Monday, June 22, 2009

My baby is 11 years old...

Samantha turned 11 on Friday! John's mom threw a lovely surprise party for her with her friend Joyce and the 2 other kids she watches... Samantha had a nice time with that and I think she was truly surprised... And, I was touched, it was such a nice thing to do... Then John's nephew Ryan came over with a card for Samantha from his family... again I was truly touched...

We let Samantha pick where she wanted to have dinner and she chose CiCi's Pizza Buffet... then when we got home she got to open her presents... Her main present was a new & bigger bike which she loved...

On Saturday poor Samantha had to work before her party... first thing in the morning we went out by the bridge in our neighborhood to install the kiosk the homeowners association purchased to keep the portion of the community who doesn't have Internet informed... We hired a guy who lives in the neighborhood & does construction to install it and we helped a bit... Samantha helped me go to the creek to get a couple buckets of water to pour in the post holes with the Quickrete...

After that we went to our neighborhoods community clean up day where poor Samantha had to work some more picking up trash around our ponds and at the entrances to our neighborhood... When we decided to trim tree branches at the entrance she asked if she could go home... lol...

Trimming the tree was quite an adventure... there were bugs all over the branches that we loaded into the back of my Element... they didn't bother me at first but after a while I felt like they were crawling all over me... And then when I went to pull out onto the main road all the branches fell out of the back of the Element into the street! Thankfully everyone was very patient while we got them cleaned up...

Finally it was time for Samantha's Birthday Party! She was so excited for Tara to come over and spend the night... Kelly and Tim hung out with us and we had a cook out... And then later in the evening the girls watched their 80's movies... They absolutely loved "Sixteen Candles"... I told the girls how when the movie first came out my best friend Carolyn and I had gone again and again to the hairdressers to get our hair cut just like Molly Ringwald in that movie and how disappointed we'd been each time that we looked nothing like her... My precious little angel says: "Well, your hair looks like hers now Mommy..." It took me 25 frickin years but I finally got the Molly Rinwald in "Sixteen Candles" hair cut!

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Indianapolis Mini Vacation... Pictures in no particular order...

This was at the Children's Museum in the Chihuly exhibit... They had this cool bench that moved around in a circle so you could lie back and look up at the Chihuly glass in the ceiling... It was so beautiful... Chihuly is one of my favorite artists...


I can't tell if John's eyes are closed because he was taking a nap or just because he blinked...



Samantha at the Children's Museum digging for dinosaur bones...


I always love the doll house exhibit at the Children's Museum and this visit it was one of Samantha's favorites as well...

Samantha was also very interested in Anne Frank... They had a video about her life and Samantha asked a lot of questions... I thought about getting her the Diary of Anne Frank but John and I decided to wait a few more years...

This picture was amazing... It was tiny pictures of the Holocaust made into Anne Frank's face...

John and Samantha playing checkers... For a while there I thought Samantha was going to win but she didn't...

The Indianapolis War Memorial...

Our hotel... We had fun finding our room from the outside... It was on the right side, the third floor down and fourth room over...

Samantha brought her hamster, Twitchy and got her Boston Terrier at the hotel gift shop... She named him Westin...

Samantha tucked into her cloud bed... I believe the Westin calls them heavenly beds and they truly are... I want one of those beds...

Wow, John and his dad look exactly alike!

Me, Cheryl, Jazmyn and Samantha...

This is the bridge from Madison, IN to Kentucky... Back when I first met John we went to visit his Grandma... She asked if I wanted to go to Kentucky and I said sure... Well, John, it turned out, is terrified of bridges like this one... When Grandma realized this she made him drive over it again and again all the while sitting there in the passenger seat laughing... It was great...

The Jefferson Proving Ground is where Grandma's family lived until the government took the land... They kept the family home and used it as officer's quarters...

This is the bridge between the Bear Creek Cemetery and Grandma's family farm... The farm is where John's dad grew up...

Covered bridge we saw on our drive through the Indiana countryside...

The one room school house across from the Proving Ground where Grandma went to elementary school...

I know some find it morbid and odd but we love looking around really old cemeteries...

This is the out house at the Bear Creek Cemetery where John's Grandma and Grandpa are buried... I have used this out house on several occasions and it is similar to the one at the cemetery across from the Proving Ground where I was so traumatized that I forgot to take a picture... I got locked accidentally in the out house! I had to go really bad and my options were the bushes or this really old and really creepy out house... I was hesitant to use the out house because it was totally full of cobwebs but I didn't want to use the bushes either because there was a creepy caretaker mowing the lawn... Finally I decided on the out house and when I was done the wooden latch on the outside had slipped down over the door locking me in there with all the cob webs and icky out house stuff! I could see though the crack in the door that John and his dad were all the way on the other side of the cemetery looking at a grave... I couldn't see Samantha but I yelled for her... When she stopped laughing she let me out... Oh, it was so icky!

Older portion of Bear Creek Cemetery...

John's Grandparents' grave...

We all thought this was an interesting picture above the toilet in the bathroom of our hotel room...

When Ellen and her family went to the beach they took foot pictures so I wanted to take foot pictures too... We were walking around downtown Indy and for some strange reason my Birkenstock were giving me blisters... they've never done that before...

Most of you know Samantha has an obsession with squirrels...

You all will surly recognize this view...

One of my favorite spots in Indianapolis is the canal...

Samantha found some ducks...


More canal...

Samantha and I were thrilled to find Starbucks coffee in our hotel room!

View of the Court House from our hotel room window...

The trip home!

More Chihuly at the Children's Museum...

Dinosaur dome at the Children's Museum...

Another favorite part of the Children's Museum...

The Chihuly sculpture... Note the bottom portion... it is what you looked up at on the circle lounger thing...

Me and Samantha at the Indiana War Memorial Museum...

The lobby of our hotel where Samantha and John would wait for me... They are so impatient!

Samantha in her Aeropostale necklace... She doesn't look like a baby anymore...

Except when she's sleeping, then she still looks like a baby...

You never ever see me in a bathing suit let alone in the water... and if you do get me in the water I never put my face in but this time I did! I showed Samantha how to do summersaults under the water...

Samantha's first shopping trip to Aeropostale... She got a necklace, bracelet and a tee shirt... She said she has always wanted a peace sign necklace...

Here we are outside the Native American Museum...

We left on Monday but on friday Samantha was all packed... I love how she packed her vintage suitcase that I had decorated for her...

And she left this note that John and I thought was adorable...

Weigelia


Every year I love our garden more and more...

New Patio Furniture

I thought lay away at K-Mart was a good idea when I saw the commercial on TV but it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth... We thought it would be nice to have the store keep it until we had stained the deck and then bring it home... So, you have to make payments every 2 weeks which was a pain because the K-Mart store is icky and full of really dumb people... Plus it smell funny (the store not the patio furniture)... Then we picked it up and when we got home we discovered that they'd given us the wrong set... the style was correct but we got a side table, 2 chairs and a big table instead of the big table and 5 chairs... It was a hassle loading it back in the car and going back to K-Mart where the nicest but oh my goodness was he slow guy helped us... then we got home and discovered that the table was minus it's hardware so we had to go back again... but now that it's all up it is perfect and we can sit on the deck and laugh about the really nice guy who moved at a snails pace...

Our Peonies This Year...


Samantha's Mosaic...