Where in the world has the weekend gone?

It seems to have passed in the blink of an eye. Probably because I've spent much of it cleaning the house. lol. My dh went and bought me a load of topsoil in earlier in the week. I originally planned on doing yard work and cleaning up the flowerbeds. But as the kids left on Friday for the weekend, I realized what a mess the house was. Blah! At least its (for the most part) clean. The flowerbeds shall have to wait. Tomorrow we have several end of the year class projects the kids need help finishing up. And then back off to work again Tuesday.

My dd has a friend over spending the night. They had planned on sleeping out in the tent but its raining out now so they have pitched it in the livingroom. Oh to be a kid again! hahaha.

The kids gave me a gift card to Macy's for mothers day. Well, I was so excited to head on down on Friday and hit the Memorial day sales. They were have some GREAT sales. I bought a 14" circulon frying pan, a really fun new spring print table linen, and (since my kids keep using my remkins for dipping sauce) I bought 12 new prep bowls for cooking and use of dipping sauce. I'm a sucker for sales!

And I watched a cute movie this week. It wasn't movie of the year material but it was an adorable little chick flick. Because I said so... I think I just may have to buy it the next time I'm in Tar-jay.

As for my little journey on weight watchers, I'm not sure how well its going right now. I mean that literally. I bought a very nice scale several years back. Lately everytime I step on it, it just shows "L". Hm... wonder if its lithium battery is kicking it. It was supposed to be garenteed for ten years. :S

Well tonight I'm lucky because dh is in the kitchen cooking dinner. He says it's about done so I'd better wrap this up. I've done a few lo's this week that I'd like to share. As usual, credits can be found in my gallery. :)

Thanks so much for stopping in! I hope you have a super week!

Okay its crunch time...

I am juggling so many balls and I feel like they all may come crashing down at once. Yikes! I hate that feeling! Really I know its only for the next few weeks as work comes to an end before summer break but sheesh! Next year I am NOT taking on all these extra things at work. Remind me that if I start considering changing my mind in the fall, okay? And now enough with the whinning. :D

The dog boarding place... OMGoodness. I called them and did you know that it would cost more to board my dogs than our entire week long vacation, food, gas for car and boat, AND spending money I've alloted? In addition, that is a quote with all my dogs sharing one kennel (I have small dogs). I found that unbelievable. We are undecided on what we are going to do with them at this point. Hmph!

On the brighter side, this week we had our year end review on our job performance and I was pleased with the results. Not meaning to toot, more so counting a blessing. This is good.

Cingular wireless. I must say what aweful customer service we've had with them in the past few months. Long story in a nutshell - we bought phones there a year ago. We bought insurance on phones because we were told that they would replace the phone with a brand new one for any reason if it were lost, damages, stolen, broken, etc. So nearly a year later, my dh's phone starts acting up, cutting out, dropping calls and such. He calls cingular who tells him they will reset his phone and that will take care of the problem, no need to collect on the insurance. Fine and dandy if that had solved the problem, but it did not. So after numerous phone calls, they send us another phone. Dh gets it and starts using it only to find that it doesn't work properly - bluetooth doesn't work with the one they sent. So he calls back and explains. He's told that its because they sent us a refurbished phone and these things happen. Well, my dh is a truck driver and uses his phone for work so being hands free is a MUST. They tell him they will put in for a new phone. Almost a week goes by and we hear nothing. DH calls again and they were still waiting approval for a replacement of the broken replacement. Yesterday, I get home to find the replacement on my porch. I open the box to find a different no name brand junk phone on my porch. I'm calling them before I even had everything out of the package. To boot, it had indents all over the phone and battery... it looked like a dog chewed on it. I was unhappy. I asked them what on earth we were paying for to get junk like this. I was told 1. that cingular contracts out and that I'm not really dealing with cingular for this particular issue. 2. that its not their policy to replace with new phones. 3. they didn't really understand why I was upset because any phone they send me will have a warrenty for 12 months. I was steamed. I politely pointed out to them that if they sent us a new phone we wouldn't have three broken phones at this point and lost business calls, and wasted time dealing with these phone calls and numerous trips to the post office to ship all this junk back to them. In the end they had the gumption to tell me they would put in a request for another replacement phone and that it would be another week for approval. That didn't fly. There was a another phone on my porch today. It's charging now so we'll see if it is fully functional soon. Needless to say, the monthly fee for the insurance is not worth it. It would be better to just save it and use it and the $50.00 fee to buy a NEW replacement when the time comes. Thought I'd share the little lesson we learned the hard way. :S

Some more good things... especially because I'm starting to feel like todays post is all about ranting and it wasn't meant to... We took the boat out. Yay! We went out on Sunday and fired her up for the first time this season. It was a lot of fun. We were fishing and it started raining. Believe it or not it was so beautiful out. We were near a bunch of lily pads that were in bloom and the rain pouring down was such a site. I wished then I had taken my camera with us. I have one just for the boat and I'll have to get it on there now that we have her up and running again. We never caught anything that day but in was so nice, peaceful, and fun. We sat in the boat part of the time and played cards with the kids too. Monday after work, dh picked us up and we went out again. Love being on the lake!

I've done one lo since my last post - its one of the field trip I took with darling daughter earlier this month. :D

Well, thanks for visiting! I hope you all have a super week!

