Tough One--

Started off the day with a Charlotte freak out. Major. Like drive her to U of M psych ward freak out. Which I didn't do. I am just feeling so defeated, and while that is going on I am still needing to be on with Danny and his schooling. Yes honey, manifest destiny is...I scream over Charlotte while on hold with BCBS to find out my mental health benefits...
She eventually stopped after 3 hours, and she, Danny and I went to the library,the post office and Target/Meijer to pick up treats for Jake and giving tree gifts for church. That was fun!
Molly went to the movies with her friend Gary and spent the afternoon at his house playing Wii. We met at the Special Olympics meeting to plan the Polar Plunge and after throwing in our 2 cents we pick up Danny at TKD and head home. Danny and Jerry decide to play Oregon Trail to jive with the unit on westward exploration. Oh the memories of Jake and Jerry playing that same game together...I miss that boy.

And they're back!

This morning I tried to finish up my cleaning so it doesn't look a mess when Jerry walks in.  And also to hide the gifts I've been wrapping.
I don't drive today! Awesome!
Spend some time with Sooz and Mom on the phone, it makes me feel a bit lonely for them. Visit planned with  Mom for Christmas and then with Sooz for 12/27ish, so I don't have long to wait. We dish out Thanksgiving dinner round 2 when the travelers arrive, then they go to church. Danny and I start to unpack the village and get our planning going. I will post pictures when we have it set up. :)

Saturday 11/25/11 Cleaning Machine!

I set my alarm for 6:45 and jumped right at the bathrooms, before I lost my enthusiasm. By 10am they were all done, including sorting and clearing the linen closets. That takes time, doesn't show, but needed to be done. I also sort and actually take some of the Christmas decorations that I never use and put them in the Sally's bag. I will not pack them up again! Other than 5pm mass, and walking the dog,  I don't leave the house. But I feel like I accomplished alot.

Black Friday Fun

Jer came out with me-I think he felt sorry for me because I don't have any shopping pals here. We headed out at about 7am. We went to Art Van and got the bunk bed for the lake and a new pub style table for the basement. There was a line of about 2 hours, and so Jer asks the guy if we can come back and  pay later, and he says that I can call with the credit card info later! So out with go, see you later all those people on the line! We went to Staples, Loews and Wal-mart and were home drinking coffee at 10am! It was awesome. Then Jerry took the kids to the lake til Sunday! Double awesome! I have time to shop a bit but mostly I clean and do the Christmas stuff. I am the one who has so many decorations, so it is my job to haul it all out and decorate! I get a bunch of wrapping done and watch a funny corny movie called My Families Wedding.

Thanksgiving Day--I am Thankful!

Well, at 5am I didn't feel quite as thankful as I might have...we are up and off to downtown Detroit. The weather, which was supposed to be warm and sunny, was foggy and chilly. Oh well! The coolest thing was the skyscraper, the RenCen, basically disappeared into the fog  before our very eyes! My slick Detroit boy zoomed us downtown and into a parking garage right at the foot of Woodward Ave. We were at the start within minutes! Jack Reilly was super happy to see Molly and welcomed her back to the event. While she waited for her cue, Jen and her husband Buddy arrived and cheered her on. Charlotte,Danny and I joined her on the dais and helped her recite the oath. Suddenly there are Sam and Eric Stewart..they followed the sound of Molly voice! They cheered Molly on too! I say hooray for friends!  Molly did a great job with the oath, then we all got into our corral to wait for the start of the race. With 21,000 runners we had a bit of a wait! Molly took off and ran a 1.00, Danny was next with a 1.01, and Charlotte, Jen and I rolled in at 1.07. Yes, I did a cartwheel at the finish line, at Charlotte's request! We headed home and Jer made a mess of scrambled eggs while I got the turkey in the oven. Then I took a hot shower and cooked the rest of the sides. I served around 3:30pm(and everyone was happy to get away from the Lions horrendous performance!) The meal was great, and later that evening I even made a Michael's run to use my 30% coupon for some Christmas shopping. I am thankful for my family here, for Jake, for my NJ family, for our house, for my church, for so much. I am a lucky girl!

my runners!

