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AHHHHHH! The SUN!!

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Okay, I truly am not a summer sun person because I really, really don’t like being hot. This “summer” has been so horribly rainy with just enough humidity in the air to make it mostly yucky, but with temps that don’t go beyond like maybe 75 on a “hot” day. So today, I’m actually relishing in the sun and warmth. I never thought I was one of those folks effected by daylight, but today I even feel better as well has feeling like I have a little pep to my emotional state.

I took a little mini-drive this morning with the sunroof open, came home and even energetically put the final coat of paint on the baby’s dresser/changing table. The dresser is basking in the sun drying right now. This is be a happy surprise for Dave when he gets home. He doesn’t like painting. And as willing as he is to do things for me to make me happy and keep me from getting too pooped these days, I know he’ll be thankful he doesn’t have to tend to that last coat of paint.

I’ve noticed something new with both of my cats. Bailey spends almost all his day either in the same room, next to me or sitting on me. But lately, he has been REALLY attentive and needs picking up all the time. Riley even has started sitting on my lap. He is not normally a lap cat. He’s a walk by for a petting, briefly sit near you for additional petting and then move along to sit elsewhere and sleep type of cat. Lately, if I sit in Dave’s chair in the living room I will frequently find myself with Bailey draping himself across my belly and Riley sitting along side me. Dave and I can’t figure out if the cats know “something” is amiss with me or if this is just a new needy phase they both entered at the same time. It sure will be interesting to see these two guys with the baby.

Well, the sun is still shining (a new 4 hour record!!!) and I am still feeling pretty good so I’m going to go clean my living room and hopefully dining room before my body aches too badly to move.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes | No Responses »

What We’ve Been Up To

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Well, my parents were here for nearly a week and did such amazing things for us while they were here. We’ve gotten more baby clothes, which I need to wash and put away. I’ve packed the baby bag for the hospital. Since I had all the supplies, I figured that I might as well take care of it now rather than later. Curtain fabric for the baby room has been picked out and my mom is working on those for us.

Dave and I have both been working on our family genealogies. Dave’s back about 5 generations total so far. He’s got a hard time of it because he’s been unable to tap into any one else’s work yet so the leg work is potentially going to be all his. I’ve had a little more success tapping into other’s work and might even be back well into the beginnings of the 17th century (1620s and earlier in some cases) and still finding folks born here in North America. Plus, I might have found leads back to Scotland, England, Ireland, France and Germany with various parts of the family.

We’ve visited the coast of Maine with my parents and had amazing lobster while staring out across the Atlantic. Pretty awesome.

And I’m still doing really well at 31 weeks pregnant. I’ve hit my threshold for endurance a few times lately and learned my lesson to take it easier nowadays. I’ve also discovered that dehydration makes Braxton-Hicks contractions actually harder and slightly uncomfortable. So staying hydrated and taking frequent breaks keeps me very happy!

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes, Marriage/Married Life, News, Pregnancy, Trips | No Responses »

Getting Ready for Another Visit!

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

So this weekend and weekend Dave and I are getting ready to host BOTH my parents who are coming out next week. They’ll be here Monday through Friday to help us out with a few household projects that we want to accomplish before the baby arrives. So I’m probably not going to be online much for the next week or so. My parents won’t be staying here at our house due to a space issue now that the former office/guest room is in transition phase to office/baby room.

We are going to surprise them with a day trip to Maine for a view of the coast and a lobster dinner. They’ve helped us out so much already and will be doing tons for us next week too. Neither one of them have been to Maine before so this should be fun for them.

I still need to come up with a menu for next week since I’ll be feeding them most meals for at least three days.

So I won’t be online, probably, for maybe a week or so. I might bug Dave to add some pictures from last month’s trip out to IL, the baby shower and a few other things though.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes, News | 1 Response »

The Weekend’s Happenings

Monday, May 4th, 2009

Saturday morning my brother-in-law and sister-in-law came over and painted the baby’s room with Dave. I hung out with my niece and nephew playing tag, card games and eating lunch. The transformation in the baby room is awesome! That horrid mustard yellow color is all gone! Now it is this very pale green color, very pretty. And they did a great job painting too!

Now the big part of the baby room transformation is converting the room from an office where we stashed a whole lot of stuff into an office/baby room. Saturday evening and most of Sunday we cleared out our desks and the big bookshelves of all our stuff. Then we each decided what we absolutely had to have access to on a regular basis, that stuff we kept in the office and the rest went to the attic. We still have some clean-up to tend too, but we made amazing headway. We opened up floor space for a crib, dresser/changing table, and a chair. One whole big shelf was also made available to house baby stuff. Dave even cleared out half of his closet for the baby’s hanging clothes.

