A Monday Morning

Monday is here again ... oh Monday, you come too soon!

What did the weekend hold? Let's see ...

• Cyndie left around 1 to go to the scrap booking retreat. She had a really good time and was very productive too!
• Grandma and Grandpa D came over to share our load of Beef Stroganoff with us on Friday night.
• On Saturday, the kids and I hit the Dollar Store to buy some Halloween decorations. They each received $4 to spend, and we came back with lots of pumpkin themed decorations. Now the family room, kitchen, and front door are all Halloweened up!
• The weather continues to be ... shall we say, brisk? Lots of frost on the ground in the mornings, and some ice on the cars. Last night after the kids hit the sack I was out on the deck and there was some ice in a little pool of water! There were even a few flurries on Saturday afternoon.
• The girl scout cookie push appears to be slowing. I think Emma has depleted her reserve readily available cookie buying fodder (our neighborhood, relatives, friends), and as such, the big push is probably at an end.
• The kids and I went down to the Crystal Lake cousins' place for a short over night. Everyone did fairly well, and a good time was had by all. Emma and Sarah came up with big plans for a Thanksgiving show they want to put on when the whole fam is together for Thanksgiving. We'll see if they stick to it enough to make that a reality. There were walks in the cold, lots of playing with cars and dolls, and a couple of treasure hunts. The adults even managed to sneak a movie in after the kids hit the sack.
• Had church in the evening again (the new "normal" time). I kept greeting everyone with "good morning". I think that's ingrained in me from 34 years (minus 10 months when we lived in Torrance) of attending church in the morning!
  
• I spent some time on Friday and Saturday working on painting the dining room and putting up some trim in there. It's looking pretty good, but there is still lots of work to do!

So there's the activities of a busy weekend in eight neatly bulleted points!

Lots going on!

What's new, right? It seems like the Wildwood DeVries always have lots going on!

Well, right now we're hitting construction mode. It started with the new floors, but is accelerating now as we'd really like to get things "put away" (if there really is such a thing!). The focus now is on the craft room and dining room. I'm hopeful to spend a lot of time on those two rooms over the coming several days. That's won't finish anything, but it will get us a long ways!

On the more social side of things, Cyndie headed out today for her scrapbooking retreat. It's just over in Delavan, so not far away, but she's sharing a room with her friend and will get all weekend to be creative and have some relax time. The kids and I invited Grandma and Grandpa D over for dinner tonight to share our Beef Stroganoff, and then tomorrow we have a few outings planned, the bigger one a trip down to the cousins in Crystal Lake for an overnight.

So that's it from rainy Wisconsin where fall is definitely here, but the beautiful leaves may be knocked out of the trees prematurely due to all the rain we're getting!

The Cookie Train Rolls On!

Well, freight train Emma, the cookie queen of Wildwood Drive, continues to roll along. She's had Cyndie out every afternoon after school to canvas the neighborhood for those poor souls who do not have girl scout cookies! She's doing great (thanks to those of you who bought cookies!). She's now "earned" (won't actually earn it until she distributes and collects the $$) two patches, and may get even further depending upon the weather and her excitement level. She's even got a signup sheet with me today at work.

Tuesday, in the evening while Cyndie was working, I made a spreadsheet for her to keep track of her accounting and expenses stuff. For working far less than full time, and not even really looking for clients, she's doing pretty darn well!

Timmy is continuing to be excited to learn to read. His 4K class really doesn't focus on much more than letters, and he easily knows that stuff, so we're teaching him bit by bit some reading basics. He really gets a kick out of that. The grin on his face when he learns a new word or technique is pretty fun. We were doing some -op words yesterday (e.g. mop), and he wanted a "long" word, so we did "crop", which he read all by himself. Then he wanted a really long word, so we did "crops". 5 letters, yea Timmer!

Nice Victory!

The Vikings picked up a nice victory last night ... winning 30 - 23. Now, I believe I had predicted a 27 - 13 win for the boys in Purple, and the score was 30 - 14 before the Pack picked up a couple of garbage time scores to make the score closer than the game really was. I watched with 10 or so guys from church ... it was a good time to hang out and see the victory!

