Swim Banquet 2009

Tonight was Lizzy's big night, in more ways then one. Tonight she was awarded her Varsity Letter in Swimming. She knew this was happening and so I bought tickets for the whole family to be there for her big night. Dinner is always pretty good and plentiful. You do not go hungry at these affairs. Coaches give their speeches, and then award their special awards. Then they start awarding the girls according to grade, freshmen, sophmore, juniors and seniors, their JV and Varsity Letters.

Then the seniors hand out their own special brand of paper plate awards to their friends on the team. Every girl gets one, sometimes they are very silly. Lizzy's paper plate award this year was for the girl that always starts her conversations with a "Like ya...". Then the captains give their speeches. You try very hard not to get as weepy as the girls do, thanking mom, dad and siblings for all their support. They really need to start handing out a box of Kleenex to each speaker and one for each table.

Then the moment every Junior on the team has been waiting for. The naming of next years captains. At the end of the season as the girls turn in their gear they vote for captain and they are announced at the banquet. So one of Lizzy's friends name is announced. It was a no brainer, her sister was a captain before her. Then another name is announced, OK not the name you expected, but no biggie. Then the third name is announced - Lizzy!!!!! This was the big surprise for us. She wanted to be captain, but had thought that she would never get it because there were two others that she believed would get it instead. She had resigned herself to be a gracious team mate when the names were announced, and instead she got to go up to the podium to receive her captain star. She is really excited, but also feeling sorry for her other two friends that didn't make captain (thats her heart showing). Expecially since the outgoing team had four captains so there is no limit really as to how many captains they can have.

Now I really have to come up with the money for that Varsity Jacket to have the special patches put on and worn with pride. Children, they just keep costing you money. Someone better show me where that money tree is in my backyard. HAHAHA

Time to think about all you blessings

This week people will be putting up with the hustle of last minute shopping for their turkey dinner, and scoping out all the early bird sales that they won't want to miss. But, it is also important to stop and remember all the blessings that have come your way this year. Now it may have been that you also had some bumpy blessings along the way as well.

My family has surely had another rough year, but I can say that we still have many blessings to be thankful for on this wonderful holiday week. We are all still alive and in as reasonable health as can be, considering our medical problems of the past year. We still have a roof over our head and clothes on our backs. The kids are healthy and smart and funny as ever. We still have one car left (I can only hope that the person that stole my van needed it more then I did).

So I am sitting here hoping that if your year has been as trying as mine, that you too can stop and take the time to remember the blessings that you have in your life this holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone and Enjoy your Turkey Dinner!

Where does the Time Go?

It is truly hard for me to believe this child is having her 16th birthday on Thursday. I, like all mom's, remember when she entered this world. She was in such a hurry, the nurse in the OB room almost had to catch her as they were setting me up to the monitors.

Now we are thinking about the colleges she will apply to, taking the ACT and SAT tests, drivers training, ordering her varsity coat and last night we wrote the deposit check for her class ring. Junior year is as costly as Senior year.

Could someone please make time stop. I have already told her I am not one of those mom's that can't wait until she is going to college. I will be the mom that is a basket case when she is gone.

Long Lost Relations

Every Family has its black sheeps, well mine reappeared this week. My youngest sister Chrissy(I am the oldest of 3 girls and 1 boy), found me on facebook the other night (Why didn't I think of that). The last time I saw her I was pregant-(my memory),not pregant-(her memory) with my third child. I remember sitting on the front porch as her and my other sister drove up (she had been gone a while) and I asked her why she had stayed away so long. No answer. I don't remember the rest of the conversation, but it was uneventful and as they got in the car to leave I told her to stay in contact better, so we would know were she was even if she didn't want to talk to anyone. Two weeks later my sister Robin called me and said she couldn't get ahold of Chrissy for a few days and had finally called some guy that Chrissy had been with and told him that if she didn't call in a few hours she was going to the police and have him arrested for kidnapping. Chrissy called her right back and told her she was in the Middle East for vacation and would be back in two weeks. That was thirteen years ago.

Both our parents passed away thinking they were going to meet her in heaven, because they just couldn't believe that she would not have at least let them know she was alive.

The other night, I was on the computer typing up my notes from the girls scout leader meeting and posting updates on the website I had made, and after logging out of there and getting ready to shut down the computer for the night, I checked my email for the last time and there were four messages asking for Christina to be added to my freinds on facebook. Seems she has been in Israel all this time, married with three boys.

