Prom 2008

Last night was SBHS Junior Prom 2008. Anisa went with her girlfriends. They had a good time getting all dressed up and pretty. They met up with more friends there. Afterward, was the Post Prom Party. One of my friends was in charge of organizing it so she called me (among the others) to help. I told her I didn't think I could stay up that late (party started at 11:30 p.m. and ended at 2 a.m.) but I could help set up. I ended up staying most of the party. I talked to some of the kids, then another friend came in and we chatted and watched the cliques. It was pretty fun. Here are some Highlights.....
Anisa, Katie and Ski.

I love this picture of Anisa and Katie

Anisa and Katie playing Guitar Hero
The three chicks with their pretty mixers for the Post Prom Party Party.

My Baby Is Gone

Well, I just got back home from watching Sara's bus drive away to WASHINGTON, D.C. Their 8th Grade field trip is a 20something hour trip on a big coach bus to our capital. I'm so happy for her, but a little sad. This is the first BIG trip she's taken like this. It's like when Anisa went to New York a couple of years ago. I wanted her to go, but I wanted to go protect her. Luckily, she's got 2 moms on the bus with her that she LOVES and Renee is out in the DC area in case of emergency.


Here is my girl with some of her friends. When they get back, I'm sure she'll have tons of pictures to share. I left her little love notes for each day in her backpack. In most of them, I reminded her to take lots of pictures and take notes on where we HAVE TO go this summer when we drive out east.



Travis left this morning to go to Michigan. Sounds easy enough since Michigan is right next to Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Lake Michigan is in the way. So, he had to drive down south through Chicago, IL, then a little through Indiana and he just called and he's just about over the Michigan border. He'll be doing some work up there for a couple of days then he'll be home just about the time Sara gets home. Anisa and I have the place to ourselves. Which is nice.

That kind of leads me to my next subject. My dear friend Haley and I have been working our butts off (literally). She was telling me she needed to start going back to the gym to get her summer body back (you know, that winter blubber layer). We've been going every week day for the last 2 weeks. I have also added seriously watching my calorie intake. The results......I've lost 6 pounds!!!! I'm so happy. I tried on a pair of pants I bought last summer that were a tad snug and now they're loose. I love seeing results. It makes it so much easier to keep it up. This week will be nice since I won't have to make dinner for the family. I can just eat what I need to eat and that's it. No pressure. I love that. :)

Thank you for being patient

Thank you all for being so patient. You've let me know that you want to see what I'm working on and now your wait is over. :) This is a baby quilt I made for Anisa's school counselor. She just had a baby boy. I still need to make a label, but here is the quilt.....FINALLY. :) I swear, I feel like I should be able to whip these things out, but since I don't work, everyone asks me to do stuff and my days quickly fill up. I'm not complaining, because I like seeing my friends, but I wish I could get my projects started and finished quicker.


Here is a teaser (since I have several friends who tease us...you know who you are) of my next (hopefully) finished project. It's got lots of small pieces to applique on, so it's taking me longer since I have to put it down after a while.

The weather today is rainy, but not too cold. Perfect for sewing! Hope you all are having a perfect spring day!! :)

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

22 years ago! Yep, we got married 22 years ago. Travis has survived another year with me. :) We haven't killed each other. We still even LIKE each other most days. Our celebration wasn't super exciting, but we did get to go out to dinner all by ourselves. Anisa had a band concert, so we went to a concert THEN dinner. We plan to watch a movie in a little bit, maybe have some popcorn and Dr. Pepper. That's our exciting evening on our 22nd anniversary.

Hope you all are having a fun evening.

TJ is MAD!

This is what we woke up to this morning, April 12. A couple of inches of fresh spring snow. Pretty much everyone (except me, the crazy person) is entirely sick of winter and snow. Heck, I like it because at least it's not 95 degrees with 90% humidity outside! :) As I type, at 8:30 p.m. , the snow is pretty much gone. It snowed on and off all day, but the temperature was warmer (36) so it started melting when it hit the ground. The poor little robins are all confused. It's hard to get worms when the snow is covering the grass.