The kids had successful dentist visits yesterday morning ... I think they're beginning to come around to dentist/doctor/eye doctor visits and not have quite so much trepidation. Hopefully. Emma has to go back to get a coating put on one molar ... no cavity or anything, just a spot that is "deep" that they want to protect.

Emma had her second Brownies meeting and was hyped after that. Right when they got home they walked part of the neighborhood to sell some cookies. She's 4 boxes from getting her first patch, so if any blog readers would like to buy, let her know!

Today is the day ...

Big game tonight around these parts ... the Packers, pride and joy of many Wisconsinites, versus the hated Vikings. It's funny though, there is a lot of cross pollination around here in southern Wisconsin. Folks move out of the city (Chicago) and to the country (here), same for people leaving Minnesota to go to the city (Milwaukee). Anyway, while the local population is the majority Packers fans, there are a number of Bears fans and a good share of Vikings fans too. All of which to say, some guys from church are getting together to watch the big game tonight. It'll be a good one with MANY story lines (Favre v. his old team, first place in the NFC North v. second place, Aaron Rodgers continuing to get out of the shadow of the man whose job he took, etc, etc). Good times, and hopefully a good game. I'm going to predict a 27 - 13 score in favor of the Vikings! Check back to this space for an assessment of my prediction tomorrow (especially if I'm right!).

We had a nice weekend. Spent a couple of nights with Laura and Gow watching season 7 of 24. We have (if I remember correctly) 9 episodes left. The show is very interesting, especially having only begun to watch relatively late (season 6) in the life cycle of the program. The writers create a pretty good plotline that keep you on the edge of your seat, involved over 24 episodes, always coming back. But at the same time, there is some pretty bad acting (ol' stone face, Keifer Sutherland), and lame dialog. Very interesting. There was actually one scene that we watched on Saturday night that was supposed to be all dramatic ... Jack's mentor/friend had died, and he was "overcome with grief", and it made me laugh out loud at Sutherland's lame facial expressions! Ha, at least it's entertaining.

Sunday was full. In the morning we had brunch with my cousin who was coming through town, then all afternoon/evening was filled with church related activities. We were meeting for the first time in the new building, so that meant that there was extra setup required, extra practice for worship team, then we also had community group before church, and a fellowship time afterwards. Phew!

This morning the kids had dentist appointments (haven't heard anything from Cyndie regarind how those went).

Friday is Here!

It's Friday, though I was telling Cyndie last night that it felt like a Friday night last night ... probably because we were up a bit later than we usually are. We had a long initial setup/practice/tear down for worship team last night. I think moving to the new building will make the process quite a bit easier in the long run. Cyndie and the kids took Pepper to the pet store to get him some snacks ... wooo, excitement!

Other than that, it's a wet, cool (but not crisply so) fall day. Emma's class walks over to a local apple orchard for a field trip this afternoon, and we have a 24 night scheduled with Laura and Gow for tonight, but other than that, it should be a quiet start to the weekend ... oh, I guess I still need to get through the work day too!

Thursday Happenings

A few things going down on a Thursday for the Wildwood DeVries:

• Cyndie had a successful clothing exchange last night. I believe it was in the neighborhood of 25 ladies and LOTS of clothes. They raised around $250 (that's 1000 pieces of clothing at $.25 each!) for the Agape House girls home charity! Now she's got the big task of packing everything up!
  
• We heard from some friends in TX that their kids have the Swine flu. Also heard rumors that a family up the street may have it too. I guess this is going to be the norm for this winter! Crazy stuff.
  
• Looks like I'll be working from home a lot more in the near term. My boss is saying we'll have a lot to do, so I reminded him I'll have more hours to work if I'm not driving back and forth. Exciting!
  
• Got in the car this morning at 7:30 and the temperature said 41 degrees! It is definitely cooling off. Previously (around 7) I'd gone out with the dog in shorts ... no shirt or shoes (after working out ... I was still hot). But man did I cool off quickly, especially my feet on the cold concrete!
• Tonight is a big worship team practice. Our first at the new building. I'll be getting there early to set up the sound equipment for the first time. Hopefully we'll hit no snags!