Woody, Mrs. Doubtfire and Cop's... we met them all

Well, I feel summer coming to a fast end! Katie went home with our friends when they came to visit, so this gave us an excuse for another trip to the Dallas area before the summer was over. I picked up the big girl and we stayed at the mother in law's over night. She is looking completely back to normal... hardly any sign of that broken hip from a couple of months ago!
We took her out to lunch for her birthday before we left town and a good time was had by all...well, I thought so, but Uncle J. doesn't look too happy in this picture does he?

We spent a humid day at Six Flags with our friends and then went on to Flower Mound to spend time with my sister, Jennifer and friends there! It was a blur of visits with all of our friends, lots of good meals at resturants we miss, days in the pool, shopping and just hanging out with family. It was wonderful.

We met my favorite girls from our old school for lunch! I miss them so much. The girls were so glad to get to spend time with their first grade teacher...she is precious and the girls would go back to first grade for her I think.

We did a little bit of back to school shopping and went to Yucky Dillard's again! It rarely disappoints! We even found a little formal dress for a function Katie has later this year... nothing like finding a formal for $20!
We spent our last night in town celebrating a birthday a the Magic Time Machine... it still has all of it's 1970's charm. The girls had a great time... our waiter was Woody from Toy Story....I'll spare you the picture of them with Mr Incredible....They came right home and told their dad if he wanted to work there he would make a great Mr Incredible!
A few odd things from the trip:

*There was an incident of the big kid scaring the little girl while she was on my lap top and holding a soda. It now takes me twice as long to type anything because the bottom two rows of keys now stick. A lot. And the space barreallysticks.

*A group of about 12 cross dressing men in a resturant one night really kept me from being able to focus on the visit with friends. It was a suburb on a Sun. night... very distracting...

*I have to offer a special thank you to the Texas Trooper who only gave me a warning for going "a little over the speed limit" as he said... really, it was really only a few miles over...I didn't understand why he stopped me to give me the warning but I was sure thankful! The funny part was while he was talking to me his cell phone rang and I heard.. what'ch gonna do when they come for you, bad boys, bad boys... I was afraid we were on an episode of Cops! It was pretty funny.

And as usual, I'm glad to be home!

a little crafty time between card games...

It has been a very quiet weekend at our house, something I don't really know what to do with...

Kellie and I have continued our card playing marathon. Not because I want to but because she is bored and determined I am her only source of entertainment. Today I talked her into starting a big puzzle thinking it would keep her busy. She won't work on it without me and now I've remembered I really don't like puzzles...

I did hold off the card games and puzzles long enough to do a little crafting today.

I got this book with long envelopes inside at a scrapbook sale, think it was an example of a class project they did. It needed a little embellishing.... I have a bunch of old letters that my grandmother and mother had written and decided they could use a home...

I also had an ugly gold box that sat in my bathroom. I decided it needed a face lift...much better...

It's going to be a long 4 weeks

Mon. night, while we were up late waiting on our company to get here, Kellie was running into my room and hit her hand on the wall...(she inherited that gracefulness from me)..
We made it through the night without going to the ER but went in the next morning and she has a broken bone in her hand. The Dr put her in a hard splint for about 4 weeks.
That changed our lake plans for the next day... it was way to hot to make her ride in the boat but not get in the water! She is very put out about the not swimming for awhile thing! We did go to Main Event while our friends were here and she bowled pretty good left handed with the help of the bumpers.
Our friends left today and the big sister went home with them for a few days. Today was the first day of just she and I at home and she is bored already! We played cards and games and cards and cards and cards! She cried tonight because she can't find her Disney Scene It DVD to play! I thought the few days of only one child at home would be a nice change but it may be one one card playing marathon! We can't thing of many things she can do with just her left hand...
If you're bored, come on over and join us...

Fun at the lake

We had a hot, fun day at the lake. I realized my pictures look just like last years, right down to the cows by the water. It was weird though, there were no cows in sight then a bunch came down to the water. The were all black except for one little white calf.

Katie's friend that went with us was very funny. She's a bit like me... she really doesn't like lake water. She tubed and tubed and tubed. Katie fell a few times but Abbi did not come off that tube. At the end of the day she slipped getting off the tube and back into the boat and I've never seen anyone get out of the water faster!