I feel like we’re coming along toward getting ready for baby. My goal is to have the baby room settled by the middle-to-end of June. That way I’ve got whatever time left in July to not worry about organizing baby items, it will be all set.

Dave and I are both concerned about the two cats taking over any of the baby’s stuff. My sister-in-law gave me this great mosquito net like contraption for the crib which was made specifically to keep cats out, so I’m not worried about the crib. But everything else has thus far been fair game for especially Bailey to climb into for a nap. We had to hurry and fold up the stroller because the instant it came inside Bailey immediately climbed into the undercarriage basket for a nap. He also managed to crawl inside the little sling carrier thingy “Snugli” (I think is what it is called). Riley’s been less of a pest about sitting on everything, but if anything is left unattended I’m sure he’d be in it pretty quickly too. I’m just going to have to be really fast about putting things away and covering cozy looking areas off from them. It sure will be interesting with those two once the baby arrives.

Sunday my mother-in-law fell down. Nothing broken, but she got some pretty bad soft tissue ouchies on her thigh that are going to cause her some pain for a while. We went over to help them with whatever they needed and made sure they got dinner. Hopefully, she heals quickly and isn’t in too much pain for long.

Posted in Baby Related Stuff, Homemaking & Recipes, Sewing & Projects | No Responses »

Big Errand Running Day

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

I had 10 places on my list of places to go today and made it to 8. I missed Bible Study and didn’t drop off my already late library books. But I made it to Walgreens, CVS, the butcher, Shop n Shop (grocery store), Big Y (another grocery store), Target, Family Dollar and lunch with my dear hubbie. I had this long list of stuff I needed so I scoured the ads and found everything we needed, but it just required some running. Thankfully, everything was kind of centrally located so the gas expense of hitting up 8 different places wasn’t too bad.

You know what really burns me is fine print in advertising. Today there was a sale on cat litter at one of the above listed places…a really good sale. And it said that if I purchased cat littler I could earn a $5 gift card too. Well, AFTER I was completely rung up at the cashier, I asked about the card and found out you have to buy TWO boxes of cat litter at one time in order to qualify for the $5 gift card. Good grief, did they really have to put that in fine print? I totally would have purchased 2 boxes. The deal was good and who doesn’t like getting free money to spend. So instead of the sign saying in big print that you can get $5 gift card if you buy this $11 35lb box of name brand cat litter, why couldn’t it have said earn a $5 gift card if you purchase 2 boxes for $22? Easy peasy…but NO they have to put the detail in fine print. GRRR! I was too tired to return the box I had, go get 2 more boxes and go through the line again so the fine print won.

I’m working on a “price book” for myself. I’m tracking the unit price of items we commonly purchase so that I can tell if a sale is actually good or if I’m just being suckered. For example, today I purchased a big bottle of Pantene shampoo and a conditioner for $5.49 each and had a $3 coupon. I’ll work out the cost per ounce so that from now on I can figure out if a Pantene sale is good or not using the price I got on it this time. I’m just doing this with commonly purchased items for our household. It will be interesting if I can eventually track sale cycles and know when to stock up on items. I’m not overly anal-retentive or anything, I just sometimes really wonder if certain sales like “buy one get one” are legitimately a good deal or an advertising scam.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes, News | No Responses »

My Belly is Actually Tired

Monday, April 20th, 2009

The third trimester is here! And my belly is getting pretty huge as is the little baby who keeps doing gymnastics inside it. Today I’m just pooped. I even took 2 naps. This might sound weird, but my belly is actually tired.

I can really tell the baby is putting on some size because I can see kicks and movement now externally, not just feel it. I always wonder what body part is pushing outward, but I can’t tell that yet. I can tell when the baby is doing total and complete somersaults though. There is this huge flip and flop feeling inside that is rather indescribable.

So because of my belly being so tired today, my major accomplishments…I folded & put away two loads of laundry and cleaned the bathroom.

We had roast, potatoes, carrots & onions last night for dinner so there are leftovers! Yeah, hardly any cooking for me this evening. I’m going to mince the beef and all the veggies to make kind of a roast hash of sorts and serve that with a salad. I like being able to turn leftovers from one meal into something that tastes and looks different from the original.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes, Pregnancy | No Responses »

My Mom is Coming!!

