9 posts tagged “bailey”

I just wrote a long post about my week and now it's gone.  Internet Explorer just completely flaked out.

Short version:

1. I'm exhausted.  It's been a long week.  Not in a bad way, just a lot going on.
2. Charter sucks.  Fortunately it will soon be gone from our lives.  I don't care if they offer it free, after next week we will never be Charter customers again.
3. My Norwex party went well.  I'm getting free stuff!  If none of my guests end up booking a party, I might book a second one so I can get a free mop.  (I can't talk about having a mop without thinking about Michael Richards' character in UHF.  Yep, the Weird Al movie.  Rent it if you want a mindless laugh.)
4. For the first time in a month I'm feeling semi-caught up on school.  I think it's because I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  Just a couple more weeks, hopefully, until I get a break.
5. Bailey came home from camp yesterday.  She had fun.
6. The bathroom remodel is going well.  Brian had the place gutted as of last week and Monday-Wednesday, the plumber, electrician, and ductwork guy came & went.  Yesterday Dale Earnhardt, Jr. came and hung the sheetrock.  Who knew that was what he did during the week?  I wouldn't think he'd need a second job, but whatever.  :)  Some pictures:
   

   Kind of a before shot

Brian's on his way to pick me up from work, so in lieu of doing actual work while I wait (as if), here's my lowdown.

• My main floor bathroom has now been officially gutted.  I moved out yesterday* so every morning for the next month or so I'll be getting ready for work in the upstairs bathroom.  I'm going to miss listening to my beloved Fox & Friends from the kitchen TV, but being as it's temporary, I think I'll live.  Construction was supposed to start tomorrow, but our contractor guy had to take an emergency call from some mutual friends who have some kind of hole in their basement wall with water gushing in.  I suppose that is more important at the moment than my bathroom.
• My little guy left for church camp this morning.  He comes home on Saturday.  I'm not worried at all about him getting homesick, especially given that he went last year so this isn't his first time.  He's going to have a blast.
• Speaking of Joey, we signed him up for 3rd grade football in the fall.  How funny is that?  How funny is spending $132 on second-hand equipment for an 8-year-old?  Ack!  Thank goodness for Play It Again Sports!  But he really wants to play.  He weighed in at 74 pounds.  I'm curious as to whether that'll qualify him as a lightweight or heavyweight.  He's neither fat nor skinny, but he's kind of tall, so I'd guess on a team of 2nd and 3rd graders, he might be among the bigger ones.  I hope he doesn't get pummelled.
• Speaking of camp, Bailey goes on Sunday - the day after Joey gets home.  Our church camp is about 4 hours away, and I get to be one of the vehicles in the caravan taking them up there.  So my Sunday will go something like this: Go to church.  Leave for camp from church, drive 4 hours.  Help get kids settled in and hopefully say hi to a couple of friends up there.  Drive back home 4 hours, hopefully with a stop at Trader Joe's while passing through the Twin Cities.  Get home around 8 or 9 and crash, all the while thinking I should do some homework before going to bed.  But I'm going to let myself not do any.
• Speaking of homework, I have so much this summer it's not even funny.  I'm wishing right now that I'd have taken a clue from Hannah and taken the summer off.  There are too many other things to do, like go to Joey's baseball games and try to get my house ready for some of my girlfriends to come in a few weeks (I apologize in advance if the house looks like crap when you get here!!).  One class has me reading government regulations, which I expect to have to do for work, but it's kind of depressing to have to do it for school.
• I'm having a party on Wednesday.  You know those parties where you send out about 7 million invitiations to everyone you've ever met, and about 3 people come because the goal of the party is to sell stuff?  Yeah, one of those.  This party is for Norwex cleaning products.  The best part is that she wants to demonstrate the products so I really don't have to clean my house!  Woo-hoo!  I need some ideas for quick, easy hors d'oeuvre that don't look like they were quick and easy.  Ideas?

OK, I got a call that Brian's on his way.  See ya!

*I mean I moved all my makeup & stuff out.  I personally didn't move out of the house.  :)

I'm a day late for Me and My Monday, but my dad asked me this weekend why I never talk about my parents in my blog.  So while I unfortunately am about earlobe-deep in homework and can't actually write anything right now, I am going to give my parents a shout out....and show off my new niece Maria at the same time.  These photos are from her dedication service on Sunday.  (FYI if you don't know, a baby dedication is similar to a baptism except there's no water.  It's where the parents [and often the grandparents too] pledge in front of God and the congregation to raise the child up in a Christian home and to encourage him/her to choose a walk with Christ when he/she is old enough to know.)

