A little of this . . a little of that . . .
It feels so much like fall – I just had to stitch up some new fall ornaments. Two down, working on another, and I have a couple more all kitted up. I need to make a trip to Hobby Lobby for some fall fabric to back them with and that’ll be my new fall décor.
Wow, the weekend went fast. Saturday was spent at home just getting stuff done. Joe serviced Eric’s car and cleaned out the shop. I worked in the house. Drew spent the day helping his dad – I was told I wasn’t allowed outside! I love that he wants to spend so much time with his daddy! Then we ran out to Belva Deer for the evening and sat around the campfire with Dad and Mom as they had been camping most of the week. It was beautiful evening for sitting around the fire!
Sunday was a fun filled day. We had a picnic at Belva Deer with Dad and Mom and my sister and Abby and Jeremy and Braxton came too! (I forgot to take my camera and so didn’t get any pictures.) It rained, which we still need the rain badly, so nobody complained. We just ate our lunch under the awning and sat crowded together and chatted. It was fun! When the rain stopped Braxton, Drew and I went for a walk and left some painted rocks for others to find. It worked too – Dad walked up the bathroom and came back with one of our rocks. He didn’t realize what we were doing and thought Drew had dropped it! After everybody had left except us and Dad and Mom, Eric texted asking where we were. He and his friend Ally had decided to come home to do their laundry! So, he came out and spent some time with Grandpa and Grandma. It was great to see him! He seems to be adjusting well to college life. I asked Abby if she had been hearing from him and she said yes and that she thought he was doing great. I love that my kids keep in contact with each other like that. If only Aaron could have been there, the day would have been perfect.
Today it’s nice and quiet around here. Joe is gone to work and Drew is gone to school. I plan to work in Drew’s room a little bit. Go through some clothes and organize his drawers. Tomorrow will be spent with a friend. Then it will be time to work on getting the camper ready for our big Labor Day Weekend camping trip. I have lists to make, food to prepare and a camper to organize. We’re looking forward to the weekend and spending it with good friends we hardly ever get to see. It’s always a fun time!
I’m making progress on baby girl’s Christmas stocking! I’ve been stitching instead of doing other things lately but that’s okay. I haven’t stitched forever and it’s nice to get back into it. Tonight Drew’s tired and crashed already and Joe is gone to the high school football game to run the chains which gives me an evening of quiet time. The windows are open and the cicadas are singing, it’s nice and cool with a breeze blowing through the house. Perfect for watching a little Alaska: The Last Frontier and getting some stitching done. Tomorrow I’ll be cleaning out the fridge, cleaning my bedroom and making a macaroni salad for a Sunday picnic with family out at Belva Deer. And I just made plans to spend Tuesday with a dear friend. She lives in town but has this beautiful little cabin out by the river. It’s family land and the cabin was built by family and her and her husband have fixed it up. It’s so cute. There’s no running water or bathroom but we’re country girls at heart – we can handle roughing it. It’s so fun to spend the day out there – away from everything. Just time for chatting and enjoying each others company, watching the river flow by, and maybe going on a 4-wheeler ride. Can you tell I’m really looking forward to it??!! I can’t wait!
When Joe and I stopped in at North Creek Antiques over the weekend I made one little $6 purchase. I’m finding the older I get the less I want. My house is overflowing with “stuff” and I see all these neat things on Pinterest and Facebook and Esty that I think I want. Then when I go to an antique store, I change my mind. Everything is so expensive anymore and I just don’t have room for things and I really don’t need all this stuff anyway. I wanted something though to remind me of our anniversary camping trip and decided this would be perfect. After a little cleaning and some mineral oil it looks perfect in one of my old wooden bowls! And maybe a couple more old wooden paddles would look nice to go with it – maybe I will have to go back and see what they’ve got!
Drew was so excited this morning – he was so ready for the first day of school to start. He was excited to go to the open house last night. He made a little basket out of a yogurt container and filled it with chalk and a sucker for his teacher. He can be such a sweet and loving little boy!
I think I shouldn’t be allowed to have black paint. I’m not sure why I bought this cupboard due to the color. It’s green. Not a color that I decorate with. But I do like the cupboard. It’s solid and very well made and I love the make do handle. Due to the color though I had stored it away and had not used it for a few years. Then recently I brought it out but was just not happy with it because of the color. Then I thought, why not paint it black! And I love it. It fits in with my black bench in the dining room. But now I have to decide whether to leave it like this or to distress and stain it. I’ll live with it for awhile before deciding. In the meantime, I wonder what else I can paint black??!!
We start the busyness back up this week. School starts on Wednesday for Drew. Tonight Drew has flag football practice. Tuesday night is the open house at school. Wednesday night is the first flag football game of the season. Friday night Joe runs the chains at the high school football game. And so it begins. It won’t be quite as hectic this year though. For the past six years we were filling up our schedule with cross country meets in between everything else. I’m going to miss those meets and watching Eric run but to be honest, I’m not going to miss the running involved. The older I get, the more I prefer to just stay home – unless camping is involved of course!
Our anniversary camping trip went way to fast! It was so nice and relaxing with just the two of us at what we’ve decided is our favorite campground. Robert’s Creek is in Pella by Lake Red Rock, about an hour away from home. We love all the trees and the big secluded sites. It was so nice to sit in the evening around the campfire with the trees all around us and above us. We went for walks, stopped at an antique store I’ve been wanting to visit, visited the meat market and the bakery (twice!) and for the most part just enjoyed each others company at the campground. I got a great start on stitching up baby girl’s Christmas stocking while Joe just relaxed and messed around with the fire. Then Eric texted and said we could come visit him on Sunday if we wanted so that ended the weekend on a good note. We woke up Sunday to rain so we packed up early and headed home. Picked up Dad and Mom and Drew and headed to Iowa City to see Eric. We took him out for an early supper and it was nice to be able to see him and give him a hug!
