Time for another round of catch up

Most days I don't feel that busy but some how I still end up getting behind. This seems to be another of those times. Corey was out of town on business for the first part of the week so the kids and I were on our own. We did fine although we did miss him. We did our usual library visit, park day, bowling league and added in a lunch here and a prefect meeting at HP Club. We received our butterfly larvae in the mail on Monday and that was exciting. They come all set in their own container supplied with food. All we have to do for now is keep the container upright (which means hands off to Alex) and watch them. After about 7-10 days they will all go to the top and spin themselves into their chrysalis and then we move them to the butterfly house (net thingie) that we have. They are already getting quite fat & fuzzy. On Thursday I went in to do all the pre-admission stuff for my surgery...lots of questions, a little blood draw & talking to the anesthesia nurse. We are all set for Tuesday morning.

We got the wire to finish off our fence and had my brother come over to do the gate & the wire (below the bottom board) but the weather didn't cooperate so we will have to try again next week on his day off. We haven't had much rain at all and it rains when he is supposed to come over and work on finishing the fence. I told him that we need to schedule him coming over more often and maybe we can catch up on the rain we need as well. lol

My mom will be keeping the kids Monday night & Tuesday so Corey can be with me for surgery. I have to report to Same Day Surgery at 6am which is why mom is taking the kids Monday night. LOL! The kids will get her up early enough without us having to drop them off at 5am. ;-)

We think we are going to have to write off our pool disaster as a mistake and cut our losses. A real bummer I tell ya but it isn't making sense to continue putting money into it when we aren't sure it is a good solution. We can't be sure it will remain level while the pool is up plus once we take it down for winter we will have to start over next summer. Soooo... sucks all around.

Tomorrow we are having a girls lunch out in Franklin. My mom, Morgan, Tish, and I are meeting up with my aunt & cousin at Stoveworks for lunch and then wandering around The Factory. This is where the neato fairy grotto is and there is the pottery painting shop and a scrapbooking store... to name a couple of our favorites.

I recently heard from my dad and he will be in the states on vacation in August. They are planning on coming to TN and we will all get to see him & my stepmother while they are here. It will be good to see them again and they get to see our house as well as Michael & Tish's house for the first time. Yea! :-) They should be up here about the middle of August.

Speaking of August...we have several family birthdays in August and I must start thinking about birthday gifts!! Ack!

Zzzzucchini

Oh my we had zucchini everywhere! Tish gave us a couple from her friend's garden that were HUGE! Her friend has horses and they use the manure for fertilizer and apparently it works really well. LOL! We also had some from our CSA share so Morgan and I set to grating the zukes. We used 2 cups of freshly grated zucchini right away in a batch of zucchini bread. I used my Pampered Chef mini bundt stoneware and they came out perfect...and so cute. And delicious! :-) We all split 2 and then wrapped & froze the remaining 4. We have 3 quart freezer bags full of grated zucchini in the freezer. Oh, and that doesn't include 2 regular sized zukes that we saved for grilling. We plan on making more zucchini bread/muffins. We also have a bit of summer squash that I'm going to make a squash casserole to share. Tish's mom will be coming up soon for some recuperation after back surgery and I want to make some for them to have so they don't have to cook so much.

Speaking of back surgery. My mom is gearing up for her's. She talked to the P.A. at the neurosurgeon's office about her MRI results. There is more deterioration and they are still on course for what they had planned to do during her surgery. He is going to talk to the doc and get the surgery scheduled. They are aiming for July 30th or August 6th, both dates are a Monday and mom would prefer this. But sometime during these 2 weeks would be acceptable I'm sure. She's still in a lot of pain but it isn't quite as severe as the week of Memorial Day. She'll be glad to have this all done.

Kelly's surgery date

I saw the surgeon this morning. My surgery is scheduled for 7:30am Tuesday, July 3rd. He was going to schedule it for next Tuesday but Corey will be in Tampa so that won't work. Hopefully everything goes smoothly. :-)

Weekend update

On Saturday, we packed up and headed out at 9:30 for the day. Morgan had her first prefect meeting for the HP Club at 10am. She attended her meeting, Alex played computer games and Corey found a couple books. I picked up a book that I had put in a request for and then went to Morgan's meeting. I have volunteered to be a house parent and the advisor had me come listen in on the meeting. The kids were voting on movies for movie night, topics for meetings for the year (they pick 4 each year) and talked about prefect duties. One of the dads there volunteered himself & his wife to be house parents and we convinced Corey to volunteer. Now the club has the 4 house parents the advisor wanted for this year. We are involved anyway so why not be a house parent. :-) After the meeting we headed to the farmer's market to pick up our CSA share. This week we got summer squash, zucchini, collards, kale, broccoli, spring onions, basil, and baby cucumbers. We wandered around the market and picked up a few more goodies. Then we loaded everything in the cooler with an ice pack and headed to our next destination...lunch with my aunt & cousin. We met up at Panera Bread & had a fabulous lunch & visit. My cousin will be back in 2 weeks so we plan on meeting up again. Morgan would like to do a girls tea at Lillie Belle's tea house (where she celebrated her 8th birthday). My cousin and aunt would love it and she mentioned it to GC who is all for it as well. After lunch & visiting we filled up the van with gas and managed to find it for $2.85/gal. Whee! GC had called to ask if Morgan & I would go shoe shopping with her. We went to GC's house and dropped off me and Morgan. Corey and Alex headed home to drain the pool & hang out. The 3 of us headed out to the Cool Springs mall, got a wheelchair and had a fun time wandering the mall & shopping. We had dinner at Cracker Barrel and then headed home. It was 9:30pm. We hadn't really planned on being gone 12 hours. lol

