A lot of catch-up...

I'm seriously ashamed that I have not updated this thing since February!!! UGH! However, in my own defense, it's been a little busy around here. Like I said in my last post, I ended up on the planning committee for my 20th high school reunion. Never in a million years did I dream it would take up so much of my time. I signed on to plan the dinner and create a Memory DVD...and wound up doing so much more. The DVD was AWESOME! I received more than 1000 pictures from classmates and created 17 different videos...starting with our kindergarten pictures from 1976 and ending with current photos of classmates and their families. I created a special video in memory of a classmate who passed away almost 13 years ago, a memory dedicated to those in our class (8 of 65, although I found out later there were actually 9) who served in the military, 3 videos of current photos, 2 videos of family photos, 1 video of photos that were taken around my hometown...not to mention a video of grade school photos, 2 videos of high school candids, 1 video of senior photographs, 1 video of high school dances, 1 video from our graduation and for the life of me, I cannot remember the last two. I even created a video of photos taken at the reunion dinner after I got back home. The dinner was a great success, everyone seemed to have a wonderful time catching up and I've heard nothing but positive feedback from all the hard work and effort put forth by Lauri Ramsey, Tammy Monier and myself. I ended up helping Lauri create memory books. We made 27 books that were 108 pages each. We 'scrapbooked' them, inserting all the clip art and past-and-present photos of classmates who returned their questionnaires. It was a long and tedious project, one that took us a lot longer to complete than we had anticipated, but thanks to the last-minute help from my younger sister Stephanie, the books were finished the night before we went to Henry.

The girls and I left on the 29th of June to make the long drive to IL. We spent the first night in Murfreesboro, outside of Nashville, and I have to say, they were real troopers! We spent the first few nights in IL at Tom and Stephanie's with the boys, where I got to see Seth play a baseball game but unfortunately left before he hit a triple with 2 RBIs! Steph and Leann took turns taking care of the girls for a couple of nights while Randy and I drove to Henry for the reunion. The girls and I had picked up some fireworks in TN - you know, the GOOD kind - that Tom enjoyed setting off the night of the 3rd of July where they were having an early 4th celebration listening to the tunes of DJ Cupcake, aka Seth Gajdorus (my nephew), at some friends of theirs. That night was my reunion dinner and I was truly pleased at the turnout of classmates. I'll try to get some photos posted on here, they are also on my facebook page, as well as the final video I produced. On the 4th, Tom and Steph drove to Henry with their 3 boys and our 2 girls and spent the night with us. Mom and pops also drove down for the day. We had a great time seeing old friends, running into people we hadn't seen since leaving Henry 20 years ago. Of course the carnival was a blast for the kids, and as always, Henry put on a magnificent fireworks display.

We returned to mom and pops' house on the 5th where Leann, Rusty, Julie, and their kids Jeremy and Paige, joined us for a cookout. The kids had a great time on the water slide, the parents had fun just relaxing and catching up. On Monday night all the kids returned to mom's house...we had 7 kids for 2 days and nights with a full moon...NEVER again! LOL! None of the kids were bad, they were just hyped up with being together and of course, the effects of the moon! We ventured out on Tuesday and took them all to see Up! What a great movie! Although what wasn't great was the phone call I received during the movie from Randy (he had flown home that day) telling me he walked into our house which felt like an oven. We'd been having problems off and on with the a/c since Memorial Day weekend and had numerous service calls to try to fix it...apparently it wasn't fixed. So, I had to try long distance to get a service tech back out there to find out what the problem was and get it fixed. (To make a long story short...it ended up not getting fixed until after I returned home, but I'll tell that part of the story later.)

On Thursday, mom and I took the girls into Chicago to the LUSH store. That night I hooked up with Stephanie and her family and went to see NASCAR qualifying at the Chicagoland Speedway, then later went to Julie's parents' house and hung out for a while with Rusty, Julie, Leann, Jules' parents and some friends. The next day was quiet at mom's house and then I went for dinner with my dear friend Kerrie while mom and pops took the girls to an outdoor production of The Wizard of Oz. While I was at dinner with Kerrie, I also got to meet NASCAR driver Robbie Gordon...and picked up a free hat and t-shirt for Randy. Saturday we were supposed to meet up with my aunt and cousin and family but plans fell through so mom and pops took the girls back home (and later to pops' favorite store, Barnes and Noble) while I met up with Tom and Stephanie, Seth, Toni and Aric Ende, Cory and Jenny Ende, and Matt and his boys for some FUN tailgating at the track before the Sprint Cup night race. I managed to find Randy a Bill Elliot t-shirt, Jeff Gordon t-shirts for the girls, and see Joey Logano up close at the #20 Home Depot trailer. Tom's parents even came by to say hi. But that's where the fun for me ended...and no, it wasn't the Beer Pong because I only played one game! I got a splitting headache and ended up leaving the race before it was even half over. It would have been more fun if Randy had been able to be there anyway.

