Scooby Doo Day!!!

We celebrated our family version Scooby Doo Day on a Friday this year!  On Thursday night Emily made a fancy cake for us to eat for breakfast on Friday morning.

Scooby Doo Collection!

This year, I thought it would be fun for us to read as many Scooby Doo books as we could in one hour!  The kids only lasted about 30 minutes, so we called it quits after that, but read quite a few books as a group*!

I just set up my new phone a few days before, and didn't yet know how to use all the features yet.  So, we ended up taking several rounds of pictures before we got a selfie with everyone in it and unblurred!

Finally!  I just needed to change one of the settings! = )

Happy Scooby Doo day y'all!

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 *Alice was lame and decided not to help us read more books. = (

Garden 2023

During some of our warmer days in early spring, Billy and I filled up the raised bed, and refreshed the soil in the old garden.

It was still much to risky to plant outdoors, so the only thing we had in the garden was our onion pile from last year.  At the end of last summer, I pulled up all the green onions and offered them to neighbors.  Any unclaimed ones were tossed into a pile in the raised bed, which was being used as a kind of compost bin.  They seemed to have survived the winter, and so instead of covering them, I dug up the whole lot of them and transplanted them to the corner of the raised bed.  They have been so happy, and even flowering in their little corner!

Since they survived the winter and spring, they are ready to eat as needed!  Hopefully they will spread along the edge of the bed, and that can just be their new home! = )  I kind of think of them as a little wild at this point.

3/4 of the squash plants Billy planted are flourishing in the raised bed, and 2 of them have tiny squash, that may or may not be pollinated.  I haven't seen them flower yet, but maybe I just missed it?

Our sugar snap peas are happy campers!  They liked their strange cages that I bought, and have had flowers for a few weeks now.  We even spotted some baby pods!

I bought four tomato plants at the spring farmer's market.  I planted two in the raised bed and two in the ground.  Last year, the single plant that I purchased produced more tomatoes than I could eat, so four seemed a little bit like overkill, but with all the freeze and frost we got in May, maybe not.  Not a week after I planted the ground ones, and some creature came along and ate the stem, leaves and all!  = (  I think it must have been a bunny, and the ones in the raised beds were spared.

An inspection today showed not only a large collection of flowers, but also a few fledgling tomatoes!

In the ground bed, we have two happy looking pumpkin plants, and possibly a third!

And Emily and I enjoyed our plethora of cucumbers so much last year, that we took turns trying to get the seeds to grow.  She even started some inside, and then planted them outside.  It looked like none of them would grow, but today, it looks like we might have 5 tiny plants growing!!!

There are many weeds and other plants that sometimes look like one of our desired plants, so these may actually be less exciting, but we'll keep an eye one them!

Our garden is still so small, I wonder if seeing the flowering and growing plants ever gets less exciting?

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Father's Day 2023

Poor Billy didn't get much in the way of gifts, but he did get lots of homemade cards and lots and lots of love!  The rather large bag has one more of his Halloween Town Buildings in it. = )

Happy Father's Day to our favorite!!! 

 later days

School Adjacent

So, all of these pictures and stories are from school events or during school or maybe just gifts for teachers but I've just lumped them all together here. = )

Grace was way proud of her perfect spelling test!

I was working with a student in Grance and Juliet's class one day, and Juliet was called up to the front to share her work, so I was able to snap a picture of her in her element (without neglecting my charge)!

Emily wanted some Cinco de Mayo accessories for a student council sponsored dance, and I did my best to deliver!

I was delighted find two sombreros at a church rummage sale, and she was delighted to find them waiting for her when she got home from school.  She wore them for days until the event.

Hmm, something seems strange here...

We added some colorful ribbon to a skirt she already had in her closet, and Avia found an ideal blouse seconds after I described it to her!

She was a happy girl!  This particular dance was only for 7th & 8th graders, but since Emily was on student council she was also invited, which made her feel even more special!

