A couple of mid-day observations...

It is HOT in Texas.

I love my new mattress. Fred and I were going to buy a new mattress for ourselves for Christmas but with the fire and all we got a new one sooner. I LOVE IT! I sleep really well on it.

The purpose of foot boards on a bed is so that your comforter, blanket and sheets don't fall off the end during the night. This "rental" furniture came with a headboard and metal frame but no foot board. I am forever pulling up my comforter and blanket and it is a bit of a pain.

Plastic bottles of BBQ sauce do break on impact. I had one slip off a shelf as I was rearranging the pantry and I now have a distinctive BBQ smell in my pantry.

You can not light a candle if you have no matches. I did briefly think about lighting some paper on fire from the gas stove but I quickly rethought that and decided to not light a candle last night and bought matches at Kroger today. My new Yankee Macintosh Candle is now burning in the kitchen and hopefully will cover up the BBQ scent.

OK, off to open a package from Stampin Up. I FINALLY have stamp pads! Yahoo!

30 good hours!

I will just skip over yesterday morning and say that it was not good, I was not at my best and it is history now.

After lunch the boys and I headed out to run a bunch of errands. You would think that at some point the errands would end, but somehow the list continues. I gave the boys showers in the AM to realize that they had no bath mat and no bath rugs. Oops. We hit Bed Bath and Beyond with some coupons and took care of those items. I also wanted to replace a couple of Yankee Candles that were totalled and was totally bummed to find no Honeydew Melon, or Sunflower in the display. What I did find was that Yankee Candles are REALLY expensive these days. I quoted a price to the insurance adjuster that was low by about $6. Yikes! I did pick up a couple of jars but I felt bad about spending that much on wax. That is music to Fred's ears I'm sure. He has always said that candles should just be made of wadded up dollar bills.

After BB&B we ran into JoAnn's and a I bought a set of 48 markers. They are a pretty expensive set and I thankfully had a 40% off coupon so they were a little easier to handle. We then ran to the Oreck store to buy some really expensive vacuum bags and then on to IKEA. We haven't been there in weeks. Will was all about the meatballs and I was excited to buy dish scrub brushes, four shoe organizers, and a base for a chair that Will got just before the fire. The seat survived but the metal base was trashed. Now he is set. We picked up some wrapping paper for upcoming August birthdays and a few other little things. It all added up to just over $50 so we also earned ourselves another $10 gift certificate to use on a later purchase. No problem with that.

After IKEA we headed up to the hood to pick-up pal Drew and headed back home to bond. I prepared for bill paying night while the boys got wild and crazy on the Wii. Drew left around 9 and is set to come back on Thursday. YEAH! The hours can not pass quickly enough. We LOVE Drew!

Today started slowly and all of the sudden the errand list had grown again. I needed to go to the post office, Staples to fax, I needed to buy some office supplies, wanted to get to Hobby Lobby to FINALLY get a 12" trimmer, and maybe Target for back to school shopping. Well, we had a little detour to Gatti Town that was a total ripoff in my opinion but of course the boys LOVED it and Will wants to go back for his birthday. UGH! The buffet food was mediocre at best and the game room is totally separated from the eating space so I could not sit at a table and leisurely sip my beverage and read, I had to go be "in" the action. Not my thing... you probably guessed that. The boys had fun though and were VERY appreciative of the detour. Props to mom on that one!

We are home and I have yet to put the stuff away but I will. I stayed up WAY too late paying bills and sorting piles last night. I still need to file but it is at least manageable from here.

We got the first inventory sheets from Liberty Mutual yesterday. There are 53 pages with 15 - 20 items on a page. There are still LOTS of items not on the list so that is kinda scary. It will all work out in the end but the process is long, arduous and not at all fun! Good news is that I will be able to help people wade through in the future if I know anyone unfortunate enough to have this happen to them. I hope I never have to share the knowledge.

OK, I am off to put away the purchases of the day. Then I need to go see when library videos are due. I hope it's not tomorrow. I really want to sit at home all day in my pajamas. Well, at least until Drew gets here!

Another day, a few more boxes...

I continue to progress toward something. not sure what my exact goal is but it looks very different than what my house looks like now. I am almost ready to vacuum the carpet that I found in my "space" but the silly people that cleaned up my vacuum threw away all of the extra bags that Fred stuffed in the thing as they carted it away. Now I have to go to the Oreck store and spend money and time getting new bags. I sure hope that the vacuum actually works. They sent back a few things that they said powered up that we found to be non-functioning. We were all ready for family movie night on Saturday to find that the VCR didn't work. By the grace of God I had just bought one at Target thinking that none of them survived. Guess i was more right than I knew... scary huh?

So I have begun the arduous task of writing thank you notes. It is overwhelming and I hope I have a year like a new bride. Hopefully it will not take so long but i am sure I will miss someone or more than one someone and I am sorry for that. Adding to the thank you note challenge... i can not seem to find my addresses. I pulled them out of my nice leather Franklin Covey Planner before we trashed it and now can't seem to find them. I have not looked terribly hard. Add that to my list for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we get Fred's desk. FINALLY! and then he can have the fun of putting it all together when he returns for the weekend. When I say putting it together I do not mean assembling, they do that for us, he just gets to store his stuff and organize files. Oh fun! I have not done the best job with mine but it is a work in progress. Also on the list for tomorrow is a trip to the library. I am going in there with two of the three books we lost in the fire. I am tempted to turn in the third book, we have it, but it REEKS of smoke and they might not appreciate that so much. They can have the Nancy Drew Graphic Novel and the Star Wars book and we'll get some fresh books to challenge our little minds. I am concerned that the boys' brains may be turning to mush even as I type. Gotta get them back in the game before we head back to school in 4 WEEKS! Yikes! I think I'll go plan the rest of the summer's curriculum TONIGHT! See ya!

