Day camp pics

Here are a few pics from the past 2 days at Cub Scout day camp. Now you can see why we are so tired!! I'll hopefully hav time this weekend to get some pics up through Kodak and send them out...beware you have been warned! :)

EXHAUSTED!

Nothing more, nothing less, pure exhaustion has set in! Maybe tomorrow I'll have energy to write something more. Until then, good night!!

Way too late! It's still Monday!

Why the heck am I up at midnight thirty?? Because I'm a good friend! Or should I say WE'RE (as in Keith and I) good friends. Jenni and Ted, our good friends and scout leaders are in charge of Cub Scout day camp...which starts tomorrow, asked for our help to sort the shirts, name tags and wrist bands. Never did we realize what a hassle that would be! They came over around 7pm and brought dinner. I had already helped get all the name tags punched out to be laminated and them cut out after that and put onto lanyards. Yummy pizza, then straight to work. Organized the shirts into sizes, had to open all the individually wrapped wrist bands and match name tag to shirt size then to wristband color, then wrap them all together. This was repeated 277 times throughout the night. Problems arose when we realized the person who ordered the shirts did not order the right sizes, nor amounts! We are short 20 kids shirts, plus a numerous amount of kids are in smalls, instead of mediums and others in adult small instead of youth larges. Oh such a mess! Still haven't come up with a solution yet.

We survived on lots of caffeine and sugar tonight, but we're going to be dragging our butts tomorrow. I said the first 2 events need to be nap time for us! Jenni and Ted still have a bunch of stuff to do as well, so they'll be up later. Not sure why they didn't start any of this sooner, but glad we were able to step in and help...even if it meant sleep deprivation.

Kaden was up until 10:30 and Salem didn't go to be till almost 11pm. They're going to be a pain tomorrow, I'm sure! Tony (J&T's) son was here and they were outside playing till 9:30 and then in watching a movie. They're all going to be in trouble tomorrow though, as I saw my peonies were TRASHED!! Stems are all over the yard and sidewalk, leaves all over as well. I know Kaden was riding throught hem, but the other kids had bats and I think they used them on my flowers! Sure the peonies were not blooming anymore, but the leaves are pretty to look at until the fall. Now it's a total mess. Can't wait to see what sunlight will bring...and the talking that will come after.

Okay, I'm totally exhausted, must climb the stairs to sleep!!

Oh, phooey on all you who sent out pictures! There will be paybacks for everyone doing it but me! (as soon as I get some free time next week to send them)

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Still in Des Moines, Keith and Rick woke up early to ride over to watch the Hy-Vee triathlon. The boys and I planned to drive over there a little later. But by the time we got up and was on our way over, Keith called and said the first group was done and the next wasn't until 1:30. So the boys and I went to Burger King and ate breakfast inside. We all had cini-minis and Kaden and I split the hash browns. I've never ate them, figured they would be yucky. But they were good! Tastes like french fries pretty much. Man, I'm gonna have to get me some of those for breakfast from now on! Along with the double hamburgers (for lunch) I discovered a couple months ago! Darn you fast food showing me new things, just when I thought I was sick of it all! Evil!!

Oh, look what we found...

We made a stop on the way home at the Coralville Dam. There is one tiny little spot you can park and check out the spillway. It was amazing!! If it was causing so much flooding and devastation, it would have been beautiful and peaceful! It'll be interesting to see what happens to the Fossil Gorge that was uncovered due to the floods of 1993, but is now washed away. Will we find new fossils, or will it be all gone? Who knows, that the big question. We loved visiting the fossil place, so I hope it is better than ever! It'll be a while before the water stops flowing over and it dries up enough to see. In the picture, if you look to the left you can see a little blue sign. That marks what the water level got to in 1993. The level it got to last week was HIGHER than that! It reached 717.02! The water has dropped a lot since, but it's still high! I don't recall what the current feet is.

Gorgeous day outside today, spent most of it after we got home outside. Keith and I relaxing and Salem and Kaden playing ball with the neighbor kid. Or riding their bikes. Didn't wear them out as much today, it took them a while to fall asleep. Kaden's got a big mess in the morning, he decided to through all his stuffed animals out of his bed. Atleast if he falls off, he'll have a cushiony stop.

Dad's Home!!!

YEAH!! Dad is home from the hospital!! I said they must have gotten sick of his sick humor! Ha ha ha. Anyway, he's home resting, eating real people food again and on some meds to help with the infection and a sore throat he caught at the hospital, ugh! I haven't been able to talk to him yet, he's been sleeping the couple times I called. Glad he's getting sleep though! I'm sure I'll catch him sometime! I guess they are going to schedule the surgery for a couple weeks out. We'll wait and see. Hopefully the gallbladder won't act up in the meantime! Glad you're home dad...no fence painting for you!!!

Saturday is race day?!?

