Been Awhile...

Wow! I think it's been close to 2 weeks since I last posted. The fam has just been hangin' out enjoying summer. Here's a quick recap of the last week:

• Monday: Austin started basketball camp out at Columbia Central with his cousin Anna. He was so psyched! Each of the kids got their very own b-balls and a tee shirt. His illustrious path to an NBA career has begun! We grilled out and the kids played all nite in the backyard~ a classic summer evening.
  
  

• Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I worked~ blah!


• Wednesday after dropping Austin off at camp, the girls and I headed over to my grandpa and grandma's. We hung out for the morning and even scored an amazing breakfast. My grandma is an amazing cook, but this time we enjoyed my grandpa's cooking. My mom went with me to pick up Austin and we stopped at a local farm to visit with 9 adorable golden retriever puppies. The kids thought they were great!



• Thursday was the last day of b-ball camp. Austin received a trophy for being "free throw champ" of the K-2nd grade boys. He was absolutely thrilled. Can ya tell?
  

  

• Friday began the start of my 4 day weekend. This time, I was the one who was psyched! I'm trying to find a toddler bed for Lexi so I've been searching the garage sale ads. I stopped at a couple of promising sales with no luck. I did get Hungry Hippos and Don't Spill the Beans, a porcelain tea set for Audrey and Lexi, and a turtle sandbox.


• Saturday Tom and I picked up a surprise for the kids from my aunt and uncle. A full size air hockey table. The thing is a beast but we managed to wrestle it into... the dining room. So much for the Pottery Barn inspired "look" I was going for. This is only its temporary resting place, because as soon as I have my garage sale, we'll have room in Tom's man room for it.


• Sunday we went to church and enjoyed a potluck dinner. Austin and Audrey headed straight for the sandbox as soon as we got home and we ended up spending the whole day outside. Tom and I got some much needed yard work done and the kids had a blast running back and forth between their pool, swing set, and sand box. We grilled for dinner and ate on the deck so the kids didn't come in till bath time at 7:30. I put the kids to bed and headed downstairs to organize my scrapbook room (pics on that to come later=)

So that was our week in review. It feels like we're slowly starting to settle into our summer routine (as we should since July is tomorrow!)

Good News/ Bad News

The good news is we have air again- just in time for the much cooler week ahead~ hah! Turns out, the unit only needed a minor repair so we got out rather cheaply. Believe me, after not sleeping well for a whole week because the house had oven-like temperatures, I was prepared to max out the credit card to restore the air; so $200 isn't too bad.

The bad news is our dryer is now sitting in pieces in the laundry room. Tom attempted to diagnose/repair the thing and hasn't gotten very far in between his last week of class and the both of us tag-team parenting. I told him we either have to get it fixed or buy a new one/have it delivered within the next couple of days or it's gonna look like the Garden of Eden around here. *an embarrassing sidenote~ of course the ac repairman would have to go into the laundry room to look at the furnace to check the airflow, etc. and of course my pile of laundry is now more like Mt. Hosmerville, and of course he literally had to climb over it to reach the furnace.*

The worst news is I was 2 1/2 hours late for work today (actually, that wasn't so bad;) because Tom and I spent 5 hours in the ER with Austin because his asthma was attacking him. We had a rough nite last nite but to be perfectly honest the thought of spending the wee hours of the morning in an ER waiting room with a bunch of race drunks didn't seem really appealing so we didn't take him in until this morning when it became very apparent that we couldn't do anything more to ease his discomfort. He had 2 breathing treatments, his first dose of oral steroids, chest x-rays, orange popsicles, and blue Gatorade before we were finally able to get his discharge papers and head home. The good news is the x-rays showed no pneumonia and he didn't have to be admitted for an extended stay.

So now I'm trying to use the last few precious hours of the weekend to recharge for a busy week. I'm going to attempt ~once again~ to have my garage sale this weekend. The weather is looking better and I'm not feeling quite so overwhelmed now. I have 3 days off this week so I'm definitely looking forward to some quality family time. Have a great week everyone!

Three Strikes... The Electricity Is Out!

Wow what a weekend! I know it's already Thursday, but I feel as if I'm still trying to get my week started. Let's start with last Friday. I was supposed to have a mammoth garage sale. I even signed on to be a part of the neighborhood sale, but the enormity of the task proved to be a bit overwhelming. Really, I was afraid that it would start storming (which it did) and I would have nowhere to put all my crap since my spot in the garage is currently being occupied by my BIL's car~ not that I'm bitter or anything. But since my house was already on the neighborhood map, I set up a few card tables of books, dishes and maternity clothes. I also dragged out a bunch of the old yard/outside toys that my kids have lost interest in. The best sale of the day came early on. My mom and I had literally just set Austin's Little Tykes race card bed down in the drive when a lady pulled up and dropped $90 on the bed, 2 Little tykes hoops and some miscellaneous junk! I sold about $200 total, not bad for a one day haul. So my basement is still full and now I'm just waiting for a decent weekend to set up the real treasures.

Saturday nite I arrive home from work to an oven, yup, the central AC conveniently decided to conk out on the first real hot weekend of the summer. I grew up without AC but we have had it in every home we have lived in since we've been married so now I'm a bit spoiled. We put getting the unit fixed at the top of our weekly to-do list. *Update~ we STILL do not have AC, someone will be arriving tomorrow, ugh!*

So, back to Saturday nite. I started getting the kids clothes around for church the next morning and discovered that Austin has no clean shorts. This really shouldn't have came as a surprise since I neglected to do any laundry all week, instead focusing my energy on preparing for the sale that didn't happen. Anyways, by now it's midnite. I'm tired, I'm sweaty, wah, wah, wah. I decide that I'll throw a load of clothes into the washer and then dry his shorts first thing while we're getting ready in the morning so that they'll be dry by the time we leave for church. That was the plan anyways. When will I ever learn Hosmerville rule #101: things in this household never go according to plan. Because, you see, when I put the clothes in the dryer and turned it on, it started but the drum wouldn't rotate. Yup, AC and dryer are broken.

It's now 9 am, we have to leave in an hour and Austin does not have a clean pair of bottoms~ no khakis, no basketball shorts, no jeans shorts, no jeans. Nothing but corduroy pants and it's already feeling like 80* outside. I had no other choice: Austin put on his shirt, his underwear, his socks, and his shoes and we left for church. No, I didn't take him to church in his skivees. what I did do was stick his wet church shorts out the van window so they could air dry at 70 mph on the highway. For the most part they were dry by the time we got to Michigan Center and we all walked in looking clean and presentable.

Skip forward to Sunday nite. I'm heading to bed and the power goes out. What the heck! It wasn't even storming. But the power was out and stayed out. I didn't sleep well in our now very primitive dwelling~ no AC, no power~ and thinking about all our food in the fridge and freezers going bad. By 9am Monday, the fridge was on its way to warm and the ice cream in the freezer was feeling soft. I made a trip out to Brooklyn to borrow space in my grandma's fridge and freezer and to take a shower. The AC repairman wasn't called because he can't fix it if we don't have power to run it. Tom called Consumers that nite and was told we'd have power by 11pm... Wednesday nite. We made plans to stay at his parents, left the kiddies there and headed for an adult-only dinner at Outback with friends who were visiting from Dallas. We swung by the house before heading out to Clarklake and lo and behold, the power was on~ ta da!!!

So here I am Thursday morning, playing catch up from the weekend and being ever so thankful for all of our modern day conveniences. how was your weekend?

Eight years later and he's still the one! Happy anniversary, TJ, I love you!