Oh, Oh, Oh! I made bagels! Thanks to Monica and friends who posted this recipe and how easy it was, I decided to go for it. And they turned out great! At first I was a little nervous because when you boil them, they're supposed to float and mine sunk. BUT, eventually they did float! Mine had cream cheese and TJ had jam on his. Yummy! Try 'em, you'll like 'em! :)

April 9

I got up this morning, April 9th, you know, spring, and this is what was outside. It rained yesterday, and then started snowing but it didn't stick because it was still warm and wet. This will probably be melted soon. No shoveling needed, and that's nice because Travis has decided to share his cooties and we are both sickies. Stuffy nose, cough, basic stinky colds. I just hope the girls don't get it again. They both brought the cooties in the first place. I'm going to finish my coffee and get ready for the day. I have bible study here at 9:30 this morning so I need to get off this computer! Hope you all are having a springy day.

Guests and Machines

This morning on our way to Travis' office, we saw this couple down the street, but when I got home, they were in MY yard! It was fun to watch them. They are so cute. We've seen lots of ducks and the geese are back, too. I love listening to them flying overhead.





So, I've got a quilty/embroidery project that I'm working on but I can't get to it right now. See this??






It belongs in HERE! Baby's been sick. She was leaking anti-freeze out of somewhere on her engine, not the easy place, her radiator. So we had to rip her guts out and HOPEFULLY fix her. While we're in there, we've been replacing gaskets and cleaning. She's got 192,000ish miles on her and she's been a faithful girl in our family for over 14 years.




Travis gets so mad when we have to work on her since there isn't much room under her short hood. He can't get his hands in certain places, but my smaller hands can get in there. All the grease, oil, chemicals and washing are doing a number on my hands....Which is why they look like this. How sad and embarrassing. I have boy hands! :( We hope to have her running and not leaking by this weekend. Then I can get more work done on my quilty project. Right now my hands are kind of sore so I haven't been able to do any embroidery, which is most of my latest project......stay tuned, pics will be posted as soon as I can get it done! :)

Spring Break 2008

The girls and I went south to go shopping for Spring Break! Both chicks went to Wisconsin Dells with friends early in the week, so we left here Thursday and came home Friday.

Our trip started out with good weather. We got just south of Milwaukee and hit the outlet mall and the snow started. Big fluffy, wet flakes. It didn't stick right away, but we had to run to the car to avoid getting all wet.
By the time we got to Gurnee Mills it was coming down. At GM, our first stop was Ruby Tuesday for lunch. We did some shopping there, then headed south to hit the Magnificent Mile in Downtown Chicago.

The farther we drove south, the heavier the snow got. AND, the more expensive the gas got! Here you can see $3.69 and you can tell it was snowing pretty heavily. People were actually driving pretty safely. Until we got to the Mag. Mile. The buses and taxis were CRAZY! I couldn't take my eyes off the road to even look for parking for fear that we'd hit someone!

We REALLY needed gas, so we got south of the Mag Mile into a not so good area. Closer to the freeway, it wasn't so scary and we found a gas station where I only put in a couple of gallons since it was $3.79 there. Oh my! The snow had kind of slowed down but it was cold and windy and wet.

We checked into the hotel and promptly went to 7-11 for Coke Slurpees! They were so yummy. We went off to find a Japanese market that I had looked up online, but got lost. So, we gave up on that and went to dinner at Chevy's. We brought back some salsa and chips for Travis.

The next morning we finally found Mitsuwa Marketplace What a fun store. It kind of reminded us of Uwajimaya in Beaverton, OR. We bought candy, cookies, rice, various drinks in cute bottles, and even a rice presser thingie for little rice cakes. The sushi looked fantastic and fresh, but we already had lunch in mind....IKEA Swedish Meatballs!!! OH YEAH, BABY! I had to run to Ikea to pick up some kitchen organizers, and plus, just to look around. So first, we hit the restraunt for lunch. This trip was a lot about the food! :) After lunch, I shopped, the girls sat on a couch and listened to their iPods. I got what I needed and we headed to the Woodfield Mall. The girls both got new shoes. :)

Even Foxy made a new friend! At the hotel there was another Element in the parking lot. Of course, we had to park next to it and take a picture from our room. That's the way we are. :)

It was time to head north to go home. Our last stop of our trip was to Trader Joe's in Milwaukee for Mochi Ice Cream. We got a few other things along with our 11 boxes of ice cream. We filled the cooler with our treasures and lots of ice, and headed home. The ice cream and us girls made it home safely and now it's back to normal life.

April started with a bang, well, actually SNOW. :) Travis was MAD. He's so over winter, it's not even funny. Lucky for him it melted pretty quickly. Today is supposed to get close to 50 degrees. The animals and Travis should be happy. :)

I hope you all are having a wonderful, cool or hot (whatever you love) day. :)