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

Well, she’s got her plane ticket so I think it is official. My Mom is coming out March 30-April 2. I’m very excited because this will be my first family member visit since I moved out here over 2.5 years ago! Mind you, folks back in IL have been in bad health or dying for the last two years thus keeping my parents from visiting, but hopefully all that is past and visits can be some what more frequent.

And it is Wednesday of my spring cleaning week and where am I on the list of completion…not done, yet. I’m making headway though and put a big dent in it today and will hopefully finish things up tomorrow. Friday-Sunday is taken up with maple syrup business and then Mom arrives Monday.

In other visitor news, later in April, God & employers willing, my brother might even be in New England on business, but close enough to visit! What would really make that even more awesome is if his wife and the girls could come too, but I’ll take what I can get.

And it is a really nice day today. The sun is shining and the temp is supposed to be nearly 50.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes, News | 1 Response »

Update on My Monday

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

I posted this below about what I would be doing today. Monday: grocery shopping & CVS (there are special sales I’m hitting at both places today in order to stock-up on things), spring clean kitchen & pantry (and possibly finish spring clean in living room), 2 loads of laundry (start to finish), pack 7 gallons of syrup into pint containers for sale at the church on 29th. Evening: attend third lecture in series on life & times of St. Paul and help Dave collect sap from at least one location.

It is 12:30 now and I’ve accomplished the grocery shopping & CVS shopping. At CVS I was able to get 3 bottles of Listerine, my face wash, lotion, & 8 Bounty brand paper towels for $19! Considering that before my little coupons and such the bottles of Listerine were $5.49 each and the Bounty was $6.99…I think I did pretty good (saving over $15 total). And at my grocery store I got $96 worth of stuff for $50.83. I totally stocked up on all this random stuff that I’ve need in order to restock my pantry. I love watching that register total get pretty high and then watch it slam to the ground after coupons and sales are tallied!

I also spoke with my mom and it looks like she’s going to deal with getting her plane ticket tomorrow! It really is looking like she’s headed our way soon!!

And since it is getting late in the day, I need to get myself busy doing laundry, cleaning and packing syrup.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes, Maple Syrup | No Responses »

A Maybe Visitor!!

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Well, my mom MIGHT be visiting us here March 30th!!! Yeah! She’s not been here yet and it will be wonderful to finally show her where I live now. There are a couple things happening back in IL that might still make it so she can’t come, but we’ll see. Dad sounded hopeful when I spoke to him Sunday afternoon.

So this week I’m going to proceed like she’s coming for sure. Her visit should offer me some really good incentive to finish spring cleaning too! This is kind of a busy week for me, so I’m going to have to eek out time wherever I can to accomplish my cleaning chores.

This is how this week is shaping up:

Monday: grocery shopping & CVS (there are special sales I’m hitting at both places today in order to stock-up on things), spring clean kitchen & pantry (and possibly finish spring clean in living room), 2 loads of laundry (start to finish), pack 7 gallons of syrup into pint containers for sale at the church on 29th. Evening: attend third lecture in series on life & times of St. Paul and help Dave collect sap from at least one location.

Tuesday: Deliver 10-15 gallons of syrup to a restaurant in MASS (1.5 hours drive time each way), regular cleaning in bathroom and spring clean our bedroom.

Wednesday: Home Only Day!! Spring clean upstairs & downstairs hallways, stairwell and organize some stuff in attic, if time permits clean office/guest room. And get laundry completely caught up. (Our hallways & stairwell have killer amounts of woodwork so those projects could take me several hours…)

Thursday: Finish any leftover cleaning projects, Bible Study at 1PM.

Friday: Spend morning with Dave helping with maple syrup production (this could be our last weekend because some trees are starting to bud.) Spend afternoon with sister-in-law between picking up niece & nephew from school then taking nephew to choir. Home by 5PM.

Saturday: Maple syrup production.

Sunday: Mass, sell maple syrup for church fundraiser at pancake breakfast between masses. (Dave tapped all the giant maples on the church property making 7 gallons of syrup to use as a fundraiser for a missions trip some folks at church at taking to Jamaica. We’ll be selling “church syrup” in pint containers so hopefully lots of parishioners will take advantage of buying syrup. ) And then finish maple syrup production potentially for the season.

Kind of roughly, that is the plan for the week. I’ll have finished spring cleaning the house on top of having the house “mom ready” if she’s able to come out.

Over the weekend, I made four dinner’s worth of meatballs and froze them in individual dinner packets. I need to update my 21 Freezer Meals post because I’m further along with that project than I previously thought.

Posted in Homemaking & Recipes, Lent, Maple Syrup, News | No Responses »

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