Countdown to Graduation day ... 3 days to go ...

Got an early start today - 4:30. It's only 3 days til graduation and I'm starting to feel more stressed. Mostly due to the events which transpired yesterday.
Terry was cleaning up/rearranging the garage and getting things ready to work on the outside of th house. Well ... are you ready for it??? He knocked over the railing which we painted on Saturday and BROKE IT!!!!! I was in tears ... the stress-button got hit big-time. We contemplated what to do ... get the welding on the wrought-iron fixed, leave it 'for now' and put it up broken, what to do? ... so off to Home Depot we go. That store has got to LOVE do-it-yourselfers like us! I can only image what 'little' amount it would have cost to have someone else do all this work that Terry and I have simply because they prob wouldn't have had to make many trips to the store to buy 'another' of something because it got screwed up. But, where's the fun in that?? Just think of the peaceful evenings and weekends we would've had, the amount stress I wouldn't have to go thru ...
Now we'll have the wood railing that Terry always wanted between the kitchen and family rooms (hmmm, ulterior motive?). Then while we're in HD, we see the gazebos ... how nice would it be to have one on the back deck? Our back deck faces the West and gets unbarably hot in the afternoon ... so hot, we cannot be out there. Our thermometer consistently reads over 100. Would a gazebo help thwart the heat and make our deck usable? Well ... we think so! However, we're not going to be impulsive and buy the first thing we see! Plus, silly us, we took the CAR to HD! So, we purchase the material for the railing and home we go. We jump outta the car and into the pickup. Off to comparison shop. Planning our trip, we thought of Sears ... and we wanted to check Target and Home Depot again and maybe Lowe's and Costco. Well, of course, all of these stores can't be nicely clustered in the same area of town! So, we head southwest to Sears and there's a Target there and a Home Depot. Costco is on the east side of town, so we'd check everything out and then make another trip back to get what we decide on.
LOL ... we are SO compulsive! We ended up getting our stuff at Sears. Not without a HD gal trying really hard to gain our business on this ... but we really were sold on the Sears. A gazebo and table/chair set. And a grill! WAIT! A grill too? Not like we needed one of those - we have one and it works. Now how to get all of this home. Luckily the grill needed to be assembled (for free! woohoo - the best price). Yeah, yeah, I know ... nothing is free. I'm sure that was all built into the price. But at least it isn't something that can get screwed up and we'll have to buy more parts or something. So, home we go with a truck load.
Terry worked late last night getting things ready for me to sand and stain this morning. I thought I was done with that ... but silly me for thinking that!
So, I get up at 4:30, come downstairs to use the bathroom. I notice that the garage light is on ... don't think much of it ... I'm in the bathroom and here a light switch click (thinking - oh, the big light got hot and clicked off). I get done in the bathroom ... and now the garage light is off! Uh-oh! And I think Terry is still in bed. I open the door to the garage and the garage door is WIDE OPEN! I shut the door and lock it and go running upstairs to see where Terry was. HE'S IN BED! Someone was in the garage! Terry checked things out and nothing appeared to be missing! Whew! My heart was pounding! (Granted, if someone wanted to steal something, they'd probably have broken a leg trying to get something out of that garage - it's rather a pigsty!)
Oh Honey ... I know you'll read this ... I do love you and I just keep telling myself 'Just think how dull and boring my life would be without you!'.
OK ... now it's time to get to work!

Sorry, no picture today ... not even time to click the camera button. I'll try to take one and post later.

Did I say only 3 days til graduation? And the 'to-do before graduation list' is still quite long ...

Onto the next chapter ...

Well, the time has come ... Chad has officially walked the halls of Palmer HS for the last time today. No more scrambling the night before on the assignments due 'tomorrow' (he works best under pressure and late at night you see - at least that's his reasoning) ... no more tests to study for (well, the little amount of studying he did have to do). This is all true at least for now ...

Next year he is off to Colorado School of Mines. Will he repeat these same habits? Hopefully not ...

But what does all of this mean for me??