To completely mess with us, Keith decided to do a race today (races are normally Sunday) and his race time wasn't until 5:30 pm! It was nice and let us take our time in the morning. The race was over in Des Moines and our friend Rick was going to race in it too. His first crit! Got to the race and Keith and Rick were warming up, the boys and I were watching the other racers. Storm clouds started moving in! Not good! It got REALLY windy and little bit of rain. The boys and I (as well as all the spectators) ran to our cars. Then it calmed back down. But when it came time for Keith's race the wind picked back up and lots of big rain! The boys and I donned our rain coats and had no probs staying to watch. The rain would go, then stop, then the sun would come out, then it'd rain again. Really ticking me (trying to take pictures) and I'm sure the racers too.
Keith was doing great in the race, right up in the front! He even took two prems (special middle of the race prizes). But a few laps to the end Keith crashed at a corner! I wasn't able to see the crash because of how the course sloped at that corner. I did see him standing there and thought he might have slipped out of his pedal or got nudged off the course. I didn't find out until the race was done that he had really crashed trying too hard there. Whatever the reason, that now made him out of contention for the top finishers :( I was SO bummed! He was doing so well and then in a split second, it's done. He was a good sport and finished the race strong! Our friend Rick (shown above sticking his tongue out in exhaustion) finished 9th! Keith finished 11th! And there were 21 racers, so a big field for such a small race.

After the race we headed over to Johnston's Green Days carnival. Carnies, lol! Tried looking for my cousins but unless they had neon signs above their heads saying who they were, I wouldn't recognize them. Not even sure if they're with carnivals anymore. Lots of carnival rides and games and such. The kids had wanted to hit a bunch of the rides, but they were expensive! $3 each for the carousel, $2 for the giant slide, $3 for the tilt-a-whirl thing. Miranda(Ricks' wife) wanted Corley (their daughter) to go on a couple rides. So we decided to stimulate the economy and let the boys go on one too. Kaden was to go on the Dragon coaster with Corley and Salem wanted to do the giant slide. Keith and I didn't think Salem would even be able to walk up the stairs, but he did! He climbed up, put his burlap sack down and slide all the way to the end! Smiling the whole time! Kaden and Corley had a blast on the dragon coaster. I think it went around 5 or 6 times! Poor Corley didn't want to leave the rides.

Decided it was time for food, so Keith and Rick head to pick up some burgers to grill and the rest of us headed back to their house. They let us crash at their house when we're on that side of town. Makes it nice we can relax and hang out without having to rush back home that night and deal with driving after the race. The kids fell asleep pretty quick! Exhausted! So were us adults!

Not much of a day

Kind of a boring day around here. laid around this morning. About the time we decided to get moving and go outside it started raining. Darn it! So we decided to head over to Game Stop, they have a promo going on this weekend where the kids can get a legendary Pokemon free on their game. So we did that and they were very happy! By the time we got home it was done raining so we played outside for a while. The boys rode their bikes around and played golf. Keith got home and mowed the lawn. The lawn didn't look too bad, but after he mowed it, it looked much better! We had some dinner, nothing fancy and went down to the school to ride the bikes some more. Salem did some more laps. We went down there last night while Keith was on his group ride and Salem did 24 laps in a row! That's 3 miles. Plus all the laps he did with Kaden racing around the track. Salem's got energy when he wants it! They just rode around tonight, no counting laps. Then they played on the swings a bit and we came home. Keith needed to get stuff ready for the race tomorrow. It's a late race, 5:30pm! Kinda nice we can take our time in the morning going to Des Moines, but weird to race so late.

Salem and I went to HyVee tonight. He was excited I let him steer the shopping cart. He didn't run anyone over either! And nope, didn't knock anything off the shelves! Pick up a few groceries on sale, nothing big, bad week for sales. We rented The Bee Movie for the trip as we haven't seen it yet and they didn't have any other good movies. We have the Red Box movie rental place in our grocery store now. It's nice to rent a movie for $1 and quick and easy. I sometimes get free rentals too, the boys like that!

Boys stayed up till 9pm tonight. We've been reading a new book called "Crash". It's from the Young Adult section, so I'm reading it instead of the kids on their own. It has a couple "bad words" that I change as I go along. But it's about hovercar racing. Good book so far, Kaden found it during a search.

Dad is doing okay. Not sure if I have all the details correct, but from what I get is this. He's going to be going home possible Sunday. Then going back in either 4 or 6 weeks to have the gallbladder taken out. He had a real meal tonight, I bet that was good, hospital food or not! So hopefully his pain will keep going down and the infection goes away!! That's the short version. But hey all that could change as we've seen it do many times in the past few days. A weird schedule I say, but I'm sure there is a reason for it. We're still saying our prayers for him!! Love you dad!

On Keith's parents front...they closed on their new house in Middleburgh, NY. They'll be moving in all the way in a couple weeks, but I guess there are some things up their now so Homer can start staying there instead of the hotel.