Ready to eat!

here is my dinner!

says it all! Start!

Shopping and decorating for an early start to Christmas

I guess I'm thinkin Christmas! After mass this am, Danny,Molly and I went home to change and grab Charlotte. We dropped Mol off at Ashley Court to help out with church service and coffee and donuts. Danny Charlotte and I continued on to the library to drop off our giving tree gift and to get books. Then we hit Marshalls and Target to do some Christmas shopping and get ideas. It was fun! Home for lunch, then Molly went back to AC for a couple more hours to assist with the Thanksgiving craft project. Go Molly! Danny and I enjoyed the great weather, warm and mid 50's , by playing with the dog, shooting baskets,raking and hanging outside lights. Our house is looking good. Danny did night 3 of TKD and I got the clothes ready for our 5:30 am departure for the big race. Turkey is defrosted, potatoes mashed and carrots cooked and glazed. It should be a great Thanksgiving.

Danny suits up for daily mass

Danny kneeling in his altar garb and behind him, Dan Oleksa mentoring him through solo altar serving. They looked so cute together! Danny did an awesome job and we prayed for Aunt Reg, who is back in the hospital. We stayed after and did the perpetual help devotion too. Snuck in a Joanne's run, then went to piano. Then I got to meet Judy Parsons for coffee at DD! A great break for me. Throw in Ryan Arbor play date, TKD and a trip to Wal-marto in the driving rain, and you have my Tuesday!!

The intrepid traveler returns! No Thanks to US Airways!

UGH! In spite of arranging with US Airways to have a companion accompany Charlotte from  gate to gate in Philly, They Don't! Charlotte asked the attendant what she should do and the attendant told her to take the tram=and that was it! So Charlotte set off across the airport on foot and by tram, and made it to her gate. By the grace of God though, and the watchful eye of Grandpa I believe! I really think that US Air needs to get their game on when it comes to travelers with disabilities, how do they communicate the information that you put in the computer to the flight staff?  You KNOW I will be finding this out.

i made it!

In other news, Danny ran six miles with Jer and Charlotte and then went to Taekwando! What a nut! And we baked 15 loaves of pumpkin bread for teachers and other friends. Boy does the house smell good! And whilst hurriedly scooping refried beans from the can for our tacos, I slice open a knuckle. The food was fine--my hand, not so much! Tried stopping the bleeding, and band-aids, but it kept on bleeding. Check out my awesome bandage!

Make your own free digital collage

Baking for the Army man

Danny and I spent a lovely morning baking together and listening to the third and final story in our Peter and the Starcatchers series. The audio narration by Jim Dale is something I enjoy so much. We baked spice cookies, and from-scratch brownies with white chocolate and butterscotch chips. They are cooled, saran wrapped 3 times, put in a plastic bag and bubble wrapped! I hope they arrive edible!

spice cookies are Jake's favourites!

I had the opportunity to chat with Jake today via google. This was wonderful. Nothing major said, but I felt close to him being able to talk in that way. God Bless the computer!
Loaves and Fishes dinner tonight, we brought sloppy joes and our smiles, and served about 60 folks. Ron played his guitar and sang, which made it quite festive. I love serving with the family.
Charlotte flys home tomrw. I hope it all goes well. I am excited to see her, I missed her!

In the car, out of the car, in the car...you get the idea! Saturday11/19

I knew it from the time I got up=this whole day would be spent driving. And so it was..TaeKwando, home, get molly and shop-vac, drop at church for Jerry(busily manning the poinsettia sale at church for SO) back to TKD, back home, feed Danny lunch, go back to TKD for testing, which last 2 1/2 hours!! Danny gets his senior yellow=good, interminable length of testing =bad! Home with Danny, get Mol, drive to Gary;s house, pick him up, drive them to snowshoe. wait for them for 1 hour, bring them home, serve dinner, drive to Howell for communtiy theatre production of White Christmas. Sit and relax and enjoy the aesome show! Drive home! Goal tomrw---stay home ;<)

Friday means basketball means free mom time!

