Phone Pics

Here’s a sampling of pics sitting in my phone.  Some date back by at least a couple of months. 

Day at Six Flags with three goof balls:

 

Maybe Grant was a little big for this one? 

 

 

At our electric co-op meeting with two goof balls:

      

“My Screaming Aunt Karen wins $100, and all I win is this lousy rubber bracelet and a stamped S on my hand?”

 

Our co-op is centered in Greenville so that’s where the festivities were.  Greenville Junior High has this pond of water right in the hallway with koi and turtles, and how cool is that for a school?

 

The night Gary was named new Scoutmaster:

Now I feel I have to call him Master.

This was only amusing because I wasn’t the one pinned in, the day I went to Alton Square Mall:

In the day of the old deck when I was wondering just who dumped all the watermelon and left it: 

and then realized it was just Scooter eating a sponge. 

Finally A Day Off

Whew, I feel like I can catch my breath today.  You might not know but I have a job these days and it’s just kept me hopping since September.  I’m away from the house so much that all my work here at home piles up so it’s like work, work, work around the clock to keep caught up. 

This past week for example, I worked:

Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning, Friday night

I guess I took Sunday off.

Too bad I don’t get paid for this position, Volunteer Mom.  This is what I did:

Saturday—worked kiddie pool game at Sam’s school Fall Festival

Monday—worked library at Caroline’s school

Tuesday—made a huge amount of vegetable soup to take in for teacher appreciation at Sam’s school plus with some help from Gary and Caroline, sorted/trimmed/counted Box Tops

[Btw, this is what $65+ back to your school looks like at 10 cents each.   And this is only from Sam’s class alone.  There are sixteen other classrooms and I don’t know if this was an exceptional amount from his room but if so, this school gets a bunch of Box Tops turned in.

This is a four foot wide table.]

 

Wednesday—worked library at Sam’s school

Thursday—worked library at Sam’s school

Friday morning—worked Accelerated Reader at Sam’s school

Friday night—worked a game station at Jack’s school Fall Fling

Oh yeah, add on yesterday:  Monday—worked library and Halloween party at Caroline’s school

Whew. 

But I love doing it.  You know, I remember when the older boys were younger and I couldn’t go in to help at school that much even though I really wanted to because of having the babies at home.  Well, now I have my chance and I really enjoy doing all of this.  But I think maybe I am going to have my fill by the end of this year keeping up with this schedule.  I think I might have taken on this volunteer thing with a little too much enthusiasm.

On the other hand, it won’t be that long before the kids are all in college and I don’t think their schools will be calling me to come in to help then, well, other than to write a check. 

Which reminds me that I think I better be considering maybe a paying job.

Happy Halloween

Stepped off the school bus like this!  Creepy cool.

More Sam Stuff

And this little gem of a book entitled Fall….

When I see a big leaf pile I will jump into it.

 

In the fall I like to jump into a leaf pile.

(Headfirst obviously)

 

I want to see a scarecrow. 

What if the scarecrow had a gun?

What if the scarecrow had two guns?

It will scare the crows!

 

I love it.

I Do Declare

this to be Crazy Hair Day.

House in the Works—Driveway

Gary is enjoying his new position at work very much, I am happy to say.  He recently had his first-in-years business travel.  We got along fine here at home without him for the week, not to say he wasn’t missed.  I, however, learned just because I am home and in charge, I maybe can not be trusted to make executive decisions. 

The gravel guy that came by last year with a deal for us involving the first half of our driveway stopped by again.  He was finishing up another job and had two loads of gravel he was offering for a good price that would finish out the rest of the drive back to the buildings.  He even threw in grading up the old and rollering the new.  Honestly, it was the idea of getting out all that old grass that sold me since I had fought it all summer long with spray and it still looked so bad.  Fifteen minutes of their equipment or me pulling it by hand for days?  Well, suffice it to say, I thought it was a good idea and gave him the go ahead. 

 

AFTER

Well, the other half of the executive branch was not happy with my decision once he got home since he had other plans that all the new gravel now makes tougher to accomplish.  But for the immediate effect, it looks so much better, right? 

Miscellaneous Catch Up

This is a cereal bowl that contains the sugar/miniscule crumb pieces that remained in the cereal box.  I had asked Grant, “Is the Cinnamon Toast Crunch gone?”  And Mr. Literal said, “No.” and put it right back in the pantry.  And not as a joke either.

