My Nephew Made It In Our Local Paper

He's the guy in front in yellow. This is my nephew Cory. What a nice kid....love him to death. This is the 1600m run. He didn't come in first but I'm sure he wasn't far behind. He's out of town for a few days so I'll have to save the paper for him.
Our daughter Terra goes to Neguanee today for a track meet. Hope she has fun!

Should We?

We are thinking about purchasing one of these. I know my husband would love...love....love to get one but I am dragging my feet. We do have a 4 wheeler and don't get a chance to go together on it so the Ranger would be more family friendly. I know my daughter and grandson would love to have this too.....but they are so pricey!!!
I'll keep looking for a deal and maybe I'll find one we just can't pass up!

Growing Things

I bought a little Sesame Street seed kit from Lowe's so I could have a little garden to tend with my grandson. We planted them in the little cups provided, put the top on (green house effect) and waited to see the seeds sprout. It only took two days for them to sprout! This is how big they are now and it was time to get them into bigger pots because it is still too cold to put them outside! By the way, we planted green beans!
So I found some cups and bought some dirt and seperated them and replanted them. My grandson wasn't with me but I will wait until he is over to plant them outside when it is time.

I have eleven plants sitting in the house on the table by the window soaking up the sun that comes thru the window.

Hopefully the nights will get warmer and they will be able to get planted soon.

Finished!

Here are the "guys" finishing up the deck.
Nathan just loved helping his Grandpa with the cordless drill! This little guy will be able to build anything when he gets older!

Here is the finished project. Now all I have to do is get the umbrella out for the table and a few decorations and some flowers and we're good to go!

After the deck was finished, we had some extra wood left over so Pepper decided to finish off Nathan's slide with some swings. Now he has two swings and a swing bar. Nathan loved the swings and he tested them out right away.

New Deck

We are adding on to our back deck. I wanted to have a space off of our original deck to put a table and chairs on. We do have a deck there already but when you get the table and chairs on it there really isn't much room to move around. First we thought we would do a paver area. We looked at all the pavers and really didn't find anything that appealed to us. I didn't really want to mess with all the leveling and filling in with sand. So we put it off until we could figure out what we really wanted. So, last weekend we just decided to add on to what we already have.
My hubby started the deck when I was away on Saturday. He got quite a bit done by himself. He is such a great handyman. He gets frustrated with me because I think he can build and do anything and he has to keep me grounded with my thinking. (He can do most anything!!)

Still trying to figure out what I can do with those old steps.

Day one ended. I was happy with what he accomplished.

Day two started with a drive to pick up the rest of the materials we needed to finish the job. No progress on the deck today.

Day three didn't start until after Pepper got off of work and continued when I got home from work and picking up our Grandson to help. He loves to be around when we are building things.

This is the deck at the end of day three. Good progress was made. Not much left to do so it won't take long to finish up.

When it's all done, we will be able to have our first dinner out there. Can hardly wait!

A Day For ME!

Isn't this a pretty mug? I received this mug from a seminar I attended this past Saturday. It was called "A Day For Women".
It was a very nice event. You were greeted at the door to register and/or sign in. You had the option to go and be screened for Vitamin D deficiencies and then you could go to another place and be tested for glucose and have your blood pressure taken. Along the way you could visit the vendors that they had there.
The guest speaker was a Dermatologist. She was very informative on our skin and how to protect it and make it as healthy as it can be. By the way....tanning beds are very bad for your skin. I was thinking about getting a tanning package until she spoke to us on how dangerous they are for our skin. Money saved.
Our first stop was lunch. The fruit was sooooo good. I guess I haven't had much fruit lately because I could have just ate that. I also had a Chinese chicken wrap which was very good but I would have liked to put my teryaki sauce on. I also had soup...a little bland but not bad. Dessert was a raspberry chocolate cupcake that you knew was skinnied up...but it was good.
I picked three lectures to attend. The first was on tweens and teens and how to talk to them about Just Saying No. Silly me, I thought this was about sex but it was about drugs. Learned some surprising things about how kids get high! Hopefully I won't have to worry about this with my daughter but the info is good to have.
Then I went to Beginner Jogging. This was not my first choice. I wanted to go to the stability ball lecture but it was full. I am interested in learning to jog and I guess this will be a good start. Of course nutrition, hydration and proper clothing and shoes was addressed but no jogging. Good thing.....I was not prepared for that.
The last lecture I attended was From Infancy to Adulthood--Women's Health. This was mostly about immunizations and we are past that but there was information on the Gardisill shot that I need to get my daughter started on---she will not be happy about that.
We all gathered back in the cafeteria as they were raffling some things. I won a 30 minute session in an infrared sauna, parafin for the hands and a 60 minute bioelement facial. Sounds good to me. Another couple of hours of pampering. I could get used to that!!

More Time

Ahhhh, I finally have more time for reading. I love to read. I especially love true stories about real life. I am definitely not into the romance novels....livin' those....LOL. I'm not much into westerns or sci fi. I do love a good biography.