Well we had a busy but excellent day. Sewing lesson with Karol(2 this week because she is going away for Thanksgiving) which lasted 3 hours! Progress made on the PJ bottoms, and learning continues. Leah was dropped off at 10am, and we played, coloured, lunched, then headed to her house to catch the bus. No sooner had we hopped out of the car and moved to the end of the driveway than we saw the bus chugging down the street. We were high fiving each other on our perfect timing as the bus pulled to a stop. When the driver opened the door, she said "no power at the school, classes are cancelled"! Oh my! So back home we went to play some more. Shawne came to pick up Leah and stayed for a nice cup of tea and a great visit. When she was leaving Leah  decided that she might as well stay the whole day and go to BBall. So she did, which is awesome cause the kids love her. I made a Target run, but then just crashed. The week of solo Mom-ing is tiring me out :)

Colour me Proud!

Oh boy! Molly and Danny are both phenomenal! The fashion show was tonight and they both did so great. From modeling duties for Molly to hobnobbing and auction bidding to shoe tying for Danny. Barb Binkley did a wonderful job as always, and one thing she did this year was play Molly's commercial and feature her as a successful  ARC client. Afterwards she introduced Mol who took a waving stroll down the runway! Her modeling went well too. She was escorted by her high school pal Zack Nichols, who is a football player and was on the TV show RealWorld. He was always so kind to her at track practice, and he is still just as sweet. Danny enjoyed the auction and we got somrthing special for Jer for Christmas..sssshhhh!

Happiness is a bird eating seed from your hand!

after patient waiting, a little bird  visits Danny

and trys the seed!

in spite of the cold, Danny stood like a statue

Danny took this awesome photo of a hawk through the binoculars!

Speaking of Birds....

shout out to the Blue Hen, though I haven't seen one at our feeder. :)

Tuesday 11/16/11 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

No, that doesn't refer to my kids...it is the book club book for tonight's meeting! We had a great discussion about this tale, was the boy autistic? did the door knob stand for the house in Dresden? were the something and nothing spaces an analogy for marriage? We really had a back and forth interesting chat. Then Renee brought out the fancy cupcakes from the new place in town, Just Baked. Flavours like strawberry cheesecake, bumpy cake, and samoa girl scout cookie had the club oohing and aahing! Then she left the extras! OH NO! Next months book is The Zookeepers Wife by Diane Ackerman. Have you read it??

Back On It!!

It's Monday and I'm writing about Monday--GO ME!!
I had an 8am meeting at Pathways with Chantal and Jane to discuss Charlotte's school path.  She hasn't been to school in 2 weeks and not a soul from BHS has even called to see what the problem is! Same old same old over there, and my hopes for her to have a good experience in the TIPS program have not panned out. We are still working on it, but it looks like Charlotte will be moving over into adult transition after Thanksgiving.Danny had a long sewing lesson with Karol in which he learned to pin a pattern,cut it out, baste and sew the seam. He is doing wonderfully. Danny and I also enjoyed playing chopsticks together on the piano..what fun! Walked the dog and gave hom his first bath at our house...he is so good, he just stood in Danny's tub and shook.
Tae Kwan do kicked Danny's dupa tonight, fast and fitness oriented. He was sweating buckets.

Sunday 11/13/11

We went to Mass at 8:30am. Danny subbed as a server. Newspaper reading and coffee drinking follow that...but most of my day I felt like was spent driving in and out of town. To and from kids friends houses, Meijer and Target to try to find a blind for the garage window, all that jazz,
Molly ended up at Anne's for dinner and Danny got home from Scott's ate and got ready for bed. We watched our new favourite show Property Brothers.

11/12/11 Aahh, Saturday!

