Sunday Funny

The following is a phone conversation I had with Luke tonight.

Me: (watching the snow pile up outside) Next Sunday night we'll be on the beach Luke.

Luke: Grandma, is that a nude beach or a normal beach??

A nude beach??...what kind of grandma does he think I am??? (Nevermind!) Or a better question might be this - where in the world does a home schooled 6 year old hear about nude beaches!?!

Oh it's going to be an interesting week in Florida isn't it??? Did I mention that Caleb is also coming with us?? Oh yeah......very interesting!

Six Days Until Florida

Well, we did it.....we closed on the house this morning! We were supposed to close next Monday but the realtor has already received the sellers packet and the bank has the money so.....we met today and sealed the deal! Yay! Tom has been down there all day. First he went there to make a list of things he needed from the hardware and then he came back and worked on stuff all afternoon. That is fabulous but - he is looking for an exact match of floor tile color and style to put down behind the refrigerator! My kitchen floor has holes in it and he is looking for tile to put behind the fridge!!! There's more, lots more, but I'll spare you the details.

Tonight we have Julie & Steve's kids. They are pretty funny......at dinner Caleb stands up in his chair, grabs his crotch and says something about his "tenders". None of the other kids even pay attention. So I asked him "tenders??" He smiles, the smile only Caleb can smile, and says "yeah Grandma, tenders like Captain Rex." (Whoever that is DUH.) This is where Alec chimes in with "Yeah Grandma tenders are nuts." I KNEW THAT!

Fifteen minutes after dinner Caleb informs me that he is hungry. This is the kid that doesn't eat so I know that he has a plan. Sure enough.......he found a leftover candy cane and that is what he was "hungry" for. And he is smart enough to know that if he took it into the family room where the other kids were, he'd probably have to share so he sat quietly in the dark in the dining room and ate his candy cane! Pretty smart kid, I'd say.

Currently he is campaigning to go to Florida with us and his brother Luke. I don't think that sounds like a bad idea.......they could go on the Teacups and the Flying Dumbo and Space Mountain with each other!!!! Well, maybe not Space Mountain but still that would mean that Tom & I didn't have to go on all those twirly rides at Disney!! And they could bury each other in the sand on the beach! It's brilliant! Yeah, I'm liking the idea better and better.

Maggie's Ears

Tomorrow Maggie will be 6 months old. YIKES!! Today she had her ears pierced. Here is a photographic journal of the big event. This is the before picture.....she is almost smiling, enjoying all the attention, wondering what in the world is going on!

This is after her ears are marked and both girls are positioning the piercing guns (!) .....beginning to look concerned......

Her ears are done here and if you look closely you can see that she is starting to react....her lip is quivering......

And now she is feeling the sting and reacting whole heartedly!!! She is probably wondering why everyone is smiling when she is clearly so upset.....not the reaction she's used to!!!!

And here she is a moment later, safe in Daddy's arms, looking so cute in her new blue earrings!!!

9 More Days!!!

Nine more days and we should be headed for Florida!!! YAY!!! I don't remember when I've been so anxious to get out of here for vacation.......well, not since last year! Our hotel is supposed to have wi-fi so I'll be able to update with lots of pics and stuff. Julie calls at least 20 times a day when we have one of her kids but now she'll actually be able to see pictures of Luke daily. Maybe I'll even be able to figure out the webcam by then! How complicated can it be???

The House - Closing #1

Well, as of about 4:30 this afternoon we are one step closer to finishing up our house purchase. We closed on the refinance of our home (above) today and expect to close on the "new" house next Monday. I say "expect" because we've learned during this process that absolutely nothing goes as planned. So...barring any more delays, snafus, misunderstandings, problems, time changes, etc......we should be the new owners of the house down the road by this time next Monday! Yay!

Work on the roof is scheduled to start the next day and should be finished by the time we get home from Florida and then we will work on getting the plumbing repaired, the leak fixed, the wall redone and install a new water softener and a water heater. Phew!

Hopefully, the "new neighbors" will be able to move in sometime mid May. I'll keep you posted. Right now I am going to watch "The Money Pit"!!!!

More Barbie

The whole thing with Barbie started a few weeks ago when she turned 50. I used this image of her as my Facebook profile for a few days (isn't the resemblance remarkable??) and then I wrote a birthday tribute to her on this blog and reminisced about my childhood without Barbie....my mom thought she was trashy and had big boobs so no Barbie for me.

Anyways, then Susan sent me some pictures of this Barbie cake - yes, this Barbie is chocolate cake! For real! It would be really weird to cut her up and eat her but whatever! So it got me to thinking of the time when Julie was little, probably about 3, and my grandma made her and my little cousin Barbie cakes.

Here is my grandma, my cousin Shannon and Julie with their Barbie cakes. Julie is the girl in the front with the orange Barbie cake. You'll see better in the next picture where she dives in face first to eat her!!

Yep! That's my girl......the Barbie carnivore!! Notice how Shannon is gently stroking Barbie's hair while Julie is eating her Barbie. Her kids are SO like her!!!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

I don't really have anything to say - just wishing everyone a Happy St. Patty's Day! Actually I do have an idea for a post (thanks to Susan D.) but it'll have to wait until I have time to put it together! So check back in a day or two.......

A Whole Lotta Nada

Well it seems to be feast or famine in the world of blogging. For me, at least. I can crack off two or more posts in a day or two and then suddenly - nothing. But around here nothing can be a really good thing!