Glad I had such a productive day yesterday because this sunburned family is laying low the rest of the day!

Tomorrow we have good friends coming for a few days to visit. I'm glad to have them but don't know what we'll do here to entertain them!

Summer project #4

The project of the day today was actually a lot of small projects. You know that last box I've been talking about unpacking for 18 months... well I finally did it a couple of weeks ago and found a couple of things I had bought on a trip to Canton before we moved... This Bible holder was in there... completely forgot about buying it...

these metal picture things were in there... So all week I've dug through pictures looking for something to put in them. Today I decided I would have to put the pictures on paper in order to use old photos like I wanted to... On another blog I ran across they put old pictures in glass hurricanes so I tried that on my mantle too...

I hung these beautiful winter scene plates Jennifer gave me at Christmas time.
I recovered the seat of this antique chair. Used more of the 'potato sack' as the girls commented. I did stencil on it though...

I hung the curtain for the back door. Mike has griped about the glare from this window since we lived here... that however, did not motivate him to hang it. So today I finally gave up the waiting game and hung it myself!

I also did touch up paint on walls, stenciled on a couple of plain white lamp shades, painted several frames from gold to black, painted Kellie's desk black, and much cleaning out and organizing, grocery shopping cooked dinner and just finished another crafty gift. I love when I have a productive day!

Tomorrow we are taking the boat to the lake. The high is only predicted to be 100 so we thought we'd take advantage of the cool front and use the boat for the first time this summer.

Summer project #3 and a little therapy

What cost less than $50, took only a couple of hours and caused more itching than I ever imagined?-- My new dining room drapes. Project of the day was new curtains for the dining room... I wanted to lighten up the room and was thinking about painting it but decided to go a different route for now so went with lighter colored drapes. I found the toile I wanted to use, matched it to a burlap (very very itchy burlap) for the panels, made tassels, used existing rods and it's done... well almost. They did not have enough of the trim but will have it in next week... so, I sewed on what I had to make sure I liked it...so just know the look will be complete when the trim is all the way across, not just in the middle...

I was very pleased with the results. My two girls however, would like to know why I put up potato sacks instead of the nice curtains I had...

I have a friend from the Dallas area that lives in this area now also and we try to have dinner once a month or so. We were way past due and managed to do it tonight. We tried a restaurant that neither of us had been to before and isn't the kind of place you go with kids. It was yummy and even though a bit expensive, we decided that it's a bargain for the therapy we get from it! I was glad it wasn't too busy since we stayed for three hours - we had a dim lit corner all to ourselves! If only my kids would have not called asking why I was still gone and when I was coming home and what were we doing all this time....

It was three hours of good girl talk... we need to do that more often. We were in there so long the temp. dropped from 105 to a cool 92 on the way home.

Have I mentioned I am not a fan of the 105 degree weather?

So, from the fighting I hear my girls doing in the living room right now, I may go back out... maybe it's down to 90 by now....

Summer project #2

I have several projects that I want to accomplish this summer. Lots of them are small things that have been on my list forever!

The first project was cleaning all my craft stuff out of the dining room so we could use that room again. I decided the guest room was going to have to be the crafty place, so now Mike is sharing his office. He has a desk and the rest of the room I've moved my sewing machine in, have a table for scrapbooking, etc. and the closet is all organized with all of my craft things. I am LOVING having everything in one place and my sewing machine where I might actually use it!

Today's project was Katie's room. Katie wanted a new comforter and needed her dresser repainted. We picked up what we needed yesterday. I stayed up way past my bedtime last night sewing the K on the comforter and today we painted and finished everything up in a couple hours. I still have a new night stand I need to put together for her room and need to get a new lamp. I finially put a shade in the round window.I thought the zebra on the dresser turned out cute. She is very pleased with the results. Kellie is asking to do the same thing in her room and that is making Katie crazy! Because they needed one more thing to fight about....

I love a good weekend

Jennifer came in for the weekend. I think mostly for a sewing lesson. She wanted to make baby slings to take to the orphanage on her upcoming mission trip. Us sewing made Kellie decide that she also wanted to learn to sew. We found an easy pattern for the baby sling and I helped with with instruction but Jennifer did great polishing up her sewing skills and has 8 slings to take to the babies. We hope since they carry dogs well they will be OK for the babies. Jennifer didn't want me to publish the picture of her wearing two slings with two dogs... I guess she didn't think that would make her look like the sophisticated, young, single woman that she is...so Kellie gladly posed...

