Catching Up...

The last couple of weeks I haven't felt like I really had anything worth blogging about, but when I think about it - there's always SOMETHING to share. This morning I woke up feeling dizzy and nauseous. UGH. As luck would have it, this was the day I was to drive Luke to the airport to catch a flight to California for a business trip that's keeping him away for the rest of the week. He drove to the airport and graciously offered to let me just drive home rather than wait for his flight with him. I really was wanting to have that last little bit of time with my man, but must admit I was relieved when he told me he thought I should just go on home since I wasn't feeling well. It seemed like traffic went on forever. I finally got home and couldn't wait to get back into jammies so I could lie down and make the room stop spinning. YUCK. Suddenly it became clear to me that I wouldn't rest with all the rumbling and wooziness going on in my tummy. I did get sick twice and couldn't wait to just sleep. I slept for three hours straight with my precious Sugar baby by my side making me feel loved. I sure do adore that little miss fuzzy buns. :) So I began feeling better around noon and managed to actually eat this afternoon and this evening and keep everything down. Now I just feel super tired and weak. I hope tomorrow I'm back to normal because I have more soap to make for a private label order I'm filling.

After taking it easy most of the day and catching up on a good episode of Dr. Phil and Oprah, I am resting in the King's recliner, (if he was home he'd fight me for it) :) Brandon is goofin' around on his computer,

Ciara is playing the piano - music from Pan's Labrynth and Pirates of the Caribbean "Davy Jones" (love it)

and Sugar is dragging all her toys out and bringing them to me so I will fight her for them and throw 'em so she can go fetch them.

It's a relaxing night and even though I still feel a little punk, I'm enjoying it - but I miss my sweetie. He was in Los Angelos when he called to let me know his flight had landed safely. I was glad for that, but of course they lost his luggage so it was catching the next flight and he would have to wait for it - which meant that he could be late for the meeting he had scheduled. He wasn't too thrilled with that. He called later then and said he had dinner on the beach in San Diego. I have to admit, I'm just a little jealous that he's in Cali and I'm here in Kansas with the raging winds. My poor tulips are weather beaten. I watered them tonite and they didn't seem to care, they just hung there - as weary of the wind as I am. On a happier note, my chives are growing and greening up. Can't wait to get some fresh chives on a baked potato. YUMMY!

So here's what else is going on: the kids were on spring break and I loved it. I took a few days off with the kids and one day we went to Salina shopping. We are on a fairly tight budget here lately with his company being so kind as to issue paycuts and all... but we decided we needed to get away. The few things we purchased were bargains. I had a ball at Hobby Lobby. Mostly I bought a few things for scrapbooking (even managed to turn out about 6 pages in Brandon's book over spring break! He doesn't really appreciate it now, but I think he will one day - at least I hope he will). Also they had a lot of stuff on sale for 50% off so I got this adorable metal sign for my kitchen for only $5!! Can you believe that? It says "Bless this home and all who enter here" - which matches my wallpaper border and country kitchen decor perfectly. I was pretty happy with that buy. Then Luke met us for supper at Red Lobster. We only eat there about once a year, so that was quite a treat. Seafood is my all time favorite!!

My cute little bargain...

In his "free time" - Luke's been trying to finish the basement. Here's what's going on down there. My man is a sheet rockin' maniac! He truly does amaze me, and does nice work. He accidentally cut the piece for the light switch wrong and patched it so well that no one will ever know. If you saw it - you'd be totally impressed. He also built a beautiful landing out of scrap pecan wood. It's beautiful! I just can't wait until the whole thing is done. Doesn't it look great so far? I'll definitely post finished pix.

Honey Man's Handiwork.

The thing I don't like about these projects (besides the expense) is the mess. UGH. Here's the family room.

