catch-all

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! I'm pretty thankful to have a day that's mostly down-time for all of us except for a little matter of two parades that Matthew's marching in later this morning.

Just thought that I'd give you an update on the goings on here, since I've a few things that just couldn't really create a whole post.

Here goes:

*Caleb's baseball team is 1-5; that is in stark contrast to being on the only undefeated team last year. He's playing right field this year and still enjoying it most nights. And there are only 3 teams in his age division this year as well, so that means fewer games. That's okay, it'll be the first time we weren't missing games of some kind for vacation in June since Matthew started playing soccer in kindergarten.

*Speaking of soccer, did you know that I am now the mother of a high school soccer player? Crazy, right? Matthew signed up for the team this week and got his sizes in for home and away uniforms and practices start in July with the first game being Tuesday, August 16th, or so I've been told. (I told him yesterday that I'm starting to already feel the pressure of planning his high school scrapbook..... spring of 2015 will be here before I know it.)

*We purchased a new stove and refrigerator with part of our federal tax refund and they were delivered last week. After the deliverymen had to remove my front door from the hinges and Jon needed to borrow a crowbar from the neighbor to get the old range out, all was well. Turns out our house has narrow doorways and the somewhere along the line someone thought it was a good idea to bolt the range to the counter top to its right. Yep, bolt. I only wish I could have been here to see that. But my new appliances are lovely and I'm a happy girl; although the counter top and cabinets are green with envy.

*Matthew was awarded the Outstanding Eighth Grade Musician award last week. This is given to the student who school officials feel is a superior musician but who also encourages other students to do their best in band and teaches what they know, going above and beyond what is expected. Receiving the award was a complete surprise to him (and to us!) and I don't have to tell you that I was proud.

*Caleb's recently made friends with a little guy who lives just around the corner in the next block and they have a blast together. I'm constantly being asked if he can go play with his friend and always hearing about how much "cool stuff" his friend has to play with. It's nice though for Caleb to have a friend close by, all his other friends live in the town where the schools are and that's harder to make time for play work with all schedules.

*Work's going well. We got a new EXA last week, his name is Mike. He's older than our previous EXA but he's fitting in really well so far and I like him. School's out for summer though, so the college kids are all back to wanting hours so almost every body's hours are cut to make room. I'm down from 25 last week to 22.5 this week to 17 next week. Oh well, 17 hours is more than I was working last year at this time, so it's all good. We'll adjust. And I've been kinda going back and forth on that number of hours anyway; it will allow me to spend time at home with the boys while they're home for summer and that's good, but we won't have as much money for "fun stuff" as we thought. We'll just have to get creative, I guess.

And finally.......

Take time today to remember all those who gave of themselves so that we could have our freedoms. What a gift.....