Footnote: My mother and I had tried many ways of looking for Chrissy, including signing up on the search websites and all were a deadend to the last address in Michigan before she left.

Good News, Bad News

OK, so on August 22nd, I woke up at 4am and could barley move. I had pain in my neck , shoulder and hand on my left side. Needless to say, I called off work and called the doctor to see if I could get into see her. No go there, as it was not her Saturday to have office hours. I took a vicodin from Jeff's medicine and felt good to go the next day.

Now flash forward to Thursday, September 10th, 4am (don't know why these things happen at this time) awaken with major pain again, this time was not a work day, so call the doctor again and went in to she her, got some muscle relaxers and pain meds and told to take it easy for the weekend. On Monday, still no better, missed two days of work knowing that I was scheduled for the following day and not felling better. Tuesday evening had an MRI with contrast. Results came back today, I have torn my rotator cup, have two tears in the muscle and my neck vertebra are messed up. Need to see an ortho doctor and have physical therapy and will probably be off work for a couple more weeks and hopefully not need surgery. And me with no short term disability insurance.

Life really knows how to knock you down a peg or two when you least expect it.

First Day of School 2009

Today was the first day of school around here. Everyone was very excited to see which of their friends they would have in class together.

So yesterday, I took the kids up to my brother's farm to gather tomatoes and peppers. While there we also went to the local cemeteries so I could take pictures of the family gravestones. We then went for ice cream and to Lake Huron so the kids could walk in the water.

Unfortunately, the area was not dredged yet and they found out that they needed to wade knee deep in mud to get to the waters edge. Allard came out covered in mud after reaching the water only to find that the mud was deeper in the water. Evie got stuck by this picture and Allard had to help her so she could turn around and come out.

Swim Meet #2

On Thursday I got to see Lizzy swim the backstroke at her meet. This is the first year that the coach has asked her to swim this event. I had told her that I thought this was one of the easiest strokes to do. As of this year, she has been swimming in the 100 Fly, 100 Backstroke and the 400 relay. She is really hoping to get her letter this year and order her jacket. So far her team is 1-1.

On a really annoying note, I have been running the swim team website since last year, and it seems that last week my site was hacked and they put a virus on it. I have been emailing the web company every couple days, but am not getting any response back. The live chat people said they take care of things like these on a first come basis, but I should think that they would have contacted me by now. I really don't see why someone would think that a girls swim team would need to be hacked. I never put pictures on my sites, only written words, so they must have looked at the name of the site and thought they would see swimsuits galore.

Happy Birthday Evie

My baby is not such a baby anymore. Yesterday Evie turned 9. It doesn't seem that long ago that we brought her home from the hospital. She was our little suprise and so sweet we knew she was a keeper. She had some of the neighbor childs over for swimming and hot dogs, and on sunday we will take 10 of her girlfriends to CJ Barrymoores, which for you California people would be like Boomers. All she asked for this year was her party and a skateboard, so I took her to Kmart and got the board last evening and she got to ride it until dark.

Scout Camp

This week both Evie and Allard went to scout camp. Evie will be back on Friday and Allard will be home on Saturday. Allard has been doing alot of camping with his troop alone, but this is the first time Evie has been gone more then one night. I of course, forgot to take the camera with me when we dropped Allard off.

Here we are loaded up and ready to go

Waiting to Check In

Unpacked and bed is made.

Locks of Love

Evie Before:

And now some lucky person can have their own

naturally highlighted wig.

Evie has been wanting to donate her hair to Locks of Love for a very long time. Today she finally got the chance.

This Week in Life

Time has been flying by here with so many outings and appointments. Lizzy just returned from one camp out this month to go to another. She and five other Girl Scouts and two Leaders will be heading to South Manitou Island for four days of backpacking and nature. They will arrive by boat to the Island and hike in a mile and a half to their campground. This is a no impact Island so no luxuries will be had. Just planing her meals for the four days has been torture. You have no electricity, no local store, just mother nature and the animals. Needless to say, she has planned a lot of PB&J and Ramien Noodles.

Evie had the school picnic recently, with lots of bounces, carnival games, and of course a petting zoo. Of course the highlight of this event is lunch with your child.

The Friday before this was Field Day, and the week after the picnic was her classroom picnic. It has been one party after another for this month.

We also had to squeeze in two field trips to the Ford Rouge Plant for Girl Scouts.