That's about it for now. I'll try to post Keith's race results tomorrow. We're staying at our friends house in DM, but not sure if they have wireless. If they don't I'll blog Sunday when we get home.

Update on dad...and our day...

He's still in the hospital. Going to be for the next 72 hours! They are trying to get his infection gone and hoping the gallbladder stops being so inflamed. Sometime after the 27 hours they are going to do surgery. Hoping it's the lesser of the two and it can happen lapro, but if not, the surgeon (a comedian on his off time I guess) said he can make another slit so dad has a tic tac toe board on his belly. Oh boy, what a funny guy! Mom said we can try and give him a call tomorrow afternoon, so we'll do that. I haven't called him because he's been out of it and I didn't want to disturb him. But the boys and I have been wanting to so she said to try tomorrow. Not much we can do from way up here. But we're praying and thinking about him...and mom!

On the home front boys are doing well. We went to the free movie day today at the theater. It was Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium. I had seen little bits and pieces of it. We rented it on a bike trip, so the boys have seen it. It's not a bad movie. Pretty cool to read the book then watch it. Alvin and the Chipmunks are at the other theater, we've seen enough of that one for now. Gonna wait till next week. Although maybe not, next week is cub scout day camp! I sure hope the weather is nice, not wanting a buggy muggy rainy hot time. Nice cool and warm would be okay...not too picky am I?

Keith fixed our cable line. When they put up the new pole, they weren't' able to switch over the cable, and it has been hanging low, so low we can't get the trampoline down. Keith finally put it up temporarily today so we could. Kids had fun jumping on it again. Keith got on it later tonight with them. They love jumping on with daddy since he bounces them high!

Keith and Salem went for a bike ride tonight. Only did 10 miles. Salem wore himself out earlier in the day and was dragging a bunch on the ride, so they cut it short.

We had fun watching bunnies chase each other in our yard tonight. They didn't seem to care too much we were in the yard too. They were jumping over each other and flying all around. It was funny to see.

Not sure what the plans are for tomorrow. Got some major laundry to catch up on. It's been so nice, we've been outside all the time. Which is good, but since I don't let the kids out by themselves, the housework gets put to the wayside. The boys help with the laundry too, so it'll go quicker, just need to take breaks to get it done. Ah and then fight with them on putting it all away!

I have been able to harvest so many strawberries! I didn't do any today and we're gonna have some dead loss, but that's okay. In two days I had enough to make a big milkshake for Keith and I! The other day we let the kids eat them all, Yummy!!

Prayers for dad again Please!

So Ang's dad is back in the hospital again :( Derek called me last night to let me know dad had gone home early from work with pain and mom took him in to the ER that evening. Of course it took us a while to find out what was wrong. They ruled out heart issues which was good! But in the end they figured it was his gallbladder. Or a stubborn gall stone that had gotten stuck in the ducts! Surgeon they talked to said it was quite a phenomenon. Which doesn't suprise us so much after all dad has been through and his medical history. He can't get sick normally I guess. So they are trying a couple thigns to get the stone to move on its own. If it doesn't work they'll have to go in. First they would try laproscopically, but becuase of his previous surgeries in teh same area, not sure if that would be possible. If they can't they would have to do a full out surgery, which we would like to advoid at all costs!! So we're really praying pretty hard that the stone will go away on it's own!! Dad is on some pain meds and antibiotics hoping to keep him comfortable. His blood pressure is pretty low at times, so that's being watched. Hoping for some good news tomorrow!

It's hard being away from your family and loved ones normally, but when someone gets sick, it makes it even worse! Just know Dad, you're in our thoughts and prayers!! We love you!!

Enjoy some of the pics we took on our vacation back in February. They sure make us smile looking at them :)

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day Dad and Dad-in-law! (From Keith and Angela) Hope you all had a wonderful day!

Keith got up a rode for just over an hour. Ang slept in. Kids behaved and played video games. Weather was very nice today.

We met up with our friends at 1pm to pick up our new bed set! It wasn't broken down as much as I had thought, but thankfully it still fit in their truck. Getting it up our stairs did require us to fully disassemble it. Kinda like Johnny 5, lol. Anyway, we got it up stairs and put together. Hum, not much clearance, the top is only about 2 inches from our ceiling. We had to move a bunch of stuff around to make it work with our ceiling fan. It's not the best set for our room, but we'll make it work! Now I have to figure out how to decorate it!!

We played outside for a while today. Keith and the boys had a long shot competition. Yes of course Keith won, but the boys are getting good and gave him a run for his money sometimes. Then they played follow the leader on their bikes. Kaden being the leader took them up and down the hill, in circles and back up and down the hill all over the yard!

The boys got daddy some goodies for Father's Day. First the got him a HUGE (seriously HUGE) mug filled with candy bars! Then a bag of other junk food goodies he likes. Such as little debbie brownies, oatmeal cookies, peanuts, cream pies and other yummies. They also got him a Webkinz Rino! I got Keith a tub of E6000 (a heavy duty glue anything glue) and a RoadId wristband ( http://www.roadid.com/ ). Hope it won't be too annoying for him to wear. It's a little piece of safety when he's out riding.

