a hotel for family, friends and even ourselves when the AC went out over a weekend this summer. 

Hope everyone is doing well! Be safe! 

Busy Monday, September 10th

Wow it really has been since March since I've been on.
I've been crazy busy.

First I'd like to say my eldest graduated from High School. My parents came out to visit for it and were here for a few weeks which it was nice to see them but it was so hot and humid they could hardly stand it.

We did have a good time though and I drove my mom to Paducah, KY for a big quilt fabric store they have there. We wanted to go to the quilt museum too but we just didn't have enough time. We had an adventure though getting there and then getting lost on the way home.


We gained a new member of the Sims's family.
Meet Copper.
On the left is about a week after we adopted him.
He's about 7 months old now and about 55 lbs! He's my big baby.

We had several Marksmanship events with Katherine this summer. Unfortunately because of marching band she wasn't able to compete in the state competition thi
s year.

She did excellent though. It's normally two steps forward and one step back with her growth and practice and being 14 now she's a full blown moody teenager who would rather text on her phone since she just got her first actual phone instead of a pre-paid for a weekend.

Katherine started High School this year and also joined ROTC so not only is she busy 3 days a week after school with Band practice but she shows up 2 days a week early to school for ROTC and she has events during the weekend so she is definitely a busy person!

Her sister attends college here in town for the time being and so the family dynamic really hasn't shifted too much.

I've also been doing some arts and crafts when I can find time.
This is a wreath I just made.

I'm also doing embroidery and beading. We had a craft show event myself and another lady attended this summer and we started an Etsy store though unfortunately I'm really bad with Etsy so I have to reset it up because things got messed up.

It is on my to do list though that list has gotten pretty long. Today I'm just focusing on finally putting up this post, making a meal plan and shopping list which I haven't done for weeks and enjoying the fact that after the tropical storm remnants came through this past weekend our temperature has dropped and it finally feels like fall.
I also canned a lot of corn this is only about half of what I did. They had corn 10 for $1 so I was able to can up enough corn for us to eat it once a week for the next year for $10. I didn't think that was too bad of a deal.

I also made a bunch of strawberry jam this spring.







Meal Plan

• Malibu Chicken & salad
• Steak, Corn, Mashed Potatoes
• Tacos
• Teriyaki Chicken, Veggies & Rice
• Pizza
• Pork Tenderloin Roast, Peas, Roasted or Baked Potatoes (haven't decided)
• Chicken nuggets & French fries.  

Well I better get back to it that's about as much time as I can spare at the moment. It's been good to touch base again. 

Busy Monday, March 19

So it has been since September since I've posted.
This particular one won't be very long because I'm hopping from one event to the next.
I've been busy with kids primarily.
I'm still leader of the STEM club so that eats up time... today I was working on the molecular make up of Borax... I'm not joking here.

Needless to say things are a bit crazy and getting even more so as a friend of mine and I are trying to start an etsy shop to pay for our crafting hobbies. I'm embroidering for it and she's sewing for it. It' been quite the ordeal so far. 

Today I squeezed in a nap though I shouldn't have on top of getting the car tags, meeting my new business partner about more supplies to giggle and contemplate, dog had to go tot he groomer,  I met my husband for lunch and then had to get new car tags, a new driver's license and then go get my monthly injection down at the hospital. Kids are home now we'll be leaving in an hour to go down town. Yesterday was the area schools Bands playing today is Choir both of which my youngest are in and tomorrow is Orchestra which my oldest is in.

It is non-stop busy. I was suppose to be working on the borax experiment this afternoon but I was just too tired.

I better scoot I didn't have time for a shower this morning thank goodness I don't have to show my license at bars any more but I'd rather not feel icky going down to the performance tonight.

Hope everyone is well. I haven't forgotten about this place I've just been so busy and so tired that I just can't will myself past staring at the TV once dinner is done.

Busy Monday, September 11th

Today's 'To-Do' List

• Blog - Apparently I need to put this because it's been way too many weeks now.
• Menu
• Shopping
• Clean around the house
• Lunch with Peter 
• 4-H Leadership Meeting

Menu

• Hamburger Helper
• Chili Dogs & Chips
• Chicken Nuggets & Fries
• Out to Eat for Brielle's Birthday
• Spaghetti
• Pizza - Birthday Party
• ?

