Nineteen... Nineteeen..... Nineteen Eighty-Five

I have to admit I love that song. But, the reason it's in the title is it's the theme of Way Back Wednesday this week. Brought to us as always by the lovely, talented and tipsy Kept Woman.

When thinking about this theme I realize that I actually still have some fashion items from 1985 in my closet. They all have sentimental value... Really... stop laughing..

First, I bring to you the red leather skirt.

Kept, first, because my beloved Nana bought it for me for Christmas despite my mother's protests. And because I have a fantasy of one day fitting back in it and shaking my ass on Whitesnake's car.

Next, I bring to you the Limited jacket. This is circa 1983.

I don't really know why I've kept it except that I remember begging for it and promising my mom it was the only jacket I would ever ask for again... I actually wear it around the house when the Man has the AC on in winter. It's nice and soft and old enough I don't mind it getting messed up when I'm cleaning or whatever.

Finally, what we've all been waiting for BIG EARRINGS (I never fully managed to acheive the big hair thing so I stuck w/ big jewelry):

Did you play?

My week

Well, it's been almost a week since I've posted! Not that much of interest to write about really. Kind of back to the same old routine this week.

Saturday we took the kids to ride the Cedar Rock Railroad . Just a little kiddie train going thru a park. We'd planned a picnic, but got chased into the car by bees. After that we had to come home and clean the car....

Sunday had the cub scout Bicycle Rodeo. The kids had fun. Two hours was waaay to long for me out in that wind, though!

Got a little worried about the garden since it nearly froze on Thursday night. But, everything survived. Still have more stuff to plant but I'll have to wait until it's less rainy. Mark set up a wire cage for a compost pile, so we'll see how that goes. I guess we won't really know for a few months. I'm not sure I can bring myself to put actual food waste (like lettuce, etc) in there. We'll see. It will def. be a good spot for all the yard clippings and such.

Here's hoping for a more exciting week.

How to make the raised beds

I've had a couple of questions on how we made the raised beds for my garden, so I thought I'd post how Mark made ours.

Get four 8-foot long boards at Lowe's, Home Depot, whatever. If you have a few old boards laying around in the yard you can use those. I think the ones we used are about a foot wide, but don't quote me on that. You can get longer if you want a bigger bed, but that was as big as we can manage in our yard. The bed we built has room for 4 tomato plants and a cucumber plant in the back row, probably 2 more rows of short plants. They are a bit crowded, but it cuts down on weeds.

While you are there, get some of those metal board corner connector things. I'm sure what they are called, but someone who works there can probably help you find them.

Cut two of the boards in half. I think they will do this for you at Home Depot as they always offer to cut boards for me. But, since we have a couple of fancy saws, hubby did it himself. Use the connectors to connect two long boards to two short boards, making a rectangle. Do the same with the second set of boards, then put it on top of the first and use the straight connectors to make it stay steady. I think you can do this all with nails, but those fancy connector things just make you feel like a real carpenter, ya know?

Fill the beds with lots and lots of dirt. Preferably good dirt, but whatever you can get is fine. Like 5,000 wheelbarrows full or so should do it. Then, you are done.

Oh, and don't buy the treated lumber. It looks pretty, but can leach stuff into the soil and contaminate your veggies. We used plain old pine. I'll post a picture of the sandbox later to show you what color the veggie box will be in a couple of years.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a yard...

(Hoping blogger will let me post these today..)

First, here's the "after" on the yard:

I realize that there is still some dirt around the edges. Hopefully it is filling in the gaps between squares of sod and helping the grass grow together smoothly and all that. The new flower bed is in the back left corner.

Here's my garden box. I went out and bought some stuff for it today and we'll probably plant it after Sunshine gets home from school.

And, while blogger is letting me post photos, here are some of our other Spring Break activities.

In front of the state Capitol:

After seeing Shamu:

No, he's not crying b/c he's wet. He's crying b/c we made him look at me instead of the whales for 10 seconds.

Flamingos and ducks:

At the Magic Time Machine:

What is up w/ my laundry?

Now, last week was Spring Break. Although we were working like crazy in the yard 1/2 of it, I did 2-3 loads, as usual, every day. Then, on Wednesday, the hubby helped me push a whopping 6 loads thru to be sure we had everything to pack for San Antonio.

We get back Fri. night, I do 3 loads on Sat, 2 on Sunday. Soo, I should be "all caught up", right? NOOOOOOO. My downstairs laundry sorter is overflowing and the kids laundry hamper upstairs is full. What do these guys do? Just periodically empty their dresser drawers into the laundry hamper.

Grrrrrr....

Whew!

The yard is done! DONE! The huge dirt pile shown below is gone, along w/ two pallets of grass. Yippeee! In addition to now having a front yard full of actual grass (as opposed to leaves and dirt) we also have a new garden box in back and a corner flower bed in the front. Can't wait to plant them - I'll have to wait for the blisters on my hands to go away first, though.

I will post pictures of all our hard work later, but blogger hates me tonight so it'll have to wait.

For our break this afternoone we went to see Roving Mars at the IMAX and I highly recommend it. While we all have seen the news reports, the movie is fascinating and the photos of Mars blown up on the IMAX screen were excellent!

Then we headed out to the state capitol b/c Sunshine has been asking for at least a year to go there and while we live about 20 min. away and pass by it on the highway at least twice a week neither of my kids have actually been inside. We had a picnic on the lawn. Well, really the boys did. Hubby and I ate before we left home. Again, I have a few photos to share, but blogger sucks tonight so I'm off to take a hot bath and fold laundry.

Well, it's not Disneyland

But I think the kids had fun today anyway. Yes, that is a giant dirt pile in front of our house. We've been needing to get the grass out there growing again and somehow decided we'd do it ourselves since the hubby would be home more than usual during Spring Break (he's technically on vacation, but is working parts of a few days).

