39 more years to go...

until Dan and I catch up with my parents. Saturday mom and dad had a party to celebrate 40 years of wedded bliss. Their actual anniversary was Sept. 4th. We (the kids) threw mom and dad an anniversary party and Kimberly was nice enough to host at her house. Mom and dad didn't want a huge party, so we just invited their brothers and sisters and their spouses. I think everyone had a good time.

We also took lots of pictures because my 93 year old grandma was able to come. She lives in an assisted living facility and doesn't really get out much anymore. So we all took pictures with grandma...

Here's one of my favorites. Kraig handed us Elmo as a substitute for the child we don't have yet. It was so funny, as you can tell from my face!

Grandma looks like she doesn't even want to be in the photo.

Here's another one of the whole Ryan family:

My house is cold.

I refuse to turn on the heat.

Got the sweatshirts and winter slippers out today.

Beef stew in the crockpot...mmm

Confession:

I am the most indecisive person when it comes to paint color.

Now that Dan has moved his business out of the spare bedroom, it's time to give it a make-over. I have been working in this room for 4 days, it's been quite the task. First, I had to prime everything, walls, ceiling and trim. Then I painted the ceiling, but I used cheap paint from Wal-Mart and it's not a bright white. So I bought new paint from Lowe's and repainted the ceiling for the 3rd time!
All the trim got 2 coats of white paint. That was actually the easy part. Then I picked out a wall color but... I'm not sure I like it. It's ok, I could live with it. It's just not what I envisioned. This happens to me every time I paint. I usually end up painting a room twice. Dan has accepted this about me and knows that I will probably change my mind. He just says, "Whatever you want, Honey." Isn't he a great husband? I'm glad he's a patient man.

Well, it didn't take me long to figure out how to spend my earnings from the yard sale last weekend. On a trip to Lowe's to buy paint for the spare bedroom, I decided that it'd be nice to put up some kind of crown molding. For some reason this room doesn't have any molding at the top and it looks plain in comparison to the rest of the house. So $65.00 was spent...

I'm also heading out to Menards today to get two square terra cotta planters for the backyard. I've been looking at these all summer thinking how cute they are and how great they would look next to our new flower bed. They've been marked down and I just don't think I can resist any longer. Here goes another $40.00....

I've spent the last 2 days in my sister's garage trying to sell junk to strangers. Ah, the joys of yard sales!

Unlike last year, we didn't have a ton of stuff to put in the yard sale, but enough that it was still a chore. The funny thing is, no one ever forces me to do this. I always volunteer of my own free will. You'd think I'd learn...

It's not that I don't like yard sales exactly, I just hate the part where you have to pack everything up that didn't sell and find something to do with it. As I came home today I was going to make a stop at the Salvation Army to drop off all the unwanted leftovers. I pull up to the door and it says "We are full. No more donations till after 12pm on Monday." Great! Now I am stuck with all this junk in my car for the next 2 days.

My reward? I'm $126.00 richer. Now, what will I spend it on.... any suggestions????

I'd like for you all to meet my "special" friend Becky.





She likes to collect bellybutton lint and used staples. She's a whiz at battleship and she is a tv expert on the 80's show Punky Brewster. She enjoys her job at McDonald's where she's in charge of wiping off tables. If you see her there be sure to say hi.

It finally happened to me...

You've all heard stories from the women in your life about a time when they lost their wedding ring. Well, now I have my own story to tell and hopefully it'll be the only story for the rest of my life.

Last Sunday I picked up my mom and my sister in law because we were all going to a baby shower. My mom and I were sitting in the car at SIL's house waiting for her to come out the door and my mom who recently broke her arm asked if I would help her put lotion on her good arm. (My dad gets grossed out by lotion so he wouldn't do it). So I took off my ring and sat it in my lap and proceeded to lotion up her arm. After I was done with that I wasn't sure if SIL knew we were in her driveway cause we'd been sitting there for awhile. I decided to hop out and go to the door to get her and I forgot the ring was on my lap!

My SIL comes out and we get in the car and we head off to the baby shower and I am completely unaware that my ring is gone.

