End of an Era

PJ's last night as a bartender was this past Friday.

It was a fun night. Here are all the pictures....

In other news, we had a 4th-of-July-early-surprise-birthday-party (for PJ's mom) on Saturday. I don't have any pictures of it. *shrug* Sunday, we had lunch with some friends. Delicious pizza and good company!!

This coming week, we'll get ready for Samantha's birthday. She'll be 16 on Thursday! Woohoo!

The Cat's Out of the Bag

In case you haven't heard yet, PJ is only working two more bar shifts...tonight's (which is already half over as I write this) and next Friday. He's going to be around on Friday nights again!! We're excited!

Family pics tomorrow. Can't wait - they'll be fun! Kerry is staying with us tonight to make it easier to get going in the morning. Yay!

Okay, I must go sort the laundry so I'm not TOTALLY behind all weekend. Later!

Four Years Already?

Today is our 4 year wedding anniversary. :) I can't believe it's been 4 years already. Where has the time gone? And we still like each other. HA!

Happy Anniversary, PJ! Here's to the next four. :D

I *heart* you.

Holy Forgetful Blogger!!

I completely forgot my May birthdays, didn't I?!

Happy Belated Birthday to you all!!

Will (5/6)
Dad (5/29).

And Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there. LOL. I'm so late!

I can almost feel my fingers...

So, last week...Wednesday to be exact, we had some serious storms come through our area. We lost power at work. We lost power at home. We almost NEVER lose power at home, so when it didn't come back on after a couple hours, PJ and I began to formulate our "what do we do with all our frozen goods?" plan.

Well, we went to the store and picked up 6 - 20lb bags of ice. We transferred everything into the chest freezer and then packed it full of ice. We opened two bags and left three intact. We put the 6th bag into the upright that's in the basement. We had already lost the ice cream and a few other miscellaneous items, but the meat was all still frozen when we made the transfer.

Then the power came back on (it was off a full 24 hours). That was good. Especially since we are experiencing a freakin' heat wave right now (and right after the storms too...they ushered in the hot weather).

Last night I took three bags of ice out of the freezer and Ethan dumped them all over the trampoline. Tonight, I had to dig out the loose ice. My fingers have almost thawed. At least all the frozen good are back in their correct place and we're having steak for dinner tomorrow. :D

In other news, it's already June 10 and I haven't wished anyone a happy birthday.

Happy Belated Birthday, Chris (June 5) and Happy upcoming Birthday, Tammy (June 14).

And Neil, don't think I've forgotten you even if you ARE in Hawaii...Happy Birthday (June 25)!!!! Bring me back something cool. :)

I hope everyone is well. :)

Yeah, whatever

So, okay, I'm like 2 months behind. Sorry, I've been busy. I'm not going to even try to get to pictures anytime soon. HA!

Happy post Memorial Day. Hope it was a good weekend for you.

We were busy. Four BBQs in 3 days. Was really nice to see PJ's family from the NJ area. They came down to MD and we went up. Nice time. :)

Ethan only has a few baseball games left... I'm very happy about that...tired of all the running around. Ethan went to FL this weekend with his dad for his Grandma's wedding. Congrats to Patty and Barry!!

Um...I'm sure there's more... Joe's home from school. Not sure if he's working yet. HELLO boy...get a job!

Megan, Sam and Ethan are all ready to get out of school. I don't blame them. Ethan and Sam seem to be doing really well. We're not sure about Megan yet.

Work has been SO busy. I'm in class the next two days and Ethan has a game on Wed night... busy, busy, busy. Can't wait for the weekend again! LOL

Barely Hanging On!

Just coming up for air long enough to let you know I'm still alive. Too busy to do much of anything these days and I'm WAY behind in my posting. So, **waving hello** to everyone....I hope to be back soon with updates and pics!

Teaser Pic

Really, I'm going to post more soon.

Look how big he is?! :-O He's almost a teenager....

A Happy Picture

I owe you guys more pictures and updates, but I have a funny little picture story for you.

We have this nice (unassuming, practical) little dry erase board in our bathroom.














It matches the theme of our bathroom and it lets us write little notes to each other. Like this one:











One day, I came in and found this!

In case you can't tell, that's supposed to be me and PJ in a hammock, declaring our love for one another. None of the kids claims it as their work and neither PJ nor I drew it...it's a mystery. I asked them about it and now there's a new picture on the white board that no one will claim (same general theme, but I think I know this artist's handwriting.) Silly kids. :P

For your viewing pleasure, here's the complete picture.













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In other news -

Ethan's team won their game on Saturday (second one). Their game tonight was rained out. I'll have pictures from opening day soon (they're downloaded, but not yet uploaded).

Our sodded lawn looks AWESOME.

My flowers are all blooming. :) Check out this cool tulip.

Go Nationals!

Ethan's LL team won their first game last night. It was a fun start for them to the season. Of course, we have friends on the losing team and that's always a bummer. :(

We're going to a Passover Cedar (Seder also) on Saturday night. I'm excited to go!

The sod/grass is growing! Yay!

Let's see... I guess that's all. haha. Have a great week!

We have not fallen off the face of the earth

I promise....we are still here. I might even have stuff on which to update you. I just need to get on it. :P Have a great weekend!

April Birthdays!

Doh! It's April already and I almost forgot!

