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Category Archives: Tom

I know she’d be thrilled. 

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So, while we were cleaning out Marsha’s apartment, I found two $50 QVC e-gift cards (from us and Tom’s brother, from maybe 2012 or so)—I took them with me to check if they’d been used. They hadn’t. So I had a $100 credit. The next day, I found a manila folder with three more QVC gift cards…dating back to—ARE YOU READY?!—2008!! I was sure they’d had to have been used because she LOVED the silver jewelry from QVC and had a lot of it…but grabbed them anyway just in case.

So fast forward to last night when I was putting away all the jewelry pieces of hers that I had chosen (for me and Katie) and I realized that my jewelry box just wasn’t big enough—I just didn’t have the space for mine plus hers (she had A LOT of jewelry and I had picked quite a bit, though it was still a fraction of what she actually had). I then realized that I have jewelry in a box, in a hanging case, in a drawer, and in random spots around the bedroom…and that that’s kinda silly and I’d actually get good use out of a standing armoire.

I ended up at QVC because I vaguely remembered wanting one from there years ago…and they had EXACTLY what I wanted…on clearance…with free shipping! It was more than I’d wanted to pay, but not bad considering what other ones cost and that it would last me the rest of my life. Tom agreed I could get it so I dug out the folder of QVC gift cards to check their balance. And none of the three had been used. NONE! So I had another $95 credit! So after almost $200 credit, I owed about $65.

So…Marsha unknowingly bought me the perfect Christmas gift—something I loved, wanted, and needed—that could house all the great jewelry I got from her…and I know she’d be thrilled.

They are both so sweet.

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So we’re watching Inside Out and some scene comes on where the characters are crying.

Katie: What’s he doing?
Tom: He’s crying. It’s good to cry. It’s how we deal with things.
Owen: Like when Grandma Marsha died.
Tom and I look at each other and get teary.
Me: Exactly.
Owen: And we won’t forget her…
Katie: Because she’s always in our heart.
Tom and I look at each other again and just about lose it. The kids weren’t phased at all and just went back to watching the movie.

I’m glad the things I’ve said to them have sunk in, even if Katie doesn’t specifically understand yet.

Halloween in Grayling

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The kids were super excited about treak-or-treating at Gramma’s house…and we were, too…until the Michigan weather happened. Yeah, it was 38° and rainy. Egads. If you look closely enough you can see Katie’s polka-dot long johns under her white tights (and she also had on pink tights!).

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On the front porch where my Halloween picture was taken every year…

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Everyone (including Uncle Rob) ready to head out!

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There weren’t many houses lit up but the ones that were were handing out TONS of candy! You see how full their bags look? We had only hit maybe six houses at this point!

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After about 15 minutes they gave up on the umbrellas and just ran from house to house while we waited at the road. Soon enough we were back at Gramma’s door!!

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Home after an hour of being out in the rain—they were soaked but happy!!

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Tom gave the kids a hot shower and put them in PJs while I made them hot cocoa!

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Eating Mallow cups from daddy and Uncle Rob—they were Grandma Marsha’s favorite treat and someone brought a bag of them for the boys.

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LOOKS AT THEIR HAUL!! The weather sure stunk but it was great for quick candy accumulation. They got 9# of candy from less than 20 houses!

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Throwback Thursday + Brothers

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We found LOTS of good pictures while cleaning out Marsha’s apartment. I posted a few of the best ones. The Facebook comments were all basically “WOW! That’s Owen!” 🙂

School pics from 1981-1983. Always in blue. Always matching. 🙂

Kind of blue and still matching. #unearthedtreasures #theboyshateme (Rob commented that they probably even had the same underwear.)

 

Unfortunately we’re not going home for a fun visit.

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For about three weeks now, we’ve known that Tom’s mom’s cancer had spread to her liver…but she was dealing with it…and the prognosis, while not great, still gave us hope. Unfortunately, I just don’t think her heart was in it. She didn’t want to deal with chemo the last time around and was glad when she didn’t have to do it. So when she learned that was in her future this time…

Tom got a call from his brother last night that she had fallen and was taken to the ER. The doctors seemed to think that she would rebound once they re-hydrated her but Tom wanted to head up anyway so he left Saturday morning. Unfortunately, about four hours in to the drive he got the call that she had died. So he turned around to come get us and we will all leave for Michigan tomorrow morning.

Last T-ball game of the fall season!