And of course the Big event to end out the year was our Bridging Ceremony. All my brownies became Juniors at our school wide awards ceremony that we leaders had planned.

We planned a school wide Girl Scout dessert potluck where each Troop displayed examples of things they had done this year, and gave out all the Badges that each girl had earned.

Of course it ended with my Brownie girls bridging to Juniors and the older girls going to Cadettes.

Lizzy was of course a big help this year with my Troop. She helped out at our meetings and so it was only right that she got to be involved with the Bridging Ceremony. She was our caller for the Flag Ceremony and of course she read the bridging poem that I had found years ago.

If I had read the poem I would have bawled through the whole event .

Today is the last day of school so now the fun can really begin for these kids. First on the list for today - Clean the house before you can do anything fun. HAHAHA

Pudgee Pie

Lizzy went camping with her troop this weekend and the theme was pudgee pie. Which for non-girl scouts means anything that you can fit between two pieces of bread in an iron sandwich maker for an open flamed fire pit. If you have never had them you are really missing out on your food cuisine. They also worked on their Pets IPP and went to the outlet mall for shopping. Hence you see her in a clothing store. Where else would you expect to find a teenager.

Busy Weekend

Today was the last day of bowling for the fall season, and the kids picked up their trophy's. Evie got high game of 113 and series of 206 in her age division.
Allard got second place for his age division as well as a pin for his 4oo series.








Lizzy got second place for her divison and most improved player with a 13.76 point average increase.

Evie and Daddy attended the Scout/Sweetheart Dance yesterday evening. The theme was Fun in the Sun. They of course had a wonderful time and forgot to pick up their picture at the end of the night. Hopefully they will bring the leftover pictures to the leader meeting on Wednesday.

Sunday, will round out the weekend with Lizzy going to a Girl Scout Meeting and a Venture Crew meeting and Allard doing a First Aid activity at the Community Center.

Now we just have to get throught till the end of school. (HAHAHA)

The Conquering Hero Returns

Allard arrived home in one piece today from his latest camp out. His troop seems to have a camp out every month. This month he got an event without rain or snow. In fact he made me aware ( two days before he left) that we might need to dry out the tent since it was wet when he last opened it and it got wetter during last months camp out. So it sat in the living room for two days to dry out, lucky for us it didn't have any mold.

Playing with Photos

I have been playing with our old family photos, trying to make copies of photos that I think need to be saved. Some are in bad shape and might not make it many more years. And of course we only have a few pictures of our relatives. My mom had very few that she kept from my side and Jeff has a few from his side. I took a few to the store and had them remade so that we can put them in frames so that they may be enjoyed more. I also have been looking for photos to put with our ancestry tree that I have been working on. I work on this a little bit every day and have gone quite far in some ways. Of course I also need to organize my own photos that I have stashed everywhere. I had started to organize them a few years ago but then stopped and let them get away from me again. Of course work just does not give me enough time to do everything I would like to get done. If only we could get paid for not going to work (HAHAHA).
There is just not enough hours in the day.

Spring Break

The kids have this week off for Spring Break. Not that we are doing anything really. Today they decorated the Easter Eggs that were cooked on Tuesday. And we did a little spring cleaning on the main floor living areas (still more to do). And we have been watching a few movies. Meijer's (where I work) put in a new Redbox and you can rent movies for $1 a night. Last night we watched Twilight, the night before was Hellboy II and Australia, and the night before that was Bedtime Stories and Slumdog Millionaire. This is very handy when you want to see all the top movies that won awards so you can decided if they gave the right movies the right awards.

Jeff has been looking into hiring a professional head hunter, I brought up this last week, because it has been so long since his last job and he has only gotten three calls to see his resume. We send his resume out at every opportunity and this time it went to a company that does business all over the world. This lead came out of an address I found online in Florida. So hopefully we are on the right track again.

It has been 1week and I am still having trouble writing this post. If you know anything about me then you know that I have very little patience with my family and their addictions. I do not want or need to be part of their downward spirals, nor do my children need to be around it. I hate all the conflict their addictions cause and so shortly after moving back to Michigan, with my mom back to drinking again, we had a fight and I cut off contact with her.

Last Sunday, March 29th, I found out that my mom had passed away on Dec 4th and because I had not stayed in contact, no one was able to find me. I am not sure how hard they really tried, they say they did. My old phone was turned off and I had moved a mile away from my house, but I was still in the same town and my new number is listed, my e-mail had not changed. And I can be googled too.

