4:40 a.m. and I'm wide awake

I am really tired, yawning a bit, but I have to jolt myself back into "real" time. Chicago time, central time that is. I've been through so many time changes in the past 12 days that I don't really know one from the other right now. It does feel a lot like Copenhagen time, which is 7 hours ahead of central time, so it feels like 11:40 a.m. to my body.

I got home last night and I swear the flight from Heathrow was the longest 7 hours, which turned into more like 8 to 8.5 hours. They lost one of my bags. Of course it was the one with all the souvineers in it and Doug kept saying "what did you get me?"
The boys are at the age where it is so hard to buy souvineers for. A tee-shirt is always good, but when the price gets converted to US dollars, paying $50ish for a tee-shirt is rediculous.

Well I'm cutting this post short. I seem really hungry or thirsty and I'm going to try to head back to bed to get back to the regular time things.

I'll update on the trip in the near future. Until then, please cross your fingers that my bag arrives today!

Hello from Copenhagen

A quick hello from Copenhagen. It is 12:45 pm here and barely 5:45 am on the 19th in the US. We, my mom and I are nearly ready to head to the cruise ship. We got in on time and were exhausted. We did visit the trendy shopping spot Strøget. Unfortunately all the stores were closed. Things I have noticed close early here. I'm most impressed by all the bicycles and that it is pretty clean here. All the taxi's I've seen are Mercedes. Shocking to me, nothing like that in the least bit in Chicago. The airport was so Ikeaesque. Now there's a new word for you. The keyboard on this computer is also a bit different. Where the apostrophe is, is the ø.

I think I should end this as we are probably looking for a short jaunt (maybe) then grab our luggage out of holding, grab a taxi and head for the cruise.

BTW - the new fashion accessory is summer scarves! I'm on the lookout.

Bon Voyage

In less than 24 hours I'll be leaving for my trip to anywhere in the world. You may remember that 3 years ago my mom gave me a wonderful Christmas present. She gave my sister and I a trip to anywhere in the world. They could be together or seperate. Well They are seperate, my sister went to Banff, Canada. I'm going on a Northern European/Russian cruise.


Not only will I get to see 7 magnificent cities, I'll get to meet my good friend Susanna. We've been online friends for quite a while now. We met at 2Peas and connected with a bunch of other ladies whose goal was to have pages published in scrapbook magazines. I've met a bunch of great people this way who I feel have all become best friends to me.

So I'm 99% sure that I won't be updating the blog until I get back. Then, I'll have a ton of pictures and stories to tell.

Until then...bon voyage!

the Garage Sale!

We decided to take a garage sale working break most of the day yesterday and it felt good. Today on the other hand was garage sale mania. I had a meeting at work for 4 hours and decided to take the train versus driving. The price of gas man! So anyway I woke up not feeling so hot but Don was up and outside getting things started for the garage sale. We decided to have it for 3 days and start on Thursday. Garage salers know...good sales start on Thursday.

We didn't advertise in the local paper. We didn't even get the listing up on the local Craig's List. We just used some good old fashioned neon poster board and about 6 stakes. We've always had great luck with my trusty signs.

Well Don practically ran the garage sale himself today. Brian was around and Brian's girlfriend Liz helped a lot. She even brought homemade cookies! At one point Don said people were parked 7 houses down the street and on both sides. The old guy who lives next door was out watching almost all day. Don said Al was sitting there in amazement because he'd never seen that many people at a garage sale.

Well as I promised I said I'd post a couple pictures.
Good news is...we've cleared tables. We started with 13 tables and Don says there are some empty now. They'll be full again tomorrow because there was some stuff that was never priced and put out. Better news...I've got spending money for my vacation next week ;)

It's only the first week of vacation...

and I'm lost on the day and date already. I've had to sit and think ok, it's Tuesday. I have plans on Thursday. It's not Wednesday. I guess I've been so busy getting up and going to class the past 3 summers that I really haven't had this problem.

Ok so we're working on this garage sale. Can I tell you, if you're close you NEED to come by and buy something. As of now we have 13...YES 13 tables of stuff. Saturday we started with stuff that was cluttering the main part of the garage and I did a whole table of adult clothing. Sunday Don started digging through deeper recesses of the garage. Yesterday the garage was totally cleaned out. Today we opened up the shed. We had 3 large rubbermaid bins full of older kids clothes and 2 storage boxes of little kids clothes. Can you believe I found 3-6 month old clothes in the bottom of a box??? My kids are 18 and 16 years old! We also dug through about 5 large rubbermaid bins and a toy chest full of toys. You know the toys they don't make anymore and you hate to part with? Well we kept the Thomas the Tank Engine stuff, the Darda track, the Lincoln Logs and army men, the Tinker Toys, Potato heads, Lite Brite, the train track with the mountain and the fisher price pirates with ship and cannons and stuff. Heaven help me that I'd better have grandsons to pass this stuff on to.

Doug cleaned out the sports bin and got rid of probably 15-20 soccer/basketball/volleyball/footballs. You know my kids are athletic and he kept every baseball bat, and adult glove. He also kept a few of each of those balls listed above too. I didn't get rid of the roller blades or wrist guards (see previous post) or my tennis racquets.

My list over things to do before I leave on the 17th is ever growning. I have errands I keep putting off. I skipped Doug's softball game. I did stop to read for about 45 minutes before starting the shed detail and that felt good. Today was absolutely beautiful and I've been wanting to sit outside and read in the shady backyard where just bits of sun splash over you when the breeze blows. Last year that didn't happen because of the cicadas. So today I stopped and took a bit of time for me.

