Day 66 of Summer ‘11

Here we are with only 17 days left of summer vacation, boating at Shanango River Lake with my father-in-law and his girlfriend, Brenda.

 

We had an awesome time.

To view the photos in a slide show on flickr, click here.

Random: Jumping in…

Random: My Parents

The girls and I spent the morning and had lunch with my parents yesterday. It was great to hang out with them. We love you Mom and Dad. I grabbed a couple of shots with my phone as we were saying goodbye…

Here is one shot of Bethany swimming at the pool.

Living the dream!!
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Week 3 & 4 of Summer ‘11

To finish up week 3, we took in a trip to Pittsburgh Mills. I was surprised at how many of vacancies there were in the mall. It reminded me of the Butler Mall back in the day when it was obviously not doing well. It was still nice to wander around and see some of the specialty stores that you don’t see when shopping the big discount stores. This is one store we have never been to, a Sears Grand:

Brenda said it smelled like a Kmart, we all thought that was funny seeing as the stores merged a couple of years ago…
This week has been kind of dull, cleaning and laundry has been accomplished since our van(the gas guzzlin’ pig) is in for warranty repairs. We hope to get to the pool tomorrow, but that will only happen if we get the van back. We are going to Kennywood on Thursday and to the Rogers Flea Market on Friday. This weekend will probably consist of cleaning the basement some more and rearranging some stuff in the house, to prepare for the next phase in our renovations, plumbing for our 1st floor powder room and 2nd floor master bathroom. Next week we will be enjoying the pool while preparing for our next camping trip.

Week 2 of Summer '11

The second week of Summer Vacation 2011 was a busy one. As I mentioned before, we volunteered at our Church’s VBS. Brenda was a crew leader of preschoolers. Bless her heart, she has the patience of a saint.

I took photos. This is one of me and Dan.

The girls both participated, Bethany is showing interest in helping next year.

 

Above was from yesterday, as we waited for the pool to open. If you follow my face book feed, you know we spent five hours at the pool yesterday. It was exactly the doctor ordered. It was a fantastic week.
Thank You God!

Day 7 of Summer '11

Yesterday was day 7 of Summer Vacation 2011, into summer seven days and having a blast.

Yesterday was also day 1 of Vacation Bible School. Brenda is helping with the preschoolers and I am taking pictures. Here is shot of my better half, smiling at the camera, this is about the only time she will let me take her photograph, and it’s a great reminder of why I love this beautiful woman so much. Dang, I am one lucky man.

It was a great first day, a little hectic as usual, but a successful day of showing God’s love to these little ones…

I can’t express how much we miss the people of this church while we are on our Church Adventure. We still have been going once a month, but during the summer months everyone is on a hit and miss schedule, we literally had not seen some of these friends for months…it is good to catch up with them.

Day 6 of Summer ‘11 (Happy Father’s Day)

Happy Father’s Day a day late. I hope everyone had a wonderful day spent with loved ones. I know that I did. We spent the day moving Brenda’s brother-in-law, we all ate lunch at Family Tradition in Harrisville (the town where Brenda and I owned our first home), we brought home a gently used stand up freezer and range top microwave, and we had a couple of beers with Brenda’s aunt and uncle when we arrived home. They just returned from an awesome week spent up at Pymatuning, camping.

Brenda sent this to me yesterday morning.

Every year on Mother’s Day, I receive at least one phone call or text message wishing me a Happy Mother’s Day. We joke around a lot about our role reversal or the identity crisis that goes on all the time in our household and we are okay with it. This arrangement works well for our family and I would not change it for anything.

Thanks Brenda for working so hard, I love you and appreciate all that you do for us and ummm, Happy Father’s Day!!! ;-)

Day 5 of Summer ‘11

Yesterday, day 5 of summer vacation 2011,  Brenda completed our wills with some pretty awesome software, it’s called Quicken Will Maker Plus. Staples has it on sale, and it’s $20 cheaper then everywhere else.

After our will was complete, I groomed the dog. Here is a before and and after picture of Georgie.