 

 

 

 

Hi Dad!

Every Memorial Day weekend in Rochester, the Med-City Marathon takes place.  Until this year, I did not know that there is also a Med-City Half Marathon and a Med-City Kids' Marathon.  ("Med-City" is a nickname for Rochester, due to the fact that the Mayo Clinic is the backbone of the city.)  Tomorrow Brian will run the half marathon with his buddy Erik, and today Bailey ran the kids' marathon - which is actually 1.2 miles.

Brian's parents live in town and they came to watch Bailey run, as did Erik and his kids.  I think Bailey liked knowing that people came to see her run.  Brian's dad is a former Marine and has been a long distance runner for many years - and in fact has run several marathons in his younger years.  I think he's just tickled pink that Brian and Bailey seem to have both taken an interest in running.

I know most of the people who read this blog have no reference point for this, but doesn't Brian look great?  He's lost 47 pounds so far!  He's still hoping for 20 more.

Bailey did really well in her run.  She wasn't the fastest in her group of 4th graders, but I was still really proud of her for being able to finish the run, and in pretty good time too!  I'd love to see her continue to run.  She's already said she wants to do this next year, as has Joey (who didn't want to do it this year).

In Rochester, there's a big complex near the center of town called Soldiers Field.  There is no football field there, but there's a track, a couple of playgrounds, a golf course, a river, and the Soldiers Field Memorial.  It was built a few years ago as a tribute to soldiers from southeastern Minnesota who have lost their lives in the line of duty.

The walls are made of black polished granite, with bits of history etched in, in both pictorial and text form:

 

There are many, many pavers both inside and outside the memorial that commemorate those lost:

As I mentioned earlier, this city is fairly medically-minded; thus it's not surprising that one of the statues shows a medic & nurse providing aid to a wounded soldier:

Before we left, we discovered a display of two wartime cannons.  The first is a Howitzer that was placed into service in 1957 and retired sometime later.

The second is an Iraqi cannon that was captured during the Persian Gulf conflict.  How cool is it that it would end up  in Rochester, MN? 

The rest of the day was filled with more mundane things like going to Home Depot and planting flowers.  Things that need to be done, for sure, but I for one was really glad to have gotten the chance to go to the memorial.  I've been there before, but it never ceases to amaze me how many, many people have lost their lives for our country - so that we can have the freedoms we too often take for granted.  So thank you, veterans!

Bailey just got her first mp3 player.  I decided to try for one in that Pepsi Stuff promotion that's going on right now.  I had to save up 175 bottle caps, and thanks to a couple of coworkers, we made it there in record time.  It just came today.  Right now it's charging so she can't use it quite yet, but she's already chosen a CD to download.  I think - I think - I've figured out how to also get it on my iPod.  It takes a bit of doing, though.

I knew it had been a while, but I didn't realize it'd been that long.  Wow.

Mostly I've been just doing life.  Work's been busy.  Last week a pathology resident started and it's my turn to train.  The first 2 weeks or so of our training make for some long days for the teacher, between lecturing, conducting lab, and preparing samples - not to mention the pile of stuff that's slowly accumulating on my desk.  Ten hour days with no time to blog or check my other beloved message board.  That is just not right.  The good thing is, my resident is doing really well, and when she's done with my training and is out on the "hot seat" she's going to make me look really good.  (Because it's all about me, right?)  I'm simultaneously starting the training for one of our two new people.  Yay for adequate staffing!!

Last week I had coag lab for a few days.  That was kind of fun.  I like coag - I kind of thought I'd hate it.  Not only do I enjoy the subject matter, it's also not very hard - which is always a bonus.

This weekend was Joey's birthday party.  He really wanted a bowling party, which was fine with me.  He and 5 friends got to bowl under blacklight for 2 hours, with a pizza and pop for sixty bucks.  Sounded like a bargain to me.  It got even better, though, because as soon as we got there, Brian ordered a cheese pizza from the bar.  Forty minutes went by and no pizza, so he decided to go ask about it.  I think they'd forgotten about it.  They said they'd put it in.  But then, about 10 minutes later, this guy comes out and tells us that someone had taken our cheese pizza, but they had this pepperoni one and if we wanted it, we could have it and they'd bring our cheese when it was ready.  Heck yeah!  So we got a bonus pizza out of the deal.  After bowling we took the boys back to our house for cake & presents.  They had fun.  The nice thing about this age is that you don't really have to entertain them....they kind of take care of themselves.  Like a bad mom, I didn't get any pictures. 