No more ...
- phone calls reporting him tardy or absent from one or more classes
- phone calls to let me know he has a D or F in one or more classes (and, yes, this has happened on occasion)
- going to Target or Home Depot for supplies for the project due 'tomorrow'
- phone calls or emails from D11 transportation to discuss his behaviour on that big yellow school bus (granted, these haven't happened for a couple of years since he's been driving, but his folder contains a few of these treasured items)

He set his goals and achieved them. For now I'm sure he's glad it's all over. Years down the road will he miss these days? Probably so if he's like so many of the rest of us. But for now ... Congratulations Chad! It's over and you did it great! I'm so proud of you. I love you. - Mom

then and now ...

Oh ... you'll all love this ... It's 6:15 and I just got a phone call from Palmer HS that Chad was reported missing or absent from one or more classes today! That'll be the last one!

Terry's workshop

OK ... well, you get another post today ... who knows, maybe even another later. Terry has told me numerous times "Don't you have some scanning or something to do?". I don't think he enjoys my 'help'!
Things are coming along!
Since my last post about the house we have gotten a few more things done actually. The living room is COMPLETE! The painting is done, the baseboards are new and painted and put in. The dining room is almost finished. We have the chair rail to finish and the window frame to put up (it is just waiting for drying time after I stained and polyurethaned it).
The oak stair railings are stained and waiting for the dry time so I can poly them. The oak ledges are now ready for me to stain and poly.
The weather is gorgeous today (around 60 or so). We sure could use some rain though. It is very very dry and we are under high fire danger.

WOOHOO!!!

I am DONE scanning my 35mm negatives! (Notice I said 35mm - as I have disc and 110 that I need to try to figure out if my scanner can do - but at least I am done so I can work on Chad's photos for graduation) I ended up with almost 3300 jpegs. I elected to just scan everything rather than go thru and only scan the ones that I wanted - I became rather methodical this way and probably much faster in the long run. Here are a few pictures from the earlier years. I don't think the boys know about my blog, or if they do I doubt they ever look at it. I'm sure they'd kill me for some of these pictures.

Pictures

Scanning all these negatives just makes me laugh at what I thought was 'photographic'! Based upon the number of pictures I took of the following, I must've thought I'd never ever again see these ...
- deer
- elk
- ducks and geese - you can't believe the number of pictures I took of these animals!
- groves of golden aspen
And to think of the cost of the film and the developing! LOL
Not like I don't take pictures of these animals now - but it's simply the click of a delete button.
And speaking of pictures of animals ... I have almost as many pictures of the cats as I do the boys! (OK, maybe not quite)

Same 'ole, same 'ole

Well ... it's a week later and not much has changed. I am still scanning and we're still working on the living room. No surprises there! LOL
We are about done with the living room though! I just spackled some nail holes in the baseboards and will paint them shortly after they dry for a bit. Then I think we'll mostly be done! YEH!!! I'll post a current picture later tonight. Terry redid the electronics so things come on when they should and go off when they should with the push of just one button. I'm so glad he understands that stuff ... cuz I sure don't! So now it is turning the corner to the dining room to finish the wainscoting (which we started several years ago) and then give it a coat of paint.
On the scanning front ... welllll ... I thought I only had about 85 rolls of negatives. I was nearing completion the other night and was thinking 'hmmm, I don't recall seeing our vacation from 1998 in the stack'. Lo and behold ... I found another 75 or so rolls! So ... I'll be at this scanning business for just a tad bit longer than originally anticipated. I will have to post some of these pictures ... they are just too funny. I can hardly believe that my babies used to be that little!
Well ... I've got painting to do ... so I'd better get to it!

OK ... picture uploaded as promised. Looks nice, eh??

How many trips to Home Depot do you think it will take?

Why do I allow him to go to Home Depot alone? We took the baseboards off in the living room and are putting 4" ones on like we did down in the family room. You'd think he could get the right ones ... but NOOOOO ... what he came home with doesn't match. So ... trip #2 back to HD to exchange and get the correct baseboards (good thing gas isn't still $4 a gallon!). I have the painting done except for the wall behind the entertainment center and some of the trim along the ceiling. It's 5:15 now ... I'm hoping to get the baseboards painted tonight so we can get them put on tomorrow and the living room put back together ... or there will be yet another unfinished project ... not like that would be a surprise ... but I'm just hoping. Terry does a very good job at these DIY projects ... but he's very picky and as a result it takes him a while (i.e. part of why there are still not baseboards and doorframes in various parts of the hours from the flood we had 4+ years ago). Well, I better go help him with the lasagna. LOL ... NEVER A DULL MOMENT!!! Laughter is the best medicine ya know!
Let me know what y'all think of the color - I think you can tell from the pic pretty well ...

