Hunter's Football Picture

What an exciting life I don't lead

Graden is off to Stockton Lake again this weekend - this time for a tournament. I talked to him a little while ago and it sounded like he had a pretty decent day ... let's hope for a perfect day tomorrow!

Today the kids and I went to Heritage Park in Olathe, KS for a picnic for my work. It was pretty fun ... the kids had fun playing with all the other kids. They played kickball, football and even an egg toss!

That was kind of draining so we all came home and took a little nap, then cleaned the house, did laundry and watched Forrest Gump. I still cry when he is talking to Jenny at her grave site. : (

Not much planned for the rest of the weekend ... Hunter will be watching the Iowa football game tonight so maybe Dayne and I will get a movie to watch, too. I watched the movie "The Break up" last night ... it was pretty good. A decent way to kill two hours anyway.

Well, if we do anything profound over the next 24 hours I will be sure to update the blog!

Hugs to all,
Tiffany

Weekend activities

Domestic. That's the word that best describes my weekend! Graden was gone all weekend pre-fishing for a tournament next weekend so I had the house to myself so I planned to do a whole lot of cleaning and work!

But before I did all this work we started the weekend out on a fun note! My boss, Matt, had a party at his house on Friday night so we met all my work buddies and their spouses as Matt's Mansion. We had a very nice dinner and then played the "Not So Newlywed Game." It was a blast! We had to answer questions like which of my friends does Graden find the most attractive (Jen!) and which of his friends I find the most attractive (he thought Adam, but I said Mike). The last question was the best (for the guys): If you were born gay and had to be with one of the men in the room, which would it be? Funny thing is quite a few women chose Graden for their husband, but none of the men chose Graden for themself!

Saturday: Graden left about 7am and I sllllllllllept in 'til about 10:00! Then Dayne and I went to the grocery store, got a whole bunch of groceries (this is a luxury for my family to have a house full of food. I loathe grocery shopping!). When I got home I put the groceries away and then started cleaning the house. I had six loads of laundry that needed folded. Guess what ... I hate folding clothes! Hunter and Dayne each stayed the night at a friends house, so I had the place to myself! I rented a movie and just hung out enjoying the peace and quiet!

Sunday: Again, I slept in a little and then got to work! I cleaned and rearranged the downstairs living room and tried to make it more "manly." I rearranged some pictures, rearranged the furniture and moved the computer and desk from the living room into Hunter's room (eek?). The desk was always messy and a general eyesore! I also hung all of Graden's fishing trophys and some of his fishing pictures! He was pleased when he came home to the renewed "man" room!

Lastly, I cleaned the basement - or the dungeon, as we call it. It was a horrid mess! I had a deocorative bale of hay that Oz got into and must have had a blast throwing it all over the place. There was hay on top of boxes stacked 6 feet high. I have no idea how he got it way up there. I can just picture him on his hind legs, standing, using his front legs to throw the hay all over the place. Asshole dog. It only took me about 2 hours to clean it, but it was a crazy mess and a bit overwhelming to tackle at first! I really should have taken a before and afer picture!

Well, now it is past my bed time and I really need a shower! I have worked waaaaay too hard today and I smell like it!

Damn, I got smart kids!

The state of Missouri has students take MAP (Missouri Assessment Program) testing (like ITBS) each year in April. The test describes performance in terms of four levels of acheivement in a content area.

We got Hunter's test results for 7th grade testing in the mail yesterday and he is in the 90th percentile! This means he scored better than 90% of the students in the nation!

Some of you may remember that Hunter scored a 99% in 4th and 5th grade! We are so proud of Hunter! He is a smart kid - and overall pretty good!

He has all A's and one C+ on his grades so far. And you can imagine how much he hears about the C+!! (Science isn't my thing either!)

Wouldn't it be great if he could keep these grade up and get into college for free?!?!?

Hunter's 8th Grade School Pic

(forgive the quality, I took a picture of the picture so I could post it).

Look how my little boy is becoming a young man! He's even growing an Adam's Apple!!!

Hunter's first football game

Hunter had his first football game tonight! They won 34-0! Hunter is #72; he plays defensive end.

