An Ordinary Day!

I saw this on another blog and thought it was a beautiful reminder to enjoy each day!  You may want to grab a tissue.  I think all of us moms have felt these feelings at some point in time as we parent.





Have a wonderful day!

Girls Night Out!

When I lived in Florida and my kids were little, I had a group of friends that I did things with.  We would scrapbook together regularly and we would go out to dinner to celebrate birthdays.  Sometimes we would go to Barnes and Noble to walk around or just to Target.  It was just a time when we all had little kids and we needed some time away from them.  We always had so much fun together.  Well, now that my kids are teens and I live in NY, I still want to do things with my friends.  But, it seems harder to get together these days.  Maybe it's because I just don't need that time away like I used to.  Well, I have some new friends and we are always saying that we should get together but it just doesn't seem to happen.  So, I planned a Girls night out!  What fun we had!  Once it was on the calendar we were all good with it.  And we can't wait for next month!  Here we are in the car on the way to Hobby Lobby:

back left to right:  carol and Lisa

front: Michelle and me

Rosa

Jen driving

We kept yelling at Jen to stop looking at the camera.  But she insisted on having her picture taken too!  Just kidding!  She was so nervous about turning around for a picture but we assured her that we would watch the road for her :)

We made it to Hobby Lobby!

We were picking out signs that fit each girl!  I love this sign.  I think all of us feel this way! lol

we are always giving Lisa a hard time because she has someone clean her house 2 times a month. (we're just jealous!)

Carol says this a lot! lol

Rosa doesn't like to cook!

I feel young but my body isn't feeling the same way anymore!  

This was great!  I feel the same way!  I have to write everything down!

this was just a funny sign!

After Hobby Lobby, we headed over to the Red Robin for dinner.

We had a lot of fun together.  It's so good to be with friends and be able to share with them things that you are going through or things that your kids are dealing with.  And we all understand.  Either we've been there or we are going through it. 

Can't wait to do it again Girls!

Thanks for lots of laughs...

Basketball

On Thursday and Sat. night, we are went to the East Regional Basketball tournament!

 Our family loves basketball and so this was a lot of fun.  When your kids are young, there are a lot of activities to do together.  As they get older it gets harder to find things that you all like to do.  I would still love to take them to the Museum of Play but they aren't into that anymore.

  So, when we saw that we could get tickets to the game, we decided that it would be something that our family would enjoy doing together.

Where we live, people go all out for high school graduation parties.  I've been to some that have been like a wedding reception.  AJ graduates next year and we got to thinking about that.  He doesn't love parties.  I always want to have a big party for him at his birthday and he never lets me.  (Thank goodness that Rachel likes parties).  Anyway, I was talking to a friend of mine and we were talking about ideas for graduation.  She said that she heard about an idea where you take one last family vacation.  We all know how hard it is to get everyone together when they are on their own.  I loved this idea.  We told AJ about the idea and told him that he could choose a place for us all to go together instead of having a party.  He liked the idea too.  Then when Rachel graduates, we will all go together again.  He started looking for places that he would like to go.  He came up with Australia and New Zealand.  Well, when he found out that their seasons are opposite of us, he decided that he didn't want to go there in their winter season.  We get enough winter where we live!  One night at dinner we were talking and Randy mentioned to AJ that we could go to the Final Four basketball game next year for his trip.  He loved that idea.  It's in Houston and we would make a vacation out of it.  I think it will be a lot of fun to all go together.  We may get lucky and get to spend some other vacations together but if not, we will have some great memories of our "last" family vacation.

bizarre

Recently, my brother went to a funeral for his friend's mother-in-law.  She and her husband were driving in a brand new 3 wheeler motorcycle and one of the tires fell off and she was killed.  While at that funeral on a Saturday, my brother ran into an old high school friend of his.  They talked about how nice the funeral was and the friend commented that he would like to have a funeral like that.  It was such a nice event for the family.  Well, on Tues., this friend was in S. Carolina jogging on the beach with his ipod.  A small plane had lost its propeller and was gliding in for a landing.  There was oil that leaked on the windshield and they never saw the jogger.  He had his ipod in and didn't hear or see the plane.  The plane hit him and  killed him.  Needless to say, he'll be having that funeral sooner than he probably ever thought.  Isn't that so sad? He was 38 with 2 children.