20 days and 2 hours

okay 20 work days and 2 hours then I will be on summer break. Not that I'm counting. ;) But really I'm getting so very excited. We have a week between when school gets out and when we leave to go camping/boating/fishing for a week. Yay!

I have quite a bit to do before we leave. First of all, we took 4 dogs with us last year and one of them was pregnant. Yep. We have small dogs so they do travel well. It was hot hot hot and I felt bad for them at times - so this year (we have one more since last summer because we kept one of the babies) we are going to kennel the ones that don't truly enjoy camping and boating. My dog however, is one that truly enjoys going with us. It really is funny. He's the smallest of our pups yet he's a little daredevil. He LOVES to go on our boat. He LOVES to go tubing. We learned this last year when on vacation. I was getting on the tube for a turn and Harry jumped from the swim platform onto the tube over a span of about three feet of water. He is crazy! This winter his went sledding with us. hehehe. But I digress. I have to finish licensing the boat and trailer, renewing our boating insurance, purchase new tires for the trailer. We need to get the dogs in for the kennel cough vaccine so they can go to the puppy hotel. The list goes on and on. The point is... its time to start working on it. :D

Mother's day was very nice. The kids were sweet and for the most part well behaved. Dear made a delish dinner. We hung out and watched some movie rentals and played some board games. It was nice!

I've been doing okay on my WW plan. Last week I wasn't as good as I should have been but I still lost a pound so I'm pleased. I do really feel successful on this plan. And I think that this is a much healthier way to lose. One of the gals at work (who is thin normally) had put on a couple of pounds so she was wearing a Pedometer this week. I was in earshot when someone asked her why she was wearing it. She said that she marked long ago how many steps she took in a regular day. When she puts on a couple of pounds, she gets her Pedometer back out and monitors her activity to make sure she is active enough. I thought that was pretty clever! So yesterday I went down to the sporting store and bought one for myself. I hope this will also aid me in my weight loss adventure.

And on another subject... I'm becoming addicted to bowling. We went the last two afternoons. LOL. The reason its so funny is that I hated bowling as a child. Really! Now my kids are doing it and I find that I'm loving it.

I scrapped some... We'll leave off with them. Thanks for stopping in! You have a super week!

And a recap

with pics like I promised. :)

These first four pics are of the Ape caves. The caves themselves were made by lava. And yes all the white stuff you see is snow on the ground in May.

A guy was out logging and excavating one day when he found this hole in the ground. His friend had a group of boys (similar to boyscouts) that he told. The boys (Ape's) went down and were the first to explore the caves. Later they were named after them. This is us going in... we hiked about a mile in and then came back. It was fun and pitch black inside.

The next pics are of OMSI. That stands for Oregon Museum of Science and Industries. I took this pic from the Jet boat. That of course is the next pic and then one of the Marina. It was so pretty!

In this picture we were back in the exhibits. This one was on Viscious Fish. Did I spell that right? Anyway... here's a tank that the kids could crawl up under and get a fishes view of a tank.

The next few are of different hands on experiments. The last is of my darling daughter and her best friend on the bus.

Good times I tell you! And this week has flown by. I haven't scrapped other than a new screen saver. I need to get back into my routine this weekend.

I haven't been as disiplined as I would have liked this week because its staff appreciation week and everyones been bringing in sweets. Yum yum yummy! hehehe.

Tomorrow I'm going to take in my bowling ball to be measured and drilled. Exciting! Of course the kids and I will stay and bowl a game or two. Then Saturday I have all to my lonesome.

Everyone has plans so I will scrap scrap scrap. :) And of course Sunday is Mother's day. We will all hang out and spend it together. :D

So if I'm not back to post before the weekend, I hope all my friends have a Marvelous Mother's day. Give those kids an extra squeeze this weekend. They are all so precious! Cheers!

Six

I've lost six pounds in the last week and a half. I'm really pleased with the ww's plan. I've been so very busy this past week and needed to eat out... yet with good choices I still lost. It's very encouraging to have some tools to help me make better choices on my meals.

Two lo's. I've done two lo's in a week and a half. Here they are-

So this past week and weekend were really great. Thursday we went on the field trip to the APE caves and then to OMSI. Hiked a lot. Toured the submarine. Explored the museum. And the one thing I would not do again... we rode the jet boat in the pouring rain at 8:00 pm and it was so cold we could see our breath. We were soaked. It was a planned group activity.... what were they thinking? lol! Friday was more of the same and then we came home. Saturday I took the kids down to a couple nurseries and we bought a bunch of flowers... hanging baskets etc. I love doing that in the spring. And I love that the kids enjoy it too! We stopped at a bizarre while we were out too and I found some lovely hand made soaps. Yummy scents! We came home and popped our awning and got out the lawn furniture. And I tried a new recipe for dinner that turned out DE-LISH! Sunday was even more fun! We took the kids bowling. Then we went to the boating store and picked up some new life jackets, a new play tube (check it out below), and some other little things we needed. And on the way home we stopped and saw Spiderman 3. Great weekend.
Well, I have tons to say but little time. We are off to the ballpark to watch our friends play. I hope you all have a super week. I'll be back next post with some pics from the weekend.