Remembering

I find it interesting to hear where others were when they heard of the attacks on our country. Please feel free to post a comment with your story.
* * *
I was on my way to drop Dayne off at daycare. I heard it on the radio. I only caught the tail end of the initial report and the bits and pieces I caught didn't make sense to me - - How could a plane land on top of the World Trade Center? I admit, I was not real familiar with the facts on the towers, but I thought "Wow, that'd take a lot of skill to land a jet on top of a building!" About 10 seconds later, it all started processing: they didn't LAND there, they CRASHED into the building. I dropped Dayne off at daycare, told the girls working and they turned on the t.v. to get some details. I went ahead and went on to work, at Affina for the Navy account. From second one of entering work that day, all hell broke loose. For reasons I am not real sure why, I needed to talk to Graden. He was still asleep so I had to wake him up to tell him. I told him we were being attacked. He didn't beleive me. I told him to turn on the t.v. Silence. Eerie silence. Graden is my rock so to hear him silent and just imagining him absorb this awful information was disturbing to me. Eventually we hung up and I had to move on with my day - although it would prove to be anything but a typical, boring day at Affina. For the next two weeks we were inundated with calls. People with a sudden interest in joining the Navy. What an awesome feeling that was; to know this is the country I am part of. One of the more memorable callers was a man who said, "I was there 40 years ago when you needed me; I am here for you today." He was a veteran of the Korean War. Amid all the articles were postings of peoples thoughts, stories, poems, etc. One of the most impactful to me was a poem called "The Day I Lost My Hyphen."

The Day I lost My Hyphen
Frantic, worried, wife didn't call, the day I lost my hyphen.
Plane fell many died, black, white, yellow the day I lost my hyphen.
No more African-American once the second plane hit, the day I lost myhyphen.
United in sorrow, pain, anger, courage, resolve and love of God, family and of my country.
Day of infamy, no my day to stand, my day of rebirth, no longer African-American but an American on the day I lost my hyphen.
— Reuben D. Eckels, 38, Wichita, Kansas

Over the next two weeks we had over 500% increase in call volume due to people expressing interest in helping this wonderful country. I worked 16 hour days trying to help in the way that I could.

HBO did a presentation on the events of 9/11, "In Memoriam: New York City, 9/11/01". With the exception of this year, I watch the video every year on the anniversary of 9/11. Every so often when I am cleaning out my old stuff, old photos, memorbilia, I find an article I saved re: the horrid events of September 11th. One of my friends, Erin Schmid, is an excellent writer. She was in school at the time and wrote a paper titled The Day with No Contrails. When I look in the sky and see contrails, I am grateful for the seemingly simple, common event of planes flying.

Where were you when you when the world stopped turning?

Weekend Events - Sept. 8th

Dayne and I traveled to "the 'Loo" the weekend of the 8th. Gretchen's 32nd birthday was August 25th and she wanted a bunch of her "girls" to get together to go out to dinner and out to the bars afterwards. Graden and Hunter stayed home to do some yardwork (good time for the girls to leave!!)

First we went to Carlos O'Kelly's for dinner then to Casey's 218 Pub for a few drinks, then off to the Pump Haus on Main Street in Cedar Falls. A lot of people watching. My personal favorite of the night (so much so that I violated his rights and recorded him!) was a man in an arm brace who must have not read the lable on his Vicoden bottle when it says not to drink alcohol. He was clearly jacked up on drugs and alcohol. He was the whitest rappin'est characther I have seen in a loooong time!

Enjoy this video of Dayne signing in the car on the ride home Sunday.

Labor Day Weekend

A few months back my co-workers Barb, Shawn (left) and I started planning for a fun, long weekend in Bull Shoals, Arkansas - located in Northern Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains. Barb grew up in the area and was very familiar with the area and always enjoys her time there so she wanted her friends from work to join her and her family over the holiday weekend!

Barb's family - hubby David and daughters Natalie and Maddy and Shawn's family - wife Becky, son Blake (11) and daughter Sheridan (5) all headed south for a great time!

We left Friday after Hunter got home from football practice and headed on the five hour journey. We arrived at the cottage around midnight on Friday night. We unloaded the truck and settled in for the night ... excited for the next day's big events!

Me, waiting for the crew to load up on the boats so we could frollick in the water!!

The kids on the dock in front of our cabin.
Dayne jumping off the dock! The water was so clear we could see all the way to the bottom!

