So the biggest excitements from yesterday were that the power went off for about 3 hours (for absolutely no reason) right in the middle of the day and Eric worked until 7:30.  He was cleaning gold off of some of his machinery (part of his job requires the evaporation of various metals and they do eventually condense on his machines) because he didn’t trust anyone else to do it right. 

Since I had the whole day to myself…I cleaned out my office, sorted old pictures, planted the rest of our container garden (beans and zucchini), and finished vacuuming the living room (I wanted to move the furniture to get under them which I only do sometimes…and I still haven’t gotten under the sectional because I can’t move it!). I tidied my bedroom and cleaned the laundry room, and then I read a book (the whole thing…it was short!) before Eric got home. Then I was hungry, so I made myself a light supper and he got home shortly thereafter. Then we relaxed for the evening, read for a while, and got out the flags for awhile before turning out the lights!

Today Eric got up a bit earlier than usual, so the day’s been slightly ahead of schedule.  That’s fine since Karen will be over soon for strawberry picking.  Should be fun!

Crazy weekend…that’s what I had!

I did spend Friday cleaning; I worked VERY hard!  We left for the farm as soon as Eric got home and we got everything loaded up.  We spent the evening at his cousins’ house for a graduation party, and then chatted for a bit when we got back to their house.  Eric and I hung around for the morning at the farm on Saturday and headed home just about lunch time.  Then we went to a gradauation party for someone we know from church and ran some errands together.  Then we went home and I went shopping while he mowed the lawn and did other little projects.  Our primary project for the last week and a half has been stripping the wallpaper in the kitchen and repainting.  Thankfully the painting is now finished.  So on Saturday, Eric removed the last of the masking and rehung the blinds and the brackets for the curtains.  (He did paint touchups on Sunday from where the masking did damage!).  We still have lots of work to do to finish the kitchen, but the walls are done…PRAISE JESUS!

Saturday evening, we had dinner and then I made desserts (Oreo cookie ice cream dessert and a berry pie) for our small group cookout which we hosted yesterday.  Then we watched Fantastic Four, which is really a good movie, and then we went to bed!  Sunday was church, then I had a meeting and Eric did the paint touchups, then a light dinner.  Then I cleaned and he worked on the computer.  The guest list changed constantly for the cookout…it was kind of crazy.  At one point it was down to just Karen & Erik and us.  But we ended up with 9 people total, and it was a good time.  Jen & DJ brought their week-old daughter with them, and it was GREAT for them to be out of the house and talking about non-baby things for awhile.  So overall…it all worked out.  Why do I ever doubt…

So our project is almost done!  Good thing, too…because Eric tends to lose focus after about a week on a particular project.  So if it takes much longer than that…our progress starts to peter out!  I spent most of the day yesterday working on it and running errands.  Eric helped me finish up the big stuff last night.  SO that means that I can FINALLY clean my house! 

So today I’m going to clean and clean and clean.  We are hosting a cookout on Sunday, so that gives me some real motivation, but I’ve got to clean all the bathrooms and basically the entire downstairs.  I’m even going to mop the kitchen floor!  Actually, I really wish I was strong enough to separate the parts of our sectional couch so I could vacuum underneath it. Oh well!

The weekend is going to be VERY busy for us.  As soon as Eric gets done at work today, we are heading out to the farm.  His youngest cousin (on the Hogue side) graduated from high school this year and her graduation party is tonight, so we thought we should go.  I also had a bridal shower for Sheri Phipps tonight, but I’m not going to that!  Then we have to come back tomorrow and get to another graduation party from a guy from church who plays with Eric in the orchestra.  Then I have to work on the house and shopping for the cookout.  Then Sunday is church in the morning, a meeting during the second service and the cookout starts at 6:00 (so I’ll spend the afternoon finishing up whatever needs done for that!).  Good thing I’m off for the summer!