This Week's 'To-Do' List

• Through week work & school for the family.
• Tuesday
• Parent/Teacher Conference
• Wednesday
• Brielle's Birthday
• Elizabeth - Work Luncheon
• Pick up/Give Pet's medications
• Saturday
• Brielle's Birthday Party - Will be at the house so will have to throw a fit and get some help preparing for it.

Last Week

Okay so last week. Let's work backwards. Sunday I took the day off. I needed the day off badly but then ended up having to be the chore fairy and go behind everyone and clean things up. I also woke up much earlier than I should have.
Saturday Katherine and I were in Lexington and up at 5:30 am, at the State Marksmanship Match by 8 am and were there until like 1:30-2 o'clock and then drove into town and had Fazoli's with the team. I'd like to mention I was extremely ill that morning trying not to throw up and that I had not really gotten any sleep the night before. Peter was home with Brielle because she had ACT that morning.

Friday, that morning Katherine informed us she needed to be drove into school. I was home sick from work. I was feeling slightly better at least enough to drive so that afternoon I was the one to take Katherine to Lexington. We got into Lexington about 10pm and had dinner at Texas Roadhouse and then got straight up to our room to go to bed. I was sad she wasn't able to go swimming in the pool but we had a lot of setbacks.

Thursday I was home from work sick and went to the doctor on that day. VERY severe UTI. I had been in excruciating pain where I couldn't function. I got my medication but spent the rest of the time in bed pushing fluids when I was awake, popping pain pills and couldn't even eat. I knew I had been fighting one for a week but Wednesday is when the pain started to kick in and it only got worse. I was seriously thinking I guess it was my bladder on my left side was going to explode from all the pain I was feeling internally. 

Wednesday, I wasn't feeling well so I left work about an hour early because I was just trying to push. I should have gone to the doctor that day but I'm stubborn and there is always so much to do.

Tuesday general day.... Oh but Katherine had to be drove into school to redo some tests.

Saturday-Monday (Labor Day weekend) ... Longest Garage Sale ever... I was exhausted and didn't help I had already had the UTI at that point so I was just fighting through everything. Monday because I wasn't feeling well (this UTI thing is the reason I'm going backwards on this timeline because you can just see the build) I had Peter go to a friend's kiddo's first birthday party with the kids because I really didn't feel well enough to go.

Okay funny story from that weekend. So Saturday we have our first day of the garage sale. That evening we pack everything under the carport but I'm a light sleeper so just as I lay down in my granny nightly I hear this bang like something falling so I run outside to the porch in just my nighty and I see this guy quick walking away from the side of my property through the yard of my neighbor and up to outside street and he calls over, "I ain't did nothing wrong ma'am" and then takes off running. So I notice there is a police car on the main road with it's lights on apparently stopped for something so I grab my robe and slippers and walk out there to talk to the officer. I wanted to make sure this guy wasn't related to whatever the problem was and he wasn't. So I go back to the house and can't really sleep now so I'm sitting on the porch posting on facebook, keep in mind this is like 1-2am, and suddenly I hear a donkey! No joke. I thought I was losing my mind but nope then I hear it again and later a 3rd time. At that point I went to bed because this was just too crazy for me.

So that was last week. Apparently I haven't posted since the 14th... wow. Life is just crazy it seems. 

30th I spent the day after work down at the dealership having my car worked on so I could finally put gas in it and not have to spend 5 minutes trying to start it every time I got gas... no joke.
29th We had a big meeting at the school for all the senior parents going over the craziness which will be our schedule of meetings trying to get our kids ready for the next step in their lives. 

26th Peter took Katherine to Marksmanship and then showed up later for another friend's daughter's first birthday Party which is where I was all that morning. And then if I remember correctly we went and played MtG and I wasn't very happy about it because it was a random deck buy in and I wasn't happy with mine.

21st Was the Solar Eclipse and we drove down to Hopkinsville so that we could see Totality. There are not words. You literally cannot keep your glasses on during Totality because you can't see a thing with them on. The world isn't dark but an eerie hue and you can see why people would freak out because for the longest time the moon looks to move over the sun at a pretty good rate and then once it reached Totality it just seemed to stop. Words just cannot describe it and I am completely planning a trip for the next one in 7 years.



The 19th my little one turned 13 years old! We went to Holiday World and then she got to see Skillet in concert. 
I wish the camera on my phone was a little better. Funny thing is Katherine really didn't even watch the concert so much as she just danced and enjoyed the vibrations more than anything else. 
Brielle & Katherine's first true 'rock' concert. 