Kellie also informed me that she was going to cook dinner for us. We WERE NOT ALLOWED TO HELP!!! I love that she is wanting to learn to cook...We were ordered to "sit on the bar stools and don't come in the kitchen". Ok, be glad to!
She planned a dinner that she new Jennifer would like. Her menu included Light Fettuccine Alfredo, salad, bread and apple dumplings for dessert. Like I said, she planned things Jennifer would like, not things that were healthy.

I had seen the recipe for the apple dumplings on Pioneer Woman and my sweet friend Jennifer also had the recipe and spoke of her love for it, so I decided we needed to make this while our Jennifer was here. Given the ingredient of Mt. Dew we thought it might me made just for her.

Apple Turnover

2 Granny Smith apples

2 cans crescent rolls

2 sticks butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 teaspoons vanilla

cinnamon

1 can Mountain Dew

Peel and core apples. Cut apples into 8 slices each. Roll each apple slice in a crescent roll. Place in a 9 x 13 buttered pan. Melt butter, then add sugar and barely stir. Add vanilla, stir, and pour over apples. Pour Mountain Dew around the edges of the pan. Sprinkle with cinnamon and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Serve with ice cream, and spoon some of the sweet sauces from the pan over the top.

I fully expected to like this recipe...but we all LOVED it. I guess there isn't much with two sticks of butter that we wouldn't love!

We've had fun, seen two movies, ate well, played, fireworks, church and now are enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon. I love a holiday weekend!

Well, it ain't the county club

In summers past, before we moved, we spent almost every day at our neighborhood pool. It was big, well kept up, never crowded and was almost as good as having our own pool. I'm sure last summer I mentioned my lack of pool here in Lubbock.

Let me re-visit this issue-

When we moved, we intended to sell the boat and put a pool in... but, since I don't think we'll be here forever I don't want to put a pool in so....

Last summer I bought the "white trash" pool for our back yard and we were happy. Until. I drained it to clean it and Mike THREW IT AWAY. I'm still mad...

So, now it's summer and we have no pool to float in and there is NOTHING much to do in Lubbock so we are left with very few choices as summer fun goes:

• I checked on pool memberships at the country clubs here in Lubbock and they were wayyyy to high.


• There is a old water park here that has re-opened this year but word on the street is that it isn't very good for the high price they charge


• we could join "the" health club that everyone in the county goes to and use their very very crowded pool


• we can buy another white trash pool and after today I think that's where we are headed.

A few weeks ago, one of Katie's friends told us about the "best kept secret" of the Wolfforth community pool... Wolfforth being a small suburb of Lubbock. So, we picked her up, went to check out this well kept secret and were quickly aware that this probably wasn't the answer to our summer woe's. It was crowded and before we left I had two other children that I didn't bring asking me for towels and talking to me as I seemed to be the only adult who cared to supervise children.

Now a few weeks have gone by, and apparently I had forgotten just how much I really didn't like this pool and I had two bored kids begging to go swimming so I agreed to give it another chance.

So again, we picked up the friend, and went to pool and were again reminded that this might not be the place for us. Let me share -

• it wasn't quite as crowded as the last time, at least I got a chair this time.


• Lady with a mullet


• the life guard was wearing a very small bikini, tattoo showing on her back and seemed to be busier texting than watching the pool and there wasn't an orange floaty thing with her...aren't they required by life guard law to always have the orange floaty thing in case of a swimming emergency?


• a couple of very young teens that made out off and on the whole time sealed the deal for me. I wanted to steal a kids noodle and beat them off of each other!

You know, most of those things I expected at the community pool -but the teens all over each other pushed me over the edge. I was going to say something to them or beat them with the noodle but Katie was afraid she might die from embarrassment if I did... so I did the next best thing. I went and talked to the life guard- who said it was her first day here and she didn't know if she could say something...on the way out, the lady who runs the place assured me someone would say something and that they are regulars and have been warned about this before.

Let me assure you that I used the time in car on the way home to give my opinion on the public display we witnessed... Katie's poor friend got my opinion on this whether she wanted it or not!

Mike doesn't know if yet, but he's going to Academy to buy me another pool tonight...