Monday August 31st, the day the girls had to return to school. We worked on things all week getting prepared for this mornings departure and it went extremely well. Now I have to get back to the grind I feel like it has just been one long weekend. I have so much to do before the snow flies. Here is my list of madness for this week:

• Laundry, it is amazing how much it throws everything off when you have blankets and bed spreads to do.
• Home work, I am sure the teachers are going to dive right into the homework. That’s alright, the girls can handle it.
• Organizing our basement of our garage, so much of the stuff that is in it is stuff we moved here five years ago and have not touched since.
• We have orientation for the kiddos on Thursday so we will miss Praise Team practice.
• Friday we will probably go through the songs for Sunday via a recording of Thursday night.
• If I get done organizing the basement of the garage, I will move onto the main part of the garage.
• Saturday we my get back to work on the attic.
• Sunday we have Church and will probably be hanging out with family afterwords.

There it is. Really not a hard week, we just have to get back in the groove of school.

Bethany is more excited and Bridget is more anxious to go to the first day of school. Romy and I are missing the both of them. I cannot believe Bridget is in second grade and Bethany is in third. I can remember taking them both to preschool like it was just  yesterday. They are growing up way too fast. I pray they both have a wonderful first day. We are very blessed to have such wonderful little girls.

Brenda had a Familiarization Tour that she finished up this morning with some clients. We got up at 5:00 so she could have some good coffee (I made it) and get on her way. Iceberg showed up at their breakfast this morning. Her is the photo that was taken with her blackberry. She is a lucky duck… While I slaved away here at home. (Not really I changed over laundry and spent the rest of the morning online and drinking coffee) Some one has to do it……

This is what happens when my daughter gets a hold of my phone. I'm trying out our new zero gravity chairs for camping. I finally found a great deal at Dunhams this past weekend. $30 a chair, when they are usually $50 and up.

The kiddos being goofy.

Thanks to Dave and Annemarie here is a shot of me on the Zip Line at our Westminster Highlands 4th of July Spectacular. What a blast, I want to do it again sometime.

Okay it is Monday August 24th. We are officially at the 1 week countdown point for the girls first day of school.

• We a had a very relaxing weekend. Saturday we had Brenda’s Dad over for dinner and to watch the Steelers game.
• Sunday we had a great worship service and spent the afternoon with Brenda’s Mom and finished up with dinner at Bob Evans, which we will not do again. Not a good experience at all…..
• Today I will be trying to get all of the girls new clothes washed and watching my nephew in the afternoon. I also have to work on my youngest daughter’s computer, it crashed last week.
• Tomorrow there will be more laundry and maybe we will visit the pool in the afternoon.
• Wednesday the girls are going over to my parents house for a sleepover and we have Praise Team practice for our Pulpit Exchange Sunday this week.
• Thursday Cleaning house and probable more laundry.
• Friday I hope we can go to the pool for the last time this summer and just have an enjoyable day.

We have really had a great summer, lots of camping, swimming, and fellowship with great friends. My oldest daughter is really looking forward to getting back to school. My youngest is a bit anxious, she is in a new school this year with her big-sis. I am sure I will go through a little shock at first with how quiet the house will be and will miss the girls, but I have a long list of things that need done and have not been started because I knew there would be too many disruptions. So here’s to school, autumn and getting things done.

Thanks for visiting and have a wonderfully blessed week! :-)

Oh, the struggle I have with time management. I checked out twitter for about 8 months. Tried to use it, I guess I am not much for conversation. It seems like it works great for most. I have watched some awesome conversations via twitter. Maybe it would be better to do it via the phone, but my mobile plan is not one that offers unlimited txt messages. I found mostly I was wasting precious time watching and not contributing. Maybe it is a flaw in my personality or maybe I just don’t have much to offer to the twitterverse. It’s all good. There are still good resources there I will refer to occasionally, I just won’t be wasting as much time on it. I will still feed my blog to it and look at it every once in a while. Thanks Twitter but no thanks.

I snapped this while we were shopping for back to school yesterday. Go Steelers!!! I love this time of year.

