Busy Monday, February 24

Today's 'To-Do' List

• Get this Blog up!
• Menu
• Groceries
• Buy Fabric (kids have 4-H in a couple weeks but I have a coupon for this week off of fabric)
• Catch up on Laundry (it has ate the house!)
• Clean the Fish Tank
• Catch Up Dishes
• Make up crustless breakfast quiches for week
• Bake muffins for Peter

Menu

• Brats & Chips (Something other than chips for me I'll have to see if something jumps out at me at the store)
• Spaghetti & Chicken
• Hamburger Helper w/Green beans
• Pizza
• Chicken Nuggets/ Fish Sticks & French Fries/Tater Tots
• Turkey & Gravy w/Mashed Potatoes & Corn

This Week's 'To-Do' List

• Brielle's Sock-Hop (School rescheduled it due to weather)
• Transplanting Workshop @ Extension Center
• Finish college application for Brielle & schedule Compass Test

Last Week

It is hard to believe last week was only one week as it seems like it should have been two weeks! 

Katherine had a hard day at school middle of last week which made a lot of stress at home as she let her emotions get the best of her. We had studied for her states test for nearly 3 weeks because of all the time out of school for snow but we had studied them the wrong way State - Capital which we found out on her pre-test will cause her to have them all marked wrong because it has to be Capital - State so she had a lot of studying to do the night before the test to try and switch around her thinking so the next day she had a meltdown when she forgot what the fun activity was she was suppose to go to for something called 'Sharpen the Saw' and the teacher told her that she didn't have time to help her figure out where she needed to be and just sit down and read. Poor girl started crying so hard she had to go to the office, got wrote up and a half day of school suspension! Not generally what folks blog about we always want our families to look so great but the reality is things don't always go as we planned. I'm praying that today she does well. We very much treat our children like little adults and take an active interest in what they have to say to us but sadly teachers at the school don't have that luxury so it always makes the switch from home to school very rough. Katherine admitted she did wrong by getting so upset and I can't ask much more from her other than to try harder not to get so upset. 

We got a rather big wind storm and the sirens went off once but most of the storm was located all around us but it avoided our town. As I like to say not even the weather wants to be in our town. We did get some gusty winds though. 

It blew around the old Big Lots greenhouse and killed it.  and I had balls all across the yard. There were some limbs down too. 

After work one day last week I said heck with it and went to Menards and bought a greenhouse. A nightmare greenhouse apparently because it was horrible to try and get together. I tried to have the girls level out the ground too but we were burning daylight so I'm going to have to try and relevel the area later. Saturday was our one nice day with being in the low 60's and then the temperature dropped again sharply. Sunday my husband and I were outside freezing trying to finish constructing the nightmare building.
I was trying to figure out shelving for the greenhouse because the shelving you can buy for it is really expensive and I don't know about anyone else but I'm not really made of money. It occurred to me to take apart the old greenhouse and use those shelves! Reuse what I have and save a ton of money!

Girls tilling

This past Saturday the whole family got ready early and we went down to the public library. Brielle stuck with me and Peter and Katherine found something to go read. I went down there for the unveiling of the Plant Library which is very cool to say the least. We first sat through an hour long lecture given by a lady from the Extension Office about gardening and then we went down stairs where they unveiled an old card catalog cabinet (remember those?) and inside were packets of seeds! You were allowed to take 5 free of charge! Later they will be switching the seeds out for the new crops and there is a possibility of a person getting up to 60 free packets of heirloom seeds per year! There is an article in the newspaper about it today so I'm actually going to go out and buy the paper!

While we were in the lecture I had received a phone call (thank goodness I had my phone on silent) and it was the jewelry shop where I dropped off my rings and Peter's all to be repaired it was my late Valentine's gift. They had our rings ready! I was told it was going to be a couple weeks but they got them done much sooner than that!

 I haven't been able to really wear my rings without a great deal of vaseline since I have had Brielle (over 13 years ago!) and the price was so great to have them brought up 2 sizes that I never thought I was going to be able to get them fixed but we have a local jeweler in town  whose prices beat those chain places in the mall hands down! Peter broke his ring a couple months ago and has felt naked without it, so he is happy to have his back too.


The girls had STEM club last week and the club is going to start building a robot from legos (yes they make those kits but they are expensive!) and the plan is once we get an idea that later this year when the new challenge comes they will enter it. Have you ever heard of FLL? It's First Lego League and yes it is a real thing across the country where teams of kids build robots out of legos and then compete against other teams! They build the whole thing and then they even have to program it!

Peter took Brielle to the Community Campus informational meeting and they found out a little more about it. Brielle and I finished her application for Community Campus but I'm still working on the application for the community college. I'm thinking I may just have to go down there because essentially what we are doing is signing Brielle up for college courses and paying for them (though at a greatly reduced cost).  Next week is the scheduling fair at the High School (yes we are already having to figure out Brielle's high school courses for next year!) so I really need to get on the ball but they did say at the informational meeting that if she had not completed everything yet for getting into the program they would still schedule her like she had. So I probably don't need to push this through as fast as I'd like to but I just want to get it off our plate and be something we don't have to worry about.

Pretty much that was last week. I went to my doctors appointment, the kids had President's Day off so they went shopping with me and found out the joys of the damaged food aisle and discount meats. Heck on our pork night I rolled their meat is cajun seasoning because they requested it and they loved it, it has been their new favorite seasoning on top of I got a discount pork tenderloin it was their first time having tenderloin and needless to say it was a hit though they will be disappointed to know that won't happen often we just got lucky.

Have a good week folks!