random thoughts

It's been a slow week around here.  Nothing exciting going on.  I guess that is good every once in awhile.  I did fall down the back steps yesterday.  That was fun.  You would think that by now I would be pretty good at coming down those.  However, a book was left on the stairs and I just didn't see it and down I went!  Ouch!  I'll probably be pretty bruised up.  And, I have been doing the Last Chance Workout from Biggest Loser for a week and it's killing me!  I weighed myself today and have only lost 1lb!  WHAT?!!!  Are you kidding me?  I was ready to give up but Randy reminded me that I'm toning up.  Yeah right!  I will keep going I guess.  I ordered a new bathing suit and so I have to be able to wear it.  Maybe I should move to Alaska where they don't get warm enought to ever wear a bathing suit.  Wouldn't that be great?!  Oh and this is embarrassing.  I had a call into a dr. for an appt. and she called back and left a message on my cell with her cell # to reach her at.  I accidentally deleted it and so now I had to call her back and tell her that I deleted her message and could she call me again.  Agh....
The other night Randy told Rachel that I used to be a Dr.!  Why, I'm not sure.  Maybe she was complaining about something hurting or something.  She came to see me and asked me if it was true.  I had overheard the conversation that they had and assured her that YES it was true.  I told her how I used to love being a pediatrician and when we had the kids we decided that it was best for me to stay home and take care of them.  I told her that maybe I would go back one day and do that again.  She couldn't get over it.  She said, "mom, I thought you used to work at Kentucky Fried Chicken."  I told her that that was when I was in high school and that it helped pay for my education.  She just couldn't get over that she never knew that about me.  Then the next day, we told her that we were just kidding.  Well, she didn't think it was very funny.  She said, "you outright lied to me!  I would get in so much trouble if I did that."  And she's right, she would but we are the parents and sometimes we get to do mean things to the kids so we can have a little fun.  Kids these days!  They just don't want to have any fun :)

Spring Cleaning!

We are finally getting the bathroom going.  It took forever to find the right things for it and now we have just about everything in.  Not in place but here.  Randy is really busy with work right now so the bathroom has taken the back burner.  On Friday, I finally cleared out the room.  It had become a scrapbook room and a shoe room.  But I don't really scrapbook anymore.  I was just dreading clearing it all out.  But that was because I knew that I had to find a new spot to put it all in.  So anyway, clearing it out meant that on Friday I cleaned out the upstairs hall closet and then somehow ended up cleaning out the bathroom closet and vanities.  On Saturday, I cleaned out the downstairs closet and reorganized it all.  All the scrapbook stuff has a new home and I did some spring cleaning in the meantime.  So, here's a before pic of the closet downstairs:

It usually stays pretty good but after Christmas I just put random stuff in there and Rachel keeps all her arts and crafts in there and it just got to be a mess.  Here's the after though :)

I took everything out and then weeded through it all.  Threw a bunch of stuff away and have a pile for the yard sale in the spring.  It's hard to get good pics of it because it's a pretty big closet but there's not room in the hallway to get the right angles.

Saturday night we went out with some friends for dinner.  They introduced us to a wonderful restaurant! It was just delicious.  Lots of laughs and good food...doesn't get any better!

Supper Club...weekend getaway!

This weekend was the first weekend getaway that the Supper Club has taken.  We went to Sackett’s Harbor, which is a beautiful village in upstate NY!  The town actually played a significant role in the war of 1812.  But, you can google Sackett’s Harbor yourself and get the history. 

We started out by all  meeting up at the hotel on Saturday afternoon.  (1 of the couples couldn't come at the last minute).  Here we are:

We strolled through the many quant shops that the town has to offer....and lucky for us all 4 of them were open! :)  Actually, I was surprised that that many were open at this time of year.  Most shops like that are only open for the season.  A few of the girls bought some beautiful decorative sticks that were shellacked.  And I know that their husbands really appreciated this.  I think a few even made some comments.  They just didn’t appreciate the quality of these sticks.

After looking through the many shops, we decided to quench our thirst over at the brewery. 

 Randy and I thought we were going for a tour of the brewery but it turns out that it was just a bar.  Oh well...  so we go in and we wait, and wait, and wait.  The place was pretty crowded but we were surprised that we weren’t being served.  Finally, a waitress came over and asked us if we were there for the private wine tasting!  Ha!  We were all so shocked that we had crashed a private party that we said no!  So they asked us to leave!  This is the first time that we’ve ever been "kicked out" of a bar!  Randy used to have to take people out of bars but we’ve never been asked to leave!  With not a lot of options left, we went back to the hotel and lucky for us 3 of the other couples brought snacks.  So, we sat in room 209 and had venison jerky, cheese, crackers, pretzels and an assortment of drinks.  