Today Alex got me up early so I closed the door so we wouldn't wake up Corey. You know, it was Father's Day & all. He deserves to get some decent sleep. :-) I got a few things done after getting Alex some breakfast. I put the pork shoulder in the crock pot to start cooking. We were having BBQ pulled pork and I wanted it to cook all day so it would fall apart nice & easily. The kids made Corey cards and pictures. After he got up we relaxed a bit and then headed outside to figure out a solution to our pool problems. We decided to try digging out the higher end and getting it all level. We spent quite a bit of time in the heat marking the edge of the pool area and cutting through the sod. Unfortunately our yard is SOOO rocky that some is just under the blades of grass and some further down. Making it extremely difficult to dig up much less get it remotely even & level. Very frustrating. We came back inside...we were roasting...to talk over some more ideas. We've decided to get more levelling sand, since we've already started this, and see what happens. Please keep your fingers crossed! Our BBQ pork was delish tonight! I have plans for making zucchini muffins/bread and squash casserole to share with my mom, brother and Tish. :-)

Tomorrow is my appointment with the surgeon so I'll let everyone know how it goes.

Oh the book I'm going to be reading next is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. A friend in Tampa is reading it and suggested it. I can't wait to dig into it...but first I must finish A Southern Family by Gail Godwin.

Kelly's weight loss & doctor update

I had my follow up appointment yesterday and met the new Nurse Practioner. I really like her and will be seeing her next time as well. She filled out the referral for the surgeon and everything else is going okay. I received a call this morning that the referral is all set and I go see the surgeon on Monday morning. Eek...this surgery might be soon. I'm not really nervous, well okay a little bit, but only because I've never really had surgery before. I had a tubal after Alex but I was already in the hospital, the epidural was still in place & it was quick..or so it seemed. It was part of the same hospital stay as his delivery. This will be different if that makes sense.

On to the weight loss part. I felt like weighing this morning, I usually do it on Monday mornings...but I'm down another 4 pounds. That is a total of 21 pounds so far!! WOOOO! I'm so excited. *Happy Dance Happy Dance*

Tuesday update

The kids have turned into little fish or ducks. LOL! They are out in the pool every chance they can get. Corey and the kids went bowling on Sunday afternoon. Alex did great and actually bowled on a regular lane. He found his method and even got a spare at one point. He was very proud of himself. Morgan is adjusting to her new ball, trying to work on an approach, and such. We watched Duma with the kids Sunday evening and all of us really liked it. A young boy & an orphaned Cheetah cub. Then last night Corey, Morgan & I watched Music and Lyrics and we all really liked it.

Today I took Alex to see the Child Psychiatrist. She believes he does have ADHD and that his angry outbursts are due to his frustration with the whole thing. He & I both liked her and he talked to her some. He was quite good in her office but she did get to witness his continuous motion & inattentiveness. She has started him on Strattera and gave us samples. He started it tonight after dinner and did fine swallowing the capsule in a spoonful of applesauce. Yea! We missed our homeschool park day but we didn't want to make the drive for a really short park day because of the doctor appointment. This afternoon the kids and I worked on their science. We are finishing up the body and today's lab was on fingerprints. It was fun.

Tomorrow is homeschool bowling and playing catch up with the laundry. I swear I get it down to almost nothing and it starts multiplying while I'm not looking. ;-) I'm sure if it isn't raining and the pool is still standing than the kids will want to be swimming as well.

Sunny Saturday

Alex did great sleeping over at GC's house. He got to stay up late, play lots of games with her and have pancakes for breakfast. He called us about 8:30 this morning to say hi and talk. GC was trying to get some more sleep. LOL! We think Kali was missing having her early morning buddy around and started attacking our feet early this morning. We started the hose up for the pool about 9'ish and Corey trimmed around the garden. He also started working on the stump in the backyard. Our neighbor saw him & came out with his chainsaw to help. The stump was cedar and smelled so good after they cut it. Later in the afternoon we met up with Alex and GC at Beef O'Brady's. Alex wasn't ready to come home with us and was very upset that he couldn't go back to GC's house & stay another night. After we got home we started the hose filling the pool again...still? LOL We all played Operation, the new game Alex got while at GC's house, and then headed out to the movies. We took them to see Shrek the Third. We really enjoyed it. Afterwards we went to the new ice cream shop (shares the same parking lot as the theatre) and it was delicious!! The kids got to stay up late, Corey got paged so had to work some.