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I love that his tongue is out the entire time. Click photo for larger image:
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He was in the pitcher position for an inning and he did REALLY well getting the ball and throwing it to first base! Click photo for larger image:
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And this is what Katie is busy doing during the game…sitting on the sidewalk by the parking lot, co-opting someone’s mitt and running around, and playing with someone’s dog. 🙂

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Stay tuned for the team photos! The fall season didn’t have official photos but the coaches wife took some!

Katie’s first text!

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So I look over and Katie had the Messages app open on their iPad and she was enjoying looking at and touching all the emojis.

I heard stuff like “Cupcake…heart…pumpkin…flower giggle giggle cat…dog…bunny!”

I couldn’t figure out how she managed to find and open that app since I’ve buried it inside a folder. Then I realized that Tom had texted me and I obviously have the settings configured badly so that my texts appear on their iPad as well…so when he texted me, it popped up on the screen while she was playing her game, she touched it, and it opened the app. Of course, it was all her own curiosity that figured out how to then open the keyboard and emoji screens. 🙂

Anyway, I just sat and watched her…and then watched as she managed to hit send. 🙂

 

Workhouse Art Festival

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There was lots of gorgeous stuff, but it was all very expensive. We saw some glass birch tree pieces we liked—but at $2400 for the set, it was just a bit out of our price range.

So we had lunch from the food trucks instead. This one caught my eye.

I posted the pic on Facebook and a local friend said he’s seen that truck in DC with lines 30-40 long! Woohoo! We had no line!

Everything on the menu sounded appealing but as soon as I saw Lobster BLT I knew that was it. YUM.

Tom had meatloaf/mac and cheese sliders from another food truck…which were really good, too.

Then the kids did an art project—coloring luminaries for an upcoming art installation in Richmond.

Black text: Bownis = Bonus
Dark pink text: Go away
Silver text: 150 poites = points

Welcome to Minotaur Forest!

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We were all on our Sunday morning walk and Owen, as usual, talks about his video games the entire way. Stuff about zombies and poison shields and earning gems and potions for magic sticks…and when we got to this point on the trail, it was “WELCOME TO MINOTAUR FOREST!” 🙂

Then as usual we stopped at the bridge to throw over some sticks and stones.

And then we told them this was a zombie house and they should go check for zombies (it’s an old prison building).

We have fun on our walks. 🙂

Our first homemade ice cream!

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I’ve had a simple/inexpensive Cuisinart ice cream maker on my Amazon watchlist for awhile now, and it hit it’s lowest price ever the other day, so I finally bought it. I figure we don’t eat that much ice cream anymore, so why not be able to make whatever flavors we want in much smaller quantities when we want it?

So we made peanut butter Oreo tonight. The kids helped me get the mix ready (no pics of that because I was too busy helping hold the mixer) and they were EXCITED.

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She would have spent the entire 15 minutes like this if we let her. 🙂

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I didn’t get any pics of the end product or of us eating it because we snarfed it down pretty quickly. (Also, we all had very small portions—maybe 3-4 spoonsful—with the rest going in the freezer.) It was quite tasty—and a soft-serve consistency which I really really like (similar to a DQ Blizzard!). So it was a success!

Owen’s Good Character Award

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Owen’s teacher emailed me last night to let me know he was getting the award this morning and that he didn’t know about it—so she left it up to us whether or not to tell him. We opted to keep it a surprise—and Tom was luckily able to make it, so we kept that a surprise, too!

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He doesn’t see us…

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Doesn’t see us…

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Then sees daddy!!

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Such a happy little boy!

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Owen’s part is about at 2:11.

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Mrs. McLenigan and Mrs. Stulman did a great job with the kids—all four 1st grade award recipients were from their kindergarten class!

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A new family picture!

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Tom was home this morning…because he was going to surprise Owen at school for Morning Program (Owen was getting a Good Character award—which was also a surprise for him!). So I took advantage of us all being home to snap a new pic! It turned out great!

These were the other pics I snapped beforehand. You see what trying to get a picture of the kids together can be like? Not one “good” one in the bunch. 🙂

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Owen’s first fall Nationals t-ball game!

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The first official game was rained out last Saturday, so tonight’s game became the first actual game! It was held at a field in a neighboring city (if you wonder why it looks different). As usual, the first game has many more pictures than I’ll post for subsequent games! 🙂

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Tom is the Assistant Coach this season! The fall season isn’t as big as the spring season, so no official shirts for the coaches (boooo!)—only hats. (The kids also just get plain colored tees with the name of the little league county on it instead of a team name and logo.)

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Once more, he’s a head taller than everyone else on his team!

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Of course she doesn’t ever really watch the game, and tonight she was exploring a new park—throwing stones in the river.

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(No, he didn’t have to go potty. Apparently he’s a natural at the baseball moves.)

