Graduation Party

Yesterday was the big Graduation Open House.  We pulled out the grill…

Cooked up some burgers and dogs…

Invited some friends and had a great time.  We had 12 seniors in our ward graduate this year.  It was fun letting them all get together and celebrate.  I guess just because you grow up, it doesn’t mean you have to grow up.  They all ended up at the park playing Hot Lava.  I think they learned that game in the 1st grade.

It was a beautiful night.  The weather was perfect and our flowers bloomed just in time.  Another graduation over and done with.  My how time flies it seems like just yesterday Shaylin was eating her crib!!!

We forgot to turn our warmer off….I think Fridays Cubs Game Hot Dogs looked better than ours….

Yum!!!! Yum!!!!!!

Go, Cubs, Go!!!!

Yes,  it was Cubs day again.  This time we sat in a suite.  We invited some friends from the ward who are BIG baseball fans.  BJ got to throw out the first pitch.  He is probably still glowing from pride 24 hours later!!  We had 6 boys Josh’s age.  They all had sooo much fun eating.  In a suite it is all you can eat…and they did. 

OK, so I admit it I had 3 Hot Dogs myself.

But the boys had way more.  So much more in fact that 2 of them threw up!!

OK, so maybe they didn’t have way more.  This is the cake I ate to wash down those dogs.  But at least my stomach could handle it.  Wait…They did have pizza on top of everything else so they probably did out eat me.

Once again Josh was thinking with his eyes and not his mouth.  He never did finish this caramel apple.  The server told him there was no way he could eat it without her cutting it up, but his pride thought different.  It is still sitting here on our cupboard.

Amanda had fun playing waitress and bringing everyone their food.  It was a great day and the Cubs beat the Dodgers 2-1.

A Great Weekend with Nichelle

 

We sent Nichelle on her way back to Mike and Utah today.  We will miss her!!  We had a great visit.  She arrived on Saturday and we went bowling.  It was a bargain.  They had a special 2 hours of bowling for $24.99.  This included the shoes for all 7 of us and a pitcher of pop.  We also each received a $5 game card for being one of the first hundred guest of the day.  So basically they paid us $10 to go bowling.  Not a bad deal. Eddie kicked us all by bowling a 203.

At the gaming arcade the kids were excited to pick any game they wanted.  Josh really wanted to play the crane game.  He has always dreamed of playing those machines but we never let him because we tell him they are a waste of money.  No one ever wins.  Well, on his 3rd try he won!!  It depressed Shaylin a little because she was coming over to show us a little plastic duck she won with her tickets when Josh was showing off his big stuffed animal.

  Sunday was spent at graduation.  It was a wonderful day.

On Monday we started at the Memorial Day Parade.  Ashley made us proud!

We than followed that up with a very quick picnic.  The rain was beginning.  Even though it was VERY quick we did manage to polish off a whole bag of Jay’s chips.  We had Johnsonville Brats rolled in tortillas.  This is something we invented when we went to concerts in the park when we lived in Colorado.  We finished off the day at the Shedd Aquarium.  They just reopened the dolphin section so we went to check it out.  They added a new hands on area which was fun until Josh fell in….oops!!!

Tuesday I spent the day “window shopping” with Nichelle and Shaylin on Michigan Ave.  I did us self control and passed by the $2,000 shirt at Neiman-Marcus.  It reminded me of the Cosby Show where Denise sews a designer shirt for Theo.  I really think Shaylin could have made one pretty close for A LOT cheaper!!!  We followed our day of shopping with cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.

Graduation Day

Sunday was graduation day.  We started the day with Shaylin’s favorite breakfast…orange rolls.  She only ate 6 so she must not have been tooo hungry. 

We than went over to her school before the graduation and Nichelle took some great pictures!

We than went to the College of Dupage for the graduation ceremony.  They had some great talks and the singing was fabulous.  We than sat through the reading of 1200 names. 

 

Shaylin was very proud of herself and we were even prouder!  She is now excited to go to BYUI.  It was an exciting day for everyone.

I have to start by saying one of my favorite places to be to get away as a child was the roof. But with that said I will start with our other summer hang out. We had a shed type thing behind our garage. I really don't know what it was for. It had a level on the ground and than a level about 3 feet up. Jon and I decided one year to make this our club house. We cleaned out the spider webs and got to work. We painted it all white I believe. We than decided that we needed better decorations. So we started illustrating the walls. It was the year of Speed Racer, so we had speed racer pictures all over the wall. I don't think we ever really got our club started for long because we spent tooo much time painting. I remember the Speed racer pictures being really good. I wish we could find some pictures of the club house because I am sure we would laugh at the art work!

My favorite place was the roof. We would go out my parents bedroom window onto the roof over the shed attached to our garage. My favorite thing to do up there was to read Nancy Drew books. Sometimes Jon and I went up there and sat and talked. I can't imagine sitting and talking to my little brother but we did. I think a lot of the time was spent talking about how we were not supposed to touch the wire that went across the roof and connected to our house. We knew we should not touch it and never tried but we did imagine what would happen a lot. We thought it was electrical but it was probably just the telephone wire our parents told us was electrical so we would not touch it.

I also vaguely remember a closet when I was younger that had some type of slope in it that we would go into. I do know the scariest place to put things growing up was the attic connected to the bedroom. I was always afraid to go in there, I thought the animals and bats would get me. I did not like when we started keeping our Barbie stuff in there, it was tooo scary!!!

