Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun day, but we must not be meant to go to the zoo. We were going to go early this morning when we received a call from younger son's music teacher. He wanted to come at 12:20 instead of 3:15. So the zoo was out. Maybe next week :)

We had a great day. This morning we stayed around the house and older son actually slept in. Then came younger son's music lesson. We had McDonalds for lunch today. I was just waiting for the McRib sandwiches to come back. Well, they are back!!

We took a couple of pictures after lunch since older son was going to work and not able to come with trick or treating. Even Milo had his own costume. He is not big on costumes :) I do believe even the dog is resigned to just letting me take pictures and get done.

We met my friend at her brother's house. We trick or treat with them most years. It is always fun walking around together! We have been through hot, cold , freezing, sun, rain, sleet, and snow depending on the year. This year was great, a little chill in the air and the sun out when we started. The only thing better would have been a full moon. We spent about two hours trick or treating and then headed home stopping at Fannie May to trick or treat there. When we came home we watched, "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". Love that movie!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Both Sons with Milo Halloween 2006

Our Gang of Trick or Treaters

Which is Younger Son?

Cool Lawn

Younger Son's Take For the Night

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Last Camp out

I was sitting down to write about our week. Older son was on vacation and it seems like we haven't been home all week, but I'll be darned if I could remember anything we did past going to a movie! Very sad I know, but I am trying to work on my memory these days :) The show we went to was Employee of the Year. It was ok, not great. It was funny in spots. The kids like it.

During the week we had plans for a lot of different outdoor things, but it rained just about everyday. We all went to the mall one day to look around. Younger son spent his time in Games Workshop http://us.games-workshop.com/default.htm. I thought I would put a link up since I talk about it a lot. Older son and girlfriend walked around the mall and I did some shopping too. Then we all went to lunch at Olive Garden. Great food!

For Christmas the kids wanted something called Guitar Hero. It is a play station 2 game that comes with a guitar as a controller. I picked that up midweek since we weren't able to do some outdoor stuff and we have been playing it since. I actually played it while the kids were gone and I can't ever remember doing that!

This weekend younger son went on his last camp out with Boy Scouts. Older son is an Eagle Scout and Younger is Life Scout. He decided to take a break from scouts and concentrate on other things. I am fine with that, but a little sad thinking as he gets older he may regret it. He still has until he is 18 to go back if he wants to make Eagle. Older son met him at his campout Saturday just for the day. They had a lot of fun.

Today older son played his trombone in church for all three services. This afternoon we went to see a play at a local college. Our first in the many we just lined up for the school year. Younger son will be writing an entry on the blog tomorrow reviewing "The Little Shop of Horrors". It was a lot of fun to see. I have the song stuck in my mind now. That wouldn't be so bad, but I don't know all the words so I am walking around the house singing "The little shop of horrors" over and over again. Both kids are avoiding me.

Older son's girlfriend is over tonight and we are all playing games and just ordered a pizza. So I will be signing off since the pizza should be here soon!

Friday, October 20, 2006

A Hiking We Will Go

We had a great day out today. My best friend and her son went with my younger son and I to get some exercise and hike. We first went to The Little Red School House that was an original little red school house. They have two hiking trails and a nature center. The center was closed today, but it was beautiful out and nice walking weather. I took LOTS of pictures. On the second walking trail we saw 5 deer run across the trail. By the time I had the digital camera ready they were too far to get a good picture of them. I love my digital camera, but they certainly aren't fast. After we were done at The Little Red School House we headed toward home, but then remembered we would be passing up Lake Katherine and decided to stop there too. Lake Katherine has a wonderful waterfall and walking tracks. They have a butterfly garden in the Summer and a great flower garden also. From there we went to McDonalds since we were hungry from all the walking.

After lunch we didn't feel like going home yet. We ended up at the party store looking at Halloween stuff. My friends son is autistic and loves all the costumes and things that go with it. I loved some of the hats he picked out. Younger son picked up a cap, mask and laser to be Darth Vader. I bought a witch headband that has a hat with green braided hair coming out of it. Kinda cute if I do say so.

Tonight while my older son was at work, my younger son and I went to a rehearsal for an Eagle Court of Honor ceremony coming up on Sunday. It only took an hour or so to go through the ceremony. Older son came home from work early tonight and is on vacation next week so he is happy.

Tomorrow if it isn't raining in the morning we are taking our neighbor and going to Boo at the Zoo with our costumes. If it is raining we are going to the show. Hope it isn't raining!