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Me: Katie, don’t play in the dirt.
Katie: Mom–it’s sand!

How did she get to be such a smart[ass] little girl? 🙂

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They’ve been trying to teach the catchers to tag out the runners (it still doesn’t count as an out since it’s t-ball) so Owen is doing his best…

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And actually CHASING them down. 🙂

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Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

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We went to get something out of the garage freezer for dinner…and it was open. Apparently one of our guests last night opened the freezer thinking it was a fridge…and didn’t shut it right. (It has a baby lock on the top, which would have had to be opened first…so they had to have known it was there…but then pushed it closed with the latch in the way.)

So it had been open 24 hours. 😐 Everything in the front 6″ was completely thawed and warm. Thankfully a bit farther back stuff was still cold and frozen.

Oh, you’re saying, haven’t you been through this exact scenario multiple times? Didn’t you get an alarm so it would alert you when the temperature changed? Why, yes. Yes we have. And yes, yes we did. And the alarm was installed…BUT TURNED OFF. I’m sure one of us did it but I can’t imagine a scenario in which I would’ve turned the alarm off so who knows. As soon as I turned the alarm back on it started beeping exactly as it should! GRRR.

We tossed at least $100 worth of food—sucky, but it could have been A LOT worse. And then the decisions—in quick succession:

  1. We need to get the coolers down and start emptying the freezer.
  2. We need to start cooking some of the stuff to save it (I was on the stove, Tom started the grill).
  3. We need to start defrosting the freezer (we might as well since it needed it and there’s really no better time). Thankfully (?) I’m well-versed in this procedure and knew it wouldn’t take long.
  4. And then finally…yeah…let’s just go buy a new freezer. (We’d been talking about it but obviously wanted to do it on our own terms…not this way.)

And we couldn’t really even wait until tomorrow because—as luck would have it—our street is going to be closed for two days for resurfacing so we couldn’t even get to our driveway with a freezer if we wanted to! And we have two coolers full of frozen food right now! We bought the freezer at our first house in 2003…so at 12 years old it was time. And we figured a newer one would be more efficient. Unfortunately, all the easily-available freezers today are bigger than what we currently have…which means we now get to reconfigure everything (shelving, etc.) because it’s all arranged Tetris-style to be able to fit in as much as possible and there’s no easy wiggle room for an additional 4″ of freezer…plus we now have to move the dorm fridge because it was on top of the old freezer but the new freezer is too tall.

As expected, it took under an hour to defrost the whole thing. As I said, I’m a pro at this.

Tom was back with the new freezer within a little over an hour and we had it plugged in immediately. Amazingly, it was down to temp within about an hour (!) so we loaded it up. The one good thing about a bigger freezer is that everything fit in there with room to spare. Now, we just have to not fill it up!! (Actually, we were already on a freezer-goods-purchasing-freeze so the ultimate goal is to leave the empty space so we can actually see what we have at all times.)

The one saving grace is that we got rid of the old freezer within a few hours. I posted it on a Facebook yard sale group and a friend in the neighborhood actually saw it and came and got it!

Fall Festival

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Our local town center was having a small fall festival so we took the kids since it was a gorgeous day. When I saw small, I mean small—there were about 10-12 booths on the outside edge (cotton candy, face painting, Pampered Chef, jewelry, etc.) and there were a few kids projects in the center island. It was perfect—the kids had fun and things didn’t take too long. 🙂

Eating his special chocolate-covered Oreo treat once we got home.

Last day at the pool!

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Labor Day is officially the last day our pool is open, so we headed down early—hoping that it wouldn’t be too crazy busy because they were having a BBQ (free food brings out everyone and their brother who NEVER come to the pool any other time) from 1-4. Fortunately, it wasn’t that busy when we got there at 11, though it got steadily busier as the actual BBQ time got closer.

I took a bunch of pics with our waterproof camera which is always fun because it’s so bright out you can’t really tell what you took so you can’t tell if you got any good pics until you get home and check them on the computer!

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I like this one because Owen looks like a stingray.

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Katie enjoyed pouring water on daddy.

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And throwing water at him. This was a lucky shot!

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Another ham in the family.

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Katie loves it when daddy goes to the bottom of the pool so she can walk on him.

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They each had a hot dog and chips…then Katie had a second hot dog! EEK!

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A full pool. Quite a difference from the empty pool we normally have when we’re there.

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Tom ended up taking Katie home a little early and I stayed with Owen until about 3:30. He would have stayed longer but I was exhausted—we’re rarely at the pool that long and I was done with the sun.