Duct Tape Crafter

I have those times that I swear someone stole days from me! Sometimes I look up and those days have run into weeks that were stolen! This is a fine example, the last time I posted to my blogs was July 25^th! I look up at the calendar coming to the realization that it has now been three weeks since I posted last! Geez louise!!! What happened to all those days in-between? We have been extremely busy! I got J enrolled in school, which took two trips to the school since she wanted to go back to her old school. One trip to enroll, then one trip to set up her schedule with the counselor. T was easy to enroll, she is still at the same school she has been in since kindergarten, and she will probably stay there through all her school years. It was this school system I put J in last year, the schools are only 8 miles from our house. The crazy state of Indiana though has our school district of record more than 20 miles away, with an hour bus ride for the kids and/or 30 minutes direct by car. The idiot politicians though think my kids should go to school in the school of the county we reside in. The stupid county politicians put the school on almost the other side of the county. Why? Because they really do not care about us little peon people on this side, we are just so few! However, the county politicians sure do not want to miss our tax dollars, do they! This hurts the kids so much, when all the activities are at the school, the drive to get the kids back –forth for the parents becomes a nightmare. Now we top that time, the distance, with the cost of gasoline! It is crazy! You would think the county & state would allow the kids in this area to be educated in the school closest to their homes! What happens is we pay out of area tuition so T can go the school closest to our home, where we are on the county line, where the majority of the kids in the area go. I had better get off this soapbox or my entire post will be over this issue!

Besides getting the girls enrolled in school, I got my own classes together for my fall 2008 semester. I also got my books ordered for the semester - $400 later! T has been to vacation bible school, birthday parties, and playing with friends. J has been working, talking to friends, and other teen stuff like shopping! Chuck and I have a wedding to go to this weekend, plans to take the kids to the state fair, then to an amusement park this month. The last three weeks have been busy with working on the house, keeping the yard mowed, taking care of kids and animals, trying to sneak some sewing in, then just trying to stop and smell the roses from time to time!

I have pictures of T’s birthday that happened here too! I will do another post with those pictures plus more in the next few days!

Yep I had another birthday on July 17^th; I am now truly 46 years old. I don’t know what has happened to all those years since I turned 21, but they seemed to have evaporated like a puddle after a rainstorm. The thing is you know that puddle was just there yesterday, but it seems overnight the air sucked the water right out of that puddle. It feels the same with aging, I swear it was just yesterday I was turning 21, then overnight someone sucked away all those years in-between and I’m now 46 years old. What is a riot is how my kids think I have never been young, that I never partied until the break of a new day, how I’ve had so much to drink I watch my insides come up for hours on end, or woke up not knowing where in the hell I was. Nope I’ve never done those things, the only thing I’ve done is raise kids, be a mom, live the straight and narrow. Yep that is how they see it, as they roll their eyes at me, as if I have lived in a cave my entire life. Good thing what goes around comes around! Those kids will have their just rewards wait until the things they spent hours giving birth to tell them they don’t know anything and grandma will sit laughing her butt off!! :lmao:

Will enough of sharing that lets talk about what I got for my birthday! Chuck took me to dinner at our favorite German restaurant, Gerhardts-Bierstube. I love eating this German food, much is a memory to me of time gone by, eating with my grandparents, grandpa cooking up some good German food. My grandfather was 100% German, straight off the truck grandma fell off the Belgium truck; on my other side my grandmother fell off the 100% German truck, therefore you know the majority of my heritage. Chuck loves German cooking after living there while in the Army for almost a year and a half. I decided on a Dairy Queen Ice cream cake, went with the Oreo Blizzard cake.

Doesn’t that look good! It was delicious too! My mother-in-law got me a new Rival Crockpot, a red one too

She also got me a new nightgown, something she has made a birthday tradition now! I can count on a new nightgown every year.

