People we have known & loved...

Places we have been,
How beautiful in memory
To see them all again.

I doubt that I can convey why the visit from our friends last week was so special, but here's a little glimpse into the past.











Now you all (if anyone actually reads my blog anyway...) will have to wait a while for the next post. Tomorrow I'm going out of town with some girl-friends for a 2 days scrap, we're going to stay at a B&B tomorrow night & eat at a "really cool" place on Saturday. Maybe (?) I'll get pictures...I've realized it's not good to promise things on my blog! LOL!!
Leon's been gone on jobs all week long, & I'm in severe need of some kid-free time, although the thought of them home without me & him "in-charge" is enough to make me quite nervous. NOT that he has a problem with it mind you, but...well just watch THIS and you might get an idea of what I'm referring to. He very much fits the mold!

I'M......B A C K...........!!!!!!!!!!!

WHEW!!! That was one long 3 1/2 days without Internet!!
I will say that I think got a record number of comments on my blog tho. I honestly didn't intend that to happen, but hey, now I know how to get your attention eh?!
Unfortunately my Internet although working again, is NOT working great, and I have 230 messages in my e-mail box!
I will also say that Yes, I did get alot of cleaning done while I was stranded from the computer!
No, I'm NOT pregnant, thank you very much...LOL! and no, I don't THINK I'm getting any new grandchildren.....yet..... at least if so, no one has let me know!
No, I didn't get a maid, a new dishwasher, new Internet service, I'm not moving, no one is moving in, or next door, I didn't get a new kitchen, although I sure need one, no new laundry room, no rice krispie treats at this house (although when I baked bread yesterday I made 2 big pans of cinnamon rolls, and this morning they are ALL GONE!)
No, my daughter is not engaged, and yes 17 is too young, it doesn't matter if I got married then, or Lynisha, It's still too young for THIS daughter!
No new car.........
BUT, WE LOVED OUR COMPANY FROM OUT OF STATE!! We had a wonderful day with them & took them along to the birthday party Friday night at my sisters and had a blast surprising everyone there. (mostly my sister!)
See, I told you it wouldn't be exciting for any of the rest of you, but yes, I was so excited that they were coming I was giddy!!
Now I'm going to post this, & you'll all have to check back later on to see my pictures. I've just about got them ready to go up, but hate to keep you all in suspense of the state of things any longer! LOL!
Thanks for the fun comments!!

I'm so excited!!

I've got a surprise!!
Well, that's all you get to know for now. Sorry! Actually I'm sure it won't even mean a thing to most of you anyway, it's only excitement for our family. Well, probably only me actually! I can't tell yet because I don't want a few people to know....on the OFF CHANCE that they MIGHT read my blog (gasp!)
Anyway, I'm just SO excited!!! Never mind, I know that tomorrow when you all anxiously check in on me, you're going to say "what?" that's nothing to dance about. Nope, as I said not excitement to you, but for me it is :*)
So, I'm off to have a wonderful day...I'm cleaning, de-cluttering BIG TIME, baking bread & tonight we have another birthday party. Yup....another! My nephew Landon & friend Shelley's daughter Lynette's birthdays were both in September, so tonight's the night to get together. Good thing we have lots of kids to have birthdays, we might never see each other! LOL! We all live close, but we don't meet Sunday or Wed. night with either of my sisters or Shelley's family
ta-da....till later!!

I've got shingles

Both on the ground and on part of the roof. It's not done yet, but getting closer.
We had a great crew here last Sat, unfortunately the place we bought the shingles at didn't deliver them. At 9 Sat. morning Leon called to see where they were, and Menard's said "oh, they're on the truck on the route, and should be getting there. So the guys went to pick up the rental loader, & continued to get the pre-shingle work done. Noon came, and still no shingles delivered!! They'd given up and took the loader back so we weren't paying for empty time and finally after another phone call confirmed that NO, the shingles were actually never even PUT ON the truck, several of the guys headed up to the store to pick them up, which is what they would have done in the first place if we hadn't been told they were already en-route! Several "slightly" upset guys managed to convince them to give us money back, so we did get enough back to pay for the un-used rental loader at least.
Thanks to a friend who came to our rescue with his loader, the shingles got lifted to the roof, & the guys went to work. Moral of the story....If you've got a roofing crew ready to work, don't depend on someone else to deliver your shingles because you may have to finish it yourself!









The little girls found a hide-away place they could watch from without danger of falling debris!
Little boy wasn't so lucky, he wanted to be outside, preferably climbing the ladder with the big guys. It was about more than he could take to have to only watch out the window!

I found one!

I was desperate...had to get that other post down the page a bit! LOL!!
As I mentioned in Relyssa's birthday post, I had discovered a program to do some digital scrapbooking in, which I've never done any of before. Had a blast doing it, then managed to delete my pages. I've re-done my project & learned some things in the process, but of course could not remember how I had done most of my pages, and somehow many of the second attemps seem to fall short of my first ones.
I was thrilled to find this page this morning that I'd manage to save to desktop so will post it & get the yearbook pix out of the way!

Birthday cake

We had a birthday dinner for Relyssa today at noon. It was fun to have our other kids home with us for it, & this weekend too. (yes, you too Mark!) Sorry you missed it Jeanne, Dalayna...etc.
I'll have more pictures to post from our weekend, but for now, I'm going to catch a nap before heading to G. meeting!









No, I didn't get a cake made...Walmart had to come to the rescue again. Relyssa doesn't really like cake that well, but she did request homemade ice-cream, and we hadn't done that for a long time. This was peach, and it was YUMMY! We scraped the bottom!
Oh, and by the way in case you haven't figured it out, the other person in the pictures is the big topic of discussion in an earlier post of mine, along with the last post on his brothers blog.

"She's 17, she's beautiful, and she's mine!"

I realize that a few other people may in the past, or currently, thought "she was theirs" and we won't talk about how much of the time SHE'D prefer not to be MINE but, that doesn't change the fact!
Happy birthday my dear girl, YOU ARE LOVED!

http://sisofeleven.blogspot.com/2008/10/happy-birthday-resse.html
http://dalayna.blogspot.com/2008/10/happy-birthday-reese.html
http://theweedas.blogspot.com/2008/10/happy-birthday-lyss.html
http://jelly3.blogspot.com/2008/10/happy-birthday-to-reese-aka-lyss.html

So I'm really really irritated here....no, no, not at HER! (this time!! lol!)
I finally found a digital scrapbooking program I can use easily, quickly and I really had fun with it designing a post for Relyssa's birthday pictures. Well yes, I'm sure I spent "too much time", but then again it would have taken me several weeks (I speak from experience here!!) to do the same thing "manually".
I'd been playing around with it earlier, and had some misc. pages done that were not related to her pages, and then when I finished the project for her & tried to post it, the other 2 pages kept coming up too & I couldn't get them off. In trying to delete those two, I somehow managed to delete the whole book, and now it's ALL gone.
I'm crying. Big buckets of frustrated tears. Not because you all care, but because I wanted it posted today, & I spent time & effort on it, (and it was great! :*) LOL!
So, for now, this is it. I have to get ready for the weekend here, kids, family & "other" are coming to help Leon re-shingle our barely surviving roof. Before the next rain/hail/tornado storm hits.
Have a great weekend everyone!