We got some steaks to grill! Keith started grilling them and they started burning a little, so I took over and tried to save them. No probs they were yummy! Haven't had steaks in the longest time. We also had some fresh corn on the cob! No, not from Iowa, we won't be getting Iowa corn for a while, sad to say! Oh and Kaden...oh that Kaden...not sure what we're going to do with him. We're eating corn on the cob at the dining room table when he yells "am I bleeding?" Huh? Here see the picture! His corn holder thing slipped out and scratched along his cheek. You can see his posion ivy is gone from his face.

Harvested some more strawberries! Yummy as always!

A nice Father's Day! Would have been better if we had the bike race, but oh well. Made the best of it and I think everyone had a good time!

Personal flooding pictures

Here are some pictures Keith took during the past few days. I'll have captions on them tomorrow.

Flooding

Saturday sun...and some rain.

Keith and Salem went out for a bike ride today! They went around 15 miles. Rode down to see the flooding on Hwy 13. And a snake! And Salem is in the middle of the road because the road is closed...don't worry grandparents!! Realize Salem needs new biking clothes. He is sporting a cresent moon, lol. It's the new termonology for when your shirt rides up your back. Not so much a butt moon, but a back moon. His shorts have a tear and his shirt is about 2 sizes too small. Darn kids growing! Oh he did come home today sporting his FIRST bike tan! He's got a nice tan line going from his bike shorts and shirt. I didn't get a picture of that yet.

Today we got some more rain, ugg. Not too much. The CR river is falling, slowly. It's leaving a HUGE mess of goop behind! They are still doing animal rescues in some houses. The water situation still is in dire straights. Now Iowa City and Des Moines is getting flooded. I hoe those towns have learned a little bit frmo us and getting people out of there asap!

Found Salem some new shoes today. We'll see if he can't rip them apart before he outgrows them. His feet grow fast, but not faster than he can tear the soles apart , or the sides off. Of course he's not in school right now, so he won't be sitting there pulling on them. So they should last a few months.

We also went bed frame shopping. We've never had a head/foot board and our frame is falling apart, so we thought we'd try to find a new one. Got it narrowed down to 2 choices. We'll have pictures up tomorrow of the final one...if we can get it set up in our bedroom okay. Hoping it fits.

Back home Salem and Kaden found all the mud puddles on our sidewalk and yard. They got so muddy from riding through them, but they had fun. And we're not on a water restriction, so it was okay to get muddy then shower.

Oh big news...Salem wants us to cut his hair! Keith has been giving him crap for it being so long. I personally like it long. It's quite "moppy", but it's cute on him. But finally tonight Salem said he wanted us to cut it for him. So tomorrow we're going to have ahair cutting party. Salem goes short, Kaden wants his bald again and Keith is going bald too. Mommy is going to wait to get to a salon, which is impossible, because we can't get to that side of town. Here is a picture of why!

Not sure what our plans are for tomorrow. There was to be a bike race, but it was cancelled. Keith is going on a couple hour bike ride. We're picking up our new bed and hopefully it'll be nice to play outsde! Geocaching sounds like a good thing to do, but not sure if there are any we haven't done that we can still get to. We'll see.

In the paper again!

http://www.gazetteonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080614/SPORTS/775155329/1056

Okay this time it's just Keith...and we ahd nothing to do with him being there. The reporter and photographer was at his Night at the Oval racing series on June 3rd doing an article. Saw it was online today! It's not in the print paper, but I'm guessing it'll be in tomorrow's. We'll have to pick up a few copies. Keith is in the orange and black Verge jersey. He's in the 1st pic leading, the one pic of him drinking and then the last picture he is the 2nd person.

Pretty cool!!!

The sun'll come out...today!

NO rain today!!! Such a nice day outside! The CR river crested today at 31.12 and is finally starting to go back down...slowly! But man I can't imagine what is going to be left once all the water goes away. But that's going to still be quite a few days away. They are estimating Friday before the rivers go back to below flood levels. And now sure how long before the bridges will be open to cross, since they will have to be examined for safety.

Salem and Kaden and mommy went to Michaels today. I had to pick up a couple things and the boys wanted to use their money for some crafts items. Kaden bought some clay, had to have non air dry clay, which we did find. He also bought one of their $1 wood kits. Both boys love doing them. They are easy enough for them to figure out, but hard enough to keep them busy. Then they get to paint them and then play! Salem bought a $1 wood kit, pack of tracing paper and bead kit (which is a little tough for him) and a foam kit to make a skateboard ramp. Kaden split the cost of the ramp since they will both be sharing it. We'll build that tomorrow. It's great seeing them use their money semi wisely.

