All Star Game

Emily was one of 5 girls from her softball team to be nominated for the All Star Game. Her team, the Eastern Conference, consisted of the LA Dodgers, Colorado Rockies, and Arizona Diamondbacks. As she played with the best of the best, the game came down the wire in the sixth inning where her team came up to bat sitting at a score of 4-8. They pulled it together and Emily scored the winning run, beating the Western Conference (St Louis Cardinals, Detroit Tigers, Oakland Athletics) 9-8.

New Acquisition

My living room is finally complete. The much desired piano is finally in place. All of us sit and play everyday...of course the kids are all over it as it's the new "toy" in the house.

Basement is Finished !

Wow! It took a few weeks...longer than planned...but it's finished & I'm moving my CM business into it for preparations for my next workshop...this Friday. Here are the before & after pix. Can you guess which one is which. You'll have to stop by to see the real (whole) thing.

Andrew turns 9

In the bowling alley where Andrew wanted to have his 9th birthday party, I sat chatting with one of the moms that stayed to watch. We determined we probably passed each other in the halls of Crittenton 9 years ago as Andrew was born on the 7th and hers was on the 9th. I told her I was the mom that was pushing the baby cart back to the nursery saying, "you keep him, I'm going to take a nap." She laughed as I told her I'd press the button for all diaper changes, and how the nurse asked me "didn't I want to give it a try", as I told her "why, I have the next 2-3 years of changing Baby Smith's diaper as we still hadn't decided on a name....and we knew it was a boy since I was 20 weeks pregnant. I was looking at this as my 4-day mini-holiday at the Hospital-Marriot, room service was high on my list! My best memories were when the food lady brought my food that I ordered and then came & cleaned it all up, all the bottle water as Rochester had some sort of water main break so we couldn't have tap, hot & cold self-administering morphine drip after the surgery....aaahhh the total spa treatment!

So now my baby is 9 years old...going on 13 (has to keep ahead of his sister)...and wondering how long my sweet little boy will stay sweet or will I be getting calls from the principal soon. Right now, I'll go with the first and keep thinking it will always be this way.

Starting on the Basement

Time to finish off the basement! That's been my mantra for the past 14 years living in this house. But as all projects go, other items move up on the laundry list of things to do, and other things get placed way down this list. Well, will all the home improvements we've been doing this past year, it was time to start the basement project.

Last summer, we started doing some initial cleaning of the basement, ridding ourselves of furniture & books & other items that finds it's way downstairs labeled "unused but not ready to let go". Well, the initial Clean Sweep did wonders, but then it refilled with moving a bunch of stuff out of the other rooms that we were remodeling.

So, I put on the work gloves, picked up GIANT size trash bags, heavy duty of course, and got to work. All books went into boxes & given to the RH Library. The old cabinets that were down there got empty & beaten to trash size pieces. All memorability of the kids got sorted and stored in tubs. Racks were purchased for the storage area & everything that was a keeper went on the racks....preferably in a tub.

June Already!

Wow! What happened to May and my blog posts...as everyone has been asking. Well, let's see what did I do in May...I read some books, see the list. I went to LA for a long weekend for my nephew's graduations from Loyal Marymount Univ. I went to many softball games or practices...and they continue through June. Had a nice long weekend up north for Memorial Day. Did another field trip with Andrew. Worked like crazy on the basement to get it all cleaned up for the contractors to start the finishing process. That about sums it up.