I was at a friend's house yesterday visiting and catching up. She mentioned that she was up late reading a book she had found in their church library. She said it was so good she couldn't put it down and was up way too late to finish it. I read the back cover and it sounded like something I would read. A true story about two college girls who had been in a terrible accident. One had died and one survived but the authorities had incorrectly identified them. It's a story written by their families. It's called Mistaken Identity by Don & Susie Van Ryn and Newell, Colleen & Whitney Cerak with Mark Tabb.

I started reading in the bath. I don't know how long I was in the tub but the water was getting too cold to stay in to read so I continued reading on the couch. My husband was quite serious when he got up and said "Don't stay up all night to read it all.". I guess he knows me too well. I usually will read a book in one day. Well, I knew work was not going to be any fun if I was tired so I got to a point in the book where the family of the injured girl was figuring out this was not their daughter. Heart wrenching! Went to bed thinking about another mother in Ontonagon who had lost her 14 year old son about a year ago from a skiing accident. I met her a few months after his passing and what a wonderful person she is! So strong! She gave all the credit to God and her faith in Him....just like the families in the book. I took the book to work thinking I will have time at lunch to finish it.

Our God is an awesome God. I know He sends people and circumstances to me for a reason. My friend Gail is one of those people. She is amazing and I love her like a sister. She would do anything for you and she has helped me in so many ways.....spiritually and mentally. She is the one that lent me the book. She knows I like true stories and God knows I need to be reminded about how grateful I am for my life and my family.

I am grateful for every day I have to be a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister and friend. I am so grateful for all of you too....my family and my friends.

Getting Back On Track

We are getting back on track at our house. The colds we have been fighting are almost gone and things are getting back to normal speed.
On Saturday, we got up early to get our weekly shopping done. We took our grandson to Arby's for lunch and while we were sitting there eating, the National Guardsmen pulled into the lot.
Nathan was so excited to see an Army dump truck. We had to hurry and finish up so he could go outside and see them. There were two of them and he watched as the men pulled into the parking lot and backed the vehicles in.
It is just a dump truck but it is kind of cool how it's painted up and so cool that the Army guys were dressed in their weekend gear. He talked about his Uncle Mike that is in the Army and asked if he drove dump trucks. I told him I didn't know but next time he was at our house and Uncle Mike called, we would ask him.

On Sunday my husband cut down a big poplar tree in our backyard. It started dying when the army worms hit here and never recovered. So, it's been slowly getting worse and we were afraid with the high winds we've been having that it would come down.
Nathan was at our house because his Dad was having issues with his dog...not in a good way. He was such a good helper! He helped Grandma and Grandpa load up the wheel barrow, hauled it (with G-pa's help), helped stack the wood and then brought the wheel barrow back to load more. He did this quite a few times then got tired of it.

This is Nathan loading the wheel barrow. He is an awesome helper!


















Here he is with Grandpa picking wood to haul away. He just loves to be outside. It doesn't matter if he's playing or if we put him to doing a bit of work.
We were out in the yard and the dog started barking. Usually means there is company. There sure was. Oma and Papa were stopping by to bring him a motorized 4 wheeler. Yahoooooo!
But, before he could ride it we had to find a helmet for him.





This is Terra's helmet but it's not too big on him. Isn't he cute!
Now the helmet is on......mount up buddy!















Here he is on his new blue 4 wheeler. He had to learn how to ride this as it is very different than his Grandpa's 4 wheeler, but it didn't take him long to figure it out.
He had a blast riding it around the yard!
We all walked beside, behind and in front of him to make sure he stayed safe.
It's going to be an active summer with this one!

Quiet Days

Things have been quiet at our house lately. We haven't been going anywhere or doing too much because my hubby and I had bad colds. His was a little worse than mine. Seems he may be starting pneumonia in his left lung. I think he also had a touch of the flu as he had the body aches, fever and tummy problems. So glad that missed me!

Easter was quiet too. We had a small family gathering at my sister's house. Of course the food was great! My Mom made a pistachio dessert and my sis made a cheesecake.....love her cheesecake! We had ham and lasagna and the fixin's. We visited and then went home to hide eggs for our grandson that would be coming over later in the evening.


Our daughter starts practicing in track today, so we will have that to go to when the season starts. She is going to be doing the pole vault, sprints and long jump. I love to watch the pole vault. You'd think it was really boring but it's actually quite interesting. This year I'll be able to watch my nephew Cory more too. I haven't watched him in his sports much this year so I need to get out and support him more.


Not much on the agenda for this week. Hopefully it'll warm up again and the wind will die down so I can get out and ride the bike more. I'll finish up the raking in the yard and get my garden ready for the flowers to come up. I'll plant the topsy turvy thingy in a couple weeks and then I'll get the old tires out of the yard and put them in place and filled with soil so my grandson can have his own little garden space to grow what he wants. So far we have green beans picked and maybe he'll want to plant pumpkins.....that will be up to him but I hope he picks pumpkins!