Yesterday Drew and I were missing Eric and I could tell Drew needed a little extra attention. So, even though my house is a disaster and I had planned on doing some major picking up and cleaning – I instead spent the majority of the day with Drew. We played with his Playmobil camping toys – he has the truck, camper and tent and he has so much fun with them! Then we painted rocks! I had seen that our community had started a Sigourney Rocks project where you paint small rocks and “hide” them around town for others to find. If you find a rock you can either keep it and paint another one to hide or you can re-hide the one you found. You also share a picture of the rock you found on Facebook under the Sigourney Rocks group. What a fun project – something both adults and kids can enjoy together!
Then last weekend while at our family get together in Burlington my cousin showed me some rocks she had painted with her granddaughter that they were taking to Lake Geode (which is just down the road from Uncle Terry’s place) to drop off with the same principle behind it. Only she was a member of Art Abandonment on Facebook. The way she explained it they do the same thing only you can do more than just paint rocks. You can make anything you want and leave for others to find. I see it to be a way of spreading joy to others without expecting anything in return. Something I want Drew to understand and want to do. We are going to take our rocks to the campgrounds when we camp and leave them for others to find. And we’re going to be on the lookout to see if others have left rocks of their own for us to find!
Today picking up the house is on my agenda and then working in the camper and if time allows, maybe painting some more rocks. It’s kind of addicting! Tomorrow is Joe’s and my anniversary and we are camping, just the two of us, for the weekend in Pella. This is a yearly tradition for us. We don’t buy each other presents and we rarely, if ever, get away just the two of us except for the weekend of our anniversary. We tend to stay either in Pella or at a favorite campground outside of Des Moines. This year we will be heading to Roberts Creek in Pella. We always look forward to this weekend and this year is no exception. Drew will spend the weekend with Grandpa and Grandma, Eric doesn’t plan on coming home this weekend, so we’ll be off to spend a nice relaxing weekend on our own!
During our first camping trip this spring the lady camping next to us was loom knitting a stocking hat for a baby and she showed it to me. I’ve never learned the art of knitting but this looked like something I could possibly do. So I ordered a set of looms off of Amazon and headed to YouTube and easy peasy – stockings hats and baby booties and these little dolls for baby girl. I enjoy it but it’s not something I want to sit and do all the time but I can now make stocking hats for the little boys and baby girl when needed. They’ll make great Christmas presents this year.
On a different note – yesterday was rough. Rougher than I expected. We moved Eric to college. The move itself was wonderful. Everything went very smoothly and we had him moved in in less than an hour. Of course the fact that he would only let me make up his bed and do nothing else made things go a lot faster. Girls are so different than boys when it come to these things. Not only did we have a small load to move, he wanted to unpack and put everything away himself after we left so that didn’t leave much for mom to do! Moving Abby was a whole lot different!
After we had everything up to his room we left to run errands. We kept running into another family we had seen at the dorms. We saw them at the restaurant and at Walmart and the boys decided they would meet up later in the evening. He seemed nice and that made me feel better knowing Eric might have already made a friend in his dorm. We ate lunch at Hu Hot then onto Walmart for a fan, microwave, coffee pot, groceries and odds and ends. He shares a bedroom and study room with one other boy and they share a small kitchen and bathroom with two other boys. The kitchen has a refrigerator and stove but he wanted a microwave and coffee pot. His roommate is bringing a toaster and a TV so that seemed fair enough! Then we had to stop at the Hawk Shop to pick up his computer and then back to the dorm.
Eric’s roommate won’t be moving in until Thursday and they haven’t met yet. They have talked on social media. He’s from Chicago. The other two boys had moved in earlier but we never saw them. We did hear them in their room when we got back from shopping but they soon left without introducing themselves. Being a worry wart mom I immediately noticed when we first got in the dorm that it smelled like cigarette smoke. When I went into the kitchen I discovered an empty water bottle sitting on the table and it contained cigarette butts and the used cigarettes had been dropped on the floor down where the wall meets the floor. There is a gap there that doesn’t have a baseboard and I guess somebody thought that looked like a good place for used cigarettes. Along with that the kitchen window was wide open. I’m sure to try and get rid of the smoke. But – the air conditioning was on and although the bedroom was cool, the kitchen of course was not. I’m sure smoking is not allowed in the dorms but Eric wouldn’t let me go talk to the RA about the situation. He said he would wait until his roommate got there and they would work things out themselves. I get it. But I’m not happy with this situation. But, I’m sure everything will turn out fine. I don’t have a problem with them smoking. I do have a problem with them smoking in the dorm and leaving their mess in the kitchen like that. If just seemed rude to me.
Anyway, leaving him was harder than I thought it would be. No roommate, the neighbors just don’t seem friendly, he has no idea how to use the bus system, he doesn’t know anyone in his dorm . . . And yet he seemed fine. I’m just a worry wart! And then Drew was crying and refusing to put his seatbelt on because he thought that way we wouldn’t be able to leave Eric. I had to sit in the back with him and he cried himself to sleep. When we got home I texted Eric to let him know we stopped and picked up his car, which had been in the shop, and that it sounded great. The exhaust had needed some work along with the alternator. He said he was with Allie and they were at Target. I should have known. Allie is a friend and classmate from high school who also moved in yesterday only in a different dorm. Funny how much better it made me feel knowing they had hooked up already! And now I’m trying to stay busy and not worry and not text him. I will at some point today but I have to let him do what he needs to do without constant interruptions from mom!