I mowed!

I know, mowing shouldn't be the reason I post. But our mower is nearly on it's death bed. You have to go over the same area two or sometimes even three times for it to look even because the blades only rotate so many times a second. Also when our neighbor or our kids (or even the husband) mows they only do the main areas and not the corners or edges or around the camper. So I set out to mow everything and I did. It looks FANTASTIC (if I do say so myself). I even moved the wood pile (that's too big to burn) and mowed there because those weeds were driving me CRAZY. I went over the entire yard until it looked like a healthy mower mowed it.

If it doesn't pour down rain tomorrow I will hopefully weed whack and then my yard will look amazing.

Of course I need to plant my roses (yeah, STILL) and trim and then I'll just burn everything I can.

My neighbors saw me mowing and I have the feeling they will mow tomorrow LOL.

Now I'm exhausted and need a shower!

Random

Nothin much going on these days. School has started and I always hear about drama from my kids. [Mostly other people's drama, not my kid's drama LOL.]

I have been super sleepy these past few days and I don't know why. So I haven't been getting anything done since I will nearly fall asleep sitting up. I'm okay driving, but if I sit for any amount of time I find myself snoozing. Earlier today I fell asleep and woke up because I swore I heard someone yell at me ~ but of course no one is here during the day so I guess I was dreaming guiltily about sleeping. I hope to accomplish a lot more next week.

My youngest child is nine and very imaginative. He comes up with games for us to play together. This game involved my Star Trek figurines (I'm a huge nerd, get over it) and Pokemon-style cards that he made up himself.

(For the record, I am an Original Series (Star Trek) fan, but someone gave me some Next Generation figurines, so yes, that is Riker).

My husband and I have been trying to get back into going for a bike ride every other night. I started taking my phone with us for the "MapMyRide" app that keeps track of where we go, how long it took us, and the amount of calories we burned, so every once and a while I get a photo. Here's the cool sunset we saw at the start of our bike ride:

I tried keeping my pedometer on my shoe....

bad picture

but it didn't work out. It only measures about half the "steps" I take while on the bike.

Lastly, I decided to take a picture of the bike with it's lights on so you guys could see it, but this is the best I could do with the phone:

You can kind of tell it has Christmas lights on it. Very cool. We get compliments almost every single time we go out. Of course it looks awesome, but I wanted it mostly so cars will be able to see me and won't hit me since we mostly bike at night. We also have headlights and taillights.

Tomorrow I hope to spend most of the day catching up on laundry, which I haven't done in the past two days, and I only did one load then....I also will be doing dishes since my older two kids won't be home and it's not time for the younger ones to do them yet.

Also we hope to do the Renaissance Fair, although I'm not interested in spending much money there. We didn't get to go last year because we were busy moving.

Oh, yeah, we're coming up on one year in our new house!!! We will be opening up some Moscato Di'Asti to celebrate our one-year anniversary.

Year one: Unpacked a little LOL

Love you all,
AmyG

Great Date!

My husband grew another year older, and as a celebration I decided to take him out to dinner and a movie. We were thinking Red Lobster, because it's a Tuesday and we have bills due LOL (and we love Red Lobster). So we got dressed up and got ready to go.

Unfortunately, because we had to pick up a cheerleader and a football player from practice at two different schools, we did not have enough time to do dinner AND a movie. So we stood and discussed it, and he decided that he really, REALLY wanted to see "The Expendables 3," so we went to the movie and did Steak 'n Shake afterwards.

The Expendables was very good. It was more actual movie and less cheesy catch-phrases. As a chick, I really enjoyed it.

Steak 'n Shake was pretty awesome, too. I tried the Royale, but I hate American cheese, so I asked if they could put cheddar on it, and they did, and it was AWESOME. If you're going to be bad, that's a pretty good way to do it ;).

Then we headed home. There are two large towns around where we live, and we were in the smaller of the two, D-. It isn't the biggest town in the world, but it is a decent size, so imagine our surprise when we were heading down the main street, the street with all the businesses and all the nicer houses, we saw two enormous deer! Two huge bucks wandering down what is essentially downtown D- was amazing to me. Luckily they stayed on the sidewalk. :)

We had taken our convertible out, and on our way home we got stopped by a train (that happens out here in cornland). The train was moving super slow; in fact, it seemed to be stopping, but it was okay, because that was when we noticed that the sky was CRYSTAL CLEAR and you could see the milky way and the leftover meteors from the perseids would occasionally streak the sky. It was amazing! One shooting star lasted a couple of seconds and looked to be orange with a pink tinge. Then we looked to the South and saw that the enormous thunder clouds we had seen while it was daylight were still there, and they were lighting up the night sky on the horizon. It was SO BEAUTIFUL!! I was sorely tempted to pull over and just keep watching the sky: I'd watch the thundercloud for a while and then watch the stars for a while. But eventually the train finally passed and it was nearing midnight so we headed home. (No pictures because I was driving, helloooo!!)

I don't know about my husband, but I had a GREAT NIGHT!!

So of course I wanted to share it with you guys! ><

MUCH BETTER

I'm 100% better!! (Okay, 99.999% better.)

