Vacation

Three more days and I'm off on vacation! These days are moving very slowly, and then again the time seems to fly by. I keep telling myself I'm going to do some quick shopping after work, but the end of the day comes and I go home and do nothing! At least my house is in fairly good shape. Vacuumed carpet, swept floors, clean refrigerator. Those things are important when you leave on vacation . . . aren't they?

I had a quiet weekend at home. Went out Friday night with a friend to Davenport. We did some gambling (I didn't win) and had a nice supper. It was a nice evening. I was supposed to help with a breakfast at Catfish Festival but Bill told me Friday he had more than enough help so I could stay home if I wanted. I didn't argue with him! I stayed home. I got a lot of cleaning out of the way and did the usual -- scrapbooked. I thought I had so much done on the kids' books but am finding out that I've scrapbooked a lot of pictures in the past few years but barely started on their early lives! This could turn out to be a chore before the holidays get here!! It took me almost a year to do Bets and Karsten's wedding -- the book turned out great but it took me forever!!

Talked to my sister over the weekend. Mentioned that I hoped we could find a scrapbooking store when we're out in Estes Park so that I can get some local stickers, etc. of Colorado. When I was in Ames with Barb and Jim I found some really great paper and stickers for Jim's graduation pages (haven't started on those yet but have the stuff to do it!!!).

I think we're ready to go. I have four beautiful New York Strip steaks to take along. Barbie is providing lunch for us on Friday as we head west. I think we're having a grilled lunch, but it sounds good to me! She's letting me borrow her camera for the trip. I love my digital camera but the flash has decided not to work most of the time. I don't want to loose pictures that I take because of a malfunction in the camera, so I'm going to borrow Barb's. When I return I'll take the camera back and hope they will either give me another camera or put the price of that one toward another one. Maybe Jim can come home some weekend and we can go camera shopping. I don't want anything real complicated but something that I can use and be comfortable with. I have the one I have all figured out. I can take the memory stick out and develop pictures at the local drug store, I can scan my pictures into my computer -- let's hope that something can be done with it so that I can continue on with my picture taking career!!!

We've decided to spend one afternoon (??) at Black Hawk, CO. It's an old mining town brought back to life by casinos. They have an Isle of Capri casino there and I would like to see what it's like. Glee and her family were there a couple years ago and she said the town is interesting. Thought I might be able to get some comp from the casino and we might be able to get a nice meal out of them. We'll see! Whatever we decide I'm sure we'll have a good time. I'm really looking forward to being away from home for a few days.

I have a unemployment hearing this afternoon with an Administrative Judge from Des Moines. I requested this hearing rather than a telephone one. I have an employee that quit in January for no apparent reason and applied for unemployment. I have a problem with that. The hearing should be interesting. I've done this once before and it wasn't too bad. I have enough documentation on this project to break your arm when carrying it around. Fortunately I only have about a dozen papers to take with me for today. I'll let you know how we turn out!

Guess I'll drag out my suitcase tonight and start putting stuff together. Might find I need a few things I don't have on the list. Barb is going to try and get some sandals for me. She's very good at that. She's bought me my last pair of tennies (they fit, they look great) so we'll see if she was lucky and found something I can wear. She was also going to look for some capri pants for me. Guess I'll live if I have to wear jeans/slacks and shorts but capri's would be nice. Think I'm going to try and spend a weekend in Ankeny and do some serious shopping with my daughter this fall. I enjoy shopping with Barb -- even if she does shop at the little, bitty girl stores!!!

My clerk is off until Thursday and Friday of this week so I'm pulling double duty for the next couple of days. I gave Donna (my recpetionist) a break this morning and will cover the desk at noon. Must remember to stop at the bank and get some money before I head home for lunch. It's raining here right now so doesn't give me much ambition!! I best get on with some other projects I want finished before I leave.

I'm on my way . . . to COLORADO!!!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day! It's raining here in Dubuque this morning. It's warm out there too! I put the air on again when I got up. I'm such a wimp!

I hope all are having a nice day with their dad's or the father figure in their lives. I looked all through my pictures and couldn't find one of my dad that I've already scanned except for this one . . . . and as you can see it's from a wedding -- my sister's to be specific!