Well I need to get ready and hang up some laundry. I guess I can manage one load a day. Literally I've been outside of the house for 80% of my day. Feels good with the weather being so nice and I know I'm getting one major job accomplished. It really does feel pretty good to purge.

So if I get my errands done tomorrow, I think I might go through some of my scrapbook paper and the games in Brian's closet. I knew when I moved into my smaller house that I needed to clean out and purge. My friend Ursula Page is really great at getting rid of stuff and purging.

So I'll try to update tomorrow with a picture or two of all the stuff I've got out on tables for sale.

Garage Sale anyone??

That's been one of the first things to accomplish on my Summer To Do list.
I create a list at the beginning of each summer of things I want to accomplish. Sometimes I carry things over from the previous summer's list and there are times that I do things that aren't on the list so I add them to the bottom to see how much I did or didn't actually accomplish over the summer vacation.

This is my To Do List as it stands right now.

2008 To Do List

1. go on vacation
2. make jelly
3. read books
4. scrapbook
5. finish Christmas journal
6. back up all photos onto dvd
7. finish altered puzzle pieces
8. work on Oprah book
9. finish knitting sweater
10. file and organize paper work
11. have garage sale
12. put stuff on ebay
13. alter and create photo cubes with cubes
14. finish altering 2 more H’s
15. find a shelf and put it up over couch for H display
16. clean out the top of Brian’s closet
17. learn to roller blade
18. make “believe” book
19. exercise more
20. remove wallpaper and paint kitchen
21. move old stove out and new stove in
22. make mom’s scarf
23. find knitting pattern for boys’ hats
24. visit farmer’s market more often
25. use chalk/pastels to color floral drawing
26. update the new phone book

Ther are some fun things, some things that are mandatory and somethings I keep moving on from year to year. I think learn to roller blade has been a carry over for 3 years and make jelly for 2. Oh the Oprah book has been on there for a while as well. Some can be done in combination like read more/vacation/knit mom's scarf. I plan on taking my books and knitting on my vacation. The flight to England will give me good uninterupted time as will the sea days on the cruise.

I doubt the wallpaper/paint job will get done because Don's unemployed and that's just extra money we don't have right now. Hopefully the guys can surprise me by moving out the old stove while I'm on vacation.

I should just get some dvds and back up one per day. I have started my scrapbook more yesterday I did a page. Boy I'm out of the loop on this because it took me hours to finish this simple page.



Credits here

Other than that, nothing big and exciting happening since I started summer vacation on Friday. Just looking forward to getting out, doing things, and spending time with friends.

1 freaking hour!!! I'm so EXCITED!!!

Everything is packed. 99% of all my stuff is moved into my new room! We have ONE hour until SUMMER VACATION!!

Yesterday Don came and helped me move stuff and finish packing up. He took the train in and we rode home together. Actually he was not only industrious with helping me, he walked to the train and walked to the school. Those were both about 30 minute walks too.

Today Don got roped into coming on the zoo field trip with me and my class. It was stormy last night and got really hot and humid today. We both have some sunburn too. The kids seemed to enjoy it.

I actually today something that has never happened to me. We lost a kid. Well actually I think he lost us. We were lined up, all accounted for and we literally walked out of the underground dolphin viewing center and around a corner to go eat lunch. I must be a really BAD teacher but the kids and I didn't notice that the boy was missing for almost 10 minutes. We back tracked, found another teacher and she told me that a third teacher had my kid. We rode the bus with his class so I knew eventually we'd catch up. We never did find the other teacher but did find him at the bus line. I really didn't worry after I knew he was safe and ok.

What is funny is what some of the kids told Don as to what should be this boy's punishment. One girl who is so nice, honest, and a cutie tells Don that this boy should get yelled at 8 times and have a detention after school today. Wouldn't that be a nice for me to sit through on the next to last day.

I'm so glad that school is going to be over. I'm overly excited!!! Can I just tell you that I'm EXCITED!!!! This is my first summer in 3 years that I DON'T have classes to stress over.

Life calls for ice cream!

That's right, ice cream. Tonight I'm splitting a container of Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough with Don. Although today was stressful enough I easily could have eaten a whole pint myself. Do you do that, binge on some sort of food when your life is stressed and crazy busy? I'm horrible about it. I also do it when I'm bored and God knows that does happen. For someone who's overly busy, I do get bored.

I have 4 more days until the class has to be 100% packed and until the end of school.
Today was the roller skating party and I hope we never go back. Kids wouldn't listen, didn't understand things, were dropping food all over the floor and not cleaning it up. I swear this particular field trip gets harder each year. I do have to say I think it wore them out because I actually called Don on my cell phone, on the bus on the way back, and he said you're on the bus, with kids?

After we got back we chilled with a bit of a read aloud. One of my end of the year stories is You're a Brave Man Julius Zimmerman A great book because it starts with the boy starting his own summer vacation, goes to intense summer language school, starts a baby sitting job and have many other situations arise. Definately not my all time favorite read aloud but I'll save that for another day.

There were other situations come up today with my own child, but that is too long and too drawn out to put into this blog. Let's just say, if the field trip wasn't enough to drive me to the ice cream, my child did!

I have some scrapbook pages I need to work on but I have to make it through the week. Tomorrow is the ice cream sundae party I used as an incentive for the kids to really learn their multiplication tables. Believe me, I owe at least 40 scoops of ice cream. Lots of sauce, candy, sprinkles and about 18 cherries. Had to buy 2 of the big gallons of ice cream.

Ok, the ice cream is gone and I feel my pillow calling my name. Have a good week!