Everything is pulled off the walls and stuck in the middle of the room, I hate how messy it looks. Also, I have 5 gallons of "sycamore grove" greyish tan paint sitting in my kitchen at the top of the stairs waiting to be texture sprayed on the walls going down the stairs and on the walls around my soap shop and around to the other corner of the storage room. The bad news is that we probably still have 20+ feet of sheetrock to hang on the long wall. Can't wait until this project is complete. It's gonna look nice. Eventually we'll finish the ceiling too and I won't have to look at rafters any more. That probably bugs me the most.

YUCK.

Also over spring break... we discovered that our laminate floor was ruined in front of the dishwasher. Upon inspection we found that the floor was soaked underneath the dishwasher.

Here you see the "hole" where my dishwasher once was... complete with fan for drying the wet floor.

Luke pulled it out and took it out into our machine shed and gave it a look over. He couldnt' tell where the water was coming from - but the machine is old and we didn't want to take a chance of there being a hole in the tub or something and having it ruin more flooring. So... we had to bite the bullet and replace it. Plus the pegs that you stack dishes on were starting to all break off. Annoying. We did get a great deal at the maytag store since the dishwasher was on sale and I guess it's making good use of some of our tax refund. I'm excited about the fact that it's supposed to run quietly - the old one sounded like a freight train going through the house. Can't say I'm not glad about having a new dishwasher, it's just that it was an unplanned expense. It will probably get installed over the weekend since my handyman is out of town on business.

Brandon gleefully announced this evening that his 15th birthday is in 17 days and there are 60 days left until school is out for the summer. :) He has been driving as much as possible so that he can get his school permit. He's only got about 23 hours of driving in and needs a total of 50 - so I hope he can get that all in over the summer and be ready to drive himself to school next fall. *sigh* I can't believe my baby is gonna be driving. It's scary. Recently a friend's 15 year old daughter was in a car accident with a friend on the way home from youth group and the friend was killed. So sad. That's a hard thing for a momma to do... puttin' babies out on the road, but Brandon is a pretty good driver. I know I can't keep him from all the "scary" growing up stuff, so I'll just double up on the prayin'. ;)

Ciara is in full swing of preparation for graduation and college. We've got her pre-enrollment event at Fort Hays the middle of April - that should be fun. I'm so proud of her... she's got her first 2 years of college paid for except for books. We're still hoping that she'll receive at least 1 other scholarship to cover books. I'm also relieved that her financial aid package has come through and it looks good. (Thank you Lord!) I didn't know getting a kid ready for college could be so involved, but now I'll know what to do again next year so that's the up side.

I began planning Ciara's graduation reception and apparently it wasn't soon enough. We live 10 miles from the school and there is not a single place in town that hasn't been rented already by other kids that live in the country. BUMMER. One church that we've visited some and our kids have gone to camp with their kids refused to allow us to rent their fellowship room because we are not "church members" This was just a little disheartening. It wasn't a liability to drive our kids to Missouri, but apparently it's a huge liability to let us use their space??? I think the whole thing boiled down to the fact that we're not "members". Why do churches get so hung up on that? Renting a room in your building is an enormous outreach to the community, that is if you WANT to be a part of the community. These kinds of churches wonder why they never grow. *sigh* Sometimes the attitudes of Christians really get me riled up. In the end my uncle and aunt were kind enough to offer their extremely clean shop to have the reception in. It will be a very casual event, but I think that's alright - we're pretty laid back people ourselves. I just hope we don't have the same kind of wind we've been having or it will be impossible to do any decorating as the big doors will probably be open to keep it cool - unless it is a cool or rainy day. We'll roll with it, I'm just so glad that we will be in town and don't have to expect everyone to drive 20 miles round trip to get to our house for the festivities. Looking forward to seeing lots of family we haven't seen in a long time. Wow... the clock is ticking and May will be here in no time!

Well... that's it for now. I've been working on this post off and on for several hours as I did other stuff (such as let the dog out at half a dozen times, ha ha) and now it's passed bed time. My head is whirling with all the upcoming events. I think I might be able to breathe easier about June 1st when my long list of activities is nearly complete. :)