Bicentennial Baby

Today is Amy's 35th birthday. She was born in 1976......the year of our bicentennial. What a cutie she was! Our second daughter....weighing in at 7 lbs. 12 ounces and 21 inches long. Kari and I had gone to LeeAnn's birthday party in the afternoon, but it was after we went to Poppin' Fresh later that Saturday night with Liz and Ed that I started having some good pains. At 10 p.m. the pains were 15 minutes apart, until 11:00 and then they were coming hard and 5 minutes apart. We packed up Kari and Buffy and took them to Mom's. Got to the hospital close to midnight. She was born at 3:49 a.m. on March 21, 1976....a Sunday. Dan went in the delivery room this time and even cut the cord.

Amy was a beautiful baby and little girl. She had such a personality, too. Looking through her Raggedy Ann baby book, I found a little anecdote she probably has never heard before. I thought it was kind of cute, so I will honor her with it now. She went to Vacation Bible School in 1980 and loved it. One of the songs they sang was Morning is Broken. Trying to remember it one day a month later she asked about that song about how the "weather fell". Ya gotta love kids, dontcha?!

Happy Birthday, Amy!!

CONTINUING ON.......

Since I've been away from blogging for over two months, I decided that since I'm on spring break, maybe I could do some catching up.





My last post was about not being able to muster up the courage to throw away two house plants that were still "hanging on by a thread". So here's the catch-up on that one:





I finally couldn't take it any more. The plant that I liked the most kept holding on to one pretty flower blossom for months, started looking sicker and sicker. The flower faded and dropped and so did huge sections of leaves. It was deown to one piece that was still alive, but the rest was not good, so I DID finally pack it off to the trash. It was hard to do, tho, I will admit, because people had been advising me that I could cut it back, and then in spring, it would start to come back to life and bloom, etc. Well, I couldn't muster up the patience for that, so off it went.





But, surprisingly, the other plant.....and the one, by the way, that I had fully expected to kick the bucket first......has started to look pretty nice and is blooming again. It is still pretty gangly and spindly, but it has lots of flower buds and blossoms coming out. I will probably hold onto it and throw it outside eventually to see if it will survive. Problem is: Now I am just reinforced that sometimes it's okay to hang on to stuff.

Grumpy

Wasn't there a famous dwarf named Grumpy?

At Amy's birthday party, Hailey barely smiled all day. She put her head down, crumpled up her lips, and looked like she was the mean old troll who was gonna chase us away from her bridge.

A couple of times, there was a light in her eyes that shone, and a little honey of a smile on her lips, but, for the most part, (especially, if a guy was nearby).....she was a wee bit crabby.

Here's a cute picture where Jennie is trying to match Hailey's crabby face.

Car Troubles.....

In case you can't read the read print on the dashboard.....it simply says BRAKES. Just a little message to let you know that they are not presently working. Maybe you shouldn't drive without them, right? WRONG!!

Saturday, on Tom's birthday, we were invited to Amy and Mike's for dinner to celebrate.They live in New Richmond and their house is a big one on the end of a cul-de-sac kind of in the boonies. Lucky thing because Tom was on the phone as we were pulling into their driveway and he was acting a little strange, but still talking to the person on the phone (a lady who lives across the street from his rental property in Turtle Lake.) He came inside after the rest of us, and proceeded to just mention that a brake line must have broken or something, because he was pushing the brakes to the floor. No worry in this family. We enjoyed a nice evening with the Belmont's and then it's time to go home and now the red BRAKE light is on and we drive home with no brakes!! We didn't have a single car follow us the whole time and there really was very little traffic, although we had Kyle on the lookout for deer and other animals that might suddenly dart out in front of us. There were two hairy spots....one where we had to cross a road, but luckily there was a hill going up and then not too many cars , so we were able to make it across safely pumping to help slow us down. No animals chose to ambush us and we got to McCutcheon rode with no mishaps. There, we dropped off Kyle and Tom and I took his new yellow truck to St. Paul to deliver me to my door.

