Before:(

I don't have pictures showing what the front of the house looked like when we moved in but picture giant concrete painted slabs between each pillar... chunky and big and horrible. I hated them, if you couldn't tell. Well over the last 9 months (remember winter was here) I torn those chunky nasty things down... I did have some help at first, but I did the last one by myself, hulled it all away... had a little help there too, and now we have decided to spend some time putting up wood deck rails. First we will have to clean the redneck haven off the porch... that is T man's job, while I get the pillars prepared... knocking enough concrete off to attach wood uprights to, then I will put on tops and sides for the rungs to attach to... should take 3 me days!

Progress

Hot, Sweaty, Sticky... but progress is being made! Looks like the boys are having all the fun!

After

I am the queen of construction... hear me roar!!!!!!!I'm done, well the railings are completely done and it's beautiful... I made this! I still have a few trim things to do and gotta buy more paint! My finishing touch today was the swing... it got thumbs up from my big little helper!

DO NOT OPEN EMAIL FROM ME

I got a computer virus, I think from the tagged site, it happened just before I went to work. I lost all my contact info... all gone, completely obliterated... so I can not even warn people who were in my contact list... I'm sorry!!!!!!! The only thing new I joined was tagged, and it started sending out stuff to everyone immediately apparently, but cause of the holiday weekend we only figured it out when my Dad called asking what it was. I'M SOOOOOOOOOOO SORRY!!! Again DO NOT OPEN UP EMAIL FROM ME UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE! Anyone who would like to email me their address again for future use... well that would be nice! I won't open it until the T-man debugs me!

My new sister-Sylvia

Yup, don't know if I mentioned I have a new sister. She is fury, has floppy ears and bad breath... also likes to lick you with her stinky tongue! Mom and Dad have been volunteering at the humane shelter in Frederick and Dad couldn't stop talking about this over weight beagle that they walked. Well 3 weeks later I got a phone call they adopted a dog... and I knew exactly which doggy it was. She had a thyroid problem but has been on meds for it so she has dropped 15 lbs since first being brought to the shelter, 13 with the help of meds, a good home made diet ( guess since all us kiddies are gone Mom had to cook for someone) and plenty of exercise. She is very friendly, very well behaved, very good with the boys and Moms psycho cats... well just Gato is psycho. Only problem is she really does not care for Daisy, our hyper... I swear I don't feed her speed, dog! The boys call her Olivia because we like that show on Nick, and we all sing along to it, well kinda yell along with it...we get a bit cared away, but slowly they are learning Sylvia vs Olivia... either way it's cute to hear them sing it to her, or about her.

Boil Boil Toil and Trouble

Well I've been playing with the flowers more than just making jelly... did I mention my newest jelly- Honeysuckle/lemon... YUMMO! I've started 2 batches of alcoholic beverages. Never tried this before so some of the recipes gave me a few raised eyebrows. The first recipe was for Honeysuckle Mead. All went according to plan until I placed the liquid in the secondary fermentation vessel... the recipe said to keep it there until it stopped bubbling. HUH? Bubbling? Well if you look close enough at the last picture you can in fact see tiny bubbles, that thankfully my little man saw... cause I was at a loss. My second recipe is Dandelion Saffron Wine... the first step caused some concern, why, well because when you boil the petals of dandelions they smell awful... really awful... like I'm going to barf awful. But I trudged on, today steps 2-4 were completed and the end result smelled very yummy! I'm not sure this was a good hobby for me... I'm too impatient and it's going to be a long long 6-12 months to wait!

Beach Bound

We had yet another day of fun in the sun... this time I brought the camera! I think the timing of losing my full time position has actually come to a great advantage for our family, I haven't been scheduled on Wednesdays and we get a family day, and since it's summerish time and the price of gas is relatively affordable we have been taking off for the day. Yesterday was another day on the shores on the Chesapeake Bay. The boys made sand castles, shark drawings, sand angels, crawled all over big rocks, played on the big boat that is a playground, and got drenched in the tides. Me, well I found tons of sea glass-lots of brown and clear, some green, but a few of the rare colors too- yellow, lime, white and red. I also found over 100 sharks teeth... a few jewelry sized! We stopped on the way home for pizza at Ledo's... then the boys promptly fell asleep the whole way home! We had a very nice day!

We went on a butterfly hunt...

... and found 28 butterflies. The city of Hagerstown has been swarmed by butterflies, so we headed out with map in hand and tried to find them all. Unfortunately 2 were missing from their pedestals, but we found the rest. The first picture is my favorite... it's made entirely of pennies, the little man says his favorite was the second picture... but I think it's because he wants to pick something different the the little dudes favorite which is the third picture. This was definitely the hit of the butterflies! They call it the monster butterfly. Then my favorite pictures of the day are from the last butterfly we saw... the boys liked posing with it. Then off we went to play in a park and eventually find some grub!






