Out with the Old

and In with the New

I had men all over the house today. Three were putting in my new windows. These men were speaking a foreign language - turns out it was polish. Call me prejudice or even racist, but I was thankful it wasn't Spanish.

I am most excited about my kitchen window. I went from 2 crank outs to one single huge window. When someone (usually me)was sitting on our deck under the window you had to be careful not to get up and bump your head on the crank out window. Not any more!



They didn't waste any time ripping out the old.





And now I have beautiful, energy efficient, with green no maintenance aluminum siding, windows.


As soon as they left the Sears guy pulls into my driveway with my new dishwasher.

Old and New

Kaylyn AnneMarie

Our little granddaughter is turning 5 - How can that be?
Kaylyn got her name from families middle names.
Kay - that's my middle name
Lyn - that is Grandma Terri's middle name and Stacy's
Anne - that would be Grandma Barb's middle name
Marie - opps - I forgot where that came from - I think a cousins

Kaylyn spent all day with us today.
We made pancakes for breakfast. (hers were better than mine)










While Papa was working out with his trainer Kaylyn and I visited Aunt Sharen at the S.E. Fire Dept.

Sitting in the drivers seat. (Firefighter Matt let her turn on the lights)


We took a tour of the station and Kaylyn loved the spiral staircase. We went up and down it.






She wanted her picture taken with the fireman. Matt was very sweet and posed for a picture with her. Turns out he went to school with Kaylyn's mother and has a girls who will be starting school with Kaylyn next year.

Aunt Sharen gave her that Moose she is clinging to - she loved it. She even took it to the movies with Papa. That was after we went to McDonald's for lunch.
We had a very fun, full day ending with the best parts - Presents for Kaylyn and hugs and kisses for Grandma Karen and Papa Down.

Softball has Started

Mike's traveling team always start their season with a trip the first weekend in May to Indy. This is Mike's 5th time and my first.
We take rt.47 down to catch 74 to avoid all the traffic construction in the city. I was amazed by all the windmills going up. WOW! There must have been 300. I was fascinated by them all moving.
About now I would post a picture, but I forgot the camer again. Though I did spend the whole weekend just looking at things I would take pictures of instead of HAVING to get a picture. Two of Mike's teammates even commented on me NOT taking any pictures.
We had dinner Friday night with Mike's sisters kid Bruce and his wife Monica. I was telling them about the windmills and she has a brother who is a "green" engineer and is involved with them in west Texas.

It rained all night Friday night and Mike got the call that all games would be pushed back on Saturday. Of course the first thing he does is turned the TV on and there doing the weather is a guy from Elgin. Randy attended Elgin High when I worked there and he went all through school and played baseball with Dup.
I get "The Star" paper and glance at the listings of the Contacts and there is a girl I worked with at the CN doing online marketing for the paper.
Small world!

Mike's team played 4 games on Saturday and won the first three easily. I think the guys just wore down the last game. His team did pick up some new young (50 yr olds) blood and they were so much fun to watch. Being in the crowd I got to hear other teams talk and they said that this year Mike's team should be the team to beat. I just smile, I think that every year!!!

The best part of the weekend happened Saturday night. This ballpark is surrounded by an abandoned golf course I know very sad. The good part is that there are golf signs everywhere. I was particularly interested in one that said Watch for Golfers beyond this point. It was hanging on the end of a fence in the parking lot. Mike parked the car with the back facing the sign all ready to fall into the trunk. :)
It was screwed on too tight to not make alot of fuss getting in down. Damn!
I took a walk down the cart path and found my next golf sign.

Mike's last game finished at 10:30pm so under cover of darkness this is what I got from my weekend in Indy.


I have signs in my golf garden from Illinois, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, and now Indiana.

Go Green

Every time you turned around on Thursday, the newspaper, the TV, even at the flower shop at Meijers, everybody says to go green. It is Earth day for pity sake.

That's what we did - I called Feldco (recommended by all the inspectors we know - wink, wink) and ordered new windows. We get a $1500 tax credit and I get new windows to wash. The windows we have now if they are not falling out of the frame they are falling apart.

It is no secret that I love to wash windows and cannot wait (even though it takes 4 to 6 weeks) to have the new windows installed. I'm getting 11 news windows to wash. Yipee!!!!!

Mower

It's been a year since I was released from my duties at the paper. I still have some duties here at home. I'm not sure when I considered myself the keeper of the yard, but I would spend my Friday's off riding around on Mike's tractor mowing.

Every Friday's, I would get my house work started and then get out and pick up sticks and mow the lawn, so Mike wouldn't have to worry about it over the weekend. I would put my ipod on and spend a mindless hour riding around the yard making sure I had straight lines that Roger Bossard would be proud of.

Now we both have every day off with plenty of time to do what we want. I still do all the planting and weeding of the flower beds, but my mowing duty has been turned back over to Mike.
Even though the weather in Chicago yesterday was 48, out in the burbs the temperature was 68 and sunny, a beautiful day to mow the lawns. Yes, I said lawns with a "s". Mike not only mowed our lawn, but with the neighbors still in FL he mowed theirs too. I admit I was a bit jealous.
Picking up the sticks










Mowing the neighbors side yard

Mary is Showered

The first of the wedding festivities was Friday night.
To say that I was excited would be more than true.
After the quilt show I got home got cleaned up and started to wrap the gifts, hoping that Mary will like them (You never can tell with homemade gifts). I bought cookies cutters to tie on the present with ribbon, but they were too sharp for the ribbon I had, so I head on over to Walgreens to buy some stronger stuff and see that the parking lot at the Sears Center is "not full". With this rebate thing going on, Mike and I decide to stop in and get a new dishwasher. OK I decided, but Mike was with me so he went too. 20 minutes later we have a new stainless steel dishwasher to be installed later in May.

Get home, wrap the gifts, grab the champagne, make sure I have the article that was in our paper with Mary's byline and head out the door with out my camera. NO pictures - what kind of Mother-in-law will I be. Michelle, Mary Ellen, and Nancy promised me some pictures.

I wasn't surprised by all the friends of Mary's that came.
I wasn't surprised by the good food and the array of drinks available.
I wasn't surprised by the awesome presents she opened.
I wasn't surprised by all the kind words that were said to and about Mary.

What I was surprised by was
The way I felt, when I realized that these presents were for Bryan too.
The fact that these girls were friends of Bryan's too.
The warm comments made to me about the great guy my Bryan is.
And just how emotional this summer is going to be for me.

Quilt show 2010

Sharen and I headed out to our annual trip to the Spring Quilt Show in Rosemont. We stopped and split breakfast. Does anyone else think that breakfast is the biggest meal served in restaurants?

We get there, get our tickets, and walk into the biggest, baddest quilt show we have ever been to. Our first trip down each isle took about 2 hours and 15 minutes to see everything.

We weren't really looking for anything in particular, just ideas, but that's when you finds things you must have. I bought a beautiful quilted blouse - I have a few parties to go to this summer. :)

When a booth with novelty chenille (I had to buy some) caught our eye we wander in and started talking with the ladies and they told us that this is the last year here in Rosemont.
NOOOOO!!!!!
They are moving the show to Cincinnati.

No wonder the place was so big and crowded. We decide to make one more sweep though it all and enjoy our last quilt show. Good thing because I found some cute buttons for a project I'm working on and Sharen bought a quilters license plate holder for the gal she works with.

It was a beautiful sunny but sad day for us as we left the Stephen Center for our 7th and last Quilt Show.
Maybe there is a road trip in our future.