We got about 80 percent of that moved around the yard and spread out or into a garden bed in the back today. AND got about 1/3 of the two pallets of grass we got laid out today. The goal for tomorrow is to finish it in the morning and then go to an IMAX movie and a quickie tour of the state Capitol building tomorrow. Despite living less than 30 min. from it and driving past it twice a week on the way to church, my children have never been in it. They always ask, so we're going.

It may not sound as exciting as their classmates trips to Disney, Colorado and Florida, but for cheap fun you really can't beat a huge pile of dirt.

Lovely, just lovely

Our plans for Spring Break this year include hanging out around here getting stuff done, hubby working some the first part of the week, then heading down to San Antonio Thursday, spending the night and hitting Sea World on Friday.

This week we have *beautiful* weather predicted all week long. not too hot after tomorrow, cloudy but no rain. Right up until FRIDAY. Yes, the day we are supposed to have our big Spring Break outing it is going to rain.

I guess we'll alter our plans a bit and go as early as we can Thursday and spend Thursday there instead, but I really think we'd have more fun if we took our time getting down there, bummed around the river walk and El Mercado on Thursday, ate a nice dinner then got up bright and early to hit the big SW. Best laid plans and all.

Sorry, excuse the griping. Just had to whine to someone.

Had a great dinner out w/ the kids tonight, then realized that we'd probably come out ahead if we'd just forked over for the sitter. Since when does a 6-year-old eat an adult plate, then scavenge food off of MY plate? All this after eating fried calamari for an appetizer. If I could eat that much and be half as skinny as Sunshine I sure would, though. Mmmmmmm. That'd be the life. Mmmmmmm.

Like Yesterday's Paper

Time for Stuff Portrait Friday, brought to us once again by the lovely Kristine. This week she wants to see our junk - trash can, junk drawer and trunk.

First, my trash can:

We def. have too much stuff in that pantry!

Now, my junk drawer:

So much paper in there - I think what I really need is a new filing cabinet and eliminate the junk drawer.

And my trunk:

Tada. I have to admit here that I got it in between loads. I cleaned it out so the mulch I picked up this morning wouldn't get all our precious trash, um, er, I mean kids art projects.

Did you play?

Career Ambitions

Since I can't find my camera to post pics of any of the exciting things we did this weekend I thought I'd write about my career plans. As many of you know, I am currently just a SAH mom. And while that sounds all fine and dandy and brings up images of eating bonbons while watching Oprah, rest assured that what it really means is I work like a dog for no pay, get a "break" once a week or so and got up three times to see what the little guy is screaming about just while I was writing that sentence.

I love it, though. : )

In addition to being Mom, I also do some volunteer work, with both my church and the PTA. I love my church work and it's not too taxing. All I'll say about PTA is if you are ever asked to be on the PTA board, run screaming from the room and change your name and phone number. Yet, I think PTA is what is going to help me out when I finally get around to getting a paying job.

Believe it or not, I'm a writer by trade. I wrote for a couple of newspapers, wrote a book on the history of a children's home and wrote air quality crap for the state of Texas, among other things. The plan when I quit to SAH was to do some freelance, but it is very hard to do freelance work with no childcare help and an infant who screams nonstop. So, I kinda just quit trying. One day I may try that again, but most likely I'll just go back full or parttime for another company.

So, Friday I get an email asking if anyone can attend a grant writing workshop for PTA members and help write grants for our school in the future. YES, YES, finally something to do for the school that doesn't make me want to cry. Yippeee! And I know that there always seems to be some demand for grant writers with experience. So, maybe, just maybe, it won't be so hard to find a job when I've been out of the workforce 10 or more years after all.

The point of all this is that 1. I probably won't post tomorrow b/c I'll be at the workshop during my "free" time and 2. I'll actually be doing something I'm excited about tomorrow. (not that the MNO wasn't great, but you know what I mean.) 3. I want to publicly thank my husband for taking an hour off of work to cart kids around while I'm at the workshop.

Now I'm off to clean up the mess that was made while I posted that.

ABCs of me

Got this from MOAC and figured it was appropriate that I post it while waiting for her to pick me up for the sorely needed mom's night out. (and figured it was about time I updated. I just can't seem to get in the swing of things this week!)

A is for Age - 29 for the, um, 7th time, I think...
B is for Books - I'll read anything.
C is for Career - BTDT, Mommy for now
D is for Dad's name - Willie
E is for Essential Item to Bring to a Party - Music
F is for Favorite Song(s) of the Moment - 1985 by Bowling for Soup
G is for Goof Off Thing To Do - Write on my blog. : )
H is for Hometown - Midland, TX
I is for Instrument You Play - Piano
J is for Jam or Jelly You Like - Plum
K is for Kids - I have two - 3 and 6, both boys
L is for Living Arrangement - In a house w/ dh and the 2 boys
M is for Mom's Name - Gloria
N is for Names of Best Friends - Shelley and Beth
O is for Overnight Hospital Stays - 2 for delivering kiddos and one when I had my gallbladder out.
P is for Phobias - can't think of any..
Q is for Quote You Like - "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." --Abraham Lincoln
R is for Relationship That Lasted the Longest - 12 years and counting
S is for Siblings - One brother
T is for Texas, ever been? - Yes, lived here most of my life
U is for Unique Trait - warped sense of humor?
V is for Vegetable You Love - Okra
W is for Worst Trait - Tendency to overanalyze
X is for X-rays you've had - teeth, chest.
Y is for Yummy Food You Make - Chicken and dumplings, homemade pizza, chocolate pie.
Z is for Zodiac Sign - Cancer