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! 
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.
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!
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!
... 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.
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!