With kids having open access to your camera, you never know just what’s gonna be captured.  Downloading the pictures almost always contains a fun surprise, like this.   What is this??

Caroline, telling a story.  Maybe about this time she and Sam got into a really bad fight.  Like this.

You can see they’re still getting plenty of mileage out of the old trampoline.

This was me with the camera, btw.  I couldn’t stop taking pics, trying to get a really cool one.  It might help if some day I get a real camera.  Love my simple camera, but you can’t do too much fancy stuff. 

   

See flying Sam in the corner?   Wheeee : )                ^^^

Hmm, what else do I have to share?  Well, I snapped this picture below while I was working concessions at Grant’s first school fling, a Friday night event for all the 6th graders.  What makes this funny is as I pulled into a parking spot outside the school as we were about to go in, he says, while wearing a neon green T, “Oh yeah, Mom? I have to wear blue tonight.”

Really, Grant, really?  I quickly assessed my options: 

Go back home. 

Go to Target. 

Go on like nothing was wrong. 

I went with Option C.

House in the Works—Deck Re-do

It took me about a whole day of playing with like 100 paint cards, holding them against the house in the bright sun part of the day, in the shadowed areas, up against the gutters, the outbuildings, etc., and finally I weeded them down to what I thought would look good around here.

 

A Fall Rainbow, if you will.

And our new shingles were called Autumn Blend.  See the connection?

The porch colors, basically a dark red and dark brown, were already picked and painted so those set the initial scheme.  Plus, that our house and fences are still Fake Cedar Orange made it so it had to be in there. 

Finally, that decision of the general color scheme was made, but then I was really struggling to decide what exactly to do for the deck out of these choices.  ‘Cause you know the screen porch which is now red and brown connects to the deck and then when we paint the whole house a new color… blah blah.  After whining about it maybe one time too many, Gary took it upon himself to politely choose for me which amounted to a random pointing to a this and a that.  And then there was no more discussion.  We went to town to get the paint/stain needed in the colors he had so thoughtfully pointed to, and I went to town getting this deck re-do party started.

When we were looking at this farm and considering buying it, it appeared everything was so nicely painted.  Yes, it was Fake Cedar Orange, but still it was a nice, new looking finish.  See what it was like a year ago June? 

Well, introduce one long snowy, icy winter and some other factor that I don’t really know about (watered down paint? wrong kind of stain?  improper prep?), and most of that stain was practically gone from all the deck flooring by the time spring came around.  Throw in a huge dog with huge claws living on this deck (despite the doggie condo sitting there nicely in the yard), and our deck was embarrassingly in need of serious work this whole summer: 

  

Yucky deck.  So we replaced a couple bad boards and I went over the whole thing with the power washer a couple of times and then applied a deck prep solution.  Then it was ready for stain!

 

So Gary’s dictate was for this:

And it turned out like this: 

   

This big wooden table is going but since Gary couldn’t lift for so many weeks, it’s stayed put and I basically painted around it.  I do love my new tablecloth.  Thanks, Mom!

 

It was so hard to stop since the paint was making such a huge improvement, but painting the rest of the fence and house will have to come next year.

And look at these gates!  We Scooter-proofed.

 

The design basically came out of a combination of what would add structural strength to the gate and what Scooter could not fit his head through.

I absolutely love them.  Except for the finicky latches… but the Scooter-proof part, I love them!

   

Unfortunately, Bob/Bruce did not get the stay off the deck memo. 

You know…confession time… I still do not know one cat from the other after more than a year, and Caroline just told me this one pictured is Bruce.  The only names I call them are Bobrooska or KitKit so I figure I’m covered.

Once I got going, I had second thoughts about such a light color for the floor boards, but I’d already put on two coats of the solid-color stain and I don’t think there is much more you can do to get rid of it other than to completely strip the stain (not me), so we will live with it and see how it fares.  It’s so light that it shows every little grain of shingle coating that comes down off the new roof, not to mention all the bits of dirt and tree debris.  I guess I will just keep the broom in hand. 

I don’t have that much other stuff to do.

The one upside of the floor color is now you can’t see the dog hair.  But he’s banned from the deck now anyway.  Btw, boy, was he hatin me for awhile. 

 

Headline:  Dog Gets the Boot

Family Takes Back Their Deck

I like it much better this way.