Some fun/interesting stories from our trip:

• We saw deer running just behind our cabin twice while we were there.
• We couldn’t drive all the way to our cabin.  We had to park like 200 feet away and walk down a very steep, gravelled path to our front door.  You really took your life into your hands to carry things from the car to the door (or vice versa).  And it totally made me feel like I was back at camp!
• We did some hiking on Saturday to see some of the natural wonders of the area.  There were a LOT of people, mostly very slow, on the path.  We passed a number of groups including this one very large group with 2 families with a total of 6-7 kids.  As we passed the back half of the group (the moms and littlest kids), one of the little boys stepped into a patch of muck on the path and announced to his mom: “I like walking in mud!”
• As we passed the front half of that same group, the dad drew the attention of the oldest girl to something on the left side of the path (where we were passing them).  She looked at it and then saw us.  As we passed all the way by, she called to me, “Hey, we have the same shoes!”  Yes…my children’s-sized Target shoes were recognized by the 8 year old.  Geez…
• There was a Mennonite wedding at one of the outdoor areas (Ash Cave, it’s called). I think there were about 30+ Mennonite men and women watching, but the bride wore a normal white wedding dress…not what I was expecting to see at all!  And just 50 feet away, the non-Mennonite kids were splashing and yelling in a big pool where a waterfall was.  It was a strange dichotomy!

So I pretty much covered Hocking Hills in the last entry…so if you were just dying to know what we did, it’s there.

Once we got home, we had a bit of catching up to do from being gone for three days: papers on the porch, bring in the mail, empty the car and unpack a bit.  I started some laundry, but didn’t get very far.  We aren’t really out of anything yet, though, so it can take a while.

Eric got to work on one of our projects when we got home, and I helped him some (mostly cleaning up behind him!).  Then I swept the floors and cleaned up the kitchen some. Eric went upstairs to take a shower, and I did the same when he was done.  It felt good to be really clean again (and use conditioner in my hair again).  The one really annoying part of the cabin was the smell of the water (quite nasty!), so it was nice to be able to breathe throughout the entire shower through my nose!  I had started to master the art of not using my nose whenever the water was running in the cabin, but it got old quickly!

Anyway, then we went out to celebrate our 2-year anniversary.  We went to Spageddies for dinner (which took an hour and a half because they were short staffed to begin with and then one of the chefs called off).  But we were in no real hurry, so that was good.  Unfortunately, I ordered my favorite dish there and the chicken was a bit blackened.  But by then, I’d filled up on the fresh bread they bring you, so it was okay!  We came home and watched March of the Penguins (which we’d gotten from Netflix and really needed to return).  It’s really cute in a strange sort of way.  The penguins are very funny to watch, and Morgan Freeman did the narration so that was a good addition.  Then we pretty much went to bed.  Boy was it nice to sleep in our own bed last night!

Thought I’d catch up on some of the weekend before tomorrow…I know that none of you will want to read THAT long of a post!

The weekend was pretty good.  We finished up some projects and got out just in time to hit rush hour traffic through Lancaster. Oh well!  We did make it down in decent time, but since lots of people were headed that way (even to Hocking Hills) the roads were pretty busy the whole way.  We found our cabin place without too much difficulty.  Those Scioto Hills-type roads make it a bit hard to read road signs!  But we arrived, checked in, and went DOWN the hill to our cute little cabin.  The road was gravel and so steep that they only allow 4 wheel drive cars down to some of the cabins…thankfully, we took the Jeep!

We spent a lot of time just hanging out.  There was a lovely hot tub, and the cabin was really nice.  Maybe I’ll try to put up some pictures tomorrow (of the cabin, Kim…don’t worry!). 

We did a bit of running around each day and then came back and vegged.  We relaxed on Friday night.  We hiked in the state parks on Saturday.  We went canoe-ing on Sunday (no church…we’re such heathens!) and watched Tommy Boy that night just for some fun.  We grilled out both nights for dinner.  It was beautiful weather the whole time, too, though it did finally get humid enough to need the air conditioning on Sunday evening.  Then we got up this morning, checked out and headed home. 

It is nice to be away from things for awhile…but I always am ready to come home, too!

So apparently, I was looking down the vent from the wrong angle.  The key stopped just a few inches down into the vent, so Eric just reached in and pulled it out! 

