Springtime Trip to WV

Every spring I go to visit Alexander to see him play baseball.  I was really looking forward to it this year since he started in the position of catcher.  Unfortunately the weekend I went it decided to rain so baseball was canceled.  I went along to Karate class on Saturday.  My son and his wife found a really nice new place for Alex to take classes.  Since I was there he has gone from his white belt to his yellow belt and now has his orange belt.  I'm so very proud of him and really hope he sticks to Karate.

Now that's what I call being flexible

That night Alex had his club scout banquet.  We needed to bake and decorate a cake for the cake raffle.  It needed to be decorated in the club scout theme.  We decided to go with a camping theme and I think it turned out pretty good.

They sold tickets and you put your ticket into a bag of the cake you wanted to win.  I put a few in Alexander's bag and some in others.  Well when they were pulling tickets we won our own cake back.  Alex thought this was so funny.  All night he kept saying "Grandma  I can't believe we won our own cake back".

Alexander

I had a great time, I can't believe how fast Alex is growing. 


Till Next Time.....

Love,
Jennifer

Home Design Part 2 & Trip to WV

When we moved to NC we bartered with Erica for a fish tank and rain barrels.  We finally decided to get the fish tank set up after Greg's sister came over and said "You know that storage container you have there...some people put fish in it"  We took the tank outside to wash it out and after a while we went out to find a lizard swimming in the water.

We were going back and forth as to what color to paint the stand.  We ended up taking the arm cover from our sofa and had the paint store match the color.  It turned out really nice & below is the finish tank. My mom really likes the tank.  She said her father had a big fish tank when she was younger.

Our dining room set is from Greg's grandmother.  The chairs were so old and the wood was breaking that we ended up trashing them.  We went to an antique store and found a nice set of antique chairs at a great price.  The fabric was nice but did not match the new dinning room color.  We went to the fabric store and redid the chair seats.  I think they turned out pretty good.

Old Chair Fabric

New Chair Fabric

I took a trip to see Alexander in West Virginia.  The cub scouts went to the food bank to help separate the food donations coming in that day.  They were collecting food for Thanksgiving.

That afternoon he had a school fundraiser. We sure did have a lot of fun. Alexander's cousin Hayden came along with us.

Hayden & Alexander

Alex & Hayden

 

The same weekend was trick or treating.  Hayden came along with us and I had so much fun watching him.  The look on his face the first time he knocked on a door and someone gave him candy was priceless.  He had a blast that night.

 

It was a great weekend!

Till next time....

Love,
Jennifer

Back On The Blog

I cannot believe it's been a year since I've written on my blog and what a year it has been.  I will catch everyone up in the next week with some new posts.  Last August started a crazy year for me.  Within a three week time period I drove to Pennsylvania twice, once to move my mother to NC with me and once for my stepmother's funeral.  I also started a new part time job at Walmart.   My mother was getting to the point that she could not take care of herself anymore.  When she decided to take a walk to the store and got lost going home and ended up in someones yard I decided it was time to make that decision.  She came to me with her legs being so bad with open wounds that she was close to the point to losing them.  She ended up in the hospital then in a Nursing home for over a month.  We had to drive 45 minutes to a doctor each week to have her legs wrapped.  She sure did fight me on this but I was not going to give in as others have in the past.  I can say that after a year her legs are finally healed.  Hopefully they will stay that way.  We have her in a hospital bed at night so that keeps her legs up and helps to keep the fluid from building up.
She was in her same apartment for over 20 years and was the 2nd resident to move in when they build the complex.  It was a hard adjustment moving to another state, she has her moments but overall she is doing well.  But I guess that's part of getting older she will be 84 this year.  She does love the southern sweet tea.

Since we moved here I could not make up my mind on the colors I wanted to paint my downstairs.  I wanted a color for the dining room but since that wall goes straight across into the family wall we needed to figure out how to separate them.  Here is the result:

This picture is looking at the wall as you are coming down the stairs.  As you can see we painted the dining room to the right a blue and the family room to the left a light tan color.  We decided to put a piece of woodwork on each side to separate the spaces.  Then we painted a darker shade of the the tan in the center.  It really turned out great and I love it.  I then got an idea off pintrest for some of the shells I've been collecting.  I bought some shadow boxes, painted the back cardboard pieces the same color of the wall.  I  spray painted the shells I was going to use white.  I then glued them onto the cardboard and put them back into the frames.  I love the way it turned out.

Well I guess this is long enough for now, I'll be writing soon to catch up on the year and all our adventures. 

Till next time....

Love,
Jennifer