The Little Red School House

Taken at The Little Red School House

Walking at The Little Red Schol House

Taken at The Little Red School House

Taken at Lake Katherine

Taken at Lake Katherine

Taken at Lake Katherine

Saturday, October 14, 2006

It's Saturday and I'm not at Work

Lately things here have been pretty hectic. I decided to stop working until younger son can drive. I can't tell you how much better I feel. I put off the decision for awhile. When I went down to working one day a week I thought it would only be for 18 months, but now younger son has decided to stay home for high school too. I am happy with the decision, but working just the one day a week for three years would have been a problem. So I am officially back home for now.

We have needed some laughter in the house after the last year so I have been buying some old and newer comedies. We are in our third season of I Love Lucy. I love all the schemes! Some of the show we have picked up are Pee Wee's Playhouse, Everybody Loves Raymond, Family Guy, Full House, and Fawlty Towers (One of my favorites!). Along with some others that aren't comedy necessarily like Diagnosis Murder, CSI, Matrix, Final Destination, and Fast and Furious. Older son use to come home from work and I would still be up and we always watched either CSI or Cops depending on what was on at the time. It is just something we started doing. So now we can watch them anytime.

Younger son is on a camping trip this weekend with scouts. I dropped him off last night at 6:30 pm. He will be back tomorrow around 10:30 am. Older son worked last night and then went to his girlfriends house. When he came home him and I watched a video for awhile and stayed up way too late! We both slept in and I made a big breakfast for us. We mostly stuck around the house and watched some tv. Tonight he has a practice at church for tomorrow morning. He is playing drums with one of the groups at church for the 8 am service. Then he has a birthday party to go to after practice. I have the house all to myself (well there is Milo) tonight. That is pretty unusual, so I have been updating and playing with the blogs today.

Older son bought equipment recently to DJ parties and weddings. He is so excited to be able to have fun and make some extra money. He was called by a friend of his tonight. His sister is getting married and they asked Jason to DJ!! It will be his first wedding. So far he has done a couple of parties mostly for family. The friends family is really nice and we have know each other since our sons were little. They bowled together on the same league for years.

We have been homeschooling now for about 8 years and I am much more relaxed about it now. Matter of fact last year when we had a family crisis younger son took off months and still did just as well on his yearly achievement test. I want to enjoy the next couple of years with him at home and do fun stuff too. He is so interested in theater that I am hoping to find a few places around here for him to be able to perform. For now he has a fine arts group that he really enjoys. They have band, choir, drama, tonechimes, speech, and orchestra. He does it all except orchestra. They are putting on a fireside theater of A Christmas Carol the end of November. In the Spring it is usually a larger full production. Older son tries to make it to fine arts in time to sit in with the band. With working nights, he usually can't make the performances though.

Older son just called he made it to the birthday party just fine. I don't know what I would do without cell phones! I certainly would worry much more about the kids.

Well I am off, have a great weekend!

Dog ate my homework!

We have a wonderful new dog, Milo. We adopted him last April. He has been great. Came potty trained and only has a few issues :) He tends to find things once in awhile around the house to grab and chew. It hasn't been bad he mostly chews and destroys his own toys. If you followed our last blog http://www.zorenaflattravelers.blogspot.com/ I have written about it once in awhile. I had a bright idea. When I saw the dog take something I would say, drop it do you want a treat. It worked great!! He dropped it instantly and I gave him a treat. I didn't figure out in time that I was rewarding his bad behavior instead of rewarding good behavior. The last week has been really bad as far as his taking anything he can reach and running waiting for us to tell him to drop it and wait for his treat :) Pens, pencils, paper, underwear, socks, towels, anything left in his reach has been chewed. Older son who is in college is taking a full load this semester to become a police officer brought home a take home test that is due Monday. He was sitting on his bedroon floor doing the test and who walks in and grabs it from him! The chase starts... Milo get back here, mom he has my test, grab him, Milo get back here. We finally resort to drop it do you want a treat. It works and older son tries to explain to Milo that in college the dog ate my homework line just wouldn't cut it even if it is true. He can still turn it in , but it does have teeth marks all over it!

