Male Bonding

I walked in on Joe and Aaron watching a movie the other night. Aren't they cute?

I submitted this pic to the local paper for father/son photos for father's day.

Finally the end of the month is in sight!

What a month! College classes are out for the next week (who ever came up with the new schedule where we have a week between regular session and summer school.....it sucks!) but I am working on updating my syllabus for my summer course and then setting up my website for the 8 week session.
We renewed our foster care license this month which meant filling out paperwork, re-do finger prints, discovering that the state of Missouri lost our original file and now we have to provide all of those copies too......cleaning the house for the inspection, etc.
I am hoping for a break in June. I am working this June for the first time in 5 years. It is a huge adjustment to go from a 10 month contract to a 12 month contract. I dislike working in July more than June but it seems weird to not be preparing to shut down for several weeks and regroup.

Difficult week

In Loving memory

Gary L. Crouch

Feb. 18, 1955 - May 9, 2009

My Uncle Gary was killed in a motorcycle accident on Saturday. Today was the memorial service and graveside service. One of my other uncles said it was fitting that it poured rain because my Uncle Gary was always trying to dunk someone in the lake.

I went to college in Springfield where my Aunt and Uncle live. My Uncle always took care of any car trouble (or any other trouble for that matter) that I had. I am so lucky to have such a large and caring family. My mother is the oldest of nine children. My Uncle Gary was married to the fifth sister in the family. Please keep my Aunt and my two cousins in your prayers as they deal with this loss.

Porch & Patio Party

Grits & Glamour is having a Porch and Patio Party today! I finally got my front porch cleaned off this morning (it just started raining again while I was taking photos). This is the view of our front porch from the street. Please excuse the tall grass, it has been raining here for 2 weeks! I got a few plants out in between rain but nothing major has been accomplished. We started painting the trim work a dark green and have painted the larger portions a golden color. You can't see it very well, but we added an Uppercase Living http://expressyourself.uppercaseliving.net "Welcome" above the house number on the porch.

We put a small pond in front of the porch for Father's Day last year. It has a fountain and a pot with a waterfall. It also provides sushi for the local cat and racoon population.....no more $12 pretend koi for us! The window baskets on the ironwork will get filled with moss rose as soon as I can located new coconut liners for them.

This is the new "wicker" love seat and end table we purchased for Mother's and Father's day this year. We have a cushion but since it is raining, we haven't brought it out. I have a small bakers rack that I fill with bird houses and plants. The blue bird house on it was made by my grandfather when I was a kid. I'm still thinking about what to put on the table. Since there is no cover on the porch it makes choices limited.

Here is a side view of the child size chairs our son uses. I will probably put some of my collection of old garden cans out here in a few days.

This is a poor old chair by the front door that I put a basket of flowers in. Hopefully once it stops raining, my flowers will take off and cover the basket. Please excuse the spot at the base of the entry way, we are in the process of replacing some rotted wood.

Give away at the lettered cottage

Check out this post at the Lettered Cottage http://theletteredcottage.blogspot.com/2009/05/coastline-contest.html
And check out http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7044601

A Rain Barrel

I have been reading about ways to conserve and save money and we decided to give a rain barrel a try. We set up a space in our back yard and used a couple of cinder blocks that were hanging out in our basement to raise the barrel off the ground.

My husband brought home a huge barrel from work. It has two small openings on the top, one we left the original size to use an an overflow and the other we made larger to fit the down spout. He drilled a hole in the side for the spigot go in. The he covered the top with landscape cloth to keep those pesky mosquitoes from finding a new place to lay eggs. It was too dark to photograph the finished product when he finished so I will have show it off tomorrow. We will also see how well it works tomorrow with the forecasted rain.

New Porch Furniture

I got a new love seat and end table for the front porch today. We decided to get it for Mother's Day and Father's Day. These are made by Hampton Bay and made of resin wicker. As soon as it stops raining, we'll put it on the porch and I'll take some photos of the porch with the furniture and my flowers.

Whew!

It has been quite a week! I put together my "basket" for our Curves Relay for Life team and delivered it on Tuesday. I used an ivory Longaberger pie plate, a Longaberger small serving basket, a Longaberger entertaining cookbook, a Longaberger apron and a woven reflections longaberger bowl (see a theme here?). So glad to have that done and delivered.
We left Wednesday for a meeting for my work at the University of Missouri - did I mention that I work from home? Sometimes it's wonderful, sometimes not. Aaron and Joe went with me. We had fun at the hotel and even got Aaron to get into the pool just a little bit. We managed to squeeze in some shopping and found Aaron some great clothes in the next size up at a huge savings.
I'm hoping to post my kitchen photos for http://www.kellyskornerblog.com/2009/04/show-us-your-house-friday.html