So I went back to mom and pops, yes - completely sober - and decided to just get a good night sleep before heading out with the girls on Sunday morning. Well, those plans changed around 4:30 am when Grace woke me up and promptly threw up all over the place. So much for leaving. She was sick most of the day until pops was an angel and went to Stephanie's for some anti-nausea medicine. By early-afternoon it looked like we were home free...until early-evening when Emily got sick. Bring on the medicine! Fortunately she didn't experience the bug as badly as Grace did because she got the meds early on. So we set off Monday morning for Tennessee where we spent the night with my mother-in-law, Judy. Tommy, my BIL, came over for dinner and hung out a while too. Judy loaded me up with stuff she's been cleaning out of her house and the girls and I left there Tuesday morning, with a brief stop in Warner Robins to have lunch with Paula and Kinley, Angela, Shelby and Gavin, and Katie and Liliana. We made it home that night...and I crashed...in a hot house.

And then the flu bug hit me. Randy was awesome and stayed home the next day, I think it was almost lunchtime by the time I got up. And when I got up I immediately grabbed my phone and started raising 90-kinds of Hades about our a/c...the contractor, the home-warranty company, the contractor again...UGH! Back and forth it went for a couple of days...which also included numerous phone calls with my BIL Tom (who's an HVAC guru). The original company who had done all the work since Memorial Day finally backed out and said they couldn't do any more...so back to the Home Warranty company I went to get a new contractor. Now mind you, this is 8 o'clock on a Friday night. It's not easy finding a contractor in this area who works weekends...at least not one who's affiliated with our home-warranty company. My bi***ing paid off though because they finally got someone out here Saturday morning who spent all of 2 minutes looking at our unit to tell us the compressor locked up and the whole unit needed to be replaced. Ok, no worries, we have a home warranty, right? Monday morning I received a call from them and was told the total cost would be about $3000, of which we would have to pay almost $1600...fees for things that weren't covered like the new line set, disposal of the unit, a new concrete slab, etc., etc. This is where it gets fun...NOT! Our compressor/condensor/outside unit was a 10 SEER, R-22 unit. Our air handler/inside unit is a 13 SEER, R-22 unit. R-22 units are not going to be made anymore after the end of this year and parts for them won't be made anymore after a couple of years. So, we had to make the difficult and painfully expensive decision to just upgrade our unit so that #1 - the compressor and air handler would match (the same SEER) and #2 - they would no longer be R-22 but instead R410A freon, the safer freon according to the EPA. Going with a higher SEER would also decrease our energy usage, something I'm all for after having 2 months of electric bills over $400! So the next week we had the new units put in...but I'm still waiting on them to come back and patch the hole in the ceiling where they first put their foot through and second, had a leak that soaked through the hole.

Enough about that! Randy asked me if I would finally get us moved in this house now that the reunion is over and vacation has ended. I spent a few days while he was in Atlanta de-cluttering the house, am currently working on re-arranging the girls rooms to put them in one room with the other room a play room, I fixed our dryer that had been inop for about 8 months, and re-hung the hall closet door. I finally got all of the boxes out of the dining room that were on the floor but now need to clear out the boxes that are on the table. My goal this fall when the temperature drops is to get our garage cleaned out. Katie came with Liliana at the end of July and spent several days with us, then Leann came last weekend, and Ryan's fiancee Jenny will be here Saturday night. We're having friends over for dinner Friday night.

The girls absolutely love having the pool and it's really beautiful with the new tile and surface we had installed in March. They swim almost every day and now that I'm not working on the reunion, I'm in it almost every day with them. Emily goes back to school the 25th of this month, I'm waiting to find out about Grace. My mom will be here for a day or so in November, she has a conference she goes to every fall that's being held in Tampa this year for oncology nursing. Katie and Lily will be here for Thanksgiving and Tom and Stephanie are hoping to come down for a long weekend in December. I have a few more friends who want to come down...Laura, Brian and Jenny...hopefully they'll be able to make it too. We won't be going to IL next summer as our vacation plans will take us to California for Ryan and Jenny's wedding, which the girls are in.

Ryan is currently en route to Afghanistan for 6 months and by the end of this month, Efren should be en route to Iraq for 6 months. Please keep them both in your thoughts and prayers.

Until next time...and I'll try not to make it as long before my next post...