Yesterday Bethany had a play date. Her friend spent a couple of hours with us at the pool then we played some board games at home after a storm blew through. We had a fun day. This is where they played while we waited for the pool to open.

I found this in the grass letting the dog out. Compare to the size of the blades of grass. It was the smallest web I have ever noticed.

I’ll go ahead and add some madness to this Monday. If you have watched my facebook statuses and twitter feed, we had a very busy weekend. A good one but a busy one.

• Friday My Dad and I helped my sister, Lisa move into her new home.
• Saturday we had a stuff to do around the house in the morning and a Summerfest to set up for in the afternoon. Our Church’s annual Summerfest was a blast great food, awesome fellowship and a wonderful concert put on by Chris Bray.
• Sunday we had Praise Team practice before Church and we scrambled out quickly after the worship service to go to a Pool/Pizza Party with some great friends we wish we could see more often. We had a great time.
• This morning I went to help my Sister’s boyfriend move some furniture from his u-haul truck to their new home. I actually fell climbing into the truck and really screwed up my shin. It hurts just to walk.
• The girls and I took my nephew Derek to our pool so Dave and Lisa could get some stuff done. We had a blast, the pool was so crowded it was not funny, but the water felt great.
• Tomorrow morning the girls and I will be helping my Dad pick up some donated wheel chairs for our Church’s Medical Lending Closet. After that I will need to get some house work done that I was not able to do today and won’t be able to do on
• Wednesday. Because we will have one of Bethany’s friends here for the day. We plan on going to the pool if the weather allows. It should be a fun day.
• Thursday I will be going through and cataloging all of the decent clothes the girls have for school so we have an idea what we need to get when we go back to school shopping on
• Saturday. I honestly am not looking forward to this at all. I’m sure it will be very busy. But it has to get done.
• Just so everyone knows, we only have 13 more days until school starts. It is a bitter sweet here. I love the time I get to spend with the girls during the summer, but I am tired of the constant fighting that seems to ensue at the the drop of hat. They are best of friends and the worst of enemies. I hope it is just a phase. The house in on the verge of getting really quiet.
• Sunday will be a lazy day after Church. We have no plans as of yet and actually I hope to keep it that way.

Thanks for visiting and have a blessed week!

Our friends Dale or Denise took this of me riding Bethany’s bike on our camping trip to Raccoon Creek State Park. We had a great time with the Smiths and the Klines that weekend. We hope to do it again sometime in the future. Thanks Dale for sending this along.

 

Bethany asked Brenda's Uncle Wayne if she could ride his motorcycle. Here she is on her first ride on a pretty nice motorcycle.

Another sky shot this morning. Summer has arrived here. 90 and very humid.

This the first time I've seen better parking spaces for fuel efficient cars.

Bridget on the horse in Greenville, PA. What can I say? There are not many photos being taken around here. No one wants to see the mountains of laundry I've been doing.

Bethany on the horse in Greenville, PA.

Here are Bridget and Romy on or last morning of Camping Trip #4 of 2009. Romy had a rough afternoon and evening. She kept dry heaving and just was not herself. We had her sleep in the crate and did not get sick through the night, but still seems a bit drained. Maybe she ate something or maybe she is just camped out. We had another wonderful trip and are hoping to have one more in the fall.

The girls riding a horse in the town of Greenville, PA.

Yesterday was a perfect day. We soaked up loads of sun. We visited the local Flea Market and did some organizing of the camper. It looked like a tornado had gone through. A few days in a tent on wheels will cause this. We call it a mid trip reddup. This morning as you can see we are on the trailing edge of a rain storm. I'm not sure what we are doing today? We may go to the infamous Drive In Church this morning.

Our $5 dollar Dicks Sporting Goods camp chairs are falling apart right before our eyes. So we may go to walmart or a sporting goods store to see what new ones will cost. We really can't complain about the chairs, they almost lasted two seasons. $20 for four chairs is dirt cheap. There is a festival here also, games for the kids, fair type foods, and music, and it is all free. I'm done rambling. My sister may come up today to stay a night with my nephew. It will be great to see her. We live a half hour away from eachother, why do we have to go an hour away to see eachother?