I say semi because we went to HyVee later and Kaden bought 2 packs of donuts, a candy bar and a bottle of bug juice. I told him we would buy him a pack of donuts (37¢) but he wanted to. The bug juice was $1, vs the 2liter bottle of sofa Salem bought which was 59¢. Buy hey Kaden wanted the bug juice, so he used his money. But then he complains how he doesn't have much money left, duh! Both kids agreed they won't get their allowance money for this week until their playroom is picked up. It doesn't have to be perfect, but they have to do a much better job than what they have done in there. I hope that has lit a little fire under them to start working on it.

Starting next week, they are going to be starting to save their money. So far we've been letting them spend it as they want. That fun is now going to end. They'll be saving a portion of it and spending a portion. They both have their money burning holes in their pockets. Need to stop that!

Keith was able to get some pictures as he drove across the I-380 bridge today. I'll get them posted tomorrow. Nothing much more than what you can see on any of the news channels I listed the other day.

We're kinda stuck in our area. They closed the I-380 bridge over the Iowa river down to Iowa City. The detour takes you north to hwy 20 across to hwy 35 north of DM, then go south to 80 in DM and across to 380 in Iowa City. I'm guessing it's a good 4 hour detour! No thank you!

Tomorrow will be nice again! Sunshine! We're on a voluntary water restriction to help out CR who is on a mandatory water restriction. So no playing in the water tomorrow for the kids. I did do a load of laundry today and took a shower. But otherwise, I'll hold off on doing the dishes and more showers. Short ones when we do. They want us to restrict our sewer usage. So we're using the "if it's yellow let it mellow theory..."

On that note...have a good evening, hope you're dry!!

We're good!

Just a quick update before bed to let everyone know we are doing fine...at our house. We ran out in between storms today and grabbed some food and water. Right now power an water is fine, but you never know how fast it might change. The only restriction we have is limited sewer useage. We're going to be staying put for the next few days. Not like we can get anywhere. There is 1 lane open on 380, otherwise, all other routes are closed! Can't get south too easily, and even if we do get south, most roads are closed there too!

The flood waters are still rising. www.gazetteonline.com is the best bet for updates throughout the day. Pictures are still sickening! River is about 30 feet right now and still rising tomorrow. Marion is quite flooded in areas. The huge park down the road from us is covered due to flash flooding.

Really no sense going anywhere. Stay home and stay safe. The rain should stop tomorrow, so we'll be able to get outside and play some. Today was an inside day since it thunderstormed most of the day.

Oh, here's another line of thunderstorms coming through, better shut the computer off before it gets fried.

Keith's new bike

Here are a couple pictures of Keith's new bike. First pic is with his old wheels. He was able to get them fixed.

Here are pics of his new bike with his new racing wheels.

Strawberry goodness!

It's time! Got to harvest strawberries today!! Kaden helped me in between rain showers. We got 30 berries!! Not the huge ones you find in store, but 30 tiny to small sized berries. FULL of juiciness!!! Keith and I made a milkshake out of them, plus a few store bought ones. SO yummy!!! Can't wait to get out and harvest some more! Friday we should have another good batch.

Flooding pictures

Here are some pics we took yesterday of the flooding. Click on the picture to see more of them!

flooding

Flooding is bad!

No rain today!! Just hot and humid. Can't please us I guess. (could be I'm in pants and too stubborn to change) Well, we're much better than others though! Quite a few towns nearby are being evacuated due to flooding. Parts of CR are as well. Worst flooding since 1993! Down south (Iowa city areas) floods are expected to hit the 500 year flood plan!! I keep saying good thing we live on our little hill away from the rivers! And surprisingly our basement hasn't flooded too badly. Seems our landlord can fix things...sometimes. Our laundry roof still leaks even after he sent someone to fix it. Sad when the fixer guy didn't seem too promising that what he did would fix it.

Salem got his report card today. Straight A's!! GO Salem!! We can check his grades online, and a couple weeks before the last day he had a b+ in language arts. So very happy he was able to pull an A- out of it! His other A- was in music. The rest were A! He's very proud of himself, as he should be!

Kaden got his report card the other day. He earned all 4's and some 3's. No 2's! He didn't do down in any areas, only went up or stayed the same!

Kids played tennis today. Didn''t play for too long, 30 minutes or so. Kaden got sick of running all over the court to get the ball and got ticked at Salem. Rackets and balls started getting tossed, so that ended the game for Kaden. It was the middle of the day and quite hot!

Kaden decided when we were home to kick Salem's hand. That ended him in a time out on the stairs. After that he was to bring in the garage can and recycling bucket from the road. He was ticked at that and proceeded to kick the garbage can up the sidewalk and throw it around the porch. I warned him to chill. But when he went to get the recycling he was kicking it over and over. That ended up in a time out in his bed. What a hassle getting him up there. He chilled for an hour! Luckily he was cool and stayed in his bed for a little while of that, the rest he was out of his bed, but quiet, so I let him be.