We laughed and talked for a few hours.  We did talk about how we were moved here from the Witness Protection Program!  (A few of the kids at school have actually asked AJ that before!)  I guess they figure that they don't know what Randy does and who would move to Red Creek!  :)  

Most rooms were pretty standard at the hotel but not room 209.  Instead of having 2 queen sized beds they had this:

And we just found this news out....  when at a hotel if there are 2 beds in the room, 1 is for sleeping and the other is for extra-curricular activities!  Did you all know that because we never knew this!   I guess you learn something new everyday! lol

  After lots of laughs, we freshened up and headed out for our dinner reservations.  

We walked to the restaurant only to be told that they lost our reservation and that it would be a 45 min. wait!  So, we put our name in and went over to the Brewery to see if they had a table for 10.  And guess what?  They didn’t!  So back we went to the pizza place and after some talking to the manager, we finally got a table.  

Above are some pics from dinner but most that I tried taking didn't turn out because where we were sitting there was a street light that was shining right in.  The food was delicious though.  We headed over to the comedy club after dinner and that too proved to be a lot of laughs. 

This morning we went to breakfast at this yummy place called Tin Pan Galley’s. 

Such unique foods and really delicious!  Here we are again.  

I had blackberry pancakes with granola, cinnamon, and maple butter!  Wow!

We found out that one of the guys headed out to the ER during night because his throat was closing up!  Yikes!  But, he’s okay...just had to have 2 shots in his behind to clear things up :(

Can’t wait for more get aways with this group!  Always lots of fun to be had together!

My poor boy is sick.  He's got Mono :(    He has had a cold for awhile now and it wasn't getting better so Randy took him to the dr. yesterday.  I worked all week and couldn't go.  I told him to ask about Mono.  I just had this feeling that he had it.  He's been sooooo tired.  At first I thought he was just run down from going all the time and not getting the sleep he needs.  Both kids have always required a lot of sleep.  Anyway, he went to the dr. and sure enough he has Mono!  He can go back to school on Monday because he's probably over the worst of it now.  He was contagious when we didn't know he even had it.  And today he woke up feeling much better.  His throat wasn't as sore and he was hungry again! :)  But, he won't be able to do any contact sports for awhile.

This picture wasn't taken recently but it was one when he was sick and had to take some nasty medicine! 

I know I haven't done a Not Me Monday in awhile and when I was making this the other night:

instead of going to this class:

I was laughing to myself!  At our last supper club we were all talking about how it's been awhile since we've all been at the class together.  So we decided that we would all be there on Monday night.  But you didn't find me there because I was home eating my hot monkey bread instead!  :)

busy....

Since I came back from Florida it's been a little hectic around here.  We flew back on Saturday afternoon and that evening was our supper club.  Couldn't miss that!  As usual we had tons of fun and lots of laughs. The theme this month was Polish and it was all so delicious!  This weekend is out supper club weekend getaway!  I'll take some pics of that.  We are heading to Sackett's Harbor on Saturday.  Doing a little shopping, having dinner together, and then meeting up for a comedy club!  Although, I don't know that we will laugh more than when we are just together for our monthly dinners.  Sunday morning we'll get up, have breakfast together and then head for home.  Can't wait!  There's even talk of a day trip this summer up with their boats!

I've been working this week.  So I haven't had much time on the computer....dang work!

Here are some pics from our Fl girls getaway!  

As soon as we got to my parent's house, Rachel got on her bathing suit and got right in the pool!  Hey, we were in Fl!  So what if it was only 70 degrees outside.  To us, that felt hot! lol  The pool was 72 and we figured that's about as warm as Lake Ontario gets in the summer so why not swim!  I still love my 90 degree Gulf of Mexico water temps.  You won't ever catch me in the Lake!  Well, there was the one time we jumped off the dock in the Adirondacks!  It was freezing but so much fun!  Anyway, we ate so good while we were there.  We sure do love food!  A few of the things we had while we were there were  raw oysters, shrimp cocktail, ceasar salad, crab legs, homemade waffles with fl strawberries, and whipped cream, and I could go on and on......

There are a few things that I miss about living in Fl.  

although I have my Wegmans in NY, I still love Publix.

I don't understand why they don't have this here!

And I really miss this girl!  And her family!!!! :)

And these people of course when they are not in NY!

And these people too!

So glad we got to visit with Granny while she was in the hospital.

These were the best cupcakes ever!  It's the cutest little shop that's all done up in Pink and they only sell cupcakes!  too cute.  They had every flavor you could think of!

And I just had to take a picture of this firewood that they sold in bundles outside of Publix.  Just like here right? :)

I also miss how convenient everything is.  But I don't miss the sirens that you hear all day and night.  And I certainly don't miss the traffic.  It's always good to be home and we sure love it here.  It's great to visit but good to be home.