I got most of my stuff done yesterday…how nice!  Later today we’ll be heading to Hocking Hills, so I have to pack and get everything ready to go.  Before that we’ll probably work around the house a bit and run some errands.

Okay, I have nothing else really to say…so here are some random thoughts

• It really annoys me how the media reports on the War in Iraq (ie “yesterday Tony Blair and Pres. Bush made rare admissions that they made mistakes in the War”).  DUH!
• We lost power for a while last night, so just as we were getting into bed for the night, they all came back on.  Figures!
• It’s supposed to get up to almost 90 over the weekend…yeah!

EDIT: OH…I forgot something!  This morning when I came back from exercising, I unlocked the door and tossed the key onto the end table where it normally sits.  Unfortunately it bounced off the table and down the vent that is just behind it.  Any good ideas for getting the key back? End Edit

This will have to be quick…I have A LOT of stuff to do today.

I painted until about 3:15 yesterday, and my body really complained about the hunched-over position.  But it is totally worth it when you step back and look at all you got accomplished!  We won’t be painting next week, so I’m done for a week or so.  Hopefully, my hand will be uncurled from the “paintbrush” position by then!

Today I have to run errands and get the house/chores ready for us to be gone all weekend.  I also want to get most of the stuff ready for our departure tomorrow, so that means thinking through what clothes to take and such.  The cabin is fully equipped.  All we need is our personal stuff and food.  Of course that also means I have to plan meals for 3 days before we leave.  Oh well!  At least the cabin has a grill there, so we can have good stuff!

Wow!  I ended up with 11 comments yesterday…that’s just crazy!

I did get most of my laundry finished…still have the ironing clothes to do.  And I have to put away the folded stuff.  But I did get that project mostly done.  I met Jen for lunch at Panera Bread, and we had a nice time just chatting.  Then I ran errands.  I stopped into Payless for a minute (no luck!), then ran to Lowe’s to look at paint colors, then to Garden Ridge to just wander around a bit.  Then I went home, threw the recyclables in the car and drove them down to the Home Depot where I dropped them off and then looked there for paint colors.  Then I came home! 

Eric and I just hung out for the evening.  We grilled out t-bone steaks (I love that I get my beef free at the farm!).  We had to run and get charcoal first, so we (mostly he) planned out the new entertainment center that he’s going to build for our living room while the grill heated up. Then we had dinner and spent the evening just working around. 

This morning, Eric got up a bit later than usual, so my schedule is a bit rearranged today.  But I’m going to the church to paint for a while, and I need to start getting things ready for our anniversary.  I’d like to clean the downstair before we go, and I need to start collecting the supplies/clothes we’ll need when we go.  I’m looking forward to the time away, though!

My legs are very sore today!  It turns out that the “couple of hours” of work that Chris (the lady who heads up the painting) needed done took me about 4 hours total.  The VBS set for our church is huge (floor to ceiling) and so I was working on 4×8 sheets of cardboard that needed to have the outline of pedestals traced onto them.  Evenutally they’ll be painted to look like a stone fence on the stage, but the tracing had to be done first.  So I stood, leaning over a table, tracing this pattern a total of 56 times!

Actually, I really enjoy helping out this way.  It’s fun to chat with Chris and others at the church, and I know it’s something that I can do that doesn’t require me taking small children to the potty during VBS!  And except for the fact that for the rest of the day my knees just ached and today, I’m a tad bit sore…it was a good time.  Tomorrow, I’ll go back and actually do some painting, I think.  Should be fun.

Anyway, that adventure kept me from Xanga yesterday, so hopefully today I’ll have more opportunity to comment.  I’m working on the laundry (again!).  I’ll probably also clean the kitchen.  I’m going out to lunch with Jen, a friend from church who is scheduled to have her baby induced on Thursday night, because right now she’s just sitting at home thinking about the coming birth.  I thought it might be helpful to distract her a bit!  Other than that, I don’t know what’s on the agenda…but the days surely do seem to fill themselves!