Busy Week

It's wonderful to be sitting here on a lazy Saturday morning in my pj's with a cup of coffee - nothing scheduled for the day and no place that we need to be!!  It's been a rather crazy week.

Last Sunday, after Ella and Si's soccer games, Justin drove up to New York to see Jim (Grandpa J).  He's been in the hospital since September 17th.  The cancer in the bones has flared up and it was affecting the nerves and he wasn't able to walk.  He's been doing radiation and started a new chemo.  Praying that this give him some relief and enables him to get around again soon!
Monday and Tuesday I was flying solo with the kids so we concentrated on the basics like homework, dinner, bath, books, bed. And then I have a bad habit of staying up WAY too late working when Justin is gone, which is fine until the alarm goes off at 5:50am.
Justin got home around 1:30am so he was exhausted the rest of the week.  He and I are both really sucky night drivers.

Wednesday night I went to a concert with Donna and Sarah - Jason Mraz and he was awesome!

(not my photo...stolen from his Facebook fan page) 

 I love going to concerts but I have to be very selective about week night concerts these days...getting too old!

Thursday night I went to see author Kelly Corrigan with Margie.  Donna was supposed to go too but got stuck doing some work stuff.  Kelly is one of my new favorite authors.  She wrote The Middle Place and Lift.  I have quoted her books on here quite a few times.  She has an amazing gift of putting into words the thoughts,  feelings, anxiety and humor of being a mother, wife, daughter, friend and cancer survivor.  Her entire talk left me both laughing and crying at the same time. It was fantastic.  You can watch some of her videos here.

By end of the day on Friday, I was wiped out.  I  had been up until midnight or later every night of the week.  Justin went out with the boys for the evening so the kids and I had a relaxing night at home.  We watched movies and snuggled.  It was perfect.  After they went to bed, I watched Food, Inc. (We now have the Netflix on-demand and it is awesome - since we can never seem to get movies that we borrow back on time).  Excellent but disturbing documentary about the food industry. Since reading The Anti-cancer book, I've continued to research and learn very frightening stuff about the food that we consume, and how appalling the industry treats our farmers. Today starts Local Matters week, encouraging consumers to buy and eat local foods as much as possible.  

One of the highlights of my week was getting a free canvas 8x10 print of one of my photos.  I had taken this picture in Hocking Hills this summer, and winkflash had a deal for a free canvas.  It came this week and I love it!

I made some Thank You cards out of some of my photos and ordered (for free!) also. Can't wait to find another deal so I can get another print made!!

The other highlight of my week is that it is OCTOBER! My favorite month of the year!  Beautiful autumn weather, pumpkin picking, hay rides, apple crisp, the pumpkin fest, some fantastic photo opportunities...and my anniversary.  Yippee for October!!

99.999999999999999999

Percent of the way there!

Front room - check!

Kitchen - check!

check!

and re-check!

The only first floor areas not completed at this point are the bathroom and the front closet. The laundry room will get tiled. All our "real" 1st floor living space is done!

So now the "putting back together" begins. Baseboards, touching up the beat-up walls, moving and removing furniture (Sarah and DZ -we need you!), the purchasing of area rugs (anyone have a Crate and Barrel discount??)
Holy smack, they are beautiful floors!!


So enough with the gorgeous floors already...

Here's my baby-love - at Jen's last weekend. I tell you, this kid really loves his books - and really, really loves other kids' books. This is the stack that accumulated on his lap after about an hour or two of thorough perusing. I love that all our kids love to read.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

On another note...me, Margie, Tara, Lisa, mom, dad, Sarah and my kiddies went to spend some time with our relatives on the east side of town (ones that we don't see very often). Someday, I will devote an entire hour of blogging to the history on this side of our family. The Mexican/Navajo/Spanish side of the family - that is where my kids get their complexion ;)

An interesting FYI - my dad's dad used to ride with Poncho Villa. I have no idea what that entailed, but I assume it was riding around on horses in Mexico...I'll need to do a little research on this!

This is a photo of dad's parents and one of his sisters (Jessie, I think).

Happy Friday!

Yippee! I'm ready for another weekend! Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous day out so I took the laptop and phone onto the deck and worked. The glare was a little hard on the eyes, but that is a small price to pay for enjoying some sunshine. I do love my job!

Silas was loving the nice day too - he occupied himself with his dump trucks and tractors in the dirt pile for a while before dinner - he definitely needed a good scrubbing before we ate!

Here are all the Fresh Face pictures that Melissa took of Ella and Silas:

One of Silas' pictures will be on Melissa's new marketing brochure. She really does great work!!

This weekend is looking pretty low key - I am hoping to finish my book group book (Child 44) before we meet on Sunday. I'm so close! But even when NO ONE reads the book, we manage to keep ourselves occupied with other discussions (aka Gossip) and wine.

TGIF!!