It was always hard to get Dad to smile for a picture. It wasn't hard to get him to smile when you were talking to him or when you were spending time around him. As many years as it has been -- I still miss him. Some of my fondest memories are of family dinners where everyone got together, ate more than they needed, and after the meal Dad would tell stories. I'd heard some of them forever but enjoyed hearing them again and again. My Gram Baade was the same way -- must be because they were related. I enjoyed sitting there and listening to him tell stories on his mother, about his brother and the times when they were growing up. Memories!! Those were good times.

I'm proud of myself -- I got my DVD player hooked up in the spare room. Saturday morning I had my hair done (perm and cut and it really does feel and look better). I stopped at Shopko to look for a couple of things for vacation and talked to one of the clerks about hooking the DVD player up. He asked a few questions about the TV and found me the conventer(s) I needed. There is a way to hook up my DVD player and the VCR at the same time -- that I haven't figured out yet but I do have the DVD player running. That was a major accomplishment for me!!! I kept the other piece and am hoping when Jimmy comes home he can finish what I started. At least I can watch DVD's on the big screen now.

I don't know if I'm accomplishing anything with my pictures or not. Last week I took books apart to put them back together in chronicalogical order. I made more of a mess than what I started out with!! But I feel like I'm making some progress. Found some stuff at Michael's the other night to complete a couple of pages I've been fooling around with. I keep thinking I'll get more organized but it doesn't seem to be happening.

I went shopping Friday night after work and picked up some groceries for the weekend. I haven't been sleeping very well so Saturday morning I was up at 5:00 and did some scrapbooking and then went for my hair and shopping. This morning I managed to stay in bed until 6:00 but then got up and finished my kitchen and put some pork chops in the crockpot for dinner. They sure smell good! I'm hungry for brownies so think I'll probably put some in the oven the next trip into the kitchen.

Laundry waits . . . doesn't it always. I've started a list for vacation. Part of it's at work the other is laying here on my kitchen counter. I'm really anxious to go . . . I'm really looking forward to being away from Dubuque and doing something different for a change!! Barb gave us some ideas and I've been online checking out some places we've talked about. Fun!!

I better get at that laundry and more scrapbooking. Hope you all are having a great father's day.

Waiting for vacation . . .

The end of the month will soon be here and I'll be on my way to Estes Park, Colorado for some rest and relaxation! At least I hope it's R&R. I've been waiting to hear from the State of Iowa regarding an unemployment matter at work and finally got the word yesterday that the hearing will be on June 27th. That means we can leave for Colorado on June 30th! I'm excited!!

I had a productive weekend. Did the usual -- pushed some dust around, did some vacuuming and laundry. I decided it was time to put some organization to some of my scrapbooking albums -- bad idea! I had pictures all over the place. I'm on my way to getting the books completed for my children (birth - 5 years of age) but it's been a trial!! I have a lot of pages in each of their books but they aren't all birth - 5. A lot of Christmas from whenever, other holidays, graduations . . . anyway you get the picture. I took Barb's book apart for starters. I have birth (including her announcements from the local papers) to about 1year of age. I went digging into my vast boxes of pictures and came up with a whole bunch that have never even been scanned. I spent some time scanning pictures, putting them in order and actually did get a couple of pages completed. I'm now working on the year (or partial year) we lived in Arizona. I'm finding that I'm doing a lot of journaling on each page. I don't even know if Barbie knows the whole story of why we did some of the things we did. I have a lot of pictures of this little tyke so there will be plenty of pictures in her book. We took a lot as we were away from home and wanted our families to see the changes in our daughter at that time too. We only lived in Sierra Vista for 6 months, but she changed a lot during that time. We did get to do some traveling when we lived there so have pictures of that too. I am learning that scenery pictures are great, but without people in them they lose something! I must remember that on my trip west this summer! Put people in front of those big mountains!!

I had a very nice surprise Saturday afternoon when my friend Marilyn called and said she was in town. We spent the afternoon and early evening together. Did a lot of talking. We have some catching up to do. We went out for supper at one of my favorite places -- Olive Garden. I enjoyed the meal and company very much. We'll definitely have to do that again!

