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.

 

Anna is 16!

Happy Birthday to Anna!

We started the celebration Saturday.  Ken and Joel went to Iowa City to take Carolyn to Illinois to buy her car!  I took Anna and 3 friends out for a birthday dinner!

Followed by ice-cream

and a photo opportunity nearby!

Birthday dinner with cheesecake.

Obligatory sibling picture!

For the first time ever, Centennial is having dance try-outs for show choir.  Below, Joel and Carolyn support Anna in her endeavor.  (probably thankful they never had to try out for dancing...sorry that would be me!)

(they are watching the choreographers on a video, while dancing)

Anna tries out on Tuesday (with 2 of the girls in her birthday party photo and 4 other kids. I truly feel sorry for the judges, but they asked for it (literally....started a whole new thing - have I mentioned we have 3 new show choir directors next year - oiy)  The good news is that Anna already tried out for concert choir and was put in Cantamus, the upper all girl choir.....so that can't hurt for show choir.  This year they have added a varsity girls show choir.  Previously they had a 9th grade girls choir and all the other choirs were co-ed.  Depending on numbers, that choir will or will not still happen.

To finish out the 16 year old adventures:  we went to the D.M.V. and got Anna's intermediate license so that she can drive alone to more places than just school  AND she has an interview at Hy-vee today!  (She applied on her birthday and heard back immediately.)

sweet doll baby

 

The Great Clean-up

So I am moving my Cricut to the basement.  Here is it in it new home.  (It is the only clean spot on that work-table, but you gotta start somewhere.)

Here is the same table November 24 2009 (this is my storage room at its finest) .  

It sure is fun to look at old Blog photos!

Back to the great Cricut saga. First I needed to connect it to a computer in the basement, but keep my computer upstairs.  I tried our OLD laptop, no luck (incompatible Windows version due to its age). 

  Then I was able to Bluetooth from my phone. (ok - but I it isn't as flexible as a desktop).  I tried to Bluetooth from my computer, but I couldn't get it to work and my chief IT guy (Joel) was helping his sister buy her new car in Illinois (more on that later!)  Anyway, today I had him come into the office to show how I tried to get the Bluetooth to work (after he reminded me that computer already had Bluetooth when I texted him in Illinois) and have him see if it could be fixed.  While I was still at the computer, showing him the problem, Bluetooth connected!  He teased, "I charge by the job, not the hour."  It was as if his mere presence in the room caused the computer to cooperate.  

This is my Cricut/scrapbook station:  a work in progress. This 9 box unit has held toys, books and Legos.  (I know Lego is a toy, but it lasted longer in our house than most other toys and kinda had a life of its own at times.  It has been YEARS since the kids played with Legos, but there were still set-up Legos in this cabinet in early April.  They are now all in a box!)

The unit is now in the basement library.  (another mostly unfinished part of the basement, tucked under the kitchen bay window, so it has a funny shape).   It is a pretty small room, but I always have loved it.

Here is what is on the other wall.  I tried to find the "original library" photo, but after searching 3 years of my blog gave up for now.  My sister gave the kids 2 huge book shelves that are now full of books and games.  (I just like the dedicated harry Potter shelf (shown below) the best.)

Here is where it started it all.  (By "it" I mean the great storage room/craft clean-up.)  This lovely steel cabinet.  Isn't it great?  I won't show you the rest of the storage room.  Although now with Carolyn and Joel home for the summer we have a lot more stuff to store!

Here is the Cricut's old home which translated to - messy office.  (I love a completely clean surface....the rest of the office still needs work.  Since the summer is almost on us, I am trying to clear off the office desk so that Ken can work from that room when the kids are home (to escape the chatter).

Hopefully soon the room will look more like this, but with no landline, desktop computer and gigantic monitor....just the clean part.  (This was from 2009 I think.)  I am not sure how often it looked this good since then, I have no photographic evidence.  It has looked decent when we had visitors.   I pulled this photo off the blog too.

One down 3 to go

 

Joel is finished his first year at Iowa State.  He said he loved his first year of college.  He will return to Ames this summer to work in the lab where he did his honors project last semester. The lab's name is:  VRAC (Visualize Realize Analyze Collaborate), the lab used to be called:  Virtual reality application center.  Joel said they liked the acronym, but no longer felt that Virtual reality covered everything they did. 

He will take Physics 2 this summer as online through Western Iowa Community College.  Erin's good friend's husband strongly recommended this route when they met at a football game this fall.  He will start to umpire the weekend after Andrew and Dani's wedding.  He is going to be busy.  (Good to keep him off the streets , plus he is saving for a car!)

Anna and I got to meet baby Ezra....he was such a "doll baby" (in case you have never heard that phrase it means beautiful and sweet)

 

The Lion King and Lion like weather (as in "In like a Lion out like a Lamb" that we were supposed to be finished with in March)

 We went to a sold out show of The Lion King.  It was fantastic, my favorite musical/play so far!  Carolyn said she preferred it to Hamilton, Joel and Ken preferred Hamilton.  Anna was undecided.  Patrick (Carolyn's boyfriend didn't go to Hamilton with the crew.)

Ken has to be 3 hours west of Omaha tomorrow at noon, so I was going to take Carolyn back to Iowa City.  (Anna was coming and we were going to go out to dinner etc.)  Just as we were leaving, Ken returned from Ames and offered to take Carolyn due to the wind-factor.  It already was snowing and his van is much heavier and no one on the planet thinks I am as experienced of a driver as Ken!

We have had several 80 degree weather days in the last couple weeks.....today this - white pear blossoms and snow.  I hope the blossoms make it!  They had just appeared on Friday.

Ken saves the day!  Bless him.  I was going to drive, but was getting less excited by the minute because it was really snowing heavy - hard to see this in the photo.