The Bitter with the Sweet

 

The first bitter news of the week, which defined, means difficult to accept and mentally painful.

 

Rhea, John's Peregrine Falcon he had for six years passed away this week.

We are still in shock.

We all got quite attached to her.

 

No immediate plans to replace her yet.

In fact, John is thinking he might take a break from falconry for a bit.

We will see what the future holds.

 

In other bitter news, Alicia graduated from sixth grade today.

It was difficult to accept because I am having a hard time grasping that we will now have two daughters in junior high, and it was mentally painful because my girls are growing up too fast - I know its cliché, but all I wanted to do when I got home working my full days at Lagoon was to cuddle up on the couch with John on my one side with the younger girls taking turns sitting on my lap and to my other side, with Kimberly and Alicia chilling at the end of the couch.

 

Truly blissful moments, and mentally painful because the time is starting to accelerate too quickly.

I've often caught myself pining over the days when the girls were young, but then I think, "I guess I will just have to wait and enjoy that again with our grandkids."

 

Seriously!?!?

Am I really already planning on holding my tiny grandbabies and cuddling with cute, fun toddlers again? 

Yes, and I am finally admitting this aloud for the first time.

 

That is why I was a basket case at Alicia's graduation, thinking about the not-so-far away years when we start sending them off to college, which actually is only 4 short years away for Kimberly.

Great...the tears will be flowing onto the keyboard if I keep going.

Aackk! I digress....

 

Back to the topic at hand:

 

 

 Alicia received an award for superb improvement in her schoolwork.

Here she is sharing the moment with one of her dear friends, Corrine.

 

...and what would a graduation post be without the classic pose with the certificate picture.

Here it is:

 

 

Now to go find a Kleenex. Sheesh.

 

Quick! I have a few minutes...

I seriously do not know how moms do it who work full-time out of their home. While working at Lagoon last week (and this week), I have not been able to keep up with regular chores around here, and by the time I get home after a full day's work, I am pooped! I just want to sit and lounge, let alone think about making dinner, tidying the house, returning phone calls, helping kids with homework, and running all the errands that didn't get done during the day.

I have a few minutes right now though, so I am quickly posting an update since I haven't had a chance to do so, and won't this week once Lagoon gets into full swing. So here goes - our updates for the last couple of weeks.

The biggest venture (including the price tag), was removing this beast of an elm tree in front of our house:

 

 I was seriously dreading having the big tree gone, but surprisingly, it actually doesn't look too bad.

 

We've had quite a few windy days, so the girls pulled out the kites, however, given our tree-land location, we've lost a few kites to their limbs.

 



 

 For my birthday, the girls and I went out for pedicures and manicures:

 

Kim found  a birds nest in one of our trees, and it looks like she is sitting on some eggs.

 

We are hard at work on projects (as always).

Here's the latest:

 

 

We spent Saturday putting in the flag pole, complete with realizing too late we had bought the wrong cement stuff after dumping all four bags into the hole. I furiously dug up what I could while John raced to get the right stuff from Home Depot.

It is up just in time for Memorial Day.

You'll notice that both cars are unable to park in the garage.
That's because all of our projects lying in wait are taking up their usual spots. 

 

John got the hardwood fixed where the closets used to reside, and we have the molding up which we now need to calk and paint.

 

 

Lastly, we are in the final stretches of the basement remodel!!!
John is getting the bead and baton board up on the walls.



The ceiling and the TV/fireplace wall is painted.



Eventually, we'll put up bookcases on either side of the fireplace, but we ran out of basement funds, so those will have to wait.

Speaking of funds, we ran out of $$ to do the flooring in the basement too - what with the unexpected wiring issues requiring us to redo ALL the walls, discovering the gas fireplace that came with the house didn't work, learning that new gas fireplaces aren't cheap, and a rather expensive car repair during the winter.

So, in chatting with one of our neighbors, lamenting the situation, we learned they had two HUGE pieces of nearly brand new carpet they pulled up in favor of hardwood when they moved in, and it was just sitting in their garage! Paying tithing paid off.

We'll lay that down temporarily in the family room and hall until after next year's Disneyland trip.
Our poor girls. We had planned to go to Disneyland last year, but we moved instead, so we moved the trip to this year, but our budget went to finishing the basement instead (and lots of other new house expenses), so we WILL be going next year.
The big projects will just be put on hold, like flooring.

 

That's it for now. You won't hear from me until June when my Lagoon adventure is done, so have a lovely end of May!

Lagoon - It's where the fun is

So my friends, I get to work at Lagoon. Now you know, working at Lagoon has never been a dream of mine, but getting season's passes for my oh-so-bored kids during the summer will be fun, so therefore, I get to do a teeny-boppers job of loading up kids onto the upside-downy Colossus Fire Dragon roller coaster for 8 hours, for a total of 9 days during the parks school days.

Yup, that's a total of 72 hours all for my kids.

The girls owe me. BIG time.

My kids are already asking me to make sure I do this every year.

We'll see how it goes. I may not ever want to see or hear Lagoon noises at the end of the two-weeks.

In other fun, we've been catching these in our backyard...

WARNING: the picture is graphic:

No kidding, we have a rat haven in our backyard. Granted, we are next to the mountains and a huge several-acre park behind our house, so this is probably their territory, but still. They must go.

Kimberly is getting really good at resetting the traps after each kill. We're up to 7 rats in the last 2 days, and counting...

 

A Mountain of Legos

We checked out a Lego show last weekend. 

 The hit was the mountainous pile of Legos they had to play in.