I think that should pretty much sum things up for the last few weeks.

Busy Monday, August 14

Today's 'To-Do' List

• Pay Bills
• Make lesson plan for 4-H STEM Meeting
• Go to the Post Office
• Go by the craft store
• Work on the house
• Decide if I'm going to go into work for a little bit (knowing me probably not but it'd be smart to)

Menu

• Food .. for the sake of posting this up sometime today since it's taken me on and off all day I will just say I will make sure food is served this week. What type? Well that will depend on how tired I am each day. 

This Week's 'To-Do' List

• Tuesday
• I have a dentist appt I have to leave work for. They never called up to schedule me it's no been over a year since I've been and noticed one of my teeth looks like it has a cavity (sighs). I have very thin enamel I'm suppose to be at the dentist 3 times a year. 
• Wednesday

• 1 pm I have to be at the Orthodontist to go over stuff for Katherine getting braces. She's already had the initial appointments to get pictures and stuff of her teeth so this is just to discuss treatment. 
• 4:30 pm is 4-H STEM Club. I will hopefully have everything ready for them to make little stick fans that I'm printing off from NASA's website that has information and a place to poke out the pinhole for the eclipse on next monday. (I will not be blogging that day)
• Thursday
• 4pm Orthodontist appt for Brielle
• Friday
• Probably take kids down for Pokemon Club. I'm assuming Peter will play cards but we will probably have one of Katherine's friends spend the night Friday and Saturday night. 
• Saturday
• Katherine's birthday! Big 13!
• Go to Holiday World all day. It is also their Christian Rock Festival and the last performance is Skillet so yes we will be at the amusement park all day! 
• Sunday
• Sleep in hopefully. 
• Get Katherine's Friend Home
• Get ready for the work week

Last Week

I'm not sure what to say about last week. The kids started back school. My oldest pulled some stuff so we're dealing with personal nastiness that may result in us sending her away... Really don't want to go too much into that. Life isn't all peaches and cream sometimes it gives you cow pies.

Hmm... I'm getting ready to can some more because I have a lot of cucumbers I need to go ahead and use.
A few weeks ago I canned up 30 lbs of tomatoes. I made salsa and then I turned around and made spaghetti sauce. And very stupidly I opened a lid without gloves so the skin is still peeling from my right hand index finger. There for awhile my hand was pretty wrapped up and I can't tell you how many things I defrosted trying to take the heat out of my hand. It was pretty bad. 

We had our back to school bash bbq no pictures this year. We were all pretty busy with stuff and it was pretty last minute we decided to go ahead and do it so I took the Friday off before as a vacation day and we hauled stuff to the dump and worked our tail ends off trying to get things to an acceptable level. It was a beautiful day! And if I didn't have to block off the carport due to sun for the movies for the kids I wouldn't have even needed a fan.

Hmm what else have I done since last being on.... Thrown stuff in on a garage sale a couple weekends. Oh one weekend was horrific for temperature.

The kitchen is now done. It's still disorganized and dirty so no pictures but I have handles on my cabinets so I can open things finally. We just need to start moving back into the house again and I need to turn in the storage building before we have to pay for another month. 

Oh and back on July 19th I took the kids to the County Fair. Brielle has a painting going to state and Katherine has her windmill going to State! 


  

Catching Things Up

So I figured I'm long overdue for a post. There has been a lot going on over here so I'm going to just probably gloss over a lot because I've forgotten more than I can even think of.

At my last post update the kids were still in school and we were dealing with pretty normal stress. Since then... Oh boy...

Well my daughter started letting her boyfriend into the house during the middle of the night... yup new locks, security stuff, police, phone calls and well I think I'm still the most hated mother as I am forcefully removing this person from the picture. I can't help my daughter has no common sense but this boy oh jeeze piece of work his family no better. LONG story with lots of boo hoo wooh is me... Yeah don't care.

Then my grandfather died right before OMGcon. So I made arrangements to go to his funeral later that week which was going to be a long drive but we were in still full gear trying to get costuming for the kids done for OMGcon. Of course the costume I was sewing my daughter never got a picture in instead got a picture in her silly sheet ghost one on a different day.
Anyways why was I at OMGcon and not at my Grandpa's funeral? Well my husband was cutting on some plastic and stupidly was forcing the exacto knife towards him and tried to remove his finger he succeeded in having a large flap of a fingertip aka we were at the emergency room all night and I stayed home to help take care of him. I late find out that while I wasn't there my uncle while talking with the lawyer and settling the estate with my other uncle and mother decided he wanted to try and push to sue me to pay me back for gifts my grandfather sent 8 years ago. No joke. It's amazing what you find out about family but my mom and other uncle quickly put a stop to that.