Scanning, scanning, and more scanning

I've been preparing for Chad's graduation. I finally got his senior pictures ordered and I'm now working on the previous 18 years. We've been digital since 2000, so I only have the first 9 years of his life to digitize - which amounts to about 100 rolls of 35mm film (at least I have all my negatives organized - "Thank you Creative Memories!"). Each 24 exposure takes me about an hour to scan and get saved to my harddisk. So, that is looooots of hours of scanning - and I'm only about a third done at this point. Then I still have to organize and get them scrapped! Thank goodness for digital scrapbooking. It will make this process a lot faster. Again "Thank you Creative Memories!"!! I use their Memory Manager to organize and Storybook Creator Plus to scrap them. The photo on this post was made with SBC+ ... don't ya love it? I may tweak it yet before the final version to print, but I think my first stab at it is pretty awesome.
I also made out our 'have to do before graduation day' list. HA! We should've started on it years ago! Oh yeah ... we did! We just don't have anything FINISHED on the list! Follow-thru to completion is not a strong suit in this house.
I'm going to try to get the living room painted today. It's still too cold out to do much outside - namely work on finishing painting the house. Maybe Terry will work on the family room floor and/or stairs. That we started last labor day. We were on a roll and got the floor itsself done, but then we needed to wait for the trim to come in, which was about a month later, and we lost our momentum on that. Ahhh ... the joys of home ownership ... always something to do.
Well ... I'm going to finish up a roll of scanning and then paint the living room. I'll take some before and after pics. Let me know what ya think!

Rows and rows of books

Only a few hours left until we have to depart the FHL. We've had a great week - researching our ancestors AND not having to work. We will drive a couple of hours tonight and stay in Evanston, WY and then continue on home tomorrow.
It's Brendan's 15th birthday today ... I can hardly believe it. My baby is growing up. I called and chatted with him for a few minutes this morning. I also talked to Trent. He's off to a Clint Black concert in Minneapolis. I hope they had a good drive up there ... he said it was not very nice weather - cold, snowy, blowing ....
Well ... I'd best make better use of my time here the last few hours.

And when is our next trip back here....???

Hiatus

Well ... it's time for another update. LOL ... nothing like a couple month hiatus! We haven't painted in a while now ... holidays, weather, etc. So ... the house still isn't 100% painted. Unfortunately it doesn't paint itself.
We spent a couple of weeks over Thanksgiving in Wellsburg at my parents' house, then came home for a couple of weeks and then went back for a week over Christmas. That's enough of that long trip for a while.
This week Terry and I are in Salt Lake City at the Family History Library doing genealogy. I think we've done all the easy stuff already because this week's finds are much harder and further between. I do think we've both managed to add a set or two of grandparents though.
Terry has a cousin (there's a 1st removed in there somewhere I think - but even I get lost at that sometimes, so we'll just call them cousins) and her family living here. Steve and Yvonne invited us to their house Sunday and we talked 'family history' for a couple of hours. Their sons and families came over later in the afternoon and we all enjoyed dinner together. We had an absolutely wonderful time.
Cortney, their daughter-in-law, is a member of the Temple Bell Choir and she invited us to come to their rehearsal last night. It was nothing short of wonderful and I do think it was the highlight of the week for me (sorry ancestors - but some other things just move in front of you sometimes). The director greeted us at the door and we had 4 chairs front and center! LOL ... never really expected that ... but it was the best seat in the house I'm sure. After we had listened to a couple of songs Ron gave us a tour of the Tabernacle and it's underground world. It was truly amazing. We had no idea that was going to happen and we were truly amazed and very, very thankful.
Well ... I'll try to be better at updates and what-not ... but for now it's off to the FHL for more investigation!
TTFN!
Tammy