My husband got me a new ice cream maker

This is electric, no ice or salt required! Can I say less mess! I love ice cream, according to the directions I should have one ½ quarts of ice cream in about 90 minutes from this machine. Chuck said the one I was looking at in Wal-Mart took 6-8 hours to make ice cream, and it was the same amount. No, I haven’t tested the machine yet. There has been so much work on the house that my mind hasn’t even wrapped around making ice cream.

On another note, I got some new movies, National Treasure 2 Book of Secrets, Vacancy, Messengers, and A Time to Kill. No, I haven’t watched a single movie either! Don’t you feel bad for my family, all these gifts and I haven’t enjoyed one yet – geezz woman!

On my previous post I mentioned how horrible I was feeling after all the housework, but thinking about it, I felt this way once before. There was a time I had an allergic reaction to some meds I was taking, turned out it was made from oyster shells; obviously I am allergic to shell fish, according to the doctor. My allergic reaction to that was similar it took me a few months of taking it as swelling, muscle aches, and joint pain increased to the point I could hardly stand without pain. See I am a glutton for punishment; here I hurt so badly before I will try to figure out what is wrong with me. I did some searching and believe I am having a reaction the Lipitor the doctor put me on. The Lipitor is the only thing that has changed for me in the 3 months, and I remember some swelling right after I started taking it. I will stop taking it, the benefits do not outweigh the effects I am having at this point. Guess I need to make an appointment with the doctor. :sad:

I am going to try updating everything that we have been doing. After my last post we continued working on the house, I’ll update that in another post or posts. During all the house work though we have to complete our family time enjoying a few breaks here and there. In the last couple of years, we have enjoyed going into Terre Haute for the Vigo county fair. T enjoys all the animals, then the rides! I do enjoy the crafts too. We always start looking with the animals. (I tried to fix the pictures to the best of my ability, as these are taken using my phone camera. Can you believe I took the camera then promptly left it in the car!)

Aren’t the baby goats cute! T loves goats for whatever reason. She has asked dad several times about some goats for our house.

Then there were the cows, not one of T’s favorites, but one of Chuck’s. T enjoyed the rabbits and the horses too! Of course the horses are T’s favorite animal in the fair! For Chuck we visited the pigs, another animal he’d like us to raise. I had to visit the chickens. I love the chickens. I was surprised that T has enjoyed the chickens too lately, curious about the different breeds and their differences.

Then of course the rides are a necessary visit while at the fair! Here are T and J waiting in line for a ride.

Aren’t they sweet together! I really need some pictures of my 3 girls together! Here J and T are getting ready to ride the Tilt-O-Whirl, one of T’s favorites.

Beside animals, and rides we also hit the food stands! Couldn’t leave a fair without some candy and caramel apples, Chuck needed his funnel cake fix! Moreover, for Chuck and me a fair needs a corn dog! We had fun, and are hoping to make it to the State Fair this year!

I mentioned in a previous post that T’s softball team took 1^st place or Grand Champs of their youth league group. The coaches of the slow-pitch softball decided a party for all the girls, from all the teams, could be fun. The coaches rented the local swimming pool for two hours Monday. What is worrisome for a child - waking up in the morning of the big pool party to RAIN! T worried while it rained until noon that her pool party wasn’t going to happen. Luckily the sun broke through in the afternoon, made it a wonderful evening for the pool party.

She absolutely loved the slide!

Then she scared the be-gebers out her dad when he seen her jumping of the diving board into the 10 feet deep water! I calmed him when I told him that was the third time she had done it; he had already missed the other 2 times

Did I say she liked the slide – in line again!!

We couldn’t talk her into any dinner until the party was completely over, believe me she was literally the last child out of the pool. While she was swimming dad went to Subway to get us dinner – my favorite kind of cooking these days Do you think she liked her meatball sub?

After the swimming, while she was eating the coaches were passing out the trophies. I was so happy to see that all the teams got trophies, including the team that got 4^th place.

Tuesday night she spent the night with a friend, so she has been having a great week! We haven’t even told her about going to the fair yet!

