Mi Vida Ocupada: My Busy Life!

4th of July Weekend

Whew!!  Another fun-filled, action-packed weekend! Here is the weekend run-down

* Friday

Worked....summer school is going great!!!  I have fabulous kids and my mornings whip by before I know it!  Went swimming....didn't spend too much time at the pool, but it was a nice day.  Hung out with Jeff and Toni....Yikes, traffic was a killer driving north to their house...everyone was trying to get out of town for the weekend.  Took us forever to go 25 or so miles. That baby Cidney is so darn cute.  I just love her! Went to dinner at Famous Daves....I had forgotten to eat all day so I was starving...couldn't eat much though because I was so famished. Went home and hung out until bedtime.

*Saturday

Went shopping and bought my new Canon camera. Went swimming for about half and hour, grilled steaks with E's parents and their friends.  Came home, did a quick load of laundry, got ready for Mary and Dubber's party and then drove up to Becker, MN.  The party was a good time, as always, complete with over $1,000 worth of illegal fireworks.  Watched Dubber light them for almost two hours before the Fire Marshall came and busted us.  He was very cool about it, though.  I took tons of cute pictures with my new camera and just after making this collage, I accidently wrote over them with the pics that I took on Sunday.  I am SICK that I did that, because the original pics from Mary & Dub's are gone forever. Soooo sorry, Julie!! I had a great one of you and Dan and one of you and your sister. Good thing I cropped and saved about 5 of them with different names, so I will still have a couple pics to scrap :)

* Sunday

Forced myself out of bed by 10 or 11am (we didn't get home from the party until 3am).  Checked e-mail and showered, went up to mom and dad's.  My aunt Con is in town from Tucson and my aunt Theresa and her family are in town from Wisconsin.  Gram, Gramp and Paul, Bob and family also come up for boating, tubing and picnic lunch.  While out on the lake we saw the Bald Eagles from the top of their perch and later in the afternoon as we were drifting by the peninsula we saw a mama deer and her three fawn babies.  Triplets!!  We feel very special for witnessing such a rare grouping.

*Sunday Evening

Lanee came over to hang out for awhile.  E had one of his buddies over and we grilled steak (yes, once again!) for a late dinner.  My friend Shannon came over a little later to hang out for a little bit too.

Father's Day

It was another gorgeous day this year for Father's Day.   I went to my parents house later in the afternoon and spent some time fishing with my brother, Brian.  All went well until we ran out of worms! Does it sound like I am giving the impression that I actually fished???  Okay, I just watched the boys while working on my tan inside the boat.  It was HOT out there, whew baby! Gram and Gramps were also up for dinner...my mom made a fabulous rotissierie turkey on the grill (dad's day off, of course!).  Jeff spent some time working on Gramps' new laptop...yes, we finally convinced them to get with "it".  We joked that they are no longer part of the stone age!!  It will be fun to send them pictures, etc. this way :)  Here is a little collage from the day (I didn't take too many pics) The font I used is SP Love Life by Kelly Purkey and can be found at Scrap Supply

 

An Unmemorable Memorial Day

You could not have asked for a more beautiful day to have a day off than Memorial Day yesterday.  I had plans to spend the afternoon swimming and BBQing but was fine with just spending the day at home, so I enjoyed the sunny weather from my deck while reading almost the entire book, Shopoholic Takes Manhattan.  I was extremely unmotivated to do much of anything, but I did grill us some spicy sausages for dinner and watched a scary movie called Hell's Gate, which really wasn't that scary, but better than most horror movies.   

Before bed I got the scrappin' bug so I started a layout that I hope to complete tonight and then I finished the book that I had started earlier in the day.

Nothing memorable about the holiday this year, but at least we had nice weather and a chance to relax!

MOthers Day

I don't think there is one single person in my family who woke up this morning without thinking about Mothers Day of last year. It was one year ago today that my brothers and I got the call from our mom that she had bad news.  Dad was in the hospital.  Oh MY GOD, What?? You see, my dad is the type of guy who NEVER gets sick.  So what was he in the hospital for? Well, it turned out that he had some terrible pain in the middle of the night and was urinating blood, so my mom brought him to the ER.  An MRI showed a giant tumor in one of his kidneys.  And it was CANCER. This news hit me like a ton of bricks...all the images and associations I have with cancer are all so bad.  Oh my God, my dad has cancer!! What was this going to mean? His positive attitude about everything really helped us to get through it.  He said he was going to take things one step at a time, and it wasn't going to make anything better by dwelling on the worst case scenarios.  To make a long story short, he had surgery a few weeks later to remove the cancerous tumor and all the cancer was contained within the kidney, thank GOD! He didn't even have to have chemo or anything...he just had to take it easy for about 6 weeks after the surgery.  It was a time in our lives when my family really pulled together to be there for each other.  I am so fortunate to have such a strong, close family.

Today was a much better day, for the most part, but it didn't start off that way.  I arrived at my parents house a complete mess...a few miles from their home I saw something that will leave a scar in my memory forever.  A truck had hit a horse that must have gotten out of its fence and the horse was lying dead in the middle of the street.  The police had not yet arrived, so I saw this just minutes after it happened.  I cannot go into detail, but it was enough to break my heart.  This wasn't like a deer, which would also be terrible to hit. This was a HORSE.  Someone's pet.  A frickin' horse.  I still can't believe it.

Boy, would you believe that I started this post with the intention of sharing how nice it was to be with my family today?  And here I have gotten all depressing to listen to!

My Gram and Gramp had just gotten back to MN after living in AZ since last October.  It is always nice to spend time with them! For being nearly 80, they are both in great shape and are doing everything they can to stay healthy and fit. I think we have all convinced them that they just HAVE TO get a computer so that they can keep in touch with us all winter long.  My Gramps also wants to get a voice recognition program so that he can speak all of his stories and family history into the computer without having to type it all down.  I think that is sooooo cool! Its a great piece of family history that needs to be put down before its too late. I got a couple of nice family pictures today at out little get together. The weather wasn't very nice so we weren't able to go out on the boat, but we were still able to hang out on the patio and look out at the lake!