Our neighbor has helped us out quite a bit and is very nice. He brought over brownies that his wife made for the kids one day. He has also planted canteloupe & watermelon plants with them right where our properties meet. The kids and I are going to make some Almond Chocolate Balls (Paula Deen's recipe) and take them over for the neighbors as a thank you. :-)

I'm not sure what we will be doing tomorrow other than to finish filling up the pool so hopefully we can USE it. Egads...we are dying to get in it.

Oooh...just have to share again...we might be going to Tampa with Corey at the end of the month. Oh please, oh please, let it work out.

What a week!

My goodness what a week. Monday the kids and I went to the library. We had overdue books & I felt really bad about the fines (we all had them). But our favorite librarian said not to look at it as a bad thing...the money from the fines was used to buy new books so we were actually helping the library. LOL! What a positive spin on it. We each got new books and the kids had their summer reading logs checked for week 1. I got 3 books to read for the adult reading program...all about Southern authors. Right now I'm reading Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage by Robert Morgan. So far it is pretty good. Later in the afternoon I had to go for a mammogram...oh what fun. ;-) Actually the women's center is very nice and the technician I had was very sweet so it wasn't too bad. I'm sure my primary will have the results when I go see her on the 14th.

On Tuesday we went to our homeschool park day and Morgan had a couple stories for the authors' club. The kids read their stories & then went to play. The moms hung out & talked. Some had to leave early and then Morgan, Alex, Tayler & Autumn decided to walk around the walking path. I walked part of it so I could keep an eye on them. They wanted to go alone but part of the path goes far back where you can't see from the sitting areas. I walked inside the path but not too close so I could see them & they could see me (Alex still needs that) but I wasn't "with" them. LOL! The things a Mama has to do. :-) The girls decided they wanted a sleepover so their mom & I talked a bit and said we would check with the dads to make sure everyone was good with it. They were.

So Wednesday we met up in the middle and we brought Tayler & Autumn home with us. We all grabbed lunch & watched Morgan at homeschool bowling. We stopped at Lowe's on the way home for sand to help level the ground for the pool. One of the guys told us about levelling sand (versus sandbox sand) ... works better and is cheaper ... yea! We got several bags. Then we stopped at Blockbuster and used a giftcard from my mom for some movies. The 3 girls picked out Night at the Museum, Alex picked out Author and the Invisibles, and Corey & I picked out Mini's First Time. They were all good movies. The girls stayed up late giggling.

Thursday there was a lot of playing games, K'Nex, video games, Barbies, dancing & singing and finishing up movies, talking about the historical figures in the museum movie. At 3pm we met up in the middle again so the girls could go home. Corey and I did some more work with the levelling sand and the area is almost level...but we need more sand. We will get more today & hopefully finish up. We want to use our pool! Last night I let Morgan set up a blog on a special site. She's thrilled about it. I'm not going to link to it but we will let people know what it is as she blogs.

Today we are playing catch up with a lot of stuff. Tonight we have plans to have dinner with my mom at the new Chinese buffet & bar that just opened up near us. Then she is going to have Alex sleepover at her house for some special one-on-one time. He is excited and has already packed his overnight bag. We are thinking about going to a movie and maybe trying the new ice cream shop that has opened nearby.

Oooooooh forgot to mention. I forgot to weigh in on Monday morning but remembered on Tuesday morning. So far my total weight loss is 17 pounds. I'm thrilled!!

Sunday Sundry

The dance recital went great. Alex was so good during the performances. It was great to have my mom, brother and aunt there to see Morgan dance. We missed having Tish there but poor thing got stuck at work & there was nothing she could do about it. She was able to meet up with us afterwards and go to dinner. I took some pictures & will get them up soon. While at dinner Friday night we saw several families from the recital as well as Morgan's dance teacher & the owner of the dance studio and then we saw one of Alex's soccer teammates. LOL! Columbia isn't very big and there are only so many places to eat. ;-)

On Saturday the kids and I went to Franklin to pick up our CSA share from the farmer's market. We wandered around & picked up a few other things. Then we went to the barn to meet up with Tish. We got a tour (man that place is nice!) and got to visit with her horse, Brady. We went to grab some lunch & come back to watch her ride but got lost & turned around. I decided we had spent too much time getting lost so we didn't go back to the barn. We then found our way to my brother's work to give him their portion of the veggies & strawberries. Finally got the kids some lunch & headed home in rain. We need it badly but unfortunately it didn't make it down to us. I had to go back over to the recital theatre to pick up Morgan's dance pictures. They turned out great so I'll have to get them scanned into the computer.

Today we bought a pool and started setting it up but we need to level out the spot for it. We tried it in a couple places in our backyard and the slope is just enough to cause problems. Blech! Huge bummer for all of us because we are dying to get in it. LOL! The kids planted canteloupe & watermelon with our next door neighbor. My mom came over for dinner and we grilled some shrimp & corn. Then had a delicious lemon cheesecake pie for dessert. It was a cheesecake in a graham cracker pie crust with lemon curd on top (like a lemon meringue pie). Oh heavenly & just perfect for a hot day.

I think we are ready for the week to begin. Corey turns over the on call pager duty tomorrow morning. Yeah! I'm not sure what day, if any, he will take off for his comp day. We just have park day with authors' club, doctor appts, and bowling this week. But that's enough. ;-)