April 10 - Jordon (Ethan's friend)
April 22 - Dawn
April 25 - Joe and Mom (mine).

Happy Birthday, Everyone!

Sod, Dirt and Woodchips - Oh My!

In a recent post, I mentioned the Big Load of dirt and woodchips we had delivered on March 28. Well, over that weekend, we spread all that dirt in the low-lying areas in our backyard. The woodchips were put into the trampoline pit. Here are all the pictures.


The driveway AFTER we were done:











This left our yard looking like this:











You know, we have THOUSANDS of pictures on our server and I cannot find one.single.picture of our backyard before we started any work. I know I forgot to take an "immediate" before picture, but the only picture I can find is this one...and it's from when we looked at buying the house (and the yard doesn't look all that bad!):

So, anyway, after all the work we last weekend, we had 6 pallets of sod delivered this past Friday. Holy Smokes! That's a lot of sod!











All day on Saturday, we (well, the guys) laid down sod. Trisha & I fixed lunch and Lisa got the beer and took pictures. Tammy helped with water bottles. We four also discussed many important, completely-unrelated-to-sod things. You know, like shoes and whatnot.

Anyway, when we (them guys) were done, we found out we had TWO extra pallets of sod leftover (and this was after we put down 2700 sq ft of sod). It appears the sod farm estimates when they deliver...of course this meant we probably could have paid for about 1800 sq ft of sod, but we didn't know that. Anyway, from one pallet, we sent 30 rolls home with John, who had helped all day, and we gave 30 rolls to our neighbors, who have similar yard issues due to their dog. The other 60 will go to PJ's sister, Tina. PJ, his dad and his brother are loading up the pick-up truck now. For all the pictures, go here.

Here's a video of the yard...it was the only way I could capture most of it without having to post too many pictures.

Vintage Prints

My mom recently got her hands on an old photo of my grandfather. I think he's the little one in the picture.

Big Load!

That's our driveway. Five cubic yards of topsoil and 3 cubic yards of wood chips...the backyard is getting a makeover this weekend. But iyiyiyiyiy! My muscles are sore just thinking of all the work we're going to do!

Echo has Whipworms. How she got them, we have no idea...especially since Polo doesn't have them...but they're both getting a shock treatment this week (and then again in 2 weeks) and we have to change their monthly heart worm meds (from Tri-heart to Interceptor). The good thing about the new dirt and sod is that we'll cover up most of the eggs since they are hard to kill. I also have to be vigilent about scooping in the back yard (ugh).

We have a busy weekend planned. Sam has a winter guard event. Megan has homework. Ethan has baseball. We're hitting the hot tub expo to try to find a new hot tub cover and then we're spreading all that dirt and the wood chips. I hope to have more pictures of all the progress.

Have a great weekend!
Ha

Baseball Schedule Posted

Check out the family calendar...practice dates/times and game dates/times are now posted!

I've been lax on remember to use my camera for anything lately...I'll try to get back in the habit!

For instance, Ethan cut off all his hair tonight (mostly by himself with just a little help from me). He wouldn't let me take pictures though. :P

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I've been really behind in posting...not a lot to announce, I guess. Anyway, Happy St. Patrick's Day.

And here's some news:

The CNU Marching Captains will be participating in the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade! They’re one out of only 12 bands selected nationwide to perform, so this is quite an honor for Joe, the band, and the school.

Once they march in the Philly parade, then can then be eligible for the Macy's Parade. Maybe we'll see him march there in 2009!

Congrats to Joe and CNU!

Death by Coughing

I have a stupid chest cold. I don't have a whole lot of congestion...except for what's in my chest. I'm coughing up a lung here.

Ethan found out he's on the Majors Nationals Team this season. Parent meeting on Monday, 3/10.

Sam's guard team is doing pretty well. She and PJ have also been working hard on Algebra and she's doing a lot better in that class!

Megan's family birthday party this past weekend was a success! We gave her dollhouse accessories (furniture and a doll family). She's been playing with it a lot. Soon PJ and Megan will have to finish the roof and there's wallpaper to install now too.

PJ's birthday is this Sunday. He's having a bunch of guys over on Saturday to home-brewing lessons and bratwurst. I'll be finding something else to do. Like cough up a lung... *sigh* *cough*

What day is it?

Last night Ethan had baseball tryouts. He'll be in the majors this year (of his little league). He thinks he did well at tryouts. I can't tell you how he really did because I don't know! You can't see much at the training center where tryouts are held! Hopefully we'll hear what team he's on in the next 10 days or so.

Tonight, PJ and Sam will probably be heading up to the high school to go over AP class options. There's some sort of informative meeting. I need to get to the grocery store too, in preparation for Megan's family birthday dinner (PJ will celebrate with the family too, but he picks his meal on Sat, 3/8, when he's having some friends over).

PJ will go to CNU on Thursday to see Joe's band perform. His mom and sister are going to. They'll have a good time, but it'll be a long day.

Megan's birthday is just two days away! She's pretty excited to have a "real" birthday this year! (ah, the curse of the leap year birthday).

Updated!

I've updated links on this blog. Heidi (my sister) for instance, finally has a blog of her own. Feisty! If you want to check it out, she's here.

I also updated my Bloglines (my feed reader) to make sure it included everyone's blogs. Phew!

Now, I just need to get my sister-in-law on board and I can keep up better with my brother's family's activities! :P