Once we get to the shower and I walked in the door I realized that I had lost my ring. I then start to panic and of course I am now crying at the realization. I frantically call my brother and I am trying to explain to him through my sobbing that I think my ring may be in his gravel driveway. While I was still on the phone with him, he stepped outside to look and in a few minutes he had found it! I was so relieved. That's what we have insurance for, but still a replacement would never have been the same.

Moral of this story, I won't put lotion on my mom's arm while in the car. :) And I will be more careful where I take off my ring.

Follow-up to April Post

Ok, so back in April I posted that I had about 10 friends or family members that were expecting babies. I thought I'd update the list and add a few more.

Patty (cousin) --boy
Lynette (neighbor) --girl
Karen (HS friend) --girl
Tonya (mta friend) --boy
Michelle (mta friend) --boy
Heather (TCC friend) -- boy

Jennifer (cousin) --still waiting
Katrina ( mta friend) --still waiting, due in a few weeks

Here are some recent add-ons to my list:

Gina
Corrie

It's a baby-palooza around here!

Take a look

Here's a link to the landscaping pictures we've taken. They start with the before and the last ones were taken yesterday.


http://tinyurl.com/q5uma

finally...pictures

The basement looks soooo much better and it feels so clean!

home improvement projects

Dan and I have been working hard this past week to get some projects done around the house. We fianlly got the basement ceilings, walls, foundation ledges and the floor painted. What a world of difference paint makes. It no longer feels like a 1926 basement. There's still more to be done, but the big project of painting is over.


I was able to get some shrubs planted in the new beds that we had put in around the house. I need to get a few more because it seems a bit bare on one corner and I still need to mulch everything. But, it's starting to look so much better. The landscapers finished up the flower beds in the back of the yard and around the gargage. I think we'll wait till next year to put the flowers in. We've spent enough money on the yard for one summer. The landscapers will have to come back and level the yard so we can plant new grass. Having new grass will make such a big difference-I can't wait to see it when it's all done.

I wanted to post pics of our improvements but Blogger is having issues with picture uploads. I'll have to try again later.

Wedding weekend

Last Saturday was my cousin Julie's wedding. I was looking forward to going because I love a reason to get all glammed up. She got married at the church around the corner from us and I had originally thought we'd walk to the wedding, but it was too stinkin' hot. So we drove a block and parked. Oh well. We went to the reception at the former Holiday Inn. It's now called The Decatur conference center... or something to that effect. Everything was really nice. It's the kinda wedding I would have planned for myself if I had had an unlimited budget. *sigh* but I digress.

Here's a shot of Dan and I. My eyes look a little droopey. I think I was gettting ready to blink.

This is my cousin Shay. He played an sang during the coctail hour. He's amazing, he only started playing piano in college. He never had any lessons, one day he just sat down and started playing. Keep your eye out for him. Someday he'll be famous.

I love her dress.

If it's not one thing, it's another...

About an hour ago I was standing on my enclosed front porch watching the rain come pouring through the ceiling. I collected as many buckets as I could find and that helped some, but there was just too much water coming in. We've lived here a year and this is the first time this has happened. Here's why: yesterday we had new gutters installed on the house. They angled the front gutter towards the porch roof and from there it's supposed to run down and collect in another gutter. Well... that wasn't working. I could see from my dining room window that the water was shooting out onto the porch roof, which meant it was shooting up under the shingles, hence the reason it was raining inside my porch! Ah, the joys of home ownership. It seems we've been given an unfair amount of water issues. But, the silver lining in all this, the basement stayed dry!

Happy 4th of July!

This morning our street had its 48th annual 4th of July parade and party. Our street is known for its social gatherings that happen several times throughout the year. On the 4th, the kids decorate their bikes and wagons and at 9:30 am the cannon is fired and the kids race their bikes down the street and back. It's so cute to watch the kids and all their decorations. Some of them really go all out. The parade lasts all of about 3 minutes and there's no candy throwing *sigh*, but it's still in the spirit of the day. After the parade of bikes, we all wandered over to the neighbors that were hosting and we enjoyed fruit and baked goodies and chatted with people we hadn't seen in awhile.
People that previously lived on the street come back to Cobb Avenue for this annual event. One man who returns every year brings his homemade cannon and fires it to signal the beginning of the parade.
Here are a few pictures from today's event's. (sorry they're not in order, had trouble uploading them)

The man with the homemade cannon gets ready to light it!