A lazy, raking,football watching, Saturday. Charlotte and Jerry took off at 8:30 to start the long awaited trip to Delaware and NJ. Jerry sent lots of pictures throughout the day and I felt like I was there.

hoodie-the highlight of any campus visit!

campus cuties

north campus part of the tour

 Shawne and I went to JCPenneys and did a bit of shopping with her 30%coupon! Whoot! Danny and I went to Blockbuster and got a couple of movies-watched one called A Far Off Place about a couple of kids that make there way across the Kalahari desert. It was quite violent, much more than I imagined, but we enjoying sitting in the chair together in front of the fireplace...Molly? where do you think she was? Downstairs watching football of course!

Friday 11/11/11 Greenhills invites us to T. Wall Bball Day

What a blast! We head down to Greenhills again, this time with our friend Gary in tow, to attend T. Wall BBall. This is a special day sponsored by a former teacher Tom Wall. It is the joining of a Greenhills student with a special visitor from a local school to play basketball and have fun together. There is a carnival, disco, face painting a cake walk and crafts. Our student team consists of Anna and Anya, juniors who love cross country and the arts respectively. We won our bball game, boy Gary can sure rebound and the girls couldn't miss today! We played carnival games, danced in the disco, made masks, and Danny,Charlotte and Gary went to the petting zoo. All the students and staff were fabulous..maybe the talk Molly gave helped with this. This is a wonderful school and we love being a part of the family. The kids each got a trophy and Tom Wall insisted on meeting Molly before we left,it was cute!

team we played against, we WON

our team!

charlotte and Anna

pretty crafty ,eh?!

nice!

maori

Molly and Anya

Boo!

go team!!

I went to the movies with Shawne. We saw Anonoymous, the Shakespeare movie. It was good, costumes were great.  We also went to Renees Pampered Chef party, and as always, that was fun.

Thursday 11/10/11

Catch up---
rescheduled piano lesson and Danny gets Christmas Tunes!
banking and food shopping
Laundry with a capitol L!!
plans for Charlotte's trip
Work at BDL, my big 4 hours this month!
but catching up---does it ever really happen??!
What do you think?!

Wednesday- I guess we're really Grandparents...

We had a nice visit with Cammy and got to meet baby Cassandra tonight. Jerry went and picked them up, and they took the van when they left. We thought we could loan the van to them since neither she or Jake had a vehicle. I made a tasty meal and got the place tidied and organized.(?)! Here are some pictures..

Tuesday in Cinci--SO fun day

We had a great sleep! Those beds are so great, I called Jer and asked him if we could just move in here! Treadmill for me, bed for Mol...and lots of great coffee start the day. Molly enjoys the fabulous breakfast and we head over to P&G. The schedule is that we get together with athletes from Hamilton County Ohio and P&G employees and we all play games together. We rotate through stations of Wii bowling, BBall, Boccee and golf putting. Mol teams up with her pal Adam and theyhave a ball. I play, cheer and take pictures. Robin from SOI is kind of the coach of the day, and it is a great fit because she coached women's basketball at Florida. The board meeting takes a lunch break and the members come down and join in with the athletes. Molly beats Bart in bocce and shoots bballs with Sam Perkins. Fun! We get goody bags and hardy goodbyes and we head back to the hotel. Adam told Molly she had to eat Graeters icecream, in fact she couldn't leave Cinci without eating it. So we walk down town and she gets a big cup...and she loved it. We are picked up in our car and dropped in Brighton at about 8pm. Oh gosh I had another wonderful time and hope we can continue to work with P&G, I am feeling blessed.

Adam amd Molly

she beats Adam

Harvard Prof. and Board member

Bart challenges Molly, she won!

me and some of the wonderful board members

Bart and Molly

Congresswoman Na of Korea

Sam Perkins and me (I'm the shorter one!)

Kerry,Janet Fletcher and Molly

Mark of P&G

Graeters of Cincinnati

our favourite company!