A few things going on now.

My daughter's art class is doing an exhibit.  We packed up the 4 paintings she's done this year to take to be exhibited.

These are the supplies we've gathered for the rehearsal dinner, so far, not including the pork roasts which are in the freezer, of course.  There are also a couple of board games in this picture because they are all over the house.  Ignore those please.

Last year in lieu of flowers at the funeral home, a friend of mine gave me a huge bag of flower bulbs for my house.  This is the gift that I hope will keep on giving for many years (if I don't somehow kill them!).  Aren't they beautiful?!

Finally, pet pictures from this week, Squinch and Duncan, Cosmo and Freckles.  :-)  Not pictured are our other 2 cats, Zelda and Zoey.

May 28, 2017.

Wedding preparation is ongoing.  We're not in the main prep because we're the bridegroom's family but we are responsible for the rehearsal dinner and we have to look good in pictures, so we needed to buy clothes.  My youngest 2 kids are also in the wedding.  We have the bridesmaid dress and we're going to go this week and get a pair of gray pants and a yellow shirt for youngest son.  Yesterday I went to Sams Club and got a lot of the supplies I will need for the rehearsal dinner.  The menu is now, therefore, kind of set in stone and I can't change it, which is good, because I've been changing it in my head about every 5 minutes since I started thinking about it, back in December.

The menu now is as follows.
Pulled pork barbecue.
Both regular and gluten free buns.
Green Beans.
Hash brown casserole.
Pickles.
Potato chips.
Various cakes.
Various drinks.

I'm thinking I may buy drinks not according to the flavors, but with royal blue and yellow cans, to match the theme.  Is that too weird?  I think it would be cute!   I'll also be serving bottled water.

The wedding colors are royal blue, gray and yellow, in case you couldn't tell from the rest of this post.  I dreamed last night that they had a practice wedding at our church and everyone just wore gray t-shirts, got in a circle, did a group hug and the practice marriage was complete.  :-P  

May 23, 2017.

I should have, at the beginning, started just typing the date as a title.  It's hard to think of titles and I always want to go with ones like "this and that" or "still here" or something like that.  I wonder how many times I've used those in the past 12 years?  Probably a lot.  

So what is the this and that of this week?

My aunt is in the hospital and I'm very worried about her.  Prayers please.

We had board game day yesterday and it was a great time.  My son got everyone excited about starting a new Dungeons and Dragons group as well but then I talked to the moms and some of them have serious reservations about D&D.  I understand this.  I remember reading Harry Potter myself to see what all the fuss was about (and loving it!) and I had some concerns when my youngest started getting fascinated with D&D.  I've since checked it out and I think it seems fine, but these ladies don't want to trust their 12 year olds to my judgement.  They don't know me that well.  I completely don't blame them.  Take me back 6 years and reverse our roles and I might not have let my youngest attend.  So, we are looking for a tabletop role playing game that is somewhat different and does not use magic.  I think we'll find one.  The other alternative is to start a D&D group but advertise it to different people or just restrict it to the over 18 people.  However, within our board game group that cuts it down to 3 and 2 of those are in my family.  :-)  Sometimes socialization for homeschoolers and ex-homeschoolers is difficult.

Third item of news is actually from last week, but I've not been blogging all that often, so it's still news.  Youngest son and I went to the local community college to try and figure out what his status is there with the financial aid office and to look around.  He's trying to decide between an apprenticeship for carpentry and going to this community college.  Right now, I think I'm in favor of the community college for a couple of reasons.  One is that we met with the learning disabilities director and he is going to really be a great help getting through the classes.  Second is that I kind of don't feel our son's future lies in carpentry because he's never really done it and I think at the college he might stumble into what he really likes.  Okay, there's a third.  There will be young women at the college that he could possibly meet.  (socialization issues again!) and (also apparently a fourth!)  fourthly, they have a choir and he really loves singing in a choir and would enjoy that very much.   We'll see what he chooses.  He really needs to get on it, deciding what he wants to do, because August will be here before we know it.

Speaking of things that will be here before we know it, the wedding is in a month!!!  We've got a ton of planning and things to do for that.  It's exciting, but kind of scary.  I'm going to have to dance in front of people!  Terrifying.

I hope you all have a good week.  Don't forget to pray for my aunt!

More pictures.

Graduation!

