Block Party Cometh...

Only a few days away until our block party!!! I hope we'll be seeing you there!

September birthdays and first day of school coming soon! woohooo!

Fizzled Out...

I had grand plans of getting the house cleaned tonight, making some dog food (my dogs are on a homemade diet) and organizing some stuff for the block party. It's 10.52pm and the only thing I've managed to do is sort the laundry. Now I just want to hit the hay!

My mom settled on a new house yesterday. I have to look up where it is again, but it's a little house on a few acres...maybe 1.5 hours from my house. I'll get to see it next weekend. Very exciting news!

Today is my grandmother's 80th birthday - woohoo! :)

Still not all here...

We have pictures up on our website. I won't post the links yet since I need to clean them up some (PJ uploaded way too many). But if you're brave or killing time, they're all there...vacation, family, miscellaneous (like the weed that's taller than Megan that was in my flowerbed!).

At some point, remind me to tell you about "The Compound."

I've had a bunch of high school friends suddenly show up on Facebook (over the last few weeks). I'm not sure what happened, but it's pretty neat to see who's on there now and to reconnect. I need to update my life story for them...

It's PJ's dad's birthday today. Happy Birthday, Pat!

Happy August Birthdays

Happy Birthday to our August Birthdays!!

Ethan, 13 on the 3rd! Woohoo!!!
Donald, the 7th (I believe. We celebrate his 80th on Sat, 8/9)
Pat, the 12th
Gram, the 15th (milestone 80th!)
Kelly H., the 21st

I think that's all of you. Hope you have a happy day!!

It's Official...

We've started planning for the block party. Info to my fellow planners went out tonight!

Mark your calendars - Sunday, Aug 31.

PJ and I just got back from vacation...I'm so behind on everything, including blogging, as you can see. As soon as he uploads our pics, I'll post links. Ten days was a long time to be gone, but it was good to see family (PJ's in OH, Mine in IN) and then we did the touristy thing in Gettysburg...the kids will thank me when they're older. ha!

I hope we're going to see the new Batman movie tomorrow (The Dark Knight as if you hadn't heard). We'll see if it fits into our schedule!

Quiet Sunday

So we were supposed to have Samantha's birthday parties (notice it's PLURAL) this weekend. We had a small scheduling conflict arise and had to cancel them. It's made for a very quiet and relatively unproductive weekend. ahahahahahah.

On Thursday (Sam's birthday, but she was at her mom's), we had a few friends over since there was no work on July 4th and everyone could sleep in!

On July 4, we swung by a BBQ and then headed to a friend's house where we could watch fireworks off the back porch (and escape all the traffic). Good times. We left there a little later than I hoped. Saturday morning came to early.

We picked up all the kids on Saturday morning and headed home. I had a few errands to run and then I parked my backside on the couch to finish a book I had started a week or so before. I finally got up to shower (stinky!) about 5pm. We were taking Sam and the family out to dinner at Friendly's. Now THAT was a fancy meal. :P After dinner and ice cream, we ran a quick errand at Wal-Mart (which makes me want to poke my eyes out). When we got home, Ethan had a friend spend the night, Megan went to a friend's house and I finished the book!

Sunday has been a lazy day. PJ went to breakfast with Joe. I did manage to get almost all the laundry done (should probably go check on it now) and I also made Sam's dinner for lunch (we ate around 2pm) - chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, corn and watermelon. She was happy as a pig in mud and the other kids didn't complain either. With the help of some of the kids, I made all the labels for PJ's father's day gift (one of those small hardware sorting cabinets for hanging in the shed). All in all, I am glad the weekend was low key.

Have a great week!

July Birthdays

Happy Birthday to our July birthdays!

July 3 - Samantha (16!!!!)
July 15 - PJ's mom
July 25 - Lisa

Hope it's a happy day for you all!

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.