More summer "vacation" photos

We sorted all the school supplies donated to our church for an inner city Catholic school. >16000 items (but we did count each pencil etc. as 1)

Saturday night after church

Sunday after church (Ken helped and took photo)

The wall tags went up on Monday at the school.  I could get in because I was helping with band uniforms.  (Carolyn, Natalie (in navy in top photo), Sophie (in gray in top photo) and Avery (not pictured) and Patrick (Carolyn's boyfriend) helped me put them up.)  Avery is in the Chaos group and Sophie's sister.  The B. family helped me with both the school sort and the hanging of the name tags.  Natalie even helped me cut and glue all of the Vortex name tags a couple weeks ago.   Anna was at marching band.  I am thrilled how these turned out and even more thrilled to have it done.  I went back on Wednesday night and had to retape many of the tags I had taped, none of anyone else's.  I was afraid we were going to run out of tape and I wouldn't have had project completion!

 

Joel moved into this apt August 1

Here he is with his 2 roommates, Will and Evan.  They have been friends since kindergarten and 1st grade respectively.  He and Will lived together last year and he and Evan have often shared a tent at scout camp.  I think they are compatible!!!

I am sad that he moved into an apt. (instead of a dorm) because I feel like he is less likely to come home.  His dorm was the size of a matchbox.

The good news is he already came home :0)  right after moving in!  He isn't really moving into his place for 2 weeks, but the boys shared a Uhaul, so he moved all the big stuff and much of the small stuff to the apartment.  He also works at a lab. in Ames, so he will be taking car loads to his apt. when he goes to work.

 

What I did on my summer vacation.

Wall nameplates for show choir.....Total number of nameplates...266 (not including showband...on the bottom, because we don't know those participants names yet.  I will add their names and "showband" and "2024" in the upper right corner when the time comes)

I hope to get these on the wall next week, during marching band uniform fittings.  (when the music hall will be open!)

Next year I will be taking down the level of complexity to be sure....more like the Spectrum tags, which were the easiest.

 

More on the great storage room/basement clean up

The Cricut computer is now in the storage room (aka huge work area).  This will help keep my office and the main basement area tidy, because I will try to keep the card making/scrapbooking to this room.  Loft goals have I.  

We are getting a new furnace and AC unit on Monday, so that really lit my tail on fire for cleaning the storage room.  I had to completely empty a huge shelving unit for the company to drill a hole in our basement wall to make our unit high efficiency.  I organized all those items so they will go back neatly on the shelf when the project is done.    

 I still have a long way to go, but I will make great progress this week, as Anna is at camp, Ken will be gone for several days and Carolyn and Joel will be at work a bunch.  (I only work 2 days this week because on Friday I will pick-up Anna from camp!)

Anna is a Jr Counselor at Catholic Youth Camp

 

Here is Anna with her best church buddy Ruth.  They have gone to camp together and are on the CORE team to help lead the Youth Ministry program at our church (with approx 10 other kids and our Youth Minister).  They have done VBS together since pre-school.

Happy Mother's Day

We missed Matthew, but enjoyed a beautiful Sunday

Matthew often plants the garden (although that isn't the only reason we missed him :0)

We bought the plants on Mother's Day and Ken and Joel turned over the soil.  Carolyn did the planting and Anna tended her strawbabies. (this was over the course of several days)  

 

Carolyn's Car!!!

Carolyn has an internship for 10 weeks this summer in West Des Moines at:

 

(a digital marketing company)

We chipped in to help her buy a car so that she can get to her internship and Joel can take the kid car to Ames for his summer laboratory/research adventures.  (Anna will need to juggle a bit to get to Hyvee....but at least it is very close.  Ken works from home a bunch and I will be home 4-5 days a week.  Anna will often work weekends when all but the kid car will be free for her transportation.....the kid car will be at the ball diamond most weekends.)  

I digress....  If you haven't read the newspaper, you might not know it is very hard to find a good used car.  This one was found in Illinois after months of searching (by Ken).  It has very low miles and is the same brand as our first kid car (Mitsubishi Outlander).  That car served us very well for 6 years.  This car still has some manufacturers' warranty remaining, which is nice.