Schitterbahn & Moving Steven

Jack, Eric, Steven, and I went to Schlitterbahn today!  It was only about 85 degrees when we got there, but by 3pm it was up to 105, yikes!  We spent most of our day in the tidal wave river, which was pretty great!  We also did the teal and black waterslides, the water coaster, the true lazy river, and the connection between the lazy river and the tidal wave river.  The signs said that there were supposed to be 6 new rides in 2011, but as we near the end of July, none of them are near completion - lame!  It sucks that the ticket prices are the same for 1/2 the park as what they will be when the rest of it opens, but we still had a great time.

Steven decided not to reapply sunscreen with the rest of us, and paid dearly for his error!  When we finished at the park, we grabbed lunch at Cheeseburgers in Paradise.  I left the boys so I could take Jack home and greet Papa on his return from Michigan!  Eric and Steven went and played some games with Grant - then I joined them at his apartment later in the evening.  We managed to finish moving him out of his apartment, except for some small things, in only two trips!  Then we were able to hang around for a bit, and I snuck a mega snap under one of the kitchen chairs...it took 30 minutes for anyone to sit in that chair, but Steven just about peed his pants when he was the unlucky winner!

Yay!  Jack and I are ready to go swimming!

Jack was super tired and upset that we were leaving, this isn't a smile, but a grimace as he was crying.  :( 

This speaks for itself! 

Jack fell asleep as soon as he hit the seat, and then woke up easily to devour his chicken strips and fries. 

Dark, but Steven outside of his empty apartment!

Day 330: Camping Part 2 (and Finishing Moving Papa!)

Our weekends seem to be busier than our week days!  We had a nice slow morning - eating donuts, marshmallows and breakfast burritos around the campfire.  Nursing the boys' hangovers.  Packing up the campsite.  That would appear to be enough to fill a day - go home, shower, and go to bed...  Not for us adventurous folk!  We showered and rested for about 30 minutes, but then we drove out to Olathe to finish getting Papa out of his apartment.  Now that the apartment is totally empty - his house (which is over twice as big as the apartment) is brimming with boxes.  So now our goal over the next few weeks is getting Papa UNpacked. -deep breath-

Eric had a two major wipeouts - one where he fell over the fence cable (about thigh high, dividing the camp site from the road), and one where he was running toward the lake and clotheslined himself with one of Chris and Daniel's tent cords.  This picture shows the damage from the latter - he had gross oozy bleeding for quite a long time that night.

Goodbye camp site 11!  We'll be back to visit you and sites 12-13 some other time!

Our awesome group photo, but Brian was in his car...oops!

The picture + Brian didn't turn out as well, but he was there too!

I was happy to see the kitties when we got home.  I think they were happy to see me too, because they didn't fight about being held at the same time!

On our way to go  move Papa, we took our first load of recycling over to the middle school in Eudora - our closest recycling pick up.

Eric preparing for the afternoon/evening of work with his 5 Hour Energy!

Papa and the last item to leave apartment 321 - a cow planter with a half live flower plant!

Day 326: How Long Does It Take To Pack A 2 Bedroom Apartment?

Oh my goodness - decades of stuff all stuffed into a two bedroom apartment... It is taking us such a long time to pack everything up and move it.  Some things are easy to pack, others have to be gone through to see if it needs to come with us, even more stuff is quite obviously trash.  Tonight Eric and I worked with Mom, Alan, and Papa at the apartment.

Lucky for us, we have our third free dinner this week!  Mom and Alan took us to Cheddars.  It has a fantastic environment and really delicious food - and the prices are $2-3 cheaper than your average bar and grill type restaurant!

Alan being...Alan.

Eric being...Eric.

Day 325: Getting Settled In

We've still got quite a ways to go to get Papa moved to his house and settled in... but some things are starting to fall into place!  Papa's house is definitely starting to feel like home!

We've got until Sunday to finish, and it looks like it will be a race against the clock.  There is still a lot left to do!  It's all worth it though - another round of free dinner!  We took Papa out to the new Buffalo Wild Wings in Olathe, yum!

The duck painting in it's rightful place!

Day 322: Moving Papa

Papa bought a house last month, and we're finally getting around to getting him moved in.  Today, with help from Paul, Deb, Mom, Alan, and Alison, we packed and moved most of his stuff.  There wasn't much packed, so we balanced our time between loading the truck and packing more boxes.  We started at 8:30, and left his house around 5.  In that 8 hours, we cleared out (almost) his whole living room, and got the big furniture from his bedroom.  Over the next week we plan on helping him finish the office, bedroom, kitchen, and cleaning up the place.  Here are some pictures from the day!

 Awe, Ashley stayed over last night.  Isn't she adorable?

Ahhhh, and you're on a grammar criticizing blog! 

 There, that's better!  I fixed it with a Sharpie!

Dusty proof that Alison was working hard!

A collection of flowers from across the years.

 Eric and I carrying the very last two boxes (for today)!

Papa, proud new homeowner in his dining room!

 A beautiful living room, with a nice low window for Frisco.

The guest room - set up for Papa until his bed gets over to the house.

The office...

And Papa's bedroom!  

Here's the kitchen.

And after a very long day of moving, Eric and I rode the motorcycle home to Eudora.

Day 77: KU Football Season!!!

What a busy day!  I woke up and headed over to my friends house - Katie and Joe, to help them pack and move.  They got married a few weeks before Eric and me, and had a lot of things to go into boxes.  Katie and I moved all of the food over to Joe's parent's house and then started packing up the rest of the kitchen to go to storage.  It took us pretty much all day to get the kitchen cleared, but by 3:00 all of the cupboards were empty!