Georgie is so patient while I groom him and I think he looks Marvelous…..if I don’t say so myself. The savings of doing it myself is contagious. Cha Ch'ing…$40 saved. What else can I do to save and help out our budget…

We ordered/upgraded our cell phones. Can I say that Verizon Wireless does not make me very happy. First a little history, I have always had a mid to higher end phone from them, so I could take photos and blog. Due to our budget and the fact the my blogging is only a hobby, I have never bought into the whole smart phone and required data plan. All of their smart phones require the full data plan which costs $30 a month, that’s 360 dollars a year that our budget just won’t allow for. Two years ago when we upgraded the choices of feature phones, or not so smart phones were dwindling and now it is absolutely pathetic. They do offer texting phones like the Pantech Crux, LG Cosmos, Samsung Intensity, LG Octane and the Pantech Jest. These all seem like decent phones for messaging and a few of them even have the higher end cameras in them. But none of them have the auto focusing lens package that the original LG enV and the LG enV touch had. This autofocus feature is what sold me on both of these phones. They take phenomenal photos, many of the still shots on this very blog have been taken with these phones. One of the days this week I stopped at the Corporate Verizon Wireless store and asked a gentleman named Bryan (Bethany was so intrigued we had the same names and that they were spelled the same.) I asked if they had any feature phones I could upgrade to without incurring the large data plan. As I showed him my worn enV touch, he kind of grinned and said “that’s going to be hard.” He continued to walk me over to the LG Octane which is the enV touch and enV 3’s successor. I explained that I really wanted the autofocus feature, he stopped mid way through his sentence and asked “Have you looked at a Sharp Kin Two m?” This phone rang a bell in my mind, only because online it didn't state that it required a data plan, but had an 8 megapixel camera, records HD video, had wi-fi, a touch screen and a full qwerty keyboard. I honestly thought there was a typo online, and also saw that the reviews were not completely favorable. Bryan gave me some of the history of this phone. It was released early last year as a smart phone. It did not sell well, maybe because it did not have the Android operating system, because you couldn't download any apps for it, or maybe it was requiring the full data plan. That is neither here nor there. Verizon pulled the phone off the shelf due to lack of sales and complaints galore, did a small reconfiguring of the os and re released it as a feature phone. The os of this phone looks entirely different from any other phone I have had, but the reviews as of late have improved. Needless to say, I ordered the Kin Two M and Brenda ordered the LG Cosmos, it may be a mistake, but I like taking a risk once in a while. If I absolutely hate it I can always revert to the two enVs that are still kicking. I plan of reviewing the phone, after I have it for a couple of weeks. Tune in to see if this risk was worth it…

We also had a family over for a small fire in our fire ring to just hang out around and make smore's on. It was a nice evening spent with friends.

Day 4 of Summer ‘11

I scrubbed the walls and ceilings of the family room this morning, I dusted and vacuumed as well. Sounds exciting, I know.  I cut the grass and we had club sandwiches for dinner. After dinner we dropped Bethany off at a birthday party and ventured off to the Home Depot for a couple of things. Not a very exciting day, but we got quite a bit accomplished. As I snapped this shot at Home Depot, I was waiting for Bridget to come out of the ladies restroom, and an employee herd the shutter sound of my phone and quickly asked me if she could help me with something and then looked at me like I may have been taking a picture of something top secret. I kind of chuckled as Bridget and I walked away. She took her job serious, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Day 3 of Summer ‘11

Yesterday the girls and I had a short list of scheduled cleaning tasks to get done. As soon as we finished we had several errands we needed to run, we had to fuel the gas guzzlin’ pig (aka minivan), retrieve sale items from Foodland, stop at the beer distributer, stop back home to drop of cold/sale items, then the girls waited patiently while I had my haircut. Lowe’s to pick up a few things, then Goodwill to donate some stuff we purged from our basement but not that bowling ball (that is just weird, they won’t accept bowling balls?), a stop at Walmart to pick up our bi weekly regulars, Kuhns as well for more sale items, and then finally Aldi’s for our bi weekly regulars.

They thought my hair cut was too short. That’s okay, it’s summer, it grows back in like three to four weeks, and shorter is cooler(temperature cooler). Ha! After having all of my hairs cut, we needed to stop at
It was a shopping marathon, and thanks to Aldi’s for their take and bake pizza’s, as our marathon lasted well into dinner time. All in all it was a busy day, but a good one. The girls and I had some fun times even while shopping.

1st Day of Summer Vacation 2011

We hoped to visit to the pool on this first day of summer vacation, but it’s too cold. I captured these as the girls were swinging outside this morning. How is everyone planning on spending the summer of 2011? We plan on doing some camping, swimming, bike riding, and probably starting the next phase of our renovations. Happy Summer Vacation to all!!