The boys picked up their bedroom today. I'll have to take a picture to show Derek, I'm sure he won't believe me that I actually got the vacuum in there! It was a mess! It'll go back to being messy tomorrow after I do laundry and they don't want to put it away.

After that the boys played in the slip n slide while daddy took his new bike for a ride. I think they all had fun!

We drove around tonight looking at the flooding. Man it's bad!! We started at the train bridge downtown. The water in inches away from going over it. They parked a train fully loaded with rocks to weigh it down. Hoping it won't get washed away now, as there was fear it would before. We'll see in the morning if it's still there. We'll also see if the dam has spilled over yet. It's been holding off for now, but it's new estimate is dawn tomorrow morning. We also checked out the nature center. Broke the law and drove around road closed signs...so did others. Another section of the road we came across had water almost up to people's houses. And yet they sat there on the front porch, no sandbags. This flooding is amazing, but only cause we're not directly affected by it.

Check out http://www.gazetteonline.com/ for more pictures and updates on the flooding. I'll try and get the rest of my pics uploaded later tonight and send them out.

GROWL!

Not to overdue the last post...but I'm mad! I'm hating Iowa more and more lately! Or maybe it's just the eastern side! I don't know but I'm not happy!

Why...we have an AWESOME scrapbook store in Coralville called Reminise. Or I should now say HAD. The darn thing is closing at the end of June! I LOVE that store. It had great papers, awesome sales, friendly workers, great classes, awesome sales, did I say awesome sales! Reminise has their own scrapbook line of products and this was their flagship store. It had been open for 6 years. Just last year they sold it to someone else. The darn people couldn't keep it open. GRR!! makes me so angry. We have lost so many scrapbook stores in the past few years. The one right down the road from us closed, a couple on the SW side closed. And now this one! Man, that store rocked! Such a fancy store that had all the latest and greatest! There is now 1 yes ONE scrapbbok store within an hour of me. We do have Michaels (but getting kinda lame for supplies) and Hobby Lobby. HL has great papers, but lacking in variety. The other store is a great store, but doesn't have the great sales R had.

Man, that just bites my butt!

Hi Uncle Derek!

My brother Derek is up in MN for a while with work. Today he came down to visit with us!

Keith had his golfing tournament thing with work buddies this morning. Sadly it was cut short. It starting thunderstorming this morning. They got 4 holes in then had to stop. The guys went home, then got back together for lunch and prizes at noon. He was back home by 2pm. Kind of good since he was able to spend time with Derek too. We waited till he got home before we went out caching.

Went out and hit 7 caches and one we couldn't find. It was a fun time with Derek. Great to have another set of eyes and sick humor! He had no probs finding most of the ones. Keith beat him to a couple though. But he came in most handy when there was a cache in a lamppost with wires. Derek was brave (or stupid) and got it. But not before tearing apart part of a fence. Or the cache where he stuck his head in the street to look down a pipe at street level. Or the one where he saw the cache under a bridge and made me get it. Don't remember if it was because he said it was too muddy and slippery, or too wet to grab. Or the first cache we found where Keith spotted it, then I did, but Derek couldn't see it for a few minutes. We forgave him on that one!

After the final cache (final because we started getting storms) Derek (or his work) treated us to dinner at Red Robin. Poor Derek had a meal planned to then realized it didn't come with the endless fries, so he had to find something else. Oh and he was told about the tomato salmanello thing going around. I think he freaked realizing at dinner last night he had chili with tomatoes and salsa with tomatoes. Thankfully he's still alive and not sick! But maybe a little ticked at that restaurant.

As we were leaving dinner the skies opened up and we got drenched running to the car! Driving home Keith heard something...the tornado sirens going off! Hey welcome to Iowa, Derek, lol! Listened to the radio and found the tornado was north of us. We're in the clear, sorta. Just some heavy rain and thunder/lightening.

Derek finally headed back north aroun 7pm. It was great to see him again!! Too bad it was such a short time, but anytime with relatives is nice to have!

I ran out to get a paper after that. Come to find half of Marion is without power. A big clap of thunder we heard I think turned out to be more than that! Not sure but I had to drive a bit to find a store that had power. HyVee was running on a generator. I drove by one road that had a ton of flashers on it. Figuring a transformer blew up. We've still got power, so that is nice. But 2 streets south and they're out. 7 blocks west and they're out. 10 blocks east and they're out. Small radious with power.

Kids are in bed now. i think they're too tired to stay up and listen to the thunder.

Friday Fun!

I don't think it rained today! Well not while we were awake that is! It was windier than all heck though! Our poor peonies are flatted to the ground. They just flowered on Tuesday too! They had no chance this year :( They still smell very nice.

What'd we do today??? Not much. Bought 10 packages of Fig Newtons and only paid around $3 for them all!! I love when CVS has deals I want! Now to make them last through bike season. They are a great snack for the races, a good recovery treat. Or good for the cheering crowd too.