SATURDAY: We all slept in 'til about 9:30, ate breakfast, made lunch to pack in the coolers and loaded up the boats for a day out on the lake! We settled into a cove and were having fun, minding our own business when the "Confederate Mafia" started interloping ... one boat at a time until they had literally enclosed us in the cove! All was well, until their puppy lab "Princess" accidentally knocked down one of the toddlers and started chewing on the kids' toys. The owner came to retrieve the dog .... but a while later, Princess - and a companion - honed in on the area again and all hell broke loose when someone (in our party) picked up a rock. (I admit, I was not comfortable with this move, but I didn't know the fella so I just minded my own business.)

Once the interloping party goers noticed that he had a rock in hand they got pretty excited and even got so crazy as to compare "us" throwing a rock at the dogs with them throwing rocks at our kids! Influenced by four glasses of home made beer (by aforementioned would be rock thrower), Shawn intervenes and tells the lady that our real problem is that our kids have to smell their smoke. Awww shit. "Oh no he didn't say that" was the general attitude of the Interloping Pirates now. As soon as he said it the ladies went off like nobody's business! "This is a public beach our dogs can be here ... we've been coming here for 10 years ... this is OUR beach!" Yes, the same beach she identified as public was now theirs and had been for 10 years. At one point, I took a good look around me and noticed that ALL the interloping pirates were looking at us. I'd guess there were probably 30 pirates. Needless to say, not one of the more comfortable moments in my life! Eventually they retreived their dogs and went back to their boats. About 15 minutes later, we decided we were going to leave (we had just been discussing leaving, prior to the "incident" .... so it wasn't really as if we left because of their comments. Although, I am sure they thought they had showed us whose beach that was!).

I should mention that Shawn is not an avid boater. In fact, this may have been his first time driving a boat - he is from Chicago and a city boy all the way! I helped Shawn push the pontoon off the shore and he gets all sorts of turned around and now the boat becomes parallel with the shore. I get out of the boat and give another shove - and a good one. Shawn is well on his way out of the cove .... but without me!! I am being left behind with the Confederate Pirates!! As I am swimming along side the boat Shawn is looking dead at me pushing the throttle forward. He is looking at me and I swear he is thinking, "Oh! Did you want on this boat?" I toss my shoes on board (they were weighing me down!) and have to swim to the front of the boat. Mind you Shawn is new to the operation of a boat so as I am in front of the pontoon I have a clear view of the motor. This served as a source of adrenaline to get my fat ass in the boat - quick!!! I will admit, I was laughing during the ordeal, it was funny! So I am finally on the boat and as we are coasting away they moon us. Nice. Perfect ending to the ordeal.

We went along and visited some bluffs and settled into a different cove for a while longer. About 5:00 we headed back to the cabins to start dinner - burgers, beef kabobs, mac-n-cheese, green beans and lots of other yummy eats! That night we all sat around and ate dinner and talked and talked and talked. We all got a great insight into Barb's family and what influenced her to be the way she is! : ) She is a hilarious character!!

SUNDAY: On Sunday morning Graden, David, Shawn and Hank (Barb's dad) went golfing. They got back to the cabin about 2:00 and we headed back out to the water! We found a (safe, pirate free) cove and swam for a few hours. Then we headed out to the cliffs to watch people jump from the cliff (we didn't see anyone jump) and did some deep water swimming - Dayne loved jumping off the boat into the water! The water was about 125' deep where we were! The water is clear and clean and very beautiful! The temperature was about 85 degrees!

We headed back to the cabin for dinner and enjoyed brisket, salad, green beans, potato casseroles and many other tasty foods!

Graden and I, sitting around the dinner table chattin' away!!

Not real sure why Graden looks frightened ...

The kids played hide - n - seek, water balloons and painted their finger nails the adults sat around and enjoyed a few beverages and talked into the wee hours of the night!

Hunter was dubbed, "Survivorman" during our time at the lake. He spent a lot of time wandering around and being naturesque. He had four kabobs in his hand one morning and when I asked what he was doing he explained he was going hunting. He caught two grasshoppers and skewered them. Mmm ... just like Survivorman on the Discovery Channel! I guess his name IS Hunter, huh!??

Check out time was 10am on Monday morning (eww, a little too early for our liking!) so we loaded up and hit the road about 10:45! We ran into a few traffic jams and stopped to eat at Braums (yummy ice cream!) so we didn't get home until 4:57 (the kids and Graden had a bet as to what exact time we'd get home - Graden won). It was a nice, relaxing time!