Then I went to work... where my back was killing me so badly I didn't really think about which pain relievers I was downing, just the thought of eventual relief. Uhhhmmmmm, NO! Those with known heart palpitations should never take Excedrin for migraine... but on occasion I do because the headaches are just too painful... well they do work and rather fast, combine 4 of them with a cup of coffee and well little miss heart palpitation had to go home early from work... and could not go back without a doctors note. No biggie, okay I couldn't afford to miss the work, but it was safer in bed lying down close to the ER, but I really couldn't afford to miss any more work, so I went down to urgent care to get my note so I could go back to work last night. Nope I can't technically go back until tomorrow... my heart needs the rest. HOW STUPID AM I? Guess they got their ammo now to truly fire me instead of just demoting me and hoping I will quit.

What's better than Thomas the Train?

Thomas the Train engines pulling Bakagan balls... apparently the magnetic device in the balls that activates the character attaches to the train magnets. The played TOGETHER for at least 45 mins with this new invention! Thomas and gang meet anime!

Graduation!

Look who graduated from preschool today! They had a very nice ceremony for the kids, first they sang songs then they got their diplomas, they we had a picture slide show of the year... which we got a copy of!, then the kids got to play games and eat snacks. It was very nice. The little man did a great job, we are so proud of him! Of course he is fairly upset that school is over and that he won't have Miss Valerie next year, but we have an upcoming open house at the kindergarten where he can meet his teachers and see his classroom... so I'm hoping he'll mellow out about the changes to come. He also knows that I'm working on a mini curriculum for the summer so we can brush up on known stuff and complete learning a few things we missed... like did you know when counting it's 15 then 21:)

We love you little man... way to go!

Where's the camera??????????

Well let us just say my brain has taken a vacation! We went on an outing today and I completely forgot the camera! Both rag rats did a 4 mile hike... the little dude whined the entire way back, but he did make it with only about a half a mile of shoulder riding time! We decided to take advantage of the wonderful weather, my park pass, and my unfortunate lack of work and we went to Calvert Cliffs State Park... wow how entirely lovely! First a 2 mile hike through forest and wetlands, then we get dumped out on the beach for 2 hours of sand castle/beach combing time, and then of course the 2 mile hike back. The beach combing was something to be desired by my sea glass hunting standards... I found 5 pieces in 2 hours... bummer, but I did find lots of other cool stuff... tons of fossils, shells, and lumps of clay... yeah like throw-able make a plate, bowl, cup, vase clay... kinda weird, but I'm assuming the cliffs are clay based, and it just falls off of them. In other bad news, it took nearly three weeks to fix the pinched nerve under my shoulder blade... and two seconds of proving to my little man that I could in fact skip a rock to snap it right back out of whack, there will again be no more sleep for me:( And I've finished the latest wonderful book I've read, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, I kinda thought it was going to be weird to read a book written by all letters... oh but it grabbed a hold and would not let go... definite thumbs up on that one!

Field trip

Today we finally got great weather for the end of the year field trip to the park! We played, and played... oh yeah and played some more! What a beautiful day!

okay, 4 things you maybe don't want your 3 yr old saying or thinking

1. When Mama wears a tank top...
"Mama you're so beautiful" ,
"Why",
"Big Boobs"

2. When a Victoria's Secret or Locked Door commercial comes on TV,
"They're so beautiful"
... while stopping all motion and pointing in a daze.

3. While potty training and you've taken all the gun like toys away and he is naked,
"pichew, pichew"
while turning around and spreading his butt cheeks apart at you.

4. While trying to showing you his Woody doll from the movie Toy Story, again naked,
"Look, I've got a Woody, I've got a Woody, I've got a Woody"

Rain Rain go away...

Come again some other, The roofers need to play... well maybe just work, I'm sure they don't view power tools as I do... it would be great fun and play for me. I love the rain for the garden, of course I'm having a hard time finding time to plant my plants... but my roof needs replacing and this rain isn't making it very easy for the roofers to schedule a time to replace it! Oh well just means I can put off parting with my tax refund money just that much longer!!!! Of course it also is not depressing me that I haven't had a day off in three weeks... what would the boys and I do but get soaked! Hmmmmmmm... boys + puddles =FUN maybe we won't mention this equation to them.

2 batches complete!

Well I have to do some research today on resetting jelly because the second batch did not set... kinda bummed about that since it smelled and tasted super duper great. The little man begged for it straight out of the pot... he wanted it warm! In the first picture you can see what the flowers looked like after being stripped of their colour... it was a fun experiment!

Crazy neighbor strikes again!

Only this time I brought my craziness to Middletown... yup grabbed up all the violets at Mom's, kinda weird but they did not dye the water as dark as the ones from my house. So far today I've made a batch of plain violet jelly... went fairly smoothly. I remembered how long it took to boil the water in the canner so this time after sterilizing the jars I left the burner on low and once the jelly boiled I cranked up the heat again and by the time I was ready to throw the full jars in I had a rolling boil going in the canner... also recycles the water. This actually is giving me enough time to do two batches. I'm not too happy with the heat in the kitchen... I'm slowly melting!