I finished up all my Tupperware stuff. It's ready to go tomorrow. I just hope people show up!!

Salem and Kaden signed up for the CR library reading club. Have to get them signed up for the Marion one too. That would make 4 reading clubs. They better start reading...and reading alot! They picked out a few new books and movies from the CR library today. Hopefully that'll keep them busy tomorrow when I'm swamped with people (ha I wish!).

Keith got his rear wheel fixed again. I think he needs to learn how to tru the wheels so he can do it next time. It's only $12 to fix it, so not too bad. He has 3 races in 6 days coming up!! His new bikes should be here Monday so he can put it together and try to ride in between thunderstorms!

Trying to think what the boys did today. All I can think of is they drove us nuts! But that happens every single day. They had d fun time watching the electric people work on the poles. They've been installing new poles in our yard and surrounding houses. Today they came back to start putting up new lines and switching it all over. I hope they don't come back tomorrow because they take up the whole street! And our driveway and the side streets! They had 8 trucks here yesterday! Big trucks too! And then they cut the phone wire, so we had 2 phone trucks out here. Busy busy busy! Kaden loved sitting and watching them, especially putting up the poles.

Off to make some apple crisp in my rock n serve!

Yeah Red Wings!

Red Wings won the Stanely Cup!! Exciting game to watch!! A bit bummed they weren't able to win it at home. There was way too much booing going on. They'll get their turn to cheers that can blow the roof off JL arena!

Got woken up this morning at 6am to McLeod doing some boring. Man that stunk, it was so loud! I was able to fall back asleep. Kaden was up at 6:30. Salem slept in till 8:30 ish!! Finally he gets it in his head, he can sleep in! Hope he does it more often. Maybe Kaden will catch on someday. I sure like sleeping in!

Looked outside to find the power company put up the new pole in our backyard! That part didn't wake me up. I didn't get a pic today, I'll grab one tomorrow. It's HUGE! They are replacing a ton of poles in our area and we get a a brand new one behind our garage. It will put a little damper on the kids riding around the garage, but I'm sure they'll find a new trail around it.

I got the dining room all cleaned today. Had to put all my scrapbook stuff away so we have that table and the tops of the file cabinets to use. When Keith came home we put the tables up. I like how much scrapping space there could be, I can have friends over to scrap!! Keith said we can keep the one table up (where we normally store our bikes). Bikes can stay in the garage and his road bike can stay in the bedroom or laundry room. Kaden and I are going to start scrapping again once after this weekend.

Not too much going on today. First full day of summer break and it was boring. Was supposed to get some storms tonight, but so far it's missed us and we've just got rain. Hope it stays that way. Salem was quite freaked when he heard we had a tornado watch until midnight. He gets too worked up sometimes. The rain is not wanted! The Coralville dam is nearing record flood stages again.

Had some homemade cappachino tonight, yummy!! We stopped for gas last night on the way to Keith's bike racing and the one gas station has white chocolate carmel kind, so yummy!! Kaden even was drinking it! Next time I'll buy a bigger size to share!

No more teachers, no more books

Yeah so I ended up staying up past midnight watching the Red Wings loose :( It was an exciting game. I really hadn't kept up with watching hockey, but it's always great to see the wings play at home. Tonight I'll be up watching Scrubs again while Keith is called out AGAIN! At least it's his last night of being on call.

Alright...rewind the day. It was the boys LAST day of school!! Not much learning happened they say. Both very excited to be done! Oh it did stop raining today, around noon, ugh!

We played outside for a while before the kids got bored and cold, so they headed inside while I stayed in the garage to finish pricing everything. Tomorrow night we hit the house. We've got empty boxes to stuff crap in to make the house look less cluttered. Gonna have to start working on the summer reading programs. We have Barnes & Noble, The Kernels and the library!

Keith had his Night at the Oval races tonight. Had to ride his cross bike with his racing wheels. Quite the set-up. Totally not matching! His bike is green, spokes are gold, tires are black with red stripes, yellow bottle cage and his black and orange skinsuit. Yeah not matching at all! He still did pretty good considering he was riding that bike and had not been on any bike for more than a couple hours this week. Here is a picture of Keith getting beat by Mack, the junior, on one race. I think if Keith had his road bike, he would have had him. Although Mack, the junior. was kicking some serious butt tonight!

Kids got to be the bell ringer during a couple races. They had fun with that. A Gazette ( newspaper) gal was there taking pics...and no, it wasn't because of us! Salem saw her 3 big cameras and lenses bigger than our heads and asked if i had lens envy, lol. Yeah he's hear us say that before at some races. And FYI, yes I was jealous!

Late night tonight. Didn't finish racing until 9pm on the way home Keith got called out. The boys and I ordered pizza and finally ate dinner at 9:45! They were excited to stay up so late! I said they were lucky it wasn't a school night! Told them to sleep in tomorrow! Even though we all know it's not going to happen.

