Catching Up

It's been awhile since I've blogged. So much has been happening around our place!

The horrible storms that brought tornadoes into Missouri and Oklahoma for one. AD and I, along with our 4 dogs took shelter in our safe room for a little while one of those nights. That was an adventure in itself since Dani doesn't particularly care for Mikey. You know she thinks she's the boss and he's so much bigger than she is, I think it kind of unnerves her a bit.

The storms didn't do any harm in our immediate area though, thank goodness.

We had scheduled an appointment to have the carpets cleaned in our living room, dining room and our bedroom the Friday before the storms hit. Long story short, the technicians didn't make it until the following Tuesday. Because we had moved all the furniture, AD and I, along with the 3 inside dogs, stayed in our 5th wheel thru the following Thursday. It took awhile for the carpets to completely dry even with "speedy dry" fans blowing.

G3 pretending to race G1's mini-Sprint

 Son brought his kiddos up from the city the following weekend.

G1's girlfriend was celebrating her birthday that weekend and I'd asked several weeks earlier if I could make her cake this year. I wanted to make her one of those topsy-turvy cakes. It was a fun cake to do.

I also made cookies (see some of them in the picture below), chocolate covered pretzels to look like lady bugs, and lady bug cake balls.

If you enlarge the photo above you'll see lady bug place mats that I made using black foam and red place mats that I bought at the dollar store. The special birthday hat was made using a glittered bowler, also from the dollar store, and the remnants of the black foam.

The flower balls were made by stringing ribbon through 2 holes of a wiffle ball and tying a knot, then hot-gluing flowers and leaves into the remaining holes. They were then tied to the chandelier.

When G4 celebrated his birthday a few weeks ago we gave him a Hex Bug starter kit and some bugs. Son told me the kids said I was the best Granny ever. Seems they all love the Hex bugs and have been adding to the collection.

They brought all their bugs and some of the other pieces to show us how they worked. It's pretty fascinating to watch all the little roach-type bugs move around the pods or whatever they're called.

When G3 and G4 were little I did a "My First Crush" (Orange Crush to be exact) photo shoot with them. I wanted to do a similar one with all the kids and this time use the title, "Orange You Cute."

This is one of the photos I particularly liked.

And this is another one of my favorites.

Girlie has some darling flamingo clothes. She wanted her photo taken with the turtle and snail in our front yard. It almost looks like the turtle is saying, "Listen, do you want to know a secret?" Ok. . . ok. . . I was a Beatles' fan back in the day and that's the first thing I thought of when I was going through the photos I'd taken. But it's a great title for a scrapbook page, don't you think?

We also made a trip to the Kiddie Park. The new photos in the header were some that were taken that evening.

So, that's what I've been up to recently along with the regular day-to-day stuff like laundry and cooking and mowing, etc. I know everyone is busy. It's that time of year. I'll be stopping by your place when I can and blogging here and there.

Have a great summer!