Snow People

My best friend and I decided to start walking together four days a week and get into better shape. I think my friends shape is just fine, but her doctor has other ideas and my doctor is suggesting weight loss surgery. Our families are going to Disney World a year from this November together and we want to be able to walk without pain for long periods of time. Our intentions are very good! Most people would start slow as this is what we did talk about at first. I suggested we walk up to the mailbox and back. I thought she would laugh at me and we would start just walking around our building. The post office and back is about 2 1/2 miles (I checked it in the car!). Well she thought it was a good idea, so we started last Friday. We were both dead when we got back, but happy neither of us had a heart attack and we made it back. We had the weekend off and we started again Monday, then Tuesday, a shorter walk Wednesday and then came Thursday. We both thought we would have a day off it was suppose to rain or snow. When she dropped her son off at school that morning the sun was out so over she came. We started out with a lovely sunny day. We were about two blocks into our 2 1/2 mile walk and the wind picked up and the snow started. By the time we were on our way back after the first mile and a half it was like a blizzard hitting us in the face. We had to push against the wind to move. At this point we had walked already three days in a row and we are really out of shape. We both had black on. I swear we were covered in snow from head to toe! The wind was whipping the snow at us faster then we could walk. Now we have different philosophies on how to get back home at this point. Mine is to slow down and know we aren't going to make our usual time. I had to catch my breath! My best friend's philosophy is to speed up and get home as fast as possible :) By the time we rounded my block the snow stopped and the wind let up. If you were not near a window the hour we were out you would have never know it even snowed! On the news that night they mentioned blizzard like conditions and earliest snow fall is history. This is what happens when two out of shape friends decide to get into shape! If we continue you can count on this being the worst winter for snow and blizzard like conditions between 9am and 10am each weekday! Yes, we did walk again on Friday too. I kept saying from about a yard behind her, you are walking too fast! She would call back I am tired, my back is killing me I just have to get home! I would say if I have a heart attack you wouldn't know until you got back to my house because you are too far ahead! She would call back come on, I am walking at a normal pace. I would call ahead normal for who?? I must say not only did we walk over 10 miles last week, we cut 9 minutes off our time between Monday and Friday and added 3/10 of a mile to our distance. I can say that happily sitting in front of my computer taking the weekend off of walking, but come Monday I will be calling ahead, slow down are you trying to kill me. My best friend will be yelling back come on I want to get home my back is killing me. And through this just maybe by the end of winter we will be in a little better shape and walking together. Well maybe!

May Need Reading Glasses :)

About a week ago younger son had a friend over night. They had a great time playing with all the war gaming stuff and watching movies. Friend noticed I had one of the new Betty Crocker microwave individual desserts sitting around. I wanted to see how they tasted. He asked if he could have it and I said yes. He read me the instructions on back and we mixed the dry powder with some water in the dish it came in. He read to microwave it for 4 to 5 minutes. I looked at the back of the box too just to check. I popped it into the microwave and went back to decorating for Halloween. About 3 or 4 minutes later I start smelling something burning. I look over at the microwave and smoke was leaking out of it. I run over and shut it off. I looked in the door without opening it and it was filled with smoke and you couldn't see the dessert I had put in it. I opened the door up and puff! The house (not just the kitchen) was filled with smoke. I ran the melted microwave safe bowl under water just in case. Meanwhile we yanked down the smoke detector so as not to alarm the neighbors. We opened both front and back doors including the next door leading to the outside area. I had both boys waving the doors open and close to air out our condo. I guess there was enough smoke that came out of our building to have someone call the maintenance man to check on our burning building! I assured him it was us and there was no fire. I was so mad at Betty Crocker I ready to sue!! I pulled the package back out of the garbage to get the 800 number to call and complain and imagine my surprise when I looked closer at the directions and it said to cook for 45 SECONDS! I swear I saw a dash between the 4 and 5 when I first glanced at it. Really I did. Not only did I feel really bad I couldn't see the directions, but younger son's friend still wanted the dessert! I offered cookies instead and it seemed to help. It has been a week now and even though I boiled water with baking soda after this happened and have used the microwave many times since when you open the door you STILL can smell the burnt dessert. I have flooded our condo twice, almost set the oven on fire (the fire department was out for that one!) and now about blew up our microwave. You can all be happy I am not your neighbor :) I go to get my eyes checked again in November.

Milo in His New Sweater for the Winter

The Castle Younger Son Built for War Gaming


Still has to be painted

My Life and Eagle Scouts

Pretty Cool

Age Gauge

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Traveling on to our new blog home

Welcome to our new blog home!

I am just setting everything up. It does look a little empty here. I worked all day today and then took younger son and a friend to the mall for a very quick trip. He had some money that he had to get more war gaming things with. He was very happy to learn that the scenery he just built can be brought into the shop and painted. The may even work it into a scenario when he brings it in. Older son helped a little around the house and then went and had his car waxed. Since it is a black car it really shows all the rain spots. We have had a lot of rain lately. He is planning on going out when his girlfriend is off work to visit an other friend that is in college right in our neighborhood. Right now we have The Fast and The Furious Tokyo Drift DVD going. Older son and any movie with fast cars is a hit. Younger son just got up for a nap he had a little headache so I am sure he will be up late now too. We have been watching the first two seasons of I Love Lucy the last week or so. Both kids have loved it.

Well I want to get this posted and work on the blog awhile tonight. I will have to work on some pictures too.