Birthday season is officially over in the G household - except for Joey's actual birthday on Thursday, but that will consist only of Brian ordering Pizza Hut as per Joey's request (I won't be there).  Our present to him this year is to redo his room, which won't be done for a few weeks.

Earlier that day (Saturday) Joey had been in a science fair for 2nd-6th graders.  It was just about the cutest thing ever.  I had volunteered to be a reviewer, so I got to talk to several kids about their projects and they really did some kind of neat stuff.  I even learned a thing or two.  It was all meant to give them a positive attitude about and encourage them in science, so they got all positive feedback.  Joey was just psyched when he read his feedback - he's already thinking about what he wants to do next year.

Again, like a bad mom I forgot to bring my camera, so I had to use my phone. 

(For anyone interested, Joey tested pool water, faucet water, and distilled water for pH, chlorine, and hardness.  We made him read about hardness, water treatment, and pH so that he could speak intelligently to the judges.  We also asked him a bunch of questions that the reviewers might potentially ask him so that he'd be prepared.  At the end of the science fair, Joey said to me, "Mommy, they only asked one of the questions you said they would ask!"  Oh well, such is the peril of being the child of an educator.  But he learned something, and that was the point.)

Bailey went to Snow Camp over the weekend.  It was up at our church camp, which is about a 4-hour drive from Rochester.  My awesome friend Lisa drove Bailey, two of her own kids, and two other kids up there, stayed the weekend, and drove them back.  She didn't even want to accept any gas money from me - that's how awesome she is (but I insisted).  Bailey had so much fun.  He favorite things were tubing down a giant hill and playing blacklight dodgeball (doesn't that sound fun??).

So yeah, it's been a crazy week.  For your entertainment, here are a couple of examples of the dumb things I do when I've got too much on my mind.  Have a laugh at my expense.

• On Friday our cleaning girl (Lisa's daughter, actually) was supposed to come.  I, like an idiot, forgot that on the days when she comes, I DON'T turn on the security alarm.  The poor girl came in and the alarm went off - she didn't know what to do, so she freaked out and locked up and left.  She ran 2 blocks to the house of someone she knew and called her mom.  Poor thing - it scared the crap out of her.  She's only thirteen.  I felt like such a jerk for scaring her like that.  But I did talk to her on Sunday and she said (and I quote) "it's all good."  We're probably going to get a fine from the city because based on the footprints around the house, I think the cops came by.
• On Sunday, Joey had another birthday party to go to (one of three over the weekend).  It started at 1pm at McDonald's and church had gotten over at noon.  Both our church and the McDonald's are literally at the opposite corner of town from our house, so Joey and I went to the grocery store to kill some time.  (Brian had already gone home in the other car, which was there since I'd had to be at church early to help lead music.)  We went to Hy-Vee and got about $35 worth of stuff.  As the kid was scanning my groceries, I started to dig into my purse in search of a credit card, when I realized......I didn't have any money with me.  Crap.  Fortunately, Hy-Vee is all about customer service and they finished scanning my stuff, suspended the sale, and I was able to walk over to customer service, call Brian, and have him give me our credit card number.  They punched it in and I was on my way.  Duh.  Joey was five minutes late for the party.

Well, since this is like the longest blog post ever (I have a week's worth of stuff...and I didn't even mention it all!) I will close this out.  I have to go start packing anyway.  On Wednesday I'm leaving for Savannah, Georgia, for a conference.  I think it will be very fun - and MUCH warmer!!  I've never been to Georgia.  I always love to go places that I've never been, but I wish that Brian could come too.  I'll have coworkers, but there's just something better about going someplace new with your best friend.  I'm going to look for some peach wine for him.  We made some peach wine a couple of years ago and it was skank.  I'm sure there's some good stuff out there, and where else to find it besides Georgia??  Oh yeah, and we fully intend to go to the Lady and Sons restaurant (Paula Deen's place).  Butter & deep fried food....mmmmmmm........

.....because my kids are perfect.  LOL, not.