I missed it!

I missed my 1 year Blogiversary! I knew I started this thing last summer sometime, I thought it was July. It wasn't. The first post was on-line on June 23rd! I am really late! Yikes. I should have party favors or some sort of trivia game but that is too much work. How bout I just say thanks for checking in and come back often. From here my life can only get MORE exciting. No where to go but up right?

I continue to work on my office/dining room. I got about 10 boxes of Longaberger baskets sorted today. I am still missing some, not sure who has them, but will look forward to getting some of the bigger ones back soon. I bought a couple of big totes, and need to buy three more, to put them in. Fred is ALL about putting things into plastic totes. We lost a lot in the fire but much of our "stuff" in totes did better because it missed the water portion of the torture party. Unfortunately all of the totes that were in the house are trashed because the smoke stink becomes part of the make-up pretty quickly. Lucky for us Target has them on sale this week. Lucky me!

The boys' MP3 players are officially synced. I am excited that they bought the same brand that I had received for Christmas. I seem to have misplaced my charging/sync cord, in all of the chaos of the summer. I am now connected again! In addition to taking care of some technology issues I also had the opportunity to take the new mower out for a spin today. Fred took care of it last time and it needed to be taken care of. He had to get up and meet with the builder so I figured in sharing responsibility I ought to mow. My assessment... #1 The thing works well on small yard without hills (heard that line from my brother) #2 My yard is small but has just enough of a hill to be a pain. #3 I am terribly out of shape. #4 Texas is HOT! I got the front and side yards done and plan to get up early tomorrow and finish the back yard. It is in full shade early in the day so I may as well take advantage right?

Plan for the night is to get through three more boxes in my office then chill and try to finish the book I am reading. I thought I was going to read the whole thing in the car on the way home Thursday/Friday but an hour in I got a little car sick and had to stop. I kinda forgot I have that problem when I read and ride. It is not a good mix for me. Guess it isn't a big deal that I don't get the chance to ride and read very often.

Off to get busy!

Long but VERY productive day!

Well, the good news is that Fred had to meet the builder at the house at 8:00 AM and not me. They are slowly and methodically working their way through the 62 page scope of work approved by the insurance company. They have a line item in that thing to clean the hanging rod in the coat closet. Talk about details! Better him than me!

I took advantage of a few more minutes of sleep and eased my way into my day. Once I was up and moving the boys and I headed to Target to do some damage. Remember when a trip to Target cost an average of $100? The boys used to check to see how close or how far over I'd get to $100. My girlfriends in MI and I had a joke that a trip to Target ALWAYS cost $100. I wish I could get back to those days. The trip this morning cost just under $300! No wonder I did not indulge my children's' desire for Icee's. We came home and drank tap water! Not really, but we did come home and have cold meat sandwiches and chips for lunch.

In the afternoon I got busy on my boxes again and can now see above the chair rail in my office/dining room. I got to a point though that I could not go on until I purchased LOTS of photo storage boxes. Just before dinner I headed to Hobby Lobby, Staples and Best Buy with another trip to Target thrown in for good measure. I got some organizational pieces I needed. Document holders for the sale of house paperwork, a desk pad, Nic's new Kodak camera to replace his Flip Camera that he received for Christmas that was damaged in the fire. I also bought flour, sugar, storage totes, a desk lamp and air freshener. Oh yes, can't forget the DVD player and the movie "21."

So we have wrapped up family movie night, complete with popcorn with mix-ins. Not sure where the boys came up with that but it was tasty. Can popcorn with pretzels and M&M's be bad? Thanks go to Mamma for the M&M's. They were the perfect addition.

I need to work a few more minutes on my desk than head to bed. Tomorrow should be a less expensive day but Fred is headed to Mexico for the week so it will be bittersweet to have him run-off on us again. Gotta make the money to pay the bills. We have LOTS of bills this month. Please go to work honey!

Migraine is HISTORY!

Yeah! It took it's own sweet time but it is GONE! I got busy this afternoon going through soft goods and assessing how many sheet sets are still in tact. How many of our snuggle and watch TV blankets made it without a stink factor. I found a bunch of baby blankets that I hadn't seen in awhile and 7 afghans that we have received as gifts and hand-me-downs that have not seen the light of day for many years. Sadly, they had notes in their storage containers saying who made what and now the notes are gone. Guess I need to call and see if anyone has a good memory.

We made another expensive trip to Best Buy tonight. We are proud owners of a printer, two new MP3's for the boys and kid sized ear bugs, MP3 cases and speakers for my MP3 player that I hook up at my desk. I think we are on the verge of "wholeness" in the electronics's category. There are still MANY more categories to go but one getting checked off is a good start.

Nic and I did go to Kroger today and restock the fridge a bit. We got lunch meat and some ice cream and frozen pizza. I still have no flour or sugar or spices but I did buy brownie mix and eggs so i know what we'll be snacking on tomorrow. YUM!

Good news of the day... Will found his Webkinz Frog. I swear that guy made the trip to Indy with us but Will just found it under is bed. Strange. Good news though... Mom and Dad and Aunt Jen can now call off the search.

OK, off to kiss and tuck then probably dig into some craft boxes. I have tried to keep myself busy with other stuff, and there is plenty to keep busy with, but I need to assess and organize and see what needs replaced. The list grows...

migraine

I think I hit the wall today. After not enough sleep and not such a great diet and just a little stress I got a killer migraine. I have taken 4 Imitrex and am feeling a litte bit better. I am going electronic free and mellow for a bit. I'll tell the tales when I can.