Everyone is getting ready and waiting for the parade to start.

OK, so this is taking alot longer than we thought

The landscapers are still out back working away. They've just about got the patio part finished. I think our landscaper really underestimated the amount of time it would take to do the job. Hopefully by the end of the day they'll have it done.

Hooray

The landscapers are here! They came and started on our backyard Friday and they are about half way done with the flagstone patio! They think they'll finish it up tomorrow. Then they can start on the beds! It's so exciting. I can't wait to have it done.

Class of '93

I've recently discovered that the soap network plays reruns of Beverly Hills 90210 in the afternoons. I am hooked! I love to watch this show and see how dorky the fashion trends were at that time. As a fellow "classmate" of the graduating class of "93, I am sure I committed some of the very same fashion mistakes...the high wasted jeans, pants and skirts, the vests and men's blazers that the girls wore, and the tights under the skirts and ruffly shirts. It cracks me up. I get a good laugh out of every show.

Blessing

I am constantly amazed at how God continues to bless our lives. HE gives us everything we need and so much more. One of the recent blessings to our lives has been a new group of friends. It's so amazing to watch these relationships grow - I'm excited about what God is going to do through these new friendships.

One year

Sunday, Dan and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. It's been a wonderful first year of marriage. In some ways, it seems like we've been married much longer than that... it feels like I've always known him

Dan and I spent a nice day together. We didn't do anything real special, we just hung out together. It was fun and we enjoyed the day.

Oprah...you're not my friend anymore!

I have the greatest husband in the world. He got me tickets to Oprah for our anniversary.

Last Wednesday morning Dan called me from work and told me to cancel all plans for the next few days. The Oprah show had called him and said they had two tickets for Thursday's show and could we be there tomorrow at 7am. So we packed up and headed to Chicago. We got to our hotel around 10:30pm and immediately went to bed because we had to get up at 3:00am. We had been told by friends that we needed to get there before 6am to get a good place in line. So we decided to try and get there at 5am. At 4:45 the next morning, the cab dropped us off at Harpo Studios. There was already 2 people in line. So we waited, and we waited and finally at 7am they started letting people inside. They herded us into a room where we waited for another hour or so. ( At this point I'm having Price is Right flashbacks...)

Finally, they started calling us in to be seated in the studio. Now, we were really excited because we were number 3 and 4 in line and had been told that seating is decided on a first come basis. We thought we'd be sitting right down front. Well, that was just the first dissapointment of the day. Apparently there were 100 or so people who had some kind of connection to the show and they got seated down front. So when we were let in, we had to sit in the back. Not a huge deal because it is a very small studio and every seat is a good seat. But, we wouldn't have wasted our time getting there so early if we'd known that! So now we're sitting in the studio and we're waiting again, but the production staff was very nice and kept us entertained.

Finally they got the signal that Oprah was on her way, everyone went crazy, and now the show was about to start. When I saw her in person, I immediately thought; she's shorter than I pictured, and she's thinner than she looks on tv. I guess it's true that the camera adds 10 pounds. We had no idea what the show was going to be because they won't tell you ahead of time. We were really hoping that since we were there on the last day of taping, there would be a fun give-away show. I was hoping for a new car! Not really, but free stuff anyway. That was dissapointment number 2. No free stuff. The show was on people who had shown a lot of courage.

The taping went by so quickly. When they went to "commercial" they changed the set around, and... here comes dissapointment number 3. During all the "commercials", Oprah never talked to the audience or even acknowledged we were there. And even when the show was over, she walked off the set and that was it. She never said anything. I know she's not always like that because sometimes they do that Oprah after-the-show and she interacts with her audience.

I got there at 4:45am for her, all I wanted was a "Thanks for coming".

All in all, we did have a really good time. We had some really fun people in line with us and they really made the time in line more enjoyable. It was fun to see the studio and see Oprah in person. I would like to go again and see how the experiences compare. I will also say that Dan was a real trooper through the whole experience. Not every husband would go to the trouble of trying to get tickets and then get there so early to stand in line. He was a good sport and I love him for that.