Oh darn, Scrubs is over now...wonder what else I can find to watch until keith gets home in the wee hours. He said they were going to have to dig a big trench to fix the cable. Sounds like he's gonna come home muddy!

Seriously, rain GO AWAY!!

No more rain please!! I'm sure we'll end up in a drought this fall. But for now, there is so much flooding going on, too much rain! It rained for a good portion of today. Luckily Kaden's grades were able to get their kickball game in before the rain came. It was a special treat for having made their reading goal during May. Kaden didn't talk much about it though.

Salem cleaned out his desk and locker today. Holy cow, what a mess! He had his backpack and a grocery sack full! The things this kid had made me laugh! A friend of his gave him a piece of a brick!?! Tons of old papers, a stack of yugioh cards and some beat up cars they raced down the slides at recess. Can't forget the multiple paper airplanes and paper footballs that he "HAS" to keep! Pencils galore that range from brand new to less than an inch tall, again "HAS" to keep! I guess they are not learning tomorrow since everything is empty. They are finishing watching a movie from a book they read, and playing games all day. Sounds like a good time!

Kaden brought home a bunch too. He still has his pencil boxes and some paper there. So I guess they'll be learning tomorrow. It's an early out for both kids. Only 4.5 to 5 hours left for both of them! And then they're mine all summer long!

I kinda miss not working these last few days. I did last year and it was fun! Today I went down to Coraville to get my contacts fixed...again! Upped my prescription and gonna try them out to see if it's any better. Stopped at Hobby Lobby to use a gift card I got for my b-day. Picked out some beads to make some necklaces. Then hit Memories on Fifth, a scrapbook store. They have LOTS of goodies, but not in my budget now. I did pick up a few things with some b-day money I had left.

Keith got called out again tonight. Dinner was just finished (boneless chicken with seasoning on the grill) when his phone rang. Ugh! He was able to finish dinner before heading out. The boys and I went to the grocery store by ourselves. Salem was so happy, they had Apple Jacks on sale for $1 a box!! I got 5 :) Kaden was pissed I didn't buy him Frosted Flakes. I told him they're not on sale, we'll see what tomorrow's ads bring. He whined through the store complaining I NEVER bought him anything he wanted! No Eggo french toast sticks, no frosted flakes, no little bottle of chocolate milk...what else...not sure, but oh well. He'll live! He'll be happy another day...maybe.

Man, we wanted to go to bed early tonight. Last night we were nuts and stayed up till midnight. Not sure why, just doing our own thing and before we knew it, it was late! Well tonight, we're watching the hockey game, GO RED WINGS! and now they're in double overtime. Would they score alreayd, win the Stanley Cup so we can sleep!!

Oh, yummy dessert tonight. Apple crisp! I even bought extra apples, so Kaden could eat some, I'm so nice :)

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

What a gorgeous day out today!! Woke up to the sun shining brightly into our room around 6am. Keith put the eye mask on to try and sleep a few more hours. Finally rolled out of bed around 9am. Kaden was in his bedroom putting together his Knex roller coaster. Salem was down playing Playstation. Both happy as can be :) Great start! Keith and Salem finally got to ride their bikes inside! Since Keith is on call, we can't really go anywhere. Salem took the trainer and Keith took the rollers. Kaden and myself went to the store to get a paper (hum haven't read it yet even) and just as we pulled into the road to park a text came on my phone alerting us of a new cache just 3.2 miles away!! Ran inside and check it out. Keith and Salem finished up a couple minutes early, stopping short of just under 30 minutes!

Got to the cache and was FTF!! Yeah us!! 3 FTF in the past week! We're starting to make enemies out there I think. Cache was an ammo can and the boys picked out a Mario figure to play with. After that we headed home to play outside!

Ang spent all day in the garage going through Tupperware boxes. Ugh, there is SO much to price! I hope I'm able to get rid of some of it. I was going to open the sale up to the public, but Keith wasn't so keen on doing that in our house. So I guess this summer I'll do one in the garage.

Keith was able to mow the lawn today. Being on call hasn't allowed him enough time to do it. It was REALLY long! Our bunny was able to hide all the way in the grass. Not anymore! Lawn looks really neat now...until tomorrow when the weeds pop back up again, grr! This pic is of our bunny trying to hide the other day. He/she flattens WAY down. Some days it works, we don't see him until we're right on top and he takes off. Usually we spy him adn take the sidewalk instead of going through the yard.

The kids spent part of the day building things with pieces of wood. Nothing that really made sense, more pounding nails into wood. They broke out the bike ramp and tried clearing the WHOLE thing! Salem was the first one to do it!! Kaden was able to almost clear it, had about an inch to go. Keith sat and watched them, not me! They also brought the legos onto the front porch to build an amusement park with them.

Finally around 5pm, we called it quits outside and headed in for dinner and chilling.