School has started and I am now in the process of getting back into the school routine. I did great yesterday, but today I sucked. I've done nothing of use to anyone except walk the dogs a few times. The biggest problem I have with school days is after 3pm my day is over.

Oh well.

Here's some pics:

I was walking the tortoise and my littlest boy decided to come out and help by skimming the pool! Isn't he sweet?

There is a tortoise in this picture:

I guess when you can't see your pets in your lawn it's time to mow, eh?

It was okay, I didn't even have to get up! The long grass must've scared him, too, because he came back to me LOL.

"Don't cut the vine on the fence," they said, "It makes pretty flowers," they said.....Now there's barely enough room to hang clothes there!! It doesn't show well in this picture, but that vest is resting on top of the vine!!!

Enough? No? Okay, here:

A beautiful Illinois sunset:

My Diva's birthday dinner:

Waffles with strawberry & blueberry toppings.

Candles (Pink, of course!)

Me having fun with candles (bored waiting for husband to get home):

My birthday girl, now 11 years-old! If you're wondering what all that white stuff is (on her),

It's paint. She got an old dollhouse from our neighbor and she wanted to repaint it. If you think SHE was messy you should have seen what she did to my patio!! Oh wait, I have a photo of that, too:

All in all she had a good birthday. We had a party with a cake for her a few days later. The photos from that will be on facebook. Good day!

RANDOM RANDOMNESS!

Okay, I'm sick for real. It was bad with the tonsilitis, now it's worse. It's like a bad cold that gets worse every hour. When I lay down I feel like I'm going to hurl. So I have to sit. I don't do a lot of games on the computer (I have Sims 3 days but not every day, I do a little Throne Rush on Facebook and I've taken to what is essentially Yahtzee but is called "Royal Dice" on Facebook as well) I start getting bored. So I came up with these completely random photos to blog about. I'll give some descriptions but basically this is a boring random post about boring random stuff LOL. You can skip this post if you want.

First up [not boring to me lol], I was bored while my daughter and her friend went back-to-school shopping for some jeans! I had to be stern that they HAD to get three pairs of jeans (at least) because my mind is set for autumn and winter and shorts and skirts sometimes aren't warm enough. 

 Then while they (and the other four kids) were trying on their jeans and other clothes to make sure they fit I started perusing the jewelry isle and found some things for my wish list:

 A California neclace!!

And a set of camera earrings!!
SO AWESOME!

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So here is the one outfit we let our daughter get. She's very proud of it:

That's a real tie so I've been showing her how to tie a tie ;)

I remember I said I'd take a picture of the horrid mess I have yet to unpack. Brace yourselves:

The Horror

Everything I've unpacked so far and look at that. It looks like I have a LOOOOT of getting rid of to do.

The above picture is the one section I've been working on and as you can see I have gotten through about a fifth of it (look back in the blog for the before picture). The other day I took that bottom green crate on the right so technically I finished the column ;).

While I was unpacking I let Igor wander around the yard to graze. He found the hose to the pool's pump quite interesting.

So here was the crate I decided to unpack:

Usually after I unpack a crate I clean the crate up (they are getting dusty in the garage), but this crate I held off because I found this:

Yeah, that's a bunch of baby spiders. I left the crate out overnight (I did check all the stuff I brought in to make sure there were not spiders on/in it) but the next day they were still there so I hosed 'em off.

Here is the fruits of my labors:

One of my husband's binders and a mini chalkboard, a vintage Danville Wings megaphone and a bunch of my husband's hats. Also [not pictured] my "Jade" chess set. I'm not sure if it's real Jade or not, but the box is made with real leather trimming, so it could be real (I'm not a jade expert). It just seems so grainy and the jade I'm familiar with is always smooth, so I don't know. In any case it's not a full set and many pieces are broken. I set it up in my glass cabinet with the best looking pieces out where I can look at it whenever I want.

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I finally started taking pictures with my phone, so you might start seeing some of them. A few weeks ago my husband and I decided that it was high time we both had our very first brand-new bikes ever. So we went to quite a few stores looking at prices. We finally found some on sale at Walmart for $70 each.

Looking at bikes.

We took them home and "pimped" 'em out a little with some lights so the motorists would be able to see us:

You can't tell in this picture but we each have a headlight, a tail light, and lights around the body. The Mr's is blue and mine are multi-colored which makes it look like a Christmas Bike LOL. As we've driven around the neighborhood we have received many comments such as "sweet bikes!" "I love those bikes!" "I want a bike like that!" and "Are you guys in a parade?"

LOL!

We were biking every other night and walking the other nights but since we've been sick we haven't done anything. The Mr is better but I seem to be getting worse every day.

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Random pictures:
Me at the public pool:

So crowded (Sarcasm).

My stepdaughter at the public pool. Believe it or not she requested I put this on Facebook. I declined but I can put it on here. ;)

My daughter at the pool:

Me with "Convertible Hair:"

And finally! My Diva has finally entered middle school (they call it Jr High out here). I laughed because her locker was pretty big and I bet her that she was still so small she could fit right in it! She of course wanted to know for sure...:

I guess if your mom is the one who puts you in your locker (and doesn't shut the door) it's all right, right? LOL!!

Anyways.....here's to hoping I get better ~ because I don't like being miserable. :)

Love to ya.
AmyG