I hope everyone that might read my blog had a wonderful family fun 4^th of July! I did get more painting done, and carpet laid at the house, I will update pictures after I get more done today. This post though I just wanted to share some of our 4^th of July fun.

We decided to do a little fishing. T is closest in this picture, J is further down on the bank of our pond.

Look T caught a fish, but dad has to help take the fish off the hook.

Wow T caught another fish

Look even J caught a fish, she actually caught 2 fish by the end of the day

What – even mom caught a fish!

But dad what happened to your fish ??? Maybe it was all that grill work he had to do

Baby those wings look good!

Did someone want some corn on the cob too? We enjoy leaving it right on the husk to cook on the grill. Because we had so many wings on the grill we actually fired up a second grill for the corn.

We enjoy eating and spending the day with a tent/awning for protection from sun, rain, and bugs!

While the wings were cooking the girls played some badminton then decided it was time to break out some fireworks. T lights her first firecracker by herself!

J wanted to see if she could blow up a bird feeder, she sets up the firecrackers, lights them up

But who got the p*** scared out of them …. Really she took off running, tripped up when the bang happened

After dinner and darkness had settled in the girls’ settled in to watch the fireworks that dad would put on for them

And they were all so pretty!

Thanks for sharing our 4^th of July !!

I painted today, 2^nd coat on the dining room, so all painting in the dining room is done! I need to put in the runner rug, and wax the floor. I also want to do something for the windows, and other décor items.

We have another room, for the previous owners the area was a beauty shop, for the last 5 years DH has used the room for an office. This room though was large, and was becoming DH’s messy collection room With all the ideas on my side of doing some easy fixes for the house, DH had one too! He wanted to separate his work area from his play / free time computer. To do that we need a home office, which would be wonderful for me too; right now my computer sits by the TV, which doesn’t make the most efficient for homework! We decided the answer would be to transform the old beauty shop into our master bedroom, with an area for DH to have a desk and his office laptop. We would make our old master bedroom into our home office, placing his personal time computer & desk along with my computer & desk in that room. There is enough space in the room to include a sewing area! We had already cleaned up and painted most of the room, the half bath, but for whatever reason DH didn’t clean out the small back room. This weekend he finally got the back room cleaned out, so today I scrubbed the walls, they are ready to prime and paint! According to DH, he’ll put up the new lights next weekend in this area plus the dining room. I don’t think he has realized that the carpet might need to put down in the old beauty shop – our new master bedroom! At least here I’ll have a bathroom off my room again This actually puts us in the right direction. The old beauty shop was a conversion in the garage; we plan to convert the rest of the 2-car garage, add it to this section, and turn it into a master suite. We know that the old beauty shop area in the end will be gutted, see nothing like living in construction zones! I’ll add more pictures as I get more done!

On a personal note, T’s coach pitch softball team took Grand Champs last weekend, this week they were in the parade for the local fair!

In addition, my personal assist is getting bigger every day! Isn’t he cute!

Actually I just updated my Word Press Program, plus added the custom smiles plug-in so wanted to do a post just to test my upgrades and add-in. I even found some cute smiles and emoticons I’ve also made a signature png!

Chuck & I took a detour on our regular home remodeling to do what we call our quick fix temp work We both just got so tired of looking at wallpaper & paneling, and since we aren’t moving fast enough on the full work, we opted for some get by painting and changes. Pictures & other information will be forth coming.

Today is just getting this web stuff fixed! Tomorrow will be garden/yard work, that is after I go to the store to get the plants I need plus a few groceries. I opted to just do tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, cantelope, watermelon, and pumpkin in the garden this year. I canned tomatoes & pickles last year that worked out wonderful, so want to put them up again this year. The bell peppers freeze up easy just cut them up to de-seed then put them in freezer bags. The cantelope & watermelon just taste good and the pumpkin Taylor loves because she has plenty for jack-o-lanterns.

Well take it easy, be cool , catch a breeze in this heat some where!