Four Things That are Making me Happy:

1.) We discovered we do have Sugar Snap Peas growing in our garden. There aren't many (And there probably won't be many since most of the plants didn't make it) but there are 3 plants that have pods on them.

2.) I paid Happy Girl to weed the garden today - and she did the MOST awesome job ever. It didn't take her too long and the garden looks great! I've been keeping up with it, but I haven't had time the last few days and I probably won't have too much time in the next few days.

3.) My house is clean and I didn't have to bully anyone into helping me. They did their chores, no complaints.

4.) My Zucchini is shredded and ready to make zucchini bread. YUM! The Princess even sat and watched me shred it. I didn't tell her what it was for. (I'm afraid she won't eat it if I do.) She even played "Zucchini Delivery Girl" and took 4-5 smaller zucchini and 1 larger Squash next door for the neighbors.

Three Things That are Making me Sad/Irritated:

1.) Mr Happy decided to go to a car show tonight and tomorrow night so my carefully planned dinners are going back into the freezer and I have to think up friendlier fare. (Note: My Cheese steak sandwiches & cantaloupe dinner have been "shelved" more times than I like to admit. He swears he wants me to make it, but now I'm not so sure. Mom & the Kids don't really care for it so I had Grilled Cheese planned for them.)

2.) One of my oldest friends has taken offense that I cancelled my reservation to her family reunion. I wasn't sure I should go in the first place and when she kept coming up with (A lot of different) excuses about why we wouldn't have fun, I made the decision to cancel my reservations. She knew that I was considering it, yet is still trying to pin this decision on my family and dh's reaction to me going. Of course, her saying that "she wouldn't travel that far to see my relatives" and/or the comment that she didn't think that she or her family would have a lot of time to spend with us so we probably wouldn't have any fun - might've had something to do with it. I was okay with the fact that she probably changed her mind about inviting us and was looking for a way to ask us (gracefully) not to come, but when she started pinning excuses on my family (which were varied and untrue) that started to irritate me. This whole situation makes me sad. I should've listened to my inner voice the first few times she invited us and just declined outright. It would be a shame to get into an argument about this.

3.) I have disgusting brown fingers from all the cherries I pitted today. I've tried bleaching them but it's in my nail beds and it looks totally disgusting. I was going to make sour cherry freezer jam, but now I'm not so sure since I tasted my strawberry jam and am not terribly excited by it. It'll keep until tomorrow - I'll decide then what to do. In the meantime, I will keep bleaching my fingers so people don't think I have disgusting bathroom habits.

Yummmm!

Now those were some Tasty Vegetables!

You Play Ball Like a Girl.....

Happygirl Pitching

The Princess, running for home plate

It's Almost Over. So They Say.

I have been talking to a few friends and acquaintances lately. (Which isn't that unusual, I talk to everybody and I talk a lot.) What grabs my attention is that quite a few of these people have commented that since we are coming up on the 4th, that the summer is almost over. These friends have school age children which means that school starts around August 26th. The way I see it is that there are still 52 days LEFT of vacation. Maybe for others they are counting down the days because they aren't enjoying their vacation. Maybe with all the Summer Clearance Sales going on, maybe it makes them feel rushed. And following those, maybe the back to school merchandise that is beginning to show up on the shelves is pressuring them to start putting their brains into "Back to School" mode. I don't know. I just don't see it that way. We've had almost 3 weeks (23 days) of vacation so far. In those three weeks we've been busy. We've had some wonderful opportunities to do all kinds of summer things. Pick Strawberries, go to the pool, observe the girls at their softball games, watch fireworks. Just hang out in the back yard and dig in the dirt. In a few weeks we will be taking a road trip to Kentucky to hang out with a dear friend and her relatives. I just can't put myself into the mindset that summer is almost over.

In August, Volleyball conditioning will begin for Happygirl. Maybe by then I'll have my brain wrapped around all the back to school stuff. In the meantime I'm just going to enjoy my days as they are.

July 4th Fun on July 3rd

It started being a cleaning day to get ready for being out on the 4th but somewhere along the way we ended up going (very last minute) to see fireworks in Medina with some friends. After driving Grandma to the beautiful shop we packed up a picnic and went to Medina to pick up our friends. Fortunately, MrHappy drove the van so we were all able to ride together. (Which was fun - almost like a bus trip~the Kids thought is was the greatest thing.) This helped because we knew with Medina having a carnival at the same time, that parking would be difficult to find for one car let alone two in the same area.

So the guys in the front navigated us to this spot - away from the concession stands (YAY!) but right across from the High School. They parked the van on this one patch of grass and it was AWESOME! I mean really! The spot could not have been any better. We were able to pull stuff out of the van and not have to haul it anywhere, the fireworks were viewed perfectly from our seats, and when the whole thing was over we were able to just throw everything and everyone back into the van (which we did in 4 minutes flat) and we were back at our friend's house in 10 minutes. (It is a record. When we lived in Parma and viewed fireworks at Tri-C, it used to take us over an hour to get home and we only lived 7 minutes down the street.)

We still didn't get home until 11:30 last night but it was an enjoyable evening and something that I'm glad we were able to do. Fireworks are one of my favorite things to do during a holiday. (It ranks up there with driving all over creation to see Christmas lights, viewing my Fisher Price Nativity set, making Valentine's sugar cookies, and dressing up for Halloween.)

To Do List

• Laundry
• Dust
• More Laundry
• Dig in Closets in the basement to de-clutter junk to take to the church by dance class for donation
• Even More Laundry
• Pay Bills online
• Get all the LAUNDRY out of my Laundry room because it's driving me nuts and I can't find anything and it's really making me a little insane because I've been washing all week but the laundry never seems to go anywhere except where I need to go and it's in my way have I said it's in my way because if I didn't then I really should say that it's in my way and I can't do anything else in that room because the laundry is still there and I need the space to work in there and....
• Oh - and remind the children & my dear sweet hubby to put away their laundry.

My Garden

One of the things I've been busy doing this summer is planting a garden. We had a patch of landscaping that didn't grow anything but thistle and humongous bush/flowering plants. (Not very pretty) It did grow a few bunnies in there last summer but after I went all "Tony Soprano" on them, they became a little more cautious. (I believe they live in the field behind our house and not in our yard anymore.)



Here are a few pics of my new hobby:

In the beginning - there was only weeds and overlarge flowering bushes.

Here are the landscapers clearing the land.



This is it on May 22nd - about 6 weeks ago. I had only gotten as far as hilling the rows. I put the plants in the next day.

This was it Yesterday June 30th.
We've already picked the first "bananas" (As the princess has named yellow squash) and would've had a few grape tomatoes this week except either the wind blew so hard it broke the tomato stem where it was tied to the stake or the cucumbers behind it pulled it and broke the stem. I'm not quite sure which. So far, we've put a lot of work into it and it's been pretty satisfying. It's not too bad for a first year's effort. I swear I'm learning a lot!