Alice also helped student council set up, and I didn't get any pictures of her, but she did send me a selfie in her sombrero!  = )

Also on student council this year were Grace and Juliet.  One of their opportunities to serve was during teacher appreciation week.  The students took shifts serving up ice cream to the teachers.  Since I was subbing that day, I went in for some ice cream, served by my two favorite 3rd graders!

They each served my an ice cream, and were more than happy to eat my leftovers, when their shift ended. = )

Teacher gifts for Middle School teachers is a little more daunting than for the elementary teachers, just because of the sheer number of them!  I customized some tumblers for any teachers that both of the girls had, and then let them each pick a couple more.  There were a few teachers that got McDonalds gift cards instead, because Emily wanted to give them something, but we didn't have the cups, since it was a last minute decision.

I was really surprised that one thank you card came home, and it was from their English teacher; he would not have been the one I pegged as a thank you note guy!

On the last day of school, the big girls came home with packets of awards!  They both did awesome, especially in a brand new school, district and environment!

William's teacher is easy to shop for, as long as I can find MSU items!! = )

The twins' teacher was a little trickier, but they helped me find some fun things!  The bag for her was two sided (one for each Grace & Juliet,) because I don't even know if she needs a single zipper pouch, let alone two. = )

Now that we are enjoying sweet summertime, it's nice to look back at all of the things we accomplished this spring!

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Plot Twist!

Along with all the fun things in life, we, of course, have chores and improvements and repairs that make the fun stuff seem like way more fun!  

Emily cleaned out her closet, and that means that I needed to clean out the twins' clothes, so that the clothes we moved down from Emily had somewhere to go!  This is the finished product, i do wish I had taken a before picture, but it looks much better, trust me!

Toward the end of school, a rather large rock found my windshield, right in front of the driver's side seat!!!  It was so terribly distracting that I was able to get it repaired that same week!  I had to call my mechanic for a reference, but was super happy with his recommendation!  The repair guy came to us!

They repaired sections of the sidewalk here in town, which made everything look really ugly for a short while, but now looks much better!  The grass still hasn't filled in, despite the seed they spread, because we just haven't had the rain!

The next job was the road, which was far less convenient, particularly in the mornings when we would have down time between dropping off the big girls and dropping off the little ones.  Usually, we came home and gathered missing items, went to the bathroom, or made breakfast, but during this time it was very inconvenient.  One time, we practically ran to the school, because it was easier than trying to drive it (but we left kind of late!)

Our washer's warranty is out, and it was making sad washing machine noises, so we called out a tech to see what the problem was.  For $90 he told us that we had a broken piece that stabilized the load.  

The washer was still in operation, but I didn't want it to fail completely, so Billy ordered a new part, and we set out to replace the broken piece. First, we had to 'break' out the old piece.  Then we were supposed to use a very specific tool, with a wide top and short handle.  We didn't have this particular tool, but we tried to make do with several other pieces, to no avail.  (top picture shows the broken bit, bottom picture shows how it is supposed to look)

As I was crawling out from behind the washer, my jeans caught on the side of the wall, and ripped out a huge chunk of the drywall.  Lovely.

Anyhow, we both fought the washer for about and hour, and finally threw in the towel (not literally.)

I used some hot glue to put back up the larger pieces, but of course it looked terrible and we had failed at repairing the washer to boot! 

I messaged my friend Tabitha, who lives just a few blocks away, to see if her very handy husband might be interested in taking a side job to repair the wall.  Not only did he get the wall back to rights, but also had the proper tool to repair the washer!!!

Alls well that ends well I suppose, but it is nice to have everything in order.  The paint he used was something I found at a thrift store.  The room is dark enough that you really can't tell, except for from one side, in the daylight (but I'm totally not even worried about it, since the orange color isn't really my thing.)

At an estate sale I found some upholstery cleaner, and my poor sad dining chairs were in desperate need of cleaning, so I thought "well it can't make it any worse..."

And it actually worked sooooooo well!  The seats don't look like new, but they look like someone actually cares!

Scotch Gard, should you want to try it on some of your furniture.

It feels nice to share the resolved issues of the past few months!  Hope you enjoyed these riveting tales. ; )

later days