In sacrament meeting on Sunday we had a talk on Ministering to the Widow and Lonely. So here is my confession. A year ago I found a note in our genealogy from Jeanette. She is Great Gma Kitty's niece. The address on the note was in a town right by us, so I decided I should see if she was still in the area. She was and only living about 10 miles from us. I went and visited with her and told her we would have her over to dinner. We than had to cancel that dinner a few times because it was at the same time Sally got sick. We then had the funeral and taking care of Ester. By the time this was done Nichelle's wedding was right around the corner. Needless to say I dropped the ball. I have been feeling guilty about that for the past few months but could not figure out a good excuse for dumping her and then just showing back up. Well, during the talk I got the feeling that enough was enough no more excuses!!! So for Family Home Evening last night we made her cookies and just showed up on her doorstep. You have to press a buzzer to get into her condo. We pushed the buzzer 3 times and waited and waited. She finally answered. It turned out it took her awhile because she did not know what the buzzer was. I guess it doesn't get used very often. We had a really nice evening with her. She has stopped driving because she is 88. We are now arranging making sure she gets groceries and has what she needs. They had no children so it is just her. If that doesn't qualify her as a lonely widow talked about by President Monson so often I do not know what does. This time we will follow the prophet and not drop the ball. There are just no excuses especially when we drive right by her house every few days anyway.

OK, so I wrote a big story and my dog erased it during scripture study. So until I feel like typing it again...take a look at the grease on this thing!!!

Ok so I did save it to my drafts......so I don't need to rewrite it after all!

Boy We Must Have Been Hungry!!!

So yesterday we had a very busy day. We had a Fine Arts Festival in the morning. We finished that at 1 pm. We attend 4 concerts by our children in a marathon district event. Eddie and I went from there to buy his new caw, a Subaru Outback. From there we went to the Temple to do initaitory. Unfortunaetly, they did not have enough people there to do them so we had to wait 55 minutes for the next session. We left the Temple at 8 pm. The Temple is not an area with stores and restuarants. So we started the trek toward home. By this time we could not remember the last time we ate. We were joking around about White Castle so Eddie said we should go there. I thought it was a litttle too greasy sounding. So we drove until we passed a Portillo's. It is the place to eat and I had never been there so

Funny Story---So my Mom came to stay with the kids last month while we went to Mexico. I left her the car keys and instructions on how to get to the nearest White Castle. The day after she left she got brave and daring--or should I say she could not resist those sliders for another minute. She grabbed the keys----oh wait---see this picture of keys? Mine is the one on the far right. She had to spend awhile in the car reading the owners manual...this was only after a long debate with herself on if this was even the key and if it was where was the key??? Well, luckily before the cravings got tooo bad she figured out how it worked. Off to White Castle she went. After adding a little grease to those arteries it was back home again. Oh wait I forgot to tell her our street had two entrances. We lived at the second entrance to Switch Grass Lane she took the first entrance. There just happens to be a house about the same color and close to the same style on that part of the street. She could not figure out why the garage door wasn't working. She was getting out of the car and walking to the door when she realized her mistake. Oops!!! I better leave better instructions next time!

Mother's Day

I tried hard to cry today, I really did!!! Eddie even offered me his tie to cry on. Today I was song to the last time in sacrament meeting. No more watching my kids smile while forgetting to sing to Mother I Love You and I Often Go Walking. Another milestone crossed!!!

I am now sitting here like a bloated pig. I told Eddie I really did not want any presents so he went overboard in the food category. He made all my favorites today. I had eggs, little smokey sausages, cinnamon roll and hot chocolate for breakfast. For dinner I had a full pound New York steak, potato, corn, eight rolls and a sliver of carrot cake. I just finished polishing off my last meal of the day a big piece of carrot cake and milk. It was very delicious!!! But somehow after reading it back it sounds like a lot more food. What would the rest of the starving world think???

Tulips are blooming in Holland...Mi. Tulips bright colored and gay. Dance on the cobble streets of Holland...Mi. (This is a song so you have to read that with the proper notes.)

We went to Holland, Mi. last weekend to see the Tulips in bloom. They were pretty, but not as many as I was envisioning. We toured this Windmill. It is the last one brought over from Holland as they will not sell anymore. Just to show you what an airhead I am I just learned this weekend that windMILLS where actually mills. Imagine that!!!????

I did decide I want to plant tulips around my yard so we have to figure out how to get rid of the rabbits. May favorites glow in the sunlight. (As seen at the top.)

Amanda and I danced on the cobble street. Everyone else were party poopers!!

We even went and ate real Dutch Food. It was very yummy!!!!

Our First Family Race

We went to Holland, Mi last weekend and ran our first race together as a family. Well kind of as a family. Eddie ran an 8K and the rest of us ran a 1K. Yes, we were wimpy. I felt like an idiot because there were even some old grandmas running in the 3k. We did the 1k so Amanda and Josh could join in. Next time we are running the 3k. We felt a little foolish at the starting line with a bunch of 3 and 4 year old kids. Basically we ran around the block. I guess you have to start somewhere. It worked out good because we finished at the same time as Eddie. It was a fun family activity but we really need to do some more training. I did not even work up a sweat. I had to go back to the hotel's workout room while Eddie took a shower so I would feel like I did something. We did get these cool t shirts!

Another reason we call this blog Lori's Loony Life

I have a very talented dog. He will only poo in trees and bushes. No, I do not mean by.... I mean in. If you don't believe me see for yourself. Now that is one trained dog!!!!!