So after all this life moves on I decide now is the time to get the floors in the kitchen and living room redone and redo the kitchen so I can have a built in dishwasher this was back on June 16th. Well the floor was a disaster so of course I complained and the contractor took me for $1700 not counting materials so he quit. So there we are with a floor not properly done and NO kitchen as in everything was ripped out. Thankfully we were able to get another guy in because it's good to know people and it's good to know good people that while they are tired and over worked they won't leave people in a bind.
Oh yeah our floor was bad. I mean really bad! It would have been destroyed by this winter because it was not properly installed. We are trying to proceed in recovering from that. If you want to see some of the videos (my husband has the rest because some of the times my phone was dead) I will post the links down below.
So here we are in the middle of July and I finally have a house back. We just got furniture back in the house Saturday and we're starting to try and unpack and move back in which has turned into a long process.

Oh I also took over being 4-H STEM leader because no one else stepped up. It hasn't been the most positive experience before but hopefully that will change.

On a positive note Peter and I did get to go see Jeff Dunham last week so that was a lot of fun and we really needed some time to laugh and destress.

Hmm other stuff. Magic the Gathering had another pre-release so pretty much everyone but Katherine has put in several hours working at the gaming shop last week to try and get store credit to feed the addiction of card games and board games.


Links:
When The Contractor Quit
Day 1 Start
Day 1 Pulling Floor Up Kitchen
Day 1 Floor Going Down Kitchen
Day 2 Work
Kitchen Work
Kitchen Done
Living Room Done

Okay so what's planned for Monday? Well move moving stuff in. Brielle needs to babysit. Both kids have to get their acts in gear to finish stuff to turn in for the fair Tuesday. They also want to can salsa so we will just see where we get.
I have an appointment for B-12 shot too.

Rest of the week? Work mostly. Brielle is volunteering down at 4-H taking fair entries Tuesday. Weekend we have some birthday parties to go to.

That's stuff in a nutshell. We cannot thank our friends enough with offer of food, help with labor, help with moving us back in... just with everything even just being emotional support. I'm sorry I haven't been posting but that's life.

Busy Monday, May 8

Today's 'To-Do' List

• Cleaning around the house
• Make a menu
• Grocery Shopping
• Lunch with Peter
• Try and work on Wind Turbine Project
• Mow the lawns
• Work in the Garden area

Menu

• ?
• Chicken & Something got to figure this out
• Spaghetti w/Italian Sausage
• Pork Tenderloin (crockpot) & unsure of sides I'll put with it yet 
• Pizza
• ?
• Mother's Day so I figured I'd let the family figure this one out

A lot of work still needed on the menu but I figured I'd post this up so I don't miss yet another week. 

This Week's 'To-Do' List

• Thursday
• Choir Concert
• Band Concert
• Friday
• Start of city BBQ Festival
• 7-9 Middle School Dance
• Pokemon Night
• Friday Night Magic Card Game
• Saturday
• City BBQ Festival Continues
• 9-11 4-H Marksmanship
• Brielle has a field Trip meeting at 3:30
• Sunday
• Mother's Day so I plan to take the day off and perhaps workoutside.

Last Week

I'm not sure what even to write on this since it has been several weeks. We've been busy with school stuff, shooting competitions, dances, camps, etc.
Been keeping super busy and been trying to go out and help friends with their projects too so I'm pretty just worn down. I took yesterday (Sunday) off and tried to just relax some though I have to get stuff done today and try and catch up on some things that have been falling behind.
You'll notice I mentioned a Wind Turbine project too. I'm taking over the 4-H STEM club in our area so the project I have planned is to make Wind Turbines with them. I've gotten a lesson plan together but now I need to build a working Wind Turbine and get project kits together.
I've also purchased a bunch of fabric to start on costumes for the June OMGcon but that requires having space to work so that's an ongoing project just to find space.

A few pictures from the last few weeks.

Shooting Competition

Cupcake Making Class

Katherine in the Bunk area for Movie Making Camp

Brielle from before her Junior Prom