So now all I can say is even if you are so angry (as I was), you should never give up staying in touch with the people you love. I will never be able to know what she might have been thinking in her last days or having her call because she needed my help.

Let's Hear it for America

That was the name of this years Third Grade Musical Performance. All four third grade classes participated in an array of music to celebrate America. This always lets you know that you are on the down swing of the year now. Vacation is next week, the new marking period will begin when they get back to school.

Allard has another camp out this weekend. He will be earning his metalwork and leather works merit badges. He finished up his God and Country merit badge today, so I will now have to start sewing these badges on his new sash.

Lizzy has her badge sewing up to date for now, but even she has a few events coming up soon.

Evie had to leave the Potluck dinner right away to go to her skating lesson. From a previous post you may remember that she turned out to be a pretty good skater, so when I saw that they were going to start a new session of lessons this month I signed her up. Last week she was sick so she did not go, and since the course is only 8-10 weeks I wanted to make sure she went today, so Jeff took her and Lizzy and dropped them off while I cleaned up from the Potluck and then he came and picked me up and we went to watch Evie do her lesson. I took this during free time as when I tried other photos I got too much of a glare from the glass partition.

Heritage Potluck

Today we finished up our Heritage Badge for Girl Scouts by having a Potluck Dinner. Of course you plan these events according to your calendar of meeting times. But it was also spirit week at school so today was crazy hair and hat day. Hence the look of the girls. Evie had her hair done in purple with yellow bangs and orange, blue and red pigtails. Some of the girls had glitter too. After this picture we worked with clay for part of our Art 3d Badge and then had the parents bring in the dish that each girl prepared with them for the Potluck. Boy did we have a good selection to choose from. I had wanted to make a cookbook out of the recipes and had asked the parents to please send them too me, but some of them didn't. So at the dinner I again asked that they give them to me and explained why I wanted them, so hopefully they will get them to me.

Oliver 2009

Last night our Troop visited the local High School to view the production of Oliver. What a great performance by the cast and crew, and the sets were just so good. Most of the girls attended and this will finish out our theatre badge. Although, like every trip I have planned this year, it snowed again. I promised my mom's that we would take a trip without snow soon (hahaha).

We have also been working on cookie sales, we have 14 days left to sell, but we are done to about 28 boxes left and we still have two booths to go, however I am having trouble getting more cookies on the weekend so I may have to just call it done and see if anyone else wants these boxes. Plus, I am really getting tired of sitting at booths for two girls, I have only been working three or four days a week since Feb. 6th.

Next week we are going to have a Girl Scout movie night for the girls at our school, Allard has his drama performance, and Evie is Star of the Week.

Life with kids, I don't know what I will do with myself when I don't have kids to do for and with.

Pirates at the Pool

Last night our Troop attended the Pirates at the Pool Event sponsored by our Girl Scout Neighborhood. Lizzy's Troop plans,arranges, and runs the event and in return get a cut of the profits. Which they use to pay for supplies for their gold or silver awards. This picture was taken during snack time when the three of us were together. Lizzy was in charge of the craft area during the night, and Evie and I took our Troop to enjoy the Y with swimming, belly dancing, crafts, tattoos, songs, snacks, a maze, and of course you had to solve clues that told you where you were suppose to be at any given time. The evening ended with a closing ceremony and swaps.

Of course, if you have been watching the weather, you would have known that again this event took place during a snow storm. One of my mom's asked me if I could ever have an event that did not involve snow and I of course replied "What fun would that have been."

Comfort Foods

Well, not much has been happening here. The kids are back to school. Chris has a birthday coming up this Sunday (he'll be 24), Allard's birthday will be soon after that. Allard wants to have the same type of party as Lizzy did (sleepover with midnight bowling). And then before you know it will be Spring again.

Last week while Jeff and I were at the grocery store I picked up a large whole chicken that was on sale and told him I was going to make some soup, so today before work I spent my time making a large pot of homemade soup. I had so much chicken and veggies that I didn't think I had enough noodles, so when Jeff took me to work this evening I picked up another bag. Evie was with me and I told her that she had to make sure when she got home that daddy only added the noodles and nothing else, because this was Mom's turn to cook and I don't need him to fix any meal I make. (When Jeff picked me up he told me that Evie made sure he didn't fix anything, and she reminded him that he had to behave.)

They are calling for 6-8 inches of snow tonight into tomorrow, so a nice bowl of chicken soup seemed to be just the thing we needed here.