Memorial Day Weekend and days after

Memorial Day weekend was excellent. I had originally planned on taking the Friday off before Memorial Day weekend, but wouldn't you know that work would have to come along and screw that all up. A local company in our town was kind enough to donate an HPLC (high pressure liquid chromatography) instrument for use on our chemistry lab. This is absolutely wonderful because our HPLC had bitten the dust and we didn't have it in the budget to get a new one because we only use once or twice or a year. So, this is all great except that we had to pick up the Friday before Memorial day weekend. We got it all picked up and set up and had a tutorial on it. It was much fancier than what we had before so we were pretty unfamiliar this and the company had a really nice guy come out and and show us all the equipment and how to work it etc. I was also happy that it didn't take all day. I was able to bug out about 2:00 so it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Friday night was Extravaganza at the kid's school. It is a big party night/fund raiser with games and activities for the kids to play. The usual, you buy tickets and spend them at the booths. Now, much to my surprise my kids never wanted to do the cake walk. I remember as a kid, I must have spent all my tickets on the cake walk because I wanted to win a cake so badly, but never did I walk away a proud winner of a cake! My kids did not even entertain the cake walk thought. Sigh...I was disappointed. They did ride the ponies, Roo shot a paintball gun at people running as targets, then the standard game stuff and of course, cotton candy. We also had Chicken BBQ and the actual highlight of the day was the play the senior class was putting on. The kids begged us to go to it, and they had seen it earlier in the day as they were the audience for the dress rehearsal, and they were very eager to see it again. The play was Robin Hood and they did an excellent job with it. It had a few good twists away from the standard characters and presentations...it was very well acted out, costumes were good, there were real sword fights and bow and arrow shootings and the like. It was really quite fun and we were all glad we went. We sat in the front row and it was fun being that close to all the action.

Saturday I honestly didn't do much and it felt wonderful! We have had so many different activities to do on Saturdays that not having to go anywhere was a nice break. Hubby worked but got off early, and then we went the park later and we had a really nice time. The kids ran themselves ragged and we all followed up with a nap after we got home. Sunday we spent watching the Indy 500. I enjoy this race but it was a bit interrupted with a bout of rain which postponed the race for a bit, and then ended up ending the race early. It was still fun to watch and was just what the doctor ordered. During the rain delay I was able to squeeze out and get some much needed grocery shopping done and was back just in time for the restart of the race.

Monday came and we had a BBQ and a bounce house. The bounce house was to make up for the one that was cancelled for Roo's birthday in April because it rained on his party day. We did not invite all the kids who were at his party, but we had the family of four girls up the street ranging from 8 to 2 years old. They are all redheads except for the two year old. They are WiLd! The bounce house was the perfect ticket and the kids bounced themselves into oblivion. My kids cousin Jarrett also joined the fun and it was really just the right amount of kids. They all got along and there wasn't any big fights or crying, which was excellent. Three of my brothers joined the festivities plus the parents of the girls up the street who announced the news they were now expecting their 5th child! It was quite unexpected...but they seemed happy about it. It was simply a very nice low key BBQ and was enjoyed by all!

I have not been back to work yet! Woo Hoo. I have decided to take two weeks off and stay home and get stuff done around the house I have been wanting to get done for a long time now. Since my classes were out but my kids were still in school I decided to take advantage of alone to get more work done while they are in school. It feels a bit selfish, but I have accomplished so much already! Tuesday, I started cleaning out the garage which was practically wall to wall junk and stuff that needed to be put away. I had scored some beautiful maple and oak cabinets from work when we moved out of our building back in September and they were sitting in the middle of garage since then! I got the old work bench out (which was covered in junk and was way too big anyway) and I got the new cabinets in place. It looks beautiful and I got so much stuff cleaned out and either put away or thrown away. I made a trip to the thrift store with a good donation for them. I managed to dump quite a few of the kids older toys. I can't get rid of them while they are around because they decide they are much needed and they drag it back out of the boxes or bags I am packing up for the thrift store. I also cleaned out one of sheds and transferred a lot of the stuff that didn't really need to be in the garage into that. That was another major haul for the thrift store. It was where we had been ditching lots of stuff we needed to donate and that was practically a truck full all on it's own! That was the first two days work.

Today, I worked on the side of the house which is being over run by ivy and where we park the garbage cans. I decided to put paver stones where we park the garbage cans and rip out a bunch of the plans that were growing there. This ended up being tougher than expected. I had my nephew Kevin helping me and he did a great job ripping the plants out of there. He brought this tool my brother (his dad) made for use on his trail maintenance trips. It made short work of tearing the plants out and I thought that was going to be the hard part, but it wasn't, with the help of that tool. The part that took longer was placing the paving stones. I had never done it before so it was a learning experience and we still aren't done with it. I need to get some of them cut to get them to fit in correctly so we will do that tomorrow. When were in a holding pattern with the pavers, we attacked the ivy and got a good portion of that ripped out and trimmed, but there is much more to do. Overall, I am really quite please with how much we have accomplished and will work tomorrow and then start back up on Monday.

I should get some before and after pics!