But I do like them.  (Warning: stop reading here if you don't want to hear me gush about my kids.)  I'll admit that a lot of the reason I like PT conferences is because my kids do well in school (call me a bragging mom if you want; it's a fact) so there have never been any serious issues.  I don't see the teachers on a regular basis like the volunteer-moms do, so I really value both good and bad feedback.  Each of the kids has had a small behavioral issue this year that they've had to work on - Joey being rude to his classmates and Bailey being silly & somewhat disruptive in class.  I like to hear those kinds of things because then we can talk about them at home.  So far, problems have been resolved without much resistance on their part.  They're such easy kids - we got so lucky with them.

Bailey has this computer program they do called Study Island.  She's ahead of the rest of the 4th graders at her school in most subjects in math & reading, and way ahead of the state average in everything! 

Joey's teacher is a little worried that 2nd grade isn't challenging enough for him.   She said he helps the class come up with strategies for learning.  For example, he said that for adding three numbers, he told the class to picture the numbers running around in circles.  The first two crash together and become one number, and then that new number crashes into the other number, giving you your total.  I love how she lets him be involved in the classroom.  I'm sure she does that for all of the kids.  Kids that age need to be interactive, and I'm glad that teachers realize that these days.  We were barely allowed to move when I was in school.  Fortunately, that worked fine for me, but I know that approach doesn't work for all kids.

Joey showed us a couple of papers that he'd written, and his teacher had him read one of them out loud.  I was almost in tears I was laughing so hard, and so was she.  I think she really gets a charge out of him.  Here's the essay; it was a compare and contrast work.  Picture it in kid-script on lined paper, being read by an almost-8-year-old:

Bengals and house cat  by Joey G

Did you know that lots of cats don't have things in common?  Even my house cat and a Bengal.  There is something very, very weird that the owners of Bengals have reported about Bengals.  If you want to know, listen very closely to paragraph #3.  I'm telling you it's very, very weird.  I don't know how funny it is!

OK, this is paragraph #2.  This paragraph is about what is alike between a Bengal and my house cat.  So, they're cats, and they both have colored coats, and they have sharp teeth and claws.  If you have heard of cats and kittens, then you know that a mom can have babies and if you own a Bengal, then you know that they are cute.

OK, we're in paragraph #3.  This paragraph that I tell you about what is different between a Bengal and my house cat (witch I don't know what kind she is) and remember this is the paragraph witch has the weird thing about the Bengal.  It is soooooo........funny!  OK let's get started with the facts.  The Bengal has front and back claws, and my cat does not (you can probley tell buy me saying "house cat".)  The Bengal hunts, my cat (of corse) does not.  OK, here is the very weird thing, (get ready to smile or laugh.)  The Bengal swims, and (of corse) my house cat does not.

OK, stop laughing or smileing and start reading.  So, did you like the facts?  OK, first I'll tell you the qustoin that I will ansewer.  So, which would I own?  I would keep the cat I have instead of a Bengal!  I would like some privacy when I'm in the bathtub!

Show us your favorite photograph.

This is an old one but I always loved it.  Bailey was about three years old, and this is the garden that Brian made for me off the garage of our old house.  I sure do miss that backyard; it was so nice.  And as an unrelated side note, I see by looking at the photo properties that this picture was taken on our sixth wedding anniversary.

Well, duh.  She is my kid after all.  :)

Today's mail contained a letter from the school district.  That can be either good or bad, in that while I have yet to receive a "your kid misbehaved in school" call or letter, there's a first time for everything.  So on a small scale I braced myself for that, or else something that was going to either cost me money or want me to volunteer.  But no, today's mail from the school actually contained good news.

In the spring, Bailey (then a 3rd grader) took the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment test.  This is sponsored by the MN Department of Education, and it appears that the purpose is to do things like hold schools accountable, track performance of individuals, etc.  I vaguely remember her taking this - I think there was a letter from the school to make sure she got enough rest or something.

So here's how it broke down.  Out of 399 points possible in each section:
MATH:
     State average score: 357.9
     Our school district: 358.7
     Bailey's school specifically: 361.4
     Bailey's individual score: 373

READING:
     State average score: 363.2
     Our school district: 365.5
     Bailey's school specifically: 368.7
     Bailey's individual score: 374

She was rated "Exceeds the Standards" in both categories!!  I'm so proud of her!  I'm not surprised that she got that kind of a score in the math section, but reading/vocabulary/spelling has never come as naturally to her as math has.  I'm just so thrilled that she did so well!