Then I went back to Lawrence to pick up Tera for the first KU football game of the season.  Lawrence teachers got free tickets and Tera is one of the biggest KU fans I know!  We started off by heading to the practice field and being the very last people in line to meet Todd Reesing - Tera got her picture taken with him!

Then we went and grabbed some awesome seats and enjoyed watching...nothing.  Haha!  Both teams played alright, but neither team got anywhere.  There were a few field goals, but no touchdowns for either team.  Poor coach Gil had his parents watching his first game in a decade and he lost!  We still had a great time though - thanks to some delicious pink lemonade and nachos.  Though all we really wanted was a hamburger in a foil bag!

Katie, (baby Thomas), and I with her empty cabinets!

Nachos!

We worked hard to find our pink lemonades!

The other team was stuck in the sun!  Genius design for the stadium!

Day 58: Getting Work Done

I have been a major workaholic this past week, mostly due to the fact that a day and a half of meeting and only half a day to prepare for students left me reeling with "what the hell am I supposed to do with my students?" syndrome.  I have some extremely high needs kids, and started off the year with absolutely no resources.  I didn't even have a stapler or crayons in my room! 

Luckily I had an awesome teacher friend, Katie, who passed on a carfull of great supplies.  I also had a wealth of knowledge and ideas in this crazy head of mine. 

One of my biggest challenges has been that the school was making a storage room of my classroom - dumping broken tables, extra chairs, and 40lb bags of potting soil in there over the weekend.  I talked with the principal and we set a plan in action - one that wouldn't have fallen into place unless I made it happen myself.  So Eric came up to school after the kids were gone and we started by going to Wal-Mart to get velcro.  You see, velcro is a special education teachers vice.  It is absolutely necessary to make visual schedules that can be rearranged depending on your activities - meaning hundreds of little picture icons, an equal amount of velcro dots, and strips of velcro that make up the physical schedule.  I bought 1000 velcro dots on ebay for $11 [I know!! AMAZING!!!] and 12 feet of velcro at WalMart for $13 [boooooo].  I've already used 9 feet of the strip velcro, augggggggggghhhhhhh!

Anyhow, my oh so loving husband helped me stick velcro dots and then lended me a helping hand [and bicep] in rearranging my classroom and putting up cubicle walls so the storage area was partitioned off and did not pose any danger to my students.

P.S. We discovered dozens of spiders in my classroom.  Gross.

Here is the stock picture of the Velcro I got on eBay for $11, the price for the same batch has since raised to $61, what the hell?!

Day 38: Bugs

Today was a pretty average day.  Eric had work at Checkers and I worked with Jack.  The cats spent a nice lazy day at home sleeping - taking the occasional break to yell, hiss, and chase one another. 

A common "I've never met real danger" sleeping on her back, Addy; and a "I'll sleep on the smallest surface available," Mystic.

When Eric and I were home from work, we continued to attack the mess of boxes in our house.  We singled out a large amount of stuff for trash and the garage sale, and further organized anything going back into storage.  We have a little 5x5 storage space right outside our front door, and between the porch light and living room light, we had a bit of a security breach.  Addy went nuts over the dozen, or so, moths that made there way inside.  She proceeded to disable the flight capabilities of each and every one of them!  Hooray!

Sadly, this video demonstrates the spot on our inner lens, sad times!  I need to return the camera and iPod [cracked screen] to Best Buy.  Thank goodness for extended and initial warranties!

Day 28: Packing, Movies, and Videos, oh my!

Today was a flip flop of yesterday - healthwise.  My fever is gone and I'm feeling fine, but Eric spent the first half of the day rather hungover.  We spent the morning and afternoon packing and organizing things to take to storage and things to sell at a garage sale or donate.  We rented a 5x10' storage unit and it's packed to the ceiling about 3 feet deep.  Eric joked that I should have said to the rental guy "5 by 10 by whaaaat?"

These are all of our boxes, stacked to the ceiling.

The result of 5 carloads of stuff, only about 3 feet deep!

We've also watched episodes of Drawn Together, The Proposal, and now we're watching Drop Dead Fred.  Today we had a talk about how we're movie people and he would call it a hobby.  Netflix is really a great investment for us, $8 per month for tons of TV and movies.  Sure, we don't get to choose from 300 channels and get to watch current shows, but we're also saving $92 month!

Finally, I finally got around to uploading some videos on YouTube.  Enjoy!







There's more, but you can just search for more videos by user if you want to see them.

Day 24: Even Worse!

Soooo, I sent Eric to go talk with the apartment manager today and...we find out we're screwed.  They've lost the renewal notice that we signed and she claims that we never did - even though we did it at her desk, in front of her eyes.  This one lady losing a piece of paper mean that we are out on our asses in 17 days if we don't find a new place to live.  They have already leased our apartment to another family.

First - we've already bought checks with both our names on them [with my married name], and our new address.  Sad times if we have to spend another $10 on checks!

Second - apartment hunting sucks when you only have a week to find a place.  I say only a week because we have to move out/move in and get this place cleaned up by the 30th.  If we have to leave, we have to be out by the 30th.

Third - it may not be as bad as we think.  After I called and politely threatened to hire a lawyer, the manager called me back and said that they will be offering some other local properties to this family in place of our home.  Hopefully this family has some mercy on us and takes the offer.  We don't particularly want to live under such careless management, but we also don't want to leave our home.

Finally, this sucks.  That's it.  This sucks.

Second finally, Eric and I worked on our jug of wine tonight to ease the tension while we cleaned the house preparing for the worst... This involved lots of trash, laughing, and scrubbing.

Those are our "wine" faces!  And Mystic looks on stoically.

Addy refuses to participate in the fun without being forced to.