My daughter was in Estes Park this past week and called on Sunday to give me all the updates. Old Fall River Road is still not open to the public to get to the top of the mountain but she said it sounded like it should be by July 4th. Still snow in some of the turns, etc. That's an interesting trip up the mountain! Beautiful scenery. She told me about a couple of new places we should check out so wrote them down and will probably take her advice and stop in! I'm afraid we're going to run out of time and money before we run out of places we want to go to!! Well there's always next year!!!

I'm going to a reception at the Greyhound Park this afternoon. All the award winners are invited to an informal presentation and reception. The food is great! Lots of people to talk to. I wrote our grant and received $9,043 that I requested for needed Head Start materials. We actually requested a little over $11,000 but I was happy with the $9,000 we received. We're already talking about what we will request for next year. I'm going to go with a couple of the guys from the D.A.L.H. group as they also received an award. Should be a nice evening.

Sounds like a warm weekend coming up. I need to do a little shopping to prepare for the trip but other than that my plans are to finish what I started last weekend and get some of my pictures where they belong. This should be interesting!!!

I don't have a father to honor on Father's Day. I think about mine a lot. Especially when Father's Day arrives. I miss him. He was one of my best friends! What a great dad.

You all have a good weekend. Until next time . . . .

Ants!

I'm on a quest! I'm being invaded by ants! Those little black creatures that run all over the place at picnics! I have no clue where they are getting into my place but I'm finding them in the strangest places. The other night I was working on the computer in my spare bedroom and one ran right across the top of my desk! This afternoon when I opened my laptop there was one running across the keyboard! Pesky little creatures, aren't they?! I found some ant spray and sprayed the heck out of the patio door frame. I noticed since I sprayed that there's quite a few running around on the kitchen floor near the door, so maybe the stuff works and it's driving them crazy! At least I hope so. I don't know that they're going to do any harm to anything but I hate the fact that they're running around my house!!

Today we had a food distribution at the DALH building. We received over 20,000 pounds of food through the postal drive over Mother's Day. Lots and lots of canned goods, some paper products and assorted pop, drink mixes, etc. It wasn't a good weekend to have one. We hardly had 200 people come through. That's very unusual. We normally have 350 - 380 families that we serve. My guess would be -- it's the first of the month and the majority of our clients are on food stamps, and/or social security. The ones that came are the ones that plan ahead -- the ones that didn't show up got their food stamps and haven't planned ahead. If we look back on past giveaways I'm sure we'll find that our best ones (where we had the most people) were later in the month. People -- go figure! We'll have plenty for another one in late June or after the July 4th holiday. It's a fun group to work with so there's no hardship working. The hardship is getting up early on a Saturday morning when I like to sleep in. Oh well, I took a nap this afternoon. Some of us went out for breakfast when we were finished for the morning. So this is one of those days when I only have 2 meals. I had a big breakfast and just finished my supper. Leftovers are great when you're lazy!

The weather has been just beautiful. My spare bedroom gets a bit warm in the afternoons but it's not to warm that I can't work in there. I do have the ceiling fans running and up until late this afternoon there was a nice breeze coming from the east. My plans are to work on scrapbooking tomorrow morning before it gets too warm. But then I'll probably do some in the afternoon too.

I'm looking for a picture of my parents dog Muttley. My son just got a dog and he sure looks a lot like Muttley and I want to send a copy to him. He was so excited when they got the dog!

It's movie night at my place. I'm watching "National Treasure" with Nicholos Cage and after that is "Friday Night Lights." Two of my favorites. Lights is a violent movie but a good one. Barb and I went to it in Des Moines one weekend when I was there. Bought DVD's of both of them. I also bought a DVD player for my spare bedroom, but when I got it home I couldn't figure out how to hook it up. We were talking about that this morning and one of the guys said just get a 10-year old off the street, they can probably do it for you. We all agreed that our children are the ones that help us hook up our electronic equipment. I'm patiently waiting for either Jim or Barb to come home some weekend and help me out!!!

Supper dishes are also calling my name, so suppose I best get to them. Wouldn't want to give those ants anything to lunch on!!!

You all have a great weekend!!