We went to Mississippi to see our son's graduation!  It was a quick, whirlwind kind of trip.  We left on Friday and came back on Monday, but we packed a ton of stuff into the trip.  Most importantly, my son and his fiance are now college graduates, with Bachelor of Arts degrees.  We also had dinner, makeovers, worked on some wedding flowers, brunch, got to meet a lot of my son's fiance's family, got to meet our son's friends and explore the town he's been living in for the past 5 years.  It was fun and tiring!  The most eventful thing was Saturday morning, during the graduation.  About halfway through, we heard a sound behind us and turned around to find that a man had passed out.  Several people got up to help and they ended up having to call 911 and perform CPR on the man until the ambulance arrived.  It was pretty intense there for a while!  For the rest of the weekend though, we had a great time.  Here are some pictures from the trip.

My future daugher-in-law gave me this succulent garden for Mother's Day.  It was my first mother's day without my mom, so being distracted on this trip was a good, good thing for me.  

We had a really nice hotel suite.  This is the kitchen part of it.  

The college where my son went, William Carey University, was devastated by a tornado in January.  They are rebuilding but have a long way to go.  Consequently, the commencement exercises were held off campus.  We drove by campus to take a look.  

This is my son and future-daughter-in-law's favorite park.  It's where he proposed.  We stopped by to take a look, walk around and play a game of pooh-sticks.  :-) 

We played a lot of board games while we were there including this one, Telestrations in which my son drew a ferret and my other son thought it was a lemon, below.  It ended up being a lemon with legs, crying and exuding rays.  :-)  It's a fun game.  

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The fun stuff.

Not really.   Today I'm sitting at the Toyota dealership waiting for them to complete a 15 point safety check on my car, then I'm going to Hobby Lobby to return a marker that doesn't work.   After that I get to take my dog to get her kennel cough vaccine and then home for cleaning, laundry, dishes and cooking supper.  Another exciting day, but I don't mind really.   :-)

Wedding Prep and Homeschooling and Other Stuff.

We are getting some things done around here.  Most of what we are doing seems to be wedding prep.  We had gotten my daughter's bridesmaid dress in December.  That's pretty easy.  They tell you which dress to buy and you order it in your size.  Mine, which we finally got on Saturday, involved a lot of shopping, one purchase and return; after which I decided not to shop online and then a lot of trying on.   I got a dress on Saturday at Dress Barn, which I just love.  

I've been practicing cooking some of the menu items for the rehearsal dinner.  I have to serve 60 people in a park pavilion in another state, which I am told has electrical outlets, but I am not sure how many crock pots I can plug in.  Also, I don't want to have to work really hard the whole time I'm there, I want to be able to relax some and enjoy myself so I'm trying to come up with a menu that is easy and not too expensive.  For now, the menu is pulled pork barbecue, green beans, coleslaw, potato chips, various drinks and cake for dessert.  They are having a wedding brunch on the day of the wedding, with no cake, so we won't be redundant serving cake.  Also, I can cook the cakes here and ice them there and that will be easy peasy.  Now that I've got that planned and my dress bought, the next thing is to outfit my youngest son who is a groomsman.  That won't be too difficult.  He's an easy size and I've been told what to buy.  

These first 2 pictures are from a trip to Q-Doba during the dress shopping adventures and are to illustrate my daughter's neat hand napkin, table napkin, table napkin, face napkin technique for eating nachos and my pile-o-napkins method.  I just think it's funny how different we are.  The next picture is Cosmo, just because he's cute.  Please ignore the piles of clothes and vacuum cleaner behind him.  :-P   The other pic is a page from the Fredrick Bachman book I just read, Beartown.  Wow, that was an intense read.   I felt like I had truly been in another world for a few hours.  It was more serious/less funny than his other books and therefore I don't know if I'll read it again.  I've already read the other 3 each twice since discovering him as an author last year.  

In homeschooling type news, we had the board game group meetup today which was fun.  We had a good turnout of 8 kids/young adults.  My favorite line from the meeting was when one of them asked if there were any nerds here and another one looked at him and said "Dude, we're all nerds."  :-)   Since we are in the launching stage of homeschooling, I am going to call the local community college and set up my son's orientation.  He still hasn't decided if he's going to community college or going to do an apprenticeship.  We'll see.  I keep trying to prepare for any eventuality, scheduling things like this, keeping up with his application status and scholarship applications and things like that.  I've also started moderating a homeschool group on Facebook, so I'm lending my voice of experience to younger moms, which is kind of cool.