So here is a whole lotta nada from the week:~)

Happy to say that I think I've adjusted to the time change. Still not happy about driving to work in the dark but I am pretty happy to have a job to drive to! My mom & dad seem to have recovered from her big 80th birthday celebration last weekend!

We had ups & downs all week with the attempted purchase of the foreclosed house we've been trying to buy for a month! You'd think the bank would be anxious to close a buy, especially in this economy, but apparently that is not true. But in the end, and on Friday the thirteenth, we received verbal confirmation from the bank that the house was ours! I'll believe it for real on the 27th of this month at closing.

So here is the new house - crummy picture, I know, but you get the idea. I'm sure there'll be plenty more pictures to come!

And here are the new neighbors! I was on the bus to bowling yesterday when I got the text from Tom that the house was ours so I quickly called Julie to tell her. Linnea answered the phone and I told her that I had a really big secret to tell her. So I tell her about the house and she immediately begins screaming! Screaming so loud that people near me on the bus could hear her! It was sweet! But there'll be no more screaming once they're my neighbors!!!

Three More Months

At one point today I looked at the calendar and realized that exactly three months (92 days) from today is our last day of school! That doesn't seem too bad. Don't get me wrong - I love my job - but this has been a difficult year, to say the least! So putting the remainder of the school year in countdown terms helps make it go by a little faster for me. Weird....I know.



My other countdowns: Florida (25 days), Chicago (53 days), Christmas (291 days).
I should probably figure out how many days until the wedding, huh?

Another Birthday!

Tomorrow is Barbie's 50th birthday. Yikes!!! So here is some Barbie trivia.....

• Full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts - named after her creator's daughter.
• Attended Willows High School but graduated from Manhattan International High.
• Barbie has owned more than 40 pets including a lion cub, a zebra and a panda.
• The first Barbie cost $3. The most expensive Barbie to sell on ebay sold for $7,999.99 and a 1959 mint condition Barbie would sell for $27,450.
• Has more than 1 billion pairs of shoes. (Yeah!)
• There have been NASCAR Barbies, astronaut Barbies, Malibu Barbies Doctor Barbies and teacher Barbies (who were recalled for not wearing panties....hmmm.)

Lest you think I know this stuff because I'm a Barbie fan, let me set the record straight......I got all these useless facts from today's Free Press.....I was not allowed to play with Barbie when I was a kid - my mom thought they were unrealistic and trashy. But don't worry, all my friends had Barbies and I played with them at my friends houses!! And my girls all had Barbies - LOTS of them!

So besides brushing up on Barbie trivia and taking a long nap what else is there to do on a rainy afternoon after losing an hour to daylight savings time? Go to the movies of course! I actually woke Tom up to go with me. It was my turn to choose and as you can see I chose "New in Town". It was cute....I don't think they missed a single up north stereotype and it was predictable but I enjoyed it anyways. Best part? It was still light outside at 7:30 when we got out of the theater!! Yay for daylight savings time!

More Birthdays!!

Well, we are only 1 week into the month of March and we just celebrated the third birthday of the month! Today was my mom's 80th birthday! My brother and his wife and all their kids came over from Holland today for her party. Here are the oldest and youngest members of our family - my mom & Maggie, my youngest grand daughter.

We had dinner at TW & Friends and then everyone came over to our house for cake & ice cream! All of the great grand kids were here - all 7 of them. It was pretty crazy! And LOUD! And of the 9 grand kids all but 2 were here. We had a house full!

Here she is getting ready to blow out the candles......good thing she had a lot of help!

Here is my niece Lauren. She made me promise not to put any pictures of her on Facebook. Hey, this doesn't count.....it is clearly NOT Facebook!

And this is Alec. I put this here just because it makes me laugh!

The Mohwak

I was having a pretty boring, long day and was in a pretty crummy mood and then I saw the Mohawk and now all I have to do is think about it and I start laughing!!

A few years ago Tom's hair started getting really thin. He's not exactly bald but you can see right through to his scalp there is so little hair left. So we decided that it looks better when its buzzed super short. Eventually he quit going to the barber and started buzzing it himself.

And that is what this post is about. Last night after I'd gone to bed he buzzed his hair. And then this morning he got up and left for work. So I didn't see his haircut until late this afternoon after he'd worked all day. I couldn't believe my eyes when he turned around and I saw that he'd left a strip of hair uncut right in the middle of the back of his head!! He had worked all day, calling on customers, inspecting jobs, dispatching his service techs, and who knows what else......with a MOHAWK!!!

I actually took this photo with my phone to show him because he didn't believe me. Needless to say he immediately buzzed it off. Thank goodness I was able to get this picture! Can you even imagine people's reactions when they saw this?? He just isn't the Mohawk type!!!

March

In our family we have a LOT of birthdays in March! I guess June must be the month of love :~) Anyways, there are 3 birthdays the first week, and 2 the last week, with assorted birthdays in between. Today was Linnea's 9th birthday! WOW! We celebrated with her this afternoon and so here are some of the pictures.....

Here are Julie's 5 kids and Nick's little one.

Here is my Dad (who will also have a birthday this month!) looking at something with Caleb.


Here is the birthday girl getting ready to open her presents.

And this is a video of Caleb describing how to put out the fire on the candles. "I lick my fingers....I touch it...and it glows out..." We're going to need him and all the others on Saturday when my mom turns 80.......there's gonna be a LOT of candles!!!