The crazy part is: The day before, in the afternoon, Grandma's car was making a weird noise and we were heading from my house to Walmart, when we smelled something like burning rubber so decided to stop at her house to "check" things before we went any further, and when we opened the hood, found white smoke pouring out of the front of the car on the passenger side. A tow truck came and got her Mercury Sable and it won't be ready until Tuesday. Some kind of freeze-up on an idle arm or something was causing the belt to slip. Lucky it didn't happen on the way to Walmart, or better yet, glad we weren't driving it to Amy's house in Champlin when the problem arose.

Then, after Tom went to New Richmond to help his Mom on Friday aftenoon, he picked me up for dinner at the Best Steak House. It's one of our favorite places, and we were having a long, leisurely talk waiting to hear from Kyle who was doing some stuff with Kim. We were planning to go to the Car Show at the Convention Center with him. When he called, we went out to the car, and Tom couldn't locate his keys. That's when I saw them in the ignition. I have an extra set of Tom's car keys in my purse for just such an occasion, (It has happened before.) but, of course, I had changed purses that night so I wouldn't have to carry a big heavy one around with me. Kyle asked his mom if he could borrow her van, and he took us across town to get the spare set of keys. Then, we had to go to Stillwater to pick up Kyle's truck where he had left it when he met his Mom to do their errands. Needless to say, by now it was too late to make the car show.

The scariest part of this whole story is that I am the only one right now who seems to have a dependable vehicle. Hope the Sentra knows it is much appreciated! (Tom's van has been idle all winter and even buried in tall snow....but he is going to work on trying to get it started....I'm glad, cuz I love that van!)

Car Show

Today was Tom's Birthday. March 19th. He turned 63 and, finally, caught up to me. It was a plan to go to the car show last night, but it didn't happen.....so we went today. So many cars. So many people. So many people trying out the seats in so many cars. It was the thing to do so I sat in most of them, too. My back got tired and my mind was swimming. Pretty soon, they were all looking the same. Kyle came with us. There were really expensive cars, Smart cars, electric and diesel and gas cars, good and bad mileage cars, fancy and plain cars, shiny and matte finish cars, vans, and trucks, too. Porsches, Jaguars, Corvettes, Mazarattis, Mazdas, Chevys, Fords, Nissans, Cadillacs, Buicks, Volkswagens, BMWs, Lexis's, Mercedes, etc., etc., etc. You name it, it was there.

However, the best cars I saw there were these, beyond a doubt!!

Grandma's Birthday

For Mom's birthday this year, I decided to invite her over for dinner. I put ribs in the crock pot, made baked potatoes, green beans with almonds, crescent rolls, and bought a chocolate cake. Kristin, Jennie and Tom D., Bob, and my Tom came, too. We had a nice celebration and I think she enjoyed it. 85 is a little amazing, is it not? We'll celebrate with the rest on the 19th.

My Birthday

It's hard to work on your birthday when no one knows it's your birthday. Even harder when they knew on Monday when the email mentioned it in the weekly bulletin, but by the time Thursday rolls around, it is forgotten. I feel like I am walking around with a big arrow above my head following me around. "Here she is! It's the birthday girl! Wish her a happy birthday NOW! Make a big deal. This day only comes around once a year, you know!"

It's not so bad until your colleague (who has a locker next to you) remembers at the end of the day and sheepishly wishes you a happy birthday and apologizes because they forgot to say it earlier. It's even worse when you are in the elevator with a colleague who mentions that the reason he was late this morning was because it was his wife's birthday, (blah, blah, blah---) and we had discussed earlier in the month that we both had the same birthday and he forgot about that. Do I mention it? or play dumb and he finds out later and HE feels dumb?

Aside from work, I got texted and phoned early in the morning with lots of love and well wishing. My girls are celebrating with Mom